Category: Life lessons

Cooped up, or kept sane? Lockdown on the canal

On By dhanya8In birds, canal, Corona, Friends and Family, Life lessons, online learning2 Comments

I now find myself having lived a boat-life on lockdown for two months already! It feels like much longer than only 1 month since I last wrote on here, and I feel like my life in Lagos is a very murky memory right now!

Life on the canal has now become my norm and we three seem to have fallen into quite a comfortable rhythm. I teach Mon-Fri and run my private sessions in the evenings or weekends, also catching up with assesments, emails and my Master’s across the days and hours, my mum works online also and schedules her meetings ideally around my live lessons, and Barry (my stepdad) has been avidly working on repairs, modifications, and improvements to our living space (their boat, AreandAre).

My working life has experienced a huge overhaul, to enable both myself, my team, and my students, to adapt and assimilate as quickly as possible into an online learning routine. And dare I say it, it seems to have worked!

“Just a quick note in this Teachers’ Appreciation Week, to say that we celebrate and appreciate your indefatigable zeal and all your hard work to bring out the best in XXX. Thank you indeed!”

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No time like the present, especially when there’s no time at all

On By dhanya8In Corona, Friends and Family, Life lessons, parenting, workLeave a comment

So, here we are, weeks into lockdown, no idea when we will come out of it. For me, and many families around the world, this is also the Easter holidays. Whilst so many people around the world are struggling to adapt to the enforced stay-at-home protocols, as they adjust to the dramatic change in social situation, and the absence of schooling and usual work life, there are also many, many people, including myself, who are working somehow harder than ever before.

My phone and social media are rife with messages, of frivolity, dark humour, inspiration, risk rates, health care guidance, let alone melancholoy, anxiety, frustration and some despair. Loved ones with children are somewhat overwhelmed with their newfound 24 hour parenting regimes, single friends and loved ones are verging on the balance of gratitude and loneliness, and then there are us teachers, finding their way through the mud. Somehow, akin with the parents, we need to keep children reassured that everything is fine, fine, fine, and that it won’t be long at all until we are back together , when they can return to their daily squabbles, curious moments, and mind-opening sessions and routines.

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Cabin time quarantine

On By dhanya8In A friend in need, Corona, Disaster, expat, Friends and Family, Life lessons, Taking time1 Comment

Corona. Covid 19. Lockdown.

Words crossing everyone’s lips, world-wide, right now. Oh, and of course, vaccine.

Social media is on fire, full to the brim, an absolute plethora of this topic. Everywhere you look, read and even listen, you will find it as the central point, as the entire globe faces a pandemic it has never known before.

Quotes of positivity, joyous, inspiration, encouragement, reflection, are abound. Likewise fears, anxieties, observations and reports of economic collapse, relationship breakdowns from too much time together, stressed out parents, highly vulnerable elderly, exhausted medical workers; all of this, right now, is omnipresent.

So, I am not here to add to all of this, to give you a tale of woe, nor a story to uplift. I don’t feel it is my place to confirm the unease many are feeling with the uncertainty, nor do I have the right to suggest everything is going to be okay. I don’t know about either. None of us do. And that, is the crux of it. NoFor the first time in my lifetime, I do not have even a tiny sense of what may come when I open my eyes upon the next dawn. And whilst I can take comfort in knowing ‘we are in it together’, we aren’t, not really. Parents are finding themselves navigating an entirely new world, as they try to work out how to home-school the children that have befallen upon their every waking hour. Medical workers around the world, who have been fighting for better pay, working standards and conditions, and credit where credit’s due, are now all of a sudden being celebrated each week, by an evening clapathon. (How this negates the life and death risks they are putting themselves under, nor the millions of hours of hardship they have already suffered within their careers, I cannot fathom. But anyhow, it makes people feel ‘like they are doing their bit’ so…..) Employees around the world, myself included, are fearing when they will receive salary, if at all, employers and huge businesses are just the same – watching crestfallen as the economy crashes, companies go bust, airlines are grounded and basically, the entire capitalist world comes to a standstill.

(The planes are not the only thing presently unmoved).

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Living life as a marathon or a sprint…

On By dhanya8In beach, expat, Friends and Family, Lagos, Life lessons, Taking time, Unexpected challenges3 Comments

Lagos life is becoming reminiscent of my old London life; fast-paced, not enough ‘end’ in my week, long journey times to reach nearby destinations, and opportunities to do so much, that I couldn’t even write it all into my diary let alone fit it in.

Rainy season this time around has been like no other I have known, for this time of year. Having returned to Nigeria at the end of August, it seems like not a single week has passed when the skies haven’t darkened, day has somehow turned into night skies, and plans have been set aside due to heavy downpours. Even yesterday, as I traveled to the beach hoping to get some ‘fresh’ sea air into my lungs for a reprieve, we found ourselves amidst a full canvas of rains, leading us to be wetter than if we had simply jumped from the boat and immersed ourselves within the lagoon. Arriving at the beach house, shivering and having the sensation of being a drowned rat, my simple choice was to submerge myself under the pool’s water. Despite it generally giving me an initial chill to the bone upon entry, I found myself warmed and soothed. Better under the water than it crashing down upon me.

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Making a personalized Irish coffee, to warm me through the rains,

There is so much of this place that I love. Yet I am working all hours that I can manage, still I find I am behind in almost every deadline that I face, and thereby of course, I feel like I don’t see much of these loves….

I have more invitations that I can keep up with, even in memory let alone in action, and I have missed some fabulous creative events, that generally make my life here all that richer. I missed the Lagos Photo festival,Lagos Photo festival, the Lagos Fashion week, many operas, meals with friends, dates with potential new relationships, the incredible Art X exhibition, jazz nights, embracing the spectacular Felabration, enjoying the incredible Ake Arts and Book festival held at the newly built Alliance Francaise that is no less than five minutes walk from my house.

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