So this is me...

There are a few Big Questions usually posed to someone in my position...

Why? How do you feel? Are you ready? Why???

"My position" is simply that I've decided to move back to Nigeria and do my NYSC.


NYSC for those less knowledged is the Nigerian Youth Service Corp, or basically three weeks of boot camp followed by one year of indentured servitude.


So, WHY?


The simplest answer is that I was bored. After looking for jobs (we all know the story) and finding none, I thought to myself, better NYSC than another year of this.


The not so simple answer has to do with the title of the blog: Dropping Anchor


All my life I've moved around from home to home, city to city, country to country, even family to family. I've always loved that aspect of get-up-and-go in my life and I find it a talent that at any given time I can pack my life into three suitcases and leave with little more than a kiss on the cheek and a promise to 'keep in touch'.


But lately, the question where are you from always draws me up short. How to answer? Born in America, origins from Nigeria, childhood in Maryland, became an adult in London, close ties to NorCal, and now residing in the hicks of Weybridge (I do tend to exaggerate). So where exactly am I from???

By moving around so much, having very tenuous ties to places and people, I've sort of grown into this rootless, wandering thing. I notice that people get over me as quickly as I get over them. And suddenly, staring at my life in three suitcases doesn't seem anything other than pathetic. My biggest fear, if I don't find something to hold me down, I might just float away.


So, this year, Nigeria, is meant to be me dropping anchor, establishing roots, so I can finally have a place to call home. 


Not to sound all mushy and woe-is-me but it is about time I figure out once and for all if I can actually survive here.


I have a feeling there are others like me: I only visit, I don't speak the language, I can cook the food but only for others (I could live on frozen yogurt and bread if I had to), I barely recognize relatives (your face looks familiar but I forgot your name...), and I feel silly calling myself Nigerian when I'm nothing like others around me.


So this is my litmus test. Either I surface at the other end speaking rapid pigin and bargaining for tomatoes at Diobe Market, or...I skulk back to London (or DC, or SF) and live the way I actually know how.


And lucky you, you get to follow me as I find out.

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