Regales Of A Lagos Bobo (By @Peero007)

Picture Courtesy: 'Dewale Peter

Hello, my name is Papi and these events may have occurred in a past life, this present life or the life to come and no! this isn't clairvoyance speaking but hunger. You may have an idea what it feels like to be hungry at 4pm, wait till dinner at 8pm and while waiting, the minions in your belly are agitating because the aroma you perceive is proportional to their agitation in that; the pleasant the aroma, the more agitation in your belly, the more hunger you experience (mathematically &scientifically proven). It gets worse when you sleep off 'cause you'll wake up feeling like the minions revolted and destroyed your stomach walls. Yeah! That's the feeling and for me, naturally, hunger always has a way of opening a valve in my brain from whence cometh strange philosophy & questions that could question one's sanity like right now I'm extremely hungry and asking myself "what if the feeling of deja vu we experience is actually a memory of an event that took place in a past life?" (Selah!)  If you really stopped to think about this, then perhaps you my friend are very hungry and need to attend to your stomach infrastructure ASAP.

I have decided to regale you with tales of my sojourn in the land of excellence, Lagos; A land flowing with milk and honey, land of opportunities, land of possibilities, was what I was told that made me leave my village at a tender age in search of green pastures and man did I suffer (refer here for Chronicles Of Papi). 

Having experienced yardism whilst living with my Uncle  in a yard filled with yardists (read Chronicles of Papi: Yard, Yardist &Yardism) on arrival to Lagos then moving to live with and work for Madam (Tolu's Aunt; Remember Tolu, Ekaette & Adaeze?) who lived in affluence, I knew from the moment I moved that I didn't want to go back to the Yardist kind of life, hell no!

Living with Madam was the best thing that happened to me, it opened a portal to a whole new world (yeah! Like Aladdin singing "A whole new world" to Princess Jasmine), with her help I became an accountant, not just an accountant, I was chartered, I mean I was one bad ass chartered accountant; can you beat that? Well, the Nigerian system beat it and beat me blue, black and rainbow. A job as a bank manager or chief accountant at some multinational company was what I was told my qualifications would get me, so I kept looking  and applying for such positions with pride as I foolishly ignored offers for lower positions, You know when you're proud and life wants to give you a reality check, it either "humbles you" once or takes its time by gradually taking off each letter from the word "PRIDE" till you're extremely humble. I attended interviews after interviews till I became a very known face at different company interviews "Hey Mr. Papi, you're here again" was the usual greeting. While some companies said they couldn't afford to pay me, most said I was very young-which they loved (I smiled), I was qualified (grinning from ear to ear) but they needed a young person with like ten years experience (smile died of a heart attack). Four years after I was still jobless, do you have any idea what it felt like when interviewers went through your resumé and saw you had been jobless four years after your professional certifications? rather than being an experienced chartered accountant, I had become a professional home stayer/experienced interviewee. I became so desperate that I fell for job scams via sms that made me lose money. I began to suspect voodoo at work against me, probably my enemies from my village or perhaps my friends' exes had cast a spell on me 'cause I was one of the people that called them "our wife" while they were together, how was I to know they would breakup- I was innocent. 

In case you don't know this, my Mama once told me "my son, you're on your own..." anyways I wasn't *Faze-d*, I also remember her saying "Papi, I know say one day you go make me proud" well they say  "its in you" I was determined to never give up, but *kan u* imagine the peak I needed to get to?

Well, after not giving up, I finally got a job, as a teacher- a primary school teacher, that was when all my friends became motivational speakers, from "great men started small" to "great things start from small beginnings", from "Google started in a garage" to "Dangote began in a room" and blablabla, the next episode should tell you more about my life as a primary school teacher.