It's been 6 years since my last appearance here and a lot of water has passed under the bridge, more like a billion cubits. I have grown up, I was grown before but trust me I have grown a lot more. I have completed a residency, chief residency and fellowship and actually moved from NY to a more idyllic less fast paced town in the Midwest in this time. The move has come with all of the culture shock that entails moving away from the North East and I have plenty to write about this. I transitioned from trains and buses to actually driving myself everywhere and recently completed a solo 7 hour drive with 3 brief stops to refuel and use the restroom. It seemed like a good idea then but several rarely used muscles showed up multiple days in a row to protest against being so abused that in concession to these muscles, any distance greater than 4 hours by road will automatically be upgraded to a flight. My regular driving distance on days when I want to escape the quiet of my town ...
I first wrote about culture shock here twelve years ago when I came as a student to the US for the very first time. And even after all this time, there are still things that shock me, even when I think I have assimilated into a culture very different from the one I was brought up in. I'll go back twelve years and then fast forward to present times. I arrived in Boston at the end of summer and thankfully got accommodation not too far from school which meant I could walk to school and did not have to commute. It also meant that I passed by people on the street every day and as a typical 'yoruba' gal greeted them with a cheery good morning. The first few times when my greeting was not acknowledged, I thought I had not greeted loud enough for me to be heard, so I changed the cadence of my voice which resulted in the exact same response- silence. It took me a while before I stopped instinctively greeting every being I passed on my way to school, but a few months later I had ad...
Day 5 Sirius http://www.alittlelightisallweneed.blogspot.com/ I loved these songs when I was growing up: 'I love my country I no go lie, na inside am I go live and die! and 'Me I like my country, I like the land and people, everything e dey for Nigeria, make we join hands to make Nigeria better'. The jingles from the radio and TV stations belted out the danceable tunes daily and as little children I remembered our excitement as my twin and cousins would stand in front of the tv singing along innocently to lyrics that tried to cover the already deepening crevices in the prosperity of our nation. My memory of those years may be like that of an adult who represses those memories too painful to remember or that of a naive child but I remember my childhood as one with a lot of hope for my country. Everyone around me was enthusiastic about the future of the country, how could I think otherwise. The future looked bright and it was! Then came SAP and its entourage and the story gra...
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