Featured by Adaeze

Don’t Tell Me How To Do My Job.

So I went to church today, my first Sunday service for the year physically. By the time I went to bed in the early hours of this morning, I’d already decided I would join service virtually today because I didn’t think I’d wake up early enough to make it to church. Guess who woke up at a few minutes to 8am without the usual morning lethargy. Yes, God has a sense of humour.

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Featured by Adaeze

Under Pressure.

I do not know now where I got the impression from, that Lawanson market was the market with highest priced goods in the whole of Surulere and Idi-Araba market which is barely 500meters away was the cheapest. I think the women who own stalls in the market are more serious than those in other markets with a wider variety of goods and that is why this morning, I took my body to Lawanson to buy the plantains and vegetables I needed to make the meal my spirit had been craving for nearly a month. Continue reading →

Featured by Adaeze

I am not Wife Material… And It’s ok.

This post has been sitting pretty in my drafts since June 30th, I wrote it at a time I found myself writing about marriage a whole lot. I decided to shelve it until another time and I guess that time is now…

 

Recently, I was having a conversation with a much older man about marriage and a woman’s place in the home. If you know me well- or at least read my blog regularly, you’d know that I do not believe in having specific gender roles in a marriage.
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by Adaeze

I Tire For Rice

I have so many things to share in this post; however, that has always been the problem with updating the blog — where do I start?

I’ll start with food.

Read more: I Tire For Rice

In the early 1990s, a beautiful Nigerian singer, Esse Agese, released a song titled Fine Pepper Soup. The song was a favourite of mine for two reasons:

  1. Esse can sing. She had beautiful, beautiful songs, abeg.
  2. My grandmother made the best pepper soup in the world. She was so good at it that she sold it. She sold a variety of drinks and pepper soup at her shop on Oyenekan Street.

The title of this post is also lifted from that song — I tire for rice, I tire for stew, she sang. I don’t like rice, so I can relate. I eat it, but I do not like it.

I genuinely thought the song was about my grandmother’s pepper soup. You have to remember that I was very young, and the chorus went:
Fine pepper soup, fine pepper soup, Mama.

I called my grandmothers Mama and my grandfathers Papa. So a song about pepper soup and Mama had to be about my grandmother, innit?

Anyway, I never had to make pepper soup while I was in Nigeria. When my grandmother moved to Ife, the pepper soup mantle fell on my mother, and all was well with the world.

I moved to England and made an abomination in the name of fresh fish pepper soup, after which I decided it was not my calling. I am a fairly good cook — this is me being modest, sha. I dey cook, abeg.

I stayed away from making pepper soup for three years. When I went home in May ’25, my mother made me quarts of the stuff to make up for years of deprivation. However, I bought some goat meat from the Nigerian store last Christmas, and the “meat” was basically a pile of bones.

When next I visit London, I will head to Peckham and buy 1,000 kilos of boneless goat meat — and goat meat with skin, biko. Speaking of travelling, aside from going to Nigeria and visiting my boyfriend in his city, I didn’t travel at all last year. I hope to do better this year, even though my financial obligations will rise steeply. Perhaps if I win the lottery or something.

Back to my pile of bones. I decided it would be best to make pepper soup, but my previous failure held me back, and my mum had travelled to the village, so there was a delay in getting tips. I turned to YouTube University for help.

The first video I saw was by T-Spices, and as I watched, I knew I had struck gold. It was simple, and it took me back to the days when I danced around my grandma’s shop as a child while she made her pepper soup. I made the soup that evening, and it banged.

Since then, I’ve made the soup two more times. My cousin even asked me to bring some for her while she was admitted to the hospital. The second time, I made it with beef and liver — it’s currently in my freezer and will definitely be thawed in the coming days, as this weather is perfect for hot pepper soup.

Maybe I should pop it into the microwave now. All this writing has made me hungry. 😌

by Adaeze

May you be Ready.

It’s been a minute since I made a post here.

I had planned to write something else today and I still will write on that topic this week hopefully. However, this is a post I made on Linkedin and I’m sharing here so it helps me overcome my blogging inertia. The post you’re about to read came to me nearly fully formed yesterday morning as I read the Bible and I was led to share it on Linkedin – of all places!.

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by Adaeze

Moments of Decision.

If you can, do this for me. Stop reading at this point.

Go to your streaming app and look up Sunset Island by Earl Klugh. Then, start playing it and come back to this post.

I first ‘met’ Frank Edoho on my father’s radio when I was about 14 or 15 years old, he was the host of a programme called Cruise Control on Metro FM (which was owned by the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria and was formerly known as Radio Nigeria 1) that lasted from 8pm to about 10pm. It was a phone-in programme that had Frank bantering with callers and fulfilling requests from people who texted in. He helped people find love as well – I don’t know if they found the love they sought, but I know he read out their requests for love and a person to love. With the hope someone in that mould responded.

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by Adaeze

Held in His Arms



I had a job; I lost a job.

This post will self destruct in a bit.

Living in the UK and schooling in the UK has been the greatest challenge of my life so far, I guess that means even bigger challenges are on the way because as I look back now many of the existential crises of my life now seem like small bumps on the road.

Growth is that you?

Anyway, yesterday I got a letter confirming that my fixed term contract had come to an end. I was expecting the letter but it was still sad to be let go and even a stab at my self-esteem, even though I only realised that today and not yesterday.

What made it worse was that I was the only one in my small group who got dropped, others all got extensions – they even assumed we all got extensions. I think that was the most painful part but I didn’t even know until I sat to read my Bible this afternoon.

I was reading Isaiah 40, I was led to it actually and as I read, I chuckled at the arrogance in God’s words to Israel – it was God speaking in that chapter. It is also a very familiar chapter and it ends in one of the most famous quotes in the Bible.


but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

After reading it, I had a prompting to read it again but this time out loud as there was a reason I was led to it and I hadn’t seen it yet. So I began to read out loud, feeling slightly foolish as I read.


But it hit different when I read aloud, each word heavy with more meaning. Then I got to the 27th verse.


Vs 27: Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?

I read it again and I held my cheeks to keep from crying. I thought I was fine really, thought I had rolled with the punches and I was optimistic about my future which could only get better.

But I was not fine. I felt forsaken, abandoned on the hard and rough path. The past three months have been hellish, a flare-up in my health meant everything was skewed. When the gynaecologist at the A/E asked about my work and I told him where I worked, he looked incredulous. I knew exactly why, the flare-up and my kind of work weren’t compatible. As I write now, I realise I should actually be thankful I served out my contract ☺

To be honest, it doesn’t seem as if I’ve had the chance to catch my breath here. It’s just been like surviving one wahala to another. To be fair, God has taken me through them all but I’m tired of being saved from the brink. Others who are coasting and winning quietly don’t have two heads, or do they?

So I stopped reading the passage and poured out all my hurt, everything from missing my family, to not being able to get a stable job (was I defective?), to my wonky love life, to my money burdens, to not having any personal space, to missing Lagos (something I’d have thought impossible two years ago).

And as I did, a phrase kept ringing in my mind. “He is not unmindful of your burdens”.

I continued reading after and for the first time, I truly understood just how powerful Isa 40:31 is. Reading it as a standalone quote robs it of its strength. Reading it aloud after being in despair finally made me cry.

Through the day as I prepared for work – I have two shifts more, listened to a beautiful song that truly ministered to me as was intended by my friend who sent it, cooked and gisted with my cousin and rushed off a job application that’s closing today. That same phrase stayed on my mind.

When I got to work, I googled it and got a verse in Hebrews but I knew that wasn’t it. I went back and the second option was also in Isaiah and I knew it was it. Funny thing was I also read the previous chapter Isaiah 48 this morning, if I’d just read the next chapter…

Isaiah‬ 49:13-‬16‬ NIV‬‬
[13] Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
[14] But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.”
[15] “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
[16] See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.

I wonder how many people from the dawn of time have come to these verses in despair and how much lighter they felt.

I’ve felt much better, even caught sight of myself in the mirrored elevator and thought “Adaeze you’re fine o”, I haven’t thought so in a long time. I even found myself looking at things and thinking about other things.

What however, was monumental was that today for the first time, I wanted my own child for reasons other than “if you get pregnant this thing could correct itself”.

The story behind it deserves its own post but it involves a Milton cold water steriliser set and memories of the most fabulous baby in the world – my youngest brother, Ikenna.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds for me, but I know he who has tomorrow in his grasp. Why doesn’t he give me the soft life kwanu?