{"id":12851,"date":"2016-09-26T02:59:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T06:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/verastic.com\/?p=12851"},"modified":"2016-09-26T02:58:59","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T06:58:59","slug":"20-lessons-learned-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verastic.com\/site\/social\/20-lessons-learned-nigeria.html","title":{"rendered":"20 Lessons I Learned In Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the Verastic In Nigeria series<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"`20<\/p>\n

While in Nigeria, I had several AHA moments and several lessons were learned. Here are 20 lessons I learned – in no particular order.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Nigerians are hard workers. They will make any situation work. ANY.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> People don’t hate Nigeria as much as they love it.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> We are an impatient group of people. Always in a hurry. To where? Even in standstill gridlock, drivers are honking.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> There is suffering everywhere. I know I’m not Jesus and I can’t fix everything and everyone, but what can I do? How can I help?<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Just because I have little resources and time does not mean it cannot be done. It<\/em> being whatever big dream is in my heart.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> In spite of the system and in spite of the change, Nigerians are still generally happy people.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> Yellow skin and accent from the abroad will take me farther. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> I have managed to make very good friends in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> Appearing to have money is almost as important as having the money. It took a little time, but I was finally able to weed people out, the people who pretend to be what they are not, and they expect you to buy into what they pretend to be.<\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> You will always be sized up and then treated according to that size.<\/p>\n

11.<\/strong> Slow and steady does not win the race; it gets you left behind. Cool, calm and collected will leave you sleeping on okada. Gra gra<\/em> is the order of the day. One simply cannot be too nice. You must shout and tear eye and bang tables and point fingers. And threaten. Don’t forget to threaten. I tried to be my regular calm person, but people were not listening, until I was raising my voice.<\/p>\n

12.<\/strong> Driving in Nigeria especially Lagos\u00a0 is chaos. But it’s organized chaos. There are less than two degrees of separation between vehicles, but they rarely ever hit each other.<\/p>\n

13.<\/strong> Speaking of degrees of separation, there is none between people. I cannot count how many times I saw two strangers standing so close that they looked like one was entering the other.<\/p>\n

14.<\/strong> Nigeria is a tough country to live in when you’re not a big man or a big woman. With the prices of certain things, I could not stop wondering how people survive.<\/p>\n

15.<\/strong> The amount of money may be a lot (example N-100,000) but the value is shit. Blink and it’s gone. I learned this the hard way. If I had stayed one more week, I would have been broke.<\/p>\n

16.<\/strong> Jos is less developed than I remember. Either that or I have been remembering Jos through rose-colored lens. You can’t pay me to live in Jos again. Sad reality.<\/p>\n

17.<\/strong> When someone says, “I’m almost there,”<\/em> could mean two hours away.<\/p>\n

18.<\/strong> We, as a nation and as a people don’t know our value. We suffer from severe inferiority complex. I was pained when I witnessed a Greek woman talking to a Nigerian man as if he was in her country begging for bread.<\/p>\n

19.<\/strong> When it comes to professionalism, we still have a very long way to go. Even when you’re paying someone to do a job, you may sometimes need to remind them that you’re paying them. I found myself doing this a lot and offering to give the job to someone else. It was only then that they straightened up.<\/p>\n

20.<\/strong> When I introduce myself as a blogger, I have to be clear that I’m a lifestyle blogger. Apparently, Nigerians generally think that all bloggers are gossip bloggers.<\/p>\n

That’s it for now! Two more days before the first episode of my weekly <\/strong><\/a>vlog goes live. Yippee!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the Verastic In Nigeria series. While in Nigeria, I had several AHA moments and several lessons were learned. Here are 20 lessons I learned – in no particular order. 1. Nigerians are hard workers. They will make any situation work. ANY. 2. People don’t hate Nigeria as much as theyRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_14738191_14738191":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[561,560],"tags":[208,1328],"class_list":["post-12851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal","category-social","tag-nigeria","tag-verastic-in-nigeria","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n20 Lessons I Learned In Nigeria - 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