Hezekiah it

In 1620, I attended a women’s retreat called Healed for Life (H4L), you can read about it here. Did I say 1620, sorry 2016! Mind me not. It is one of the memorable things I’ve done this year and I’m truly grateful to GOD for it. I hope to go again and again as much as I can. Babe ghast be healed for life though! Amen?

You might be wondering when I get to the reason behind the name of this post. Let me explain. One of the tools I gained at the retreat was to ‘Hezekiah’ any issues I have. I recently re-read the account of king Hezekiah in Isaiah 36-40. Here’s a summary:

Been One Year

This week makes it one year since I upped and moved out from Loughborough to Manchester. (I briefly wrote about it here.) And I’ve been thinking about how much has changed in me and around me since I made the move. What’s new? What’s the same? Who’s new? Who’s the same? Many things have happened in this one year unlike no other year – good and what I’ll, in my limited understanding, call not-so-good.

For this week I thought to write about some of the ways I’ve changed, what I’ve learnt and I’m still learning in this new environment, the encounters and people I’ve met.

Commuter Observations

If you are my regular reader (thank you for your support!) and have read my most recent posts on the art of being Home, I wrote one on travel which you can read here. While Home, I used a lot of public transport and because for most of my journeys, I didn’t really know exactly where I was going – knew just the address, nor the way to get there, there was no luxury of bowing down to my phone

the art of being Home – Hospital

E don dey look like this na the last in my chronicles of the art of being Home – number 5 in this series. I think I’ve milked enough from these past weeks, the rest are under lock & key . . . at least till further notice. You can read the previous ones here, here, here and here.

The devil is a liar! So before I travelled back home, on my way back from visiting with a friend

the art of being Home – Village

This post is the 4th in ‘the art of being Home’ series, but with more pictures.

A major one of my reasons for going Home was to visit my home town a.k.a place of origin = the village to see where my dad was laid to rest. After a bit of stalling, tbh, I bought our air tickets to travel about 2/3 days before the planned departure. I was avoiding paying the online transaction fees but after I’d reserved the flights online and visited two banks to make payment in person but wasn’t successful, na to just ‘chest’ the ~N3000 extra and pay on the online.

So off we went with Air Peace and arrived peacefully!

I haven’t been to the village since Christmas 1994! Too long to be honest but life happened to my family and we kids just didn’t go after that apart from my parents. We met with one of my uncles and his family. I saw the burial place, arranged to have the place cleaned and just chilled. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry, maybe because I was with my brother and mum. I laughed and was cheerful all the time.

I plucked guavas from the trees in the yards – two varieties;

  broke palm kernels with hammer and stone;

and harvested a bunch of unripe plantain as my   souvenir back to Lagos, then to the UK – mum insisted!! I complained to my uncle that UK unripe plantain never ripens in my hand but just shrivels. But this one was different – it was organic, pesticide-free and very natural, and ripens!

My dear brother decided to do a iron-man with shoes only. It was really funny!

After visiting home, we went to visit one of my dad’s lands; took pictures and headed for the capital – Owerri, drove around the city and went to a restaurant – ate Ofe Owerri (Soup of Owerri). Why it was more expensive than the other types of soups – a local cuisine more expensive than foreign ones, without importation or customs or shipping or storage fees. Only in Owerri!

But it was really nice being HOMe and seeing family and places I hadn’t seen in years! Hopefully I’ll do that more often especially as there are at least 5 flights everyday from Lagos to Owerri!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and the ones before this. You can read the others here, here and here.