Latest Stories

Check out my latest travel tales from locales across five continents. They come in all shapes and sizes, styles and tones, whatever fits the story being told. So maybe you’ll enjoy some extended prose, snappy short stories, flash non-fiction, or even lyrical poetry from time to time. Either way, all are guaranteed to take you around the world and back. So relax in your seat and enjoy the inflight entertainment, we’re about to take off!

**Latest stories**

Signs of Diaspora / Carry On Luggage / Interjection / Purple Girl / The Present Future / Identity: Global Roots / Strong Tea / Tummy Pudge: Internalised Feminism / Forward Agenda / 

Forward Agenda

‘Ẹ káàrọ̀ everyone. Welcome to this presentation on the Benin Robots.’ 

Ọlánrewájú took a big breath as she centred herself on the podium surveying the 2,000-strong crowd gathered at the Ẹdo Museum. The Robotics Engineer had been working towards this convention project throughout her final PhD year at Ilé-Ifẹ̀ University. Finally, the day had come to share her ideas and she was feeling a bit shaky. But she’d had a smart ànkàrá outfit made with a vibrant gèlè wrapped around her freshly braided hair, looking outwardly presentable to induce a confident delivery. She took a sip of water, looked into the sea of expectant faces, and continued: 

‘The continent has come a long way since the Africa Union’s Agenda 10,104 strategic initiatives striving for ‘The Africa We Want’. And indeed, great milestones have been achieved over the 50 years of its implementation for the prosperity of our peoples. I’m glad the Ilẹ̀ Káàárọ̀-Oòjíire government has recognised even more can be done within Technology, Innovation and Sustainability.’ ...read more

Tummy Pudge: Internalised Feminism 

Not too long before, I’d been out clubbing along the same beachfront dressed to look good (cute flowing top) but more importantly to comfortably bust my killer dance moves (flared black trousers). After seeing my jovial vibes on the dance floor (seriously though, I can move people!), some guys came to join in and I let a tall, dark, handsome one hug me from behind. As he did, his hands made contact with my own tummy pudge that my flowing top had concealed, particular with my ample bosom forming a protracted ridge. Clearly surprised by my considerable mass juxtaposed to my considerable hot-stepping, he’d quickly patted his hands across my mid-section inspecting just what I was working with. Then a second later, he actually grabbed both sides of my pudge and started bouncing it up and down, like gently shaking a tambourine to the music beat. I started laughing at his mini journey from dancing queen interest to pot belly surprise to playful acceptance of my body shape, which aligned with me being happy as a UK size 20 at age 20...read more

Strong Tea

What’s in the dried tea leaves for you? 

What stories emerge of the future true? 

What tales rise forth from the darkened wet? 

What twists and turns are yet to be met? 

But wait truth seeker, not quite so fast 

To know your future, first know your past 

There’s geographical, historical mystery 

That surrounds the roots of this ‘Yorkshire’ tea...read more

Identity: Global Roots 

‘You’re one is a million’, a special stat.,

though one in 8 billion more pivotal than that.

Each human perspective, all quite unique,

but more vantage lies from airborne peaks.

With privileged travel, I was blessed to see

through childhood’s eye, continents-a-three.

Onto African, European and Asian marks

my young life journey did oddly embark...read more

The Present Future

Today I am.

Today I am doing lots of self-reflection: an activity I feel grateful to have the time and space to do.

I’m residing in a home paid for (by the skin of my teeth) with the humble salary from the part-time job I managed to hold down through the pandemic.

I’m sitting at the table and chair already in this furnished flat that I could instantly settle into and start living, versus traipsing around Ikea trying to select bits and bobs.

I’m wearing a purple ‘dirac’ airy dress from my Somali friend further wrapped in a red ‘kain sarung’ from my Malaysian friend for more warmth, feeling lucky as a Yorùbá-Nigerian clothed in such international community...read more

Purple Girl

Upon graduation, I wore my ceremonial cap and gown…and the traditional scholarly yet obscure black seemed to rub off on me. I went through a phase blending with my own shadow, ‘mainly in colder weather as dark colours help with heat absorption,’ I told myself. I recounted the same thing to my host parents from my hot southern Japan latter school days when, during a visit in my early 20s, they bought me a bright orange scarf. They insisted, ‘a young lady shouldn’t be wearing such dark colours all the time!’

In any case, them throwing shade on my shaded tones seemed to have kicked me up the bum. In the ensuing years, my mid-late 20s wardrobe was always filled with colourful options. There were scarlet rose hats, marmalade earrings, lemon tops, lime belts, ocean spray trousers and chestnut shoes. But I and others soon started noticing there were often also lavender caps, beetroot shawls, aubergine blouses, violet dresses, fuchsia coats, plum denims and lilac sandals. Yes, I’d developed a passion for the passion fruit hue....read more

Interjection

surprise hearing other Japanese speakers  

Now, an East Asian family speaking fluent Japanese in a London park, okay. A blond-haired, blue-eyed family speaking fluent Japanese in a Tokyo park, fine! But this blond-blue family communicating entirely in East Asian fluency in our Western European surroundings got me doing quite a bit of rubbernecking. So, now my attention distribution inhabited a new dichotomy. In my eye/ear focus was still the cuteness overload that was my nephew clamouring on the climbing frame. But in my eye/ear periphery was the curiosity overload of the backstory of this European family's Japanese aptitude.

After a while, my little one decided he wanted to try the slide. With its gentle slope and elevated edges it was safer than the climbing frame, so my peripheral rubbernecking of the curious family slightly increased as they continued their latest round of rounders. By that time, it was the brother who ran to base, beating his sister there. With that, their amplified joy caused mine to spill over and I said with a huge smile on my face, 「 hayai sugi!」, declaring ‘too fast!’ in Japanese. And in that moment, suddenly their game slowed down as they clocked I understood the language too...read more

 Carry On Luggage

Head in the clouds again...literally!

Being a cultural aficionado, I’ve always loved jet-setting to different world locales, dropping into different countries, immersing myself into different communities with people of different ideas and aesthetics. Though one constant within the global hopscotching is the monotony of airports. My standard routine for years has been arriving at departures lounges (huffing and puffing), searching for a baggage trolley (hopefully no ‘accidental’ elbowing involved), finding my airline check-in (of course on the opposite side of the airport), waiting in the passenger queue (always at least one baby practicing for the opera), and then staving off boredom-induced vertical sleep because that’s what the impending horizontal flight is for...read more

 

Signs of Diaspora

African Global Migration

Right there in the college corridor, I’d encountered yet another example of a phenomenon that had followed me throughout my life across the world. Whilst I was finishing my schooling in Japan as a 17-year-old Yorùbá-Nigerian exchange student, the Japanese secondary school students in the boys basketball team insisted on a ‘Black American slam dunk’ from me, even though I was shorter than them! Whilst finishing university in France as a 21-year-old Yorùbá-Nigerian language student, the Swedish language students insisted on dancing to ‘Black American songs’ with me. And now as a 30-something-year-old Yorùbá-Nigerian higher education lecturer, this Emirati foundation year student insisted on throwing up ‘Black American hand signs’ at me. Upon seeing my melanated face, she was unable to discern any form of distinct diversity like I’d done hearing the different mosque muadhans’ voices or even seeing the slight variations in black habaya designs. Yes, she and all the other people across the world I’d encountered seemingly had no substantive idea of the African diaspora…read more.