Me

I’ve had a few comments on this blog over the past few months with questions and hypotheses about the kind of life I lead. People ask how come I manage to keep my blog going and post so frequently. They also wonder about where I get all my information. I think the assumption is that I am an over-paid and under-worked expat bathing in broadband with a huge generator humming away permanently in the background, living in a lux, calme et volupte compound with swimming pool, gym, amidst other lustrous foreigners spending their lives going to cocktail events etc. I suspect I am considered to be the type you glimpse turning to the left as they enter the plane to and from Abuja etc. People also probably think that being a Jeremy, I am the product of a public school education.

There’s a residual narcissism in writing a blog that can only be amplified by reflecting about one’s life on the blog. It puts me off writing about what I actually do and how I do it. However, at the risk of turning into a self-reflexive bubble, just for once, let me talk about myself and put the record straight:

The first thing to know is that I have been lucky to meet many inspirational people in Nigeria. I borrow a lot of ideas from them, and mix them in with my own to write my posts. In truth, ideas have no origin; they have always been there as a form of energy that connects people to actions and projects. So, I tap into the energy behind the ideas of the people I know, as they tap into mine. Many a post comes from this melange of bodies and beings.

There are, of course, wonderful humans everywhere in the world (even in Staffordshire); the trick is how to find them. When I say ‘lucky’, I’m not sure that that points to a simple random process. Rather, I take serendipity to be a dynamic of the cosmos, where energies go in search of each other, moving into aleatoric spaces of opportunity created by the unfolding of the world in time. Its as if there is an energy gradient for people, just like the meteorological pressure gradients that generate the weather. So, in terms of connecting with people and idea generation: its part happenstance and contingency, but paradoxically, also part necessity. More generally, I think we have to learn to accept the contradiction that life is a combination of contingency and necessity: absurd, comic and tragic all at once. Most of my ideas are not my own, but then they were never anyone’s anyway..

The second thing is, unlike many if not most people who move to Nigeria to work (expat and repat alike), I took an 80% pay cut to live in Nigeria. I left a job I enjoyed (working for a consultancy on the edge of Soho), reporting to a guy I admired and respected. I could not describe myself as an economic migrant. More like an experiential migrant, if anything. I am definitely not in Nigeria for the moolah. Moving here was one giant scary leap into the unknown, for both of us. Only now am I earning something resembling what I earned when I lived in London. Even so, had I stayed, I would be pulling in more over there, probably living in zone one, having a ball with ideas and creatively disruptive projects aplenty. So, I gave a lot up, just as I have gained through being here.

The third thing to know is that I am hyper-productive. I taught myself to type at 16, and now type 90-100 words a minute. I wrote my PhD thesis in 3 months, averaging 5000 words a day. Before that, I got an MA (distinction - from Warwick) and a First Class degree. These things did not come by chance. Nowadays, I typically write between 60 and 100 emails per day, and receive at least the same number, amidst the predictable oceans of spam (or should that be ‘supermarket shelves’?). At present, I am a consultant for DFID working for NEITI. Evenings and weekends, I work on a media start-up project. At the moment, it’s a quiet revolution under wraps. One day very soon, it will not be. I also do bits and bobs of consulting on other projects, whenever I have time. I tend to work 7 days a week, at any time of day or night.

Apart from earning money in these different ways, I am writing a book on memory. I have a long-term back-burner book on invisibility which is quarter written but currently unattended. I am also working on several film projects and studying the art and technique of documentary film-making. I also support Bibi with Cassava Republic – reading manuscripts, meeting potential writers, casting opinions on book covers etc. In between there’s tennis and yoga - bold attempts at keeping my belly the shape it should be.

I don’t think there’s anything so remarkable to celebrate in all this – many people keep themselves just as busy if not more so. It helps that we have a house-help, so there’s no time wasted on chores and the ultra-mundane. In a way, there’s no magic to the life I lead. It was an active choice to find a partner who believes in personal and social transformation. It was an active choice to study so hard, read so much, talk to so many people, ask so many questions, incessantly. I chose to spend night after night talking through the night, work consistently to become a better writer, spend hours and years practising jazz guitar. Years earlier, I had practised hard to be a cricketer. I didn’t make it. I’ve worked in factory after factory on night shifts, restaurant after restaurant, bar after bar. My first job was washing cars at the age of 14. Looking back, it was all about the desire to transcend the present situation and a desire to see and be in the world. Work, work and more work.

The fourth thing to say is that we do not live in a fabulous apartment with reliable electricity supply and broadband internet and a David Hockney patch of aquamarine in the compound. Our house leaks, has cockroaches, constantly disappoints. Our power is oftentimes supplied via battery/inverter. If we still lived in London, our living space would be way more comfortable, if a little smaller. We pay rent for occupation and maintenance, but nothing is ever maintained by our landlord (the norm in Nigeria). The door handles regularly break and fall off (it seems its impossible to get decent door handles in Nigeria). Ditto for taps. Our ceilings sag and shit dust and termites. Still, we’ve done the best we can to make it habitable. People often make mildly-impressed noises when they enter our living room, with our Bida tables, Moroccan wall hangings, big green abstract painting from India, our coffee table books and the welcoming ambience we create around us. But then, our taste didn’t come from nowhere. It too was work: galleries and books and conversations and experiences, not just thoughtless trips to Ikea amidst the numbness of the suburbs. The cultivation of taste has an intrinsic snob element to it – this cannot be avoided or denied.

The fifth thing is that I fly economy. Which is problematic, being a small giant. I’ve flown business class about ten times. I do have a sense of business-class entitlement, but that is height-based more than an in-built sense of superiority. I should also say that I went to a shitty comprehensive school full of brainless thugs, with only a smattering of sentience. My pre-tertiary education nearly ruined it for me. I am an auto-didact. We have to educate ourselves.

I get my insatiable curiosity for the world from my mother, and my indefatigable work ethic from my father. I’ve been lucky, to find an element of the cosmos that is the self of my other. But then, even that was not luck, it was work. I wrote this while flying Virgin Nigeria to Lagos. It took me 35 minutes to write, and another 30 minutes to edit. If it sounds pretentious and self-satisfied, so be it. There's no self-congratulation. The reality is, I am never satisfied and there is never any pretence.