1 Month a Nomad: A two-edged sword

What's happened since I upped and left Lagos?

Hey,

I hope you’re doing okay. Sorry I missed two weeks of writing. But I’ve made it up with this post :)

Stay Jiggy and Positive always.

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I sit at Ozzies beach looking at the onrushing waves hitting the shores as I wait to meet up with a friend. Here I am, 600+ kilometres from home and I don’t feel homesick. I feel like I’m supposed to be here. Like I’m supposed to be doing this.

(Beachside at Ozzies)

My friend arrives about 45 minutes later. We haven’t seen each other in a couple of years but it’s so good to see him. In my usual fashion, I want to try something new on the menu and we decide to go for the tilapia and yam fries even though we’re warned the tilapia could take at least an hour.

(The tilapia was worth the wait)

Just three weeks before, I had packed a single suitcase and left Lagos. It had been a bit of a struggle to decide on what to take and what to leave. Luckily, I had never been much of a possessions person since I moved to Lagos.

When I lived on the mainland, I only owned a table and chair for the longest time. As long as I have my laptop and a bed to sleep on, I’m usually okay. When I moved to the Island and lived with Lively in a duplex, I got a lot of stuff from him.

I’ve probably only gone shopping for clothes three or four times in the past 3 years. Lively was a celeb, so I got a lot of natives from him. I only wear natives and casual shirts with shorts, so didn't see the need to go to the boutique. I didn’t have to buy many things in the house either. So my possessions were very likely worth less than #1M.

(All the things I moved with)

The hardest part about leaving Lagos was the uncertainty that lay ahead. I wasn’t sure what living somewhere new was going to be like. How will I make friends? How will I handle the loneliness? How will I maintain relationships back home considering I’m a workaholic? What if something negative happens overseas. Lots of questions. Not a lot of answers.

I arrive in Ghana by 8 pm. I had come here in November for a week which was a good thing as it allowed me to learn a few places. I didn’t have internet when I landed so I got ripped off and paid 75 cedis (#7.5k) for a short trip from the airport to my apartment.

(Waiting for my COVID result at the airport)

My friends in Ghana had been gracious to help me look for apartments and I found one close to a mall I had visited the last time, so I decided to go with it. For some reason, I had assumed that I left mosquitoes behind when I left Lagos. It took only a minute of me sitting down while waiting for the caretaker for that notion to be bitten away. There were so many mosquitoes that I wondered if the headquarters of the species was in Ghana.

One of my favourite things about Ghana is the calm. As someone who had lived in Lagos for the past 5 years of my life, calm was a rarity. Lagos is called the hustle and bustle city for a reason. I don’t even know what ‘bustle’ means!

The sound of generators. The heat in traffic even with your AC on. The craziness on the road. The lack of fresh air. The constant anxiety when walking on the road out of fear of street boys or police. I didn’t feel this during my previous trip to Ghana and the feeling came back on my first night.

If I gave y’all a summary of each week, you’ll spend the rest of the day reading this and you wouldn’t go to work or spend time doing things you love. So for your sake, I’ll try to highlight a few things from my experience in Ghana so far:

The Living Experience

For those who don’t know, Ghana is EXPENSIVE!!!!

Okay, maybe just Accra cos I haven’t been to other places. The way I’ve come to think about it is that most things are 2X or 1.5X the comparative price in Nigeria. Let’s start with accommodation.

Accommodation

This is perhaps the most expensive thing because houses are primarily priced in dollars. An apartment in East Legon which is similar to living in Victoria Island/Lekki in Lagos is double the price of a comparative apartment in Lagos.

It’s a bit more spacious and the houses aren't exactly modern but they still command high prices. It’s quite normal to get a one-bedroom apartment for $2,500 monthly in this area. And there are places like Cantonments and Airport City (similar to Ikoyi) where the prices are much higher. There’s more flexibility with accepting monthly payments however, which was a good thing.

(No 1, Oxford Street. One of my favorite buildings in Accra)

A lot of the locals I've met complain about the prices. With lots of Nigerians and other expats coming into Ghana, there are complaints that locals can't afford good places in the upscale areas.

Internet

This has been the most frustrating thing about my experience so far. When I first got here, my friend gave me an AirtelTigo sim. It was like I went back to 2015. It didn’t have 4G/LTE capabilities and I had to survive on 3G.

I couldn’t survive. So I got a Vodafone sim a few days later. I hear it's incredibly hard to get an MTN sim here because of the requirements to get one. I only needed my passport and 2 cedis to get my Vodafone sim.

Internet in Nigeria is definitely better and more reliable. In Lagos, if you have 5Mbps - 8Mbps on your mobile, you can be sure that your Zoom call wouldn't disconnect. In Accra, on mobile internet, I can get 10mbps and still have issues with video calls.

I think the challenge is with the resilience of the network. It can be good most times but the strength fluctuates. I’ve had to work out of a friend’s office during the day sometimes and that has helped with video calls.

(The internet speed as I write this letter)

From a price standpoint, it’s a bit more expensive than the internet in Nigeria. In Lagos, I’ll do mobile internet (MTN) at 1.5GB for ~$1. In Ghana, I get 4.5GB for about $4 on Vodafone.

MTN will give you 1GB for a little less than $2. What stands out to me though is how the plans are designed such that the cheaper plans give you more value. If you’re buying internet for more than $4, you’ll be cheating yourself. Perhaps they make money from transaction fees each time data is bought.

Food

To be honest, I had higher expectations for the food. The last time I was here, I ate some new meals like Waakye so I was expecting I’ll like more Ghanian meals.

The most important thing you want to know about food here is that it is served in LARGE portions. The average portion is double what you’ll get in a restaurant in Lagos. It’s more similar to the humongous portions that restaurants in Abuja serve.

(A simple Waakye meal. Note that I only got one cup of rice & beans here. People typically eat two per meal)

The other thing is that I feel there are not enough local meal options. That I like at least. The major local meals I’ve tried so far are Waakye (Rice, beans, spaghetti, plantain, garri plus meat & fish), Banku with soup (similar to Fufu/pounded yam), Kenke (my least favorite), Kelewele (plantain), Gobe (beans with egg and fish inside) and a few others. There are soups like okro soup, light soup (groundnut) and a few others but none of them has excited my taste buds.

I’ve heard of others like rice ball, kokote etc. but I’m not really looking forward to eating them tbh. There is a taste problem. As a Nigerian, I’m used to spice being inside the food from the get-go and a less vegetable taste in foods. It’s normal for spice to be served separately from the food here. I understand that since there are a lot of ex-pats and foreigners here who likely wouldn’t like spicy foods. But my taste buds have not been pleased.

My favourite food discovery so far has been SHITO!!! Such a beauty to my taste buds. No wonder Runtown sang in his “Mad Over You” hit: Hope your love go sweet pass shito. The red pepper-like sauce adds some very much needed depth and taste to meals.

(My first dinner which also became breakfast the next day. Shito is the red thing)

Ghana Jollof versus Nigerian Jollof. For the spice reasons above, I’ll go with Naija jollof. I find that Ghanian jollof is drier. But I still enjoy it anyways.

Essentials

I went to the supermarket the other day, spent 400 cedis/#40,000 and I came out with only two nylons! Just two! Essentials are a bit more expensive here. But considering I’m living in a Lekki-type environment, I’m sure it’s not reflective of all of Accra or Ghana.

The thing I’ll want to point out though is that VAT is much higher here at about 20%. As someone used to paying only 7.5%, this means things are more expensive than they seem.

Fun fact: A litre of petrol costs 8 cedis (#800).

Health

I found it easier to perform my morning routine in the first 2 weeks of my move. Every weekday, I’ll wake up early, take a walk, do some light pushups, have my bath and get set for the workday.

I got sick during my second weekend in Accra. Before the sickness, on the Tuesday of my second week, I noticed I had rashes on most of my body. I was terrified. I usually don’t have skin reactions so I almost freaked out. My friend calmed me down though and asked me to think about what I had changed in my self-care products recently that could have caused it. The thing that stood out was a new shea butter cream I had gotten before I travelled because I couldn’t find my regular one.

I got some medicated powder, threw the cream away and didn’t use any cream for the next two days. By the end of the week, the rashes had mostly disappeared and I thought it was time to get back into my journey.

Then I got sick on Saturday. It was the sickest I had been in almost a year. While I have global nomad insurance, I decided to self-medicate for the first time in years because I was unsure what the healthcare system was like. Luckily, I had a friend around so he helped get some anti-malaria and multivitamins from the pharmacy.

When I get ill, I usually expect to be back fully after two or three days. But I was out for most of the third week and only felt much better during the weekend.

(My first walk after I got fit)

As this journey to different cities continues, I think this will be one of the points I’m worried about. What happens if I fall really sick when I’m in a city where I don’t have friends. Let’s hope my immune system stays as strong as possible.

Combining the nomad life with Work

As a nomad who still has a full time and demanding job that I can do remotely, I wasn’t sure what it’ll look like on the road. It’s not been much different from my weekday life in Lagos. Most days, I’ll spend all day working till 8 pm or 10 pm at night. Sometimes I go to the office I work out from. On other days, I’ll work from home.

(The office I work from is 4 mins walk away. I’ll typically carry my bag and go in a shirt and shorts)

I’ll recommend making sure that the apartment you get if you become a nomad allows you to work easily. I stay in a one-bedroom which has a small living room. So it’s good for me because I like to change my work environment during the day.

On some weekdays (usually from Thursdays), I get to go out in the evenings either to bars in East Legon or somewhere in Osu (where all the fun happens).

I’m glad the trip hasn’t affected work cos that’s important to me. What I’ll like to do better is find better ways to be more productive so I can spend more evenings resting at home or at a lounge or some interesting place I find.

Nightlife/Weekends

The best summary for this is that I’ve been out every Friday or Saturday since I came to Accra except for when I was ill. I prefer the nightlife in Accra to Lagos. Back home, I always feel like people go out to show off rather than have fun. You always wanna buy bottles, take videos, buy platters etc without actually having fun.

If you want to have a good dance in Lagos, the best places are clubs or a few spots like South. Clubs are loud and expensive. The average club outing on the island with your boys will be #200k - #500k spent. And you don’t really have fun.

It’s different in Ghana. There are a lot of bars and lounges that are built for people to come dance, party and chill. And you can do so on less than #20k. If you’re prudent, you could even get away with spending only 100 cedis (#10k) buying only beers and cocktails.

(Evening at AlleyBar)

The main difference though is that people are there to have fun. I feel like there’s more liberty of expression than in Lagos. It’s normal to walk into a bar and find a small group of people dancing and vibing even if the rest of the crowd are just chilling. As a lover of music and dance (even though I’m not a great dancer), I have found this very refreshing.

Since I arrived, I’ve been building a checklist of places to go and things to do. If I’m in an Uber, I’ll ask the driver for his recommendations. If I meet a friend, I’ll ask them. This is what my list looks like so far. The ones with “Yes” are the ones that have been conquered and there’s lots more to go.

What are my favourites? AlleyBar, FrontBack and PurplePub.

Exploring Ghana

If I was in school, I’ll score an E on this subject. I’ve explored different parts of Accra: East Legon, Labone, Osu, Teshi, Achimota and a few places. But mostly at night.

(I’ve been to 3 beaches so far. So I’m not doing so bad on that front)

I’ve got a checklist of places to go. I’ll do more of them in March. I also want to visit places outside Accra and take scenic pictures. I’ve got a few lined up for March and look forward to them.

The Challenges

Experience is a two-edged sword. As a traveller, you get the thrill of discovering new places. Meeting new people. Creating new memories. Feeling free & liberated.

The other side of that sword is the lack of constants. Unlike back home, there are no old faces. You don’t have your favourite places anymore. There are no old patterns to rely on. You miss spending time with family. You miss your friends. You exchange familiarity for new experiences.

You feel alone easily because of the absence of these familiarities. It feels like you only exist in this small room in this new part of the world. This occasional ‘aloneness’ and feeling a weaker connection to everything and everyone you know has been the biggest challenge so far. The thought of building connections here and having to leave them behind when I go to my next city is one I don't look forward to either, lol.

I’m glad that I’ve been able to make new friends. I’ve met friends from Ghana, the Caribbeans, Sierra Leone and a few more countries. They make it easier.

The other major challenge I wasn’t expecting is the fear you experience when taking pictures in random places. Especially as a black dude with dreadlocks, jewellery in hair and often in shorts. I’ve gotten challenged once so far and I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

Biggest Learnings So Far

I asked a friend who does tarot readings to do some for me yesterday. One of the questions I asked her was why I was so curious about the world. The answer from the cards was straightforward: “Because I was meant to”.

Because I have an innate curiosity to feel new things. To experience new things. To challenge my opinions. To learn about different perspectives. To shun myths and understand from a place of knowledge. To impact people. To bring smiles to the faces of strangers. To express and show others how to express.

(Sunrise at Labadi Beach)

The opportunity to discover something new every weekend is thrilling. It is almost like what life should be. A journey to experience the world as much as we can while we’re here. Adding something new to your memories and experiencing as much as one can.

I’ve also realized that being a nomad is not only about travelling. It’s more about the mindset of discovery. Regardless of where we are, there are always new places and things to discover. As long as they don’t oppose your values, you should try doing them (sometimes you should try them even when they opposed your ‘values’ because values aren’t static)

This one month has gone by faster than I expected. I’ve had no regrets. I’m extremely grateful to God for the journey so far. I’m grateful to everyone who stays in touch and follows my journey. Grateful for the new friends I’ve made. Grateful for the relationships back home.

I look forward to the March experience. Hopefully, we get more non-nightlife places checked on the list.

Stay curious always. Live in the moment. Experience new things. Be grateful always.

#AnAfricanNomad

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I’ve absolutely loved listening to Ghanian music. One of my favorite artists is Kwesi Arthur and I listened to Baajo while writing this letter.

Love always,

Francis.