A W A Y F R O M H O M E

(2/7)

"The worst period of work was during Ramadan. If you work within a house, just take it that you will not sleep for the whole period of the Ramadan.

The thing about the Arabs is that they love to see all sorts of meals on their table even if
no one would eat it - so we’d set a grand table that has all sorts of meals.

On the day the fast starts, I’d begin to prepare sahur from around 11pm the previous day and I will cook all through the midnight till about 3am.

Now when sahur is over, I’d begin to
wash all the plates, bowls, cutlery and pots used to serve and eat. All of that washing and cleaning up will start from when sahur is over till about 9am.

Then I’d resume cleaning the compound, washing cars etc., that could last for another 2-3hours.
All the sleep I get is the nap I can steal before the cleaning for sahur begins.

By 12, mid-day, I’d have to start cooking whatever meals we’d be serving for the breaking of the fast at sundown.

As I am making real foods, I am also making snacks and preparing all
sorts of delicacies. I’d be in the kitchen working till about 7pm when I’d serve the food. When they are done eating, I’ll commence washing all over again for hours; this could last till 10pm.

All the time I have to sleep is about 30mins-1hour because I have to
resume cooking for sahur by 11am! So what time do I have to sleep?! And remember, I still had to be checking on the aged woman, changing her diapers and cleaning her up.

Remember that I told you that one of my boss’ son had a daughter-in-law that was pregnant
at the time I was working there. When she delivered her baby, that was another hellish period for me. We kept receiving visitors daily for 40 whole days!

Considering how the Arabs entertain visitors, as a batch of visitors was leaving, another batch would be coming in.
So if a batch of visitors came and we have laid out food for them; when a new batch of visitors came around I'd have to start cooking all over again.

Visitors would start coming from morning and we may not stop receiving visitors until 2am, and as every visitor came,
I'd be cooking for them.

When visitors arrive, we'd first of all serve them water. Then about 15mins after, we’d serve them coffee along with dates.

After a couple of minutes, I’d serve them chocolates all round. After like 15mins, I'd prepare Lipton tea and serve them that.
As I am serving the tea, I'd be packing the coffee I’d brought in earlier. A few minutes will pass and then I’d serve them pizza – mind you, we don’t order pizza, I’d have to make the pizza myself.

While I am serving all these, the main food is on the fire – I am serving,
clearing and cooking all at the same time.

When the main food is ready, we will scoop the food into a very large tray; the guests will gather round the that huge bowl and everyone will deep their hands and eat from the bowl.

Bear in mind that this is Saudi Arabia,
Bear in mind that this is Saudi Arabia, men and women don’t mingle or do things together; so male guests will stay together while female guests will stay together.

That means that just as I have dished all sorts of foods for the male guest, I have to rush over to the room
where the female guests are and do the same.

I’d be running flights of stairs from one room to the other trying to be at hand for both the men and the women.

As I am serving the men in one room, I am rushing over to serve the women in another room; as I am packing the dishes
and cleaning up the room holding the men, I have to rush to do the same for the women.

In that house, they don’t allow that food cooked for a batch of visitors be served to another batch.

Even if the guests did not touch the food I had dished out, the new batch of guests must
not be served the same food – I have to go on and cook a new batch of foods for them. Whatever foods was untouched would be packed and put in public refrigerators for anyone interested to eat.

Every street has fridges located on the corner and so everyone puts cooked food and
drinks inside the fridges so that anyone passing by who is hungry or who might want to taste the food would just open and take as much as they want to take.

Even the rich stop by the fridges so it is not unusual to see a man driving an expensive car park by the street fridges
and pick whatever is available in it. This eliminates the concept of beggars littering the streets.

So whenever we cook and we don’t eat it, I will go put the food in the fridge on our street. If you feel like eating a meal and you don’t have it at home,
you can go to the fridge on your street and see if it is stored in it."
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(3/7 runs tomorrow

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More from @awatiibadan

30 Aug
(7/7)

The man mentioned a Muslim name as the person who had used the phone to call and that he wasn’t at home but that when he got back home he'd let the caller call back.

I didn’t know anyone in Dubai by that name. It was when the man allowed her to call me back that I
found out that it was my friend!

What I didn’t know was that she had told her boss that she had an elder sister in Dubai. My friend is Christian but in the Arab world, it is not advisable that you provide a name that is not Islamic and so she had adopted the Muslim name
which the man had mentioned over the phone.

We began to talk but she couldn’t talk freely, her boss was right next to her – anything she said that sounded suspicious could get her into more trouble.

Luckily the man walked away and we could talk freely.
Read 18 tweets
28 Aug
A W A Y F R O M H O M E
________________________

(6/7)

I had spent two years in Saudi Arabia and I had nothing to show for it. I came to the country to work and earn some money but there I was in the airport with nothing. I called the big sister. Image
She told me to use my remaining money to buy a train ticket from Saudi Arabia to Dubai.

The big sister met me at the train station and welcomed me. She was the one who connected me with a family in Dubai where I worked for a year.

The purpose was so as to, at least,
earn some money that I could come back home with. In this family, the work was still much but there was ease too – I had a measure of freedom, I could use my phone with no hassles and I was paid my salaries.

The sister however warned me that when I was ready to leave I should
Read 17 tweets
25 Aug
A W A Y F R O M H O M E
_____________________________

(3/7)

"Sometimes we’d go to the desert and spend some two, three days and the cold in the desert is indescribable. Whenever we are going to the desert, we will pack so many bags you’d think we were leaving for the moon.
Sometimes we wouldn’t even spend more than a few hours in the desert yet they would pack everything they can pack.

A whole car is loaded with boxes and everything they believe they’d need to replicate their home in the desert.

It didn’t matter if we’d only be
spending a few hours in the desert - they didn’t care! They still expected you to cook several dishes as though we were back at home.

While you’re moving up and down through the sand in the scathing evening cold, these guys just sit down, cross their legs doing
Read 18 tweets
23 Aug
A W A Y F R O M H O M E

📍: SAUDI ARABIA 🇸🇦

(1/7)

"When agents pitch to you about working in Saudi Arabia, they will tell you great things about the place; they’d tell you that you can work as a nurse or paint some decent jobs to you.
They would also tell you about the huge amount of money that you would be paid.

When you earn N10,000 per month in Nigeria and someone says you can earn N150,000 per month, the idea of traveling begins to look enticing.

My brother, it is all mostly lies.
My first job when I got to Saudi Arabia was to be a care-giver, to take care of an aged woman in diapers. The aged woman I was to take care of was the mother of my boss.

Upon my arrival, I was told that I couldn’t own a phone and so my boss seized my phone.
Read 17 tweets
23 Aug
In June, I was wrapping up my two-year project on the #SingleMothers series - I had one last person on my list to talk with and I'd wrap it all up.

Originally, we should have met in 2019 but then, she was in one of the Middle Eastern countries and she told me she wouldn't be
back until last year.

COVID struck, and things dragged.

We couldn't meet up until June this year.

I casually asked her about life in Saudi Arabia where she had been and a flood of stories emerged.

Really, the meeting was for #singlemothers series but there we were talking
about life in Saudi Arabia for almost 2hours!

I went back home and the stories wouldn't get out of my head. I pulled out my laptop and began to write about the experiences she had shared.

When I was done, I was convinced people needed to hear these stories too.
Read 5 tweets
13 Jan 20
This is the story of @AdewaleYusuf_ and how he began what has become the biggest tech media company in Africa - Techpoint Africa.

He was magnanimous enough to share every detail - the good, bad & ugly and over the next 4 days, I'll be reposting the story here.

Here is 1/4
1/4

“People meet me and think I am one ajebota. I am not. My father had a block industry while growing up and I was always at hand to help me. My mother was a trader and so growing up was just the regular life. We lived within our means, no extravagance, no luxurious lifestyle.
Just the normal quiet, regular life.

After graduating from Loyola College in 2004, I couldn’t advance my education to the tertiary level at the time because there was no financial resources to do so at the time. I was introduced to computers in Ibadan. My father had a friend
Read 14 tweets

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