As a child, I was always quick to tell anyone who cared to listen that traveling was my hobby and one day, I would travel the world. To me, that meant going far away, wherever the road led, meeting new people because conversations with strangers fascinated me.
I am a native of Kaduna State, in Northern Nigeria but moved a lot from state to state with my parents who travelled for work.
As I grew, I shelved my dream of traveling without realizing it, so when my National Youth Service posting letter came stating that I was posted to serve for one year in Imo state, a place I only saw on the television, I had lots of fears as tales of how dubious and unwelcoming the South-Eastern people were was all I knew. Worthy of concern was also the fact that I couldnât communicate in their dialect â Igbo, even though English is the countryâs official language, so I was bound to stand out as a foreigner.
This turned out to be the most interesting adventure I embarked upon as a Google Local Guide exploring new places and showing others too.
All the terrible reports I got didnât deter me. Determined to document the adventure on my YouTube channel, I opted to start with a bus ride. The journey lasted 14 hours instead of 12 hours as the bus kept breaking down occasionally. Was I scared? A little, but it was too late to turn back. I began filling the pages of my travel journal with all I saw, determined to see and record the lands beauty.
On arriving Imo at 11 pm, all I could see were street lights and flickering lamps from the roadside sellers, the air was filled with loud High Life music and undiluted Igbo language in the purest accent I had never heard before.
As I awaited the arrival of my host, a family friend I had never met, I felt lost and alone, but this strange land was my new home despite the uncertainty and so I was determined to share my Eastern journey with everyone across my social media platforms.
Three weeks of training at a camp in Nkwerre Local Government Area passed quickly, strangers spoke Igbo to me and stopped dead in their tracks when I told them I was a Northerner, âyou look Igboâ was something I got accustomed to.
I met amazing people that were nothing like what I was told, my find slowly began to make me understand the dangers of a single story.
My new family drew me a basic route map of the Municipal showing how to get to work and back home, it was my bible, held tightly while boarding cabs as the names of the junctions quickly fled from my mind when I needed them. I missed a bus stop once because I kept shouting âIâm dropping hereâ instead of its socially accepted Igbo equivalent âKam pu ebaâ.
I was assigned to work as a Newscaster and presenter at a Radio station in the heart of town and quickly started to feel at home. My co-anchor Nwakego wrote out the 36 letters of the Igbo alphabets and sang it out daily till I learned to pronounce it right. Daily, I educated more people about Northern Nigeria as I was the only contact some had with all the 19 states in Northern Nigeria and I was determined to retell a positive story and bring the best of both worlds.
Beyond my imagination, I found a home away from home, Mrs. Theresa my neighbor who I fondly called âMamaâ, named me âChinyereâ meaning âGodâs giftâ and would always greet me with a smile at the gate after work âBle Ble another day is gone, we await tomorrowâ she always said.
I visited four out of the five South-Eastern states (Imo, Abia, Anambara & Enugu) and one South- Southern state (Rivers) for cultural exploration and tourism during my year-long stay, tasted many indigenous delicacies with âNkwobiâ and âOfĂ©-akuâ as my favorites, immersed myself in the culture and lifestyle and went on to curate more of my travel around Nigeria on YouTube in a bid to showcase the beauty amidst the wrongly-conceived chaos, creating social impact and encouraging peopleâs trust in diversity by changing the narrative.
Above all, I am grateful I took the leap into the unknown and explored more than my comfort zone provided and this turned out to be the most interesting thing I had done as a local guide.
