Occasional-Essays

My earliest memories of Christmas - and ultimately of growing up - are inextricably connected to the sounds of roosting chickens, the anticipation of a hearty Christmas afternoon meal and the Chapel’s annual Christmas carol night. We were by no means very well off. Those were the dark days bookended by SAP and its attendant devaluation of the Naira and the Abacha dictatorship in which people in the Academia essentially lived hand to mouth. What was an already thinly stretched wage was steadily eroded until my proud, well read father resorted to farming yams and cassava in the space behind his house to augment his wage. The main garnishing to the routine fare we got served as soups and stews was beef bought in abundance from the local butchery, and fish. ...

I was graciously given the opportunity to share today’s entry over at the3Six5 Project. I enjoyed it so much, I might actually try to blog everyday for an entire year! The first few lines: Making it into work on time each week day is a minor optimization problem for which I try to find a solution: maximize sleep and minimize time spent waiting at the bus stop, subject to time of arrival being 8.30am. These last few days, Mother Nature has compounded my little problem by unleashing an unwelcome trio of rain, gale force winds and the occasional fluffs of snow making my waits at the bus stop something I have not particularly looked forward to. ...