April Notes: The Price of Distance, Lagos in 2026, and High Praise from OG
On staying connected to a home that doesn't wait for you, life in Lagos in 2026, and the bar for impressing a three-year-old
“What are you coming to do in Nigeria?” We were asked several versions of this question by multiple people as we told family and some friends about our trip to Nigeria this April. There were probably good reasons for the questioning. Travelling to Nigeria is expensive. Outside of Detty December, Nigerians in diaspora typically return for specific events – funerals, weddings, milestone birthdays. Uncertain visa arrangements also complicate things: many Nigerians know someone in diaspora who missed a parent’s funeral or a sibling’s wedding because travelling home might jeopardise the life they had built abroad.
I recognise our privilege in being able to return to Nigeria as often as we have – nine times in nine years for me, and three times in three years already for OG. And yet, deep down I feel like it has not been enough. Nine trips in nine years, but I was not there for the early parts of my dad’s illness in 2021, when my presence might have made the most difference in convincing him to follow a different treatment plan. Nine trips in nine years, but I gave my Bible reading at my brother’s funeral via WhatsApp voice note and watched the service on Zoom. Nine trips in nine years, but I missed my best man’s wedding and didn’t meet his children until they were already toddlers. Nine trips in nine years is a lot, but it hasn’t even scratched the surface of what has been needed to stay in touch with home. Still, the trips have also given me things I could not have found any other way: relationships deepened by presence, memories of my parents and siblings I could not have gotten from a screen, and a little one who already knows and looks forward to going to Lagos.
There is a real emotional cost to building a life away from home and moving countries as an adult presents a unique kind of difficulty. The home you’ve left never quite leaves you, but it doesn’t wait for you either. It continues to move on without you. When you eventually return, you find a living and moving stream where your mind once conceived of a stable anchor.
I don’t have any answers and I’m not sure there are easy ones. If you’ve found ways to live with this tension, I’d genuinely love to hear them.
Where Ibadan now mostly stands for obligation and responsibility, Lagos continues to offer me a genuine opportunity to disconnect and unwind. Unlike my last six trips – where I spent most of the time in Ibadan, treating Lagos as a bookend – this one was spent entirely in Lagos. I noticed a few things on the trip that I wanted to share:
On electricity: I typically travel to Nigeria with two power banks: a 20,000mAh battery pack and a smaller 10,000mAh one. This trip was the first time I did not need either. We were never without electricity across the entire trip. A combination of Band A electricity, regular inverters, and solar inverters meant there was always some form of power to charge devices and run essentials like fans and a small air conditioner. There were at least twenty split-unit air conditioners at the Nike Art Gallery, all powered by a large generator. While it was sad to reflect on how inefficient it all is, I remain in awe of the Nigerian ability to just carry on despite the government.
Some of the air conditioning units at the Nike Art Gallery On cash: Outside of cash to spray at a wedding on Friday (no trip to Nigeria is complete without the Nigerian party fix), I did not touch the Naira throughout this trip. The economy has become well and truly cashless. When I left the Nike Art Gallery, the baba parking vehicles in the hot sun came over to chat as I waited for the Uber. Typically, I would have handed over a small tip once our chat concluded. Instead, I asked for his account number and sent him ₦2k. His phone number doubled as his account number, and the whole transaction was over in seconds. Everything was paid by card or bank transfer, even a purchase of three sachets of Indomie from the neighbourhood corner shop. I still remember a time when I would carry several cards because they would just randomly fail to work (and GTBank did face one outage while I was there). That seems like distant history now.
On OG’s day out and baby names: OG and I went to FunVille in Victoria Island for an afternoon out, which she thoroughly enjoyed. The facility was clean and had a wide range of activities for children, staff were caring and attentive, and it was a cool oasis in the Lagos heat. At some point while we were there, a mother called out to her son Jayden and three boys looked up. Of the five other kids there, three were named Jayden. While I’ve seen the trope on Instagram for years, it was my first time experiencing it in person.
On the heat: I remember a time when the secondary school children I taught Mathematics during national service in Lagos wore sweaters to school. I cannot quite imagine this is the same Lagos. It is oppressively hot! People have dismissed this in the past as the complaints of someone who has gotten used to milder temperatures, so I went searching for proof. Daytime temperatures in Lagos have been rising at nearly 1.5°C per decade and there is up to a 7°C temperature gap between the city’s heartland and its outer edges. We like to blame climate change, which makes us seem a bit helpless, but urbanisation without sustainability is also a big culprit here. Built-up areas grew by over 70% between 2000 and 2022 and rising temperatures have followed. All that concrete and asphalt is trapping a lot of heat.
On community: “The problem is that everywhere in Lagos is now members-only” – overheard at the INSEAD Nigeria Alumni Association monthly drinks. While there were always prestigious members-only clubs in Lagos, there seems to have been a spike in their numbers recently. Several people I caught up with reported joining, or seriously considering joining, members-only clubs with four-figure dollar membership fees. There’s money in Lagos and you can’t even tell me otherwise!
OG has been reminding me this month that sometimes the bar for being amazing is lower than we think as adults.
“Where did you get my swimming goggles from?”
“From Amazon.”
“Wow. You’re amazing at getting things from Amazon.”
“And my swimming cap?”
“Also Amazon.”
“Wow. Really amazing.”
Reading:
My reading slowed down through April as my schedule got hectic in preparation for nearly two weeks off work. I’m currently reading Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work To God’s Plan For The World. I’m genuinely surprised I never heard of it until now. In the book, Keller argues that work is part of God’s design for humanity and is an expression of our nature as makers and contributors. He makes a compelling case that all work, done well and with the right motivation, is a form of worship. Tim was such a brilliant Christian thinker and there’s a lot of that rare combination of intellectual depth and pastoral generosity in the book.
One of the more remarkable pieces of writing I encountered this month was Temitope Owolabi’s Site of Remembrance. There were several layers to it, but the one I want to mention here – without spoiling the novella for you – is that abuse and violence directed at women is often enabled by people who protect the offenders from the consequences of their actions and/or absolve themselves of responsibility because they haven’t directly participated. I encourage you to read the novella, but beyond that, to hold the men and boys in your social circles to higher standards when it comes to their treatment of women.
Listening:
I really enjoyed this interview with Christopher Payne in which he talks about scaling DoorDash to market dominance. Before DoorDash, Christopher held senior operating roles at Amazon and eBay, and his depth of experience comes through in every sentence. I particularly liked hearing about his use of anecdotes to complement data, such as when his wife didn’t get the specific ciabatta bread she wanted and that helped him realise they weren’t providing the right instructions to dashers.
I now have 4 Audible credits waiting to be used – please send any great recommendations my way.
PS: I’ve given up on avoiding em-dashes in my writing. I just didn’t like the fact that I was contorting my sentences in weird ways where an em-dash would have worked most cleanly.
Happy New Month!
Koye
Kids are very easy to impress indeed! My reading has slowed down more significantly than I’d like but The ruthless elimination of hurry is a great book if you haven’t read it already!
Can really resonate with this ache that comes from living far from home
Every Good Endeavour is one of my fave books ever on faith and work.. and I am biased cos I am such a Tim Keller fan ( have most of his books)
Re Audible Credits even though I didn’t agree with every premise I really enjoyed Abundance by Ezra Klein. Memoirs are really good on Audible and one I enjoyed was Indra Nooyi( former ceo of PepsiCo) My life in Full.