If you know me in real life and/or follow my many (many) retarded ramblings online, you would know that I recently moved from my father’s house. This feat, as many have earnestly informed me it is, was embarked upon for two reasons. The first is that I have the means to, and the second is that leaving my former area is a prerequisite for many very fine things I want to happen in my life. The move had been planned since the ending of 2022, and 2023 was the year I thought I would achieve it. But then I suffered a massive tragedy in June last year, and I had to start from almost the beginning in respects to savings and other stuff. Anyway, I saved very aggressively and I got it done. It cost a lot of money, and I almost cannot believe how much I have spent, considering how much I earn and other adjacent issues.
House Hunting In Lagos
I am an exceptionally busy person. Sometimes, I don’t believe how busy I am. My work takes an ungodly chunk of my time, leaving me with zero social life. In fact, the only socializing I do these days is online. I have not met a new friend in well over a year, and I have not attended a party in the same time frame. I don’t feel particularly affected by all of this, to be clear. I just think it weird, and I have a niggling feeling at the back of my mind that I might be wasting my youth. So I have decided to take up some new and exciting vices almost guaranteed to ruin my future. But more on that later.
Anyway, my time constraints meant that I did not have too much time to find a house. I had to actually take out very little time from my busy schedule. And here is how Lagos agents wasted that very little time I had from my busy schedule.
The first agent I got took me to not one, not two, but THREE uncompleted houses. He earnestly informed me, the stupid dolt, that this is how it is done in Lagos. This house will be completed in latest one month and as you can see they have POP and the flat has two toilets (I was looking for a Mini Flat).
The house, at this point, had not been painted, did not have running water, and those bamboo things were still propped up against the wall. But this agent had a sweet mouth and the faith of a mustard seed. Just nine hundred thousand is the rent. Just nine hundred. Everything will now be 1.3. Once you pay, you can move in.
Move into an uncompleted house? What? I got home and told my mum. My aunt was like; well, I heard that is how they pay for house in Lagos these days. So maybe you should pay it if you like the house.
But I am not completely retarded. I know that there is no way to hold any landlord accountable to any development timeline after paying my money. For all I know, my money, and that of other gullible tenants, will be used to complete the building. And no one knows when that will be. So I stopped picking that agent’s call and ghosted him. Hopefully, he does not write a newsletter about it.
Then I moved on to the next agent. This one asked, before I even began, for an inspection fee of 5 thousand. I thought it strange, but paid. And then I cleared out another day to walk around Yaba looking for a place. We started around Fadeyi and then worked our way down to Yaba. We went from bad house (one house was built LITERALLY beside a dumpsite) to bad house (another house insisted that I had to purchase my own burglary proof windows) to bad house (not big enough for all 6”7 of me to sleep in).
The funny thing is that on our journey we saw one of the uncompleted houses the first agent took me to, and despite it being nearly a month after I visited, nothing had been done on the house. There was literally no progress. I mentioned this to the agent taking me around, and he laughed. This house ehn, before them complete am, maybe August.
Then we finally landed at some manageable house. It was an upstairs flat, and the amenities weren’t bad. The rent was quite enticing too (800 thousand). The walls needed some painting, and the kitchen was too small for some mothers to even exist in, but it was not so bad. Because I had seen so many awful houses that day, I decided to settle on this less awful one. Again, the price was really good. Really good. It was considerably below my budget.
I took a video of the house, and later that day I texted the agent that I would love to take the place. And then he texted me the total amount. Then I realized that there was some disparity. It appeared that the agent was trying to cut out the original agent out of some of the additional payment. That rubbed off wrongly on me, and I decided that I would not be getting the place anyway. I really don’t like dealing with duplicitous people — besides, the place did not look like a permanent arrangement for me. Through all of this, I continued poasting on Twitter.
Luckily for me, all my posting was not in vain. After another day of going from bad house (too expensive) to bad house (too expensive), I got a DM from someone on Twitter saying their house had a spare flat in Bariga. I got to the flat, and it was good. There were some issues concerning water, but the rooms were large, airy (had two windows) and the whole gig looked decent. Later that day, I transferred the rent to the Land Lady.
I now control my own room and parlor.
Living Alone
One of the shocking things about living alone is that you start to realize just how unnecessary words are. Why do you have to speak all the time? I hardly call people, so it is silence all the time. Pervasive. It is everywhere.
Living alone also gives you the time to acquire interesting vices that you could not acquire in University for logistical reasons. I miss my mum sorely, and I wonder if I will continue to miss her into adulthood. It is now a month, and I have not made a single friend here. I fear that I will not. I saw my next door neighbor, from my balcony, rolling weed at 6 AM, right before getting into corporate attire. Working class, right? Is that even dysfunctional or highly functional? Can you face a day of work high out of your mind? If you can’t, maybe you should respect people who can.
One thing I love my area for is that I can go out and come back home anytime. And by this, I mean I can book an Uber from anywhere in Lagos and they won’t look at me with funny eyes when I say my address. This happened to me fairly often when I still lived in my former place.
But I don’t go out that often, so I might never really get to enjoy that benefit. It is what it is. The water situation I overlooked when I paid for the house has somehow gotten worse. And if there is one regret I have about this place, it is the water situation. That is so unfortunate, because the house is such a good one outside of that tiny little fact. Sadly, it is not so tiny or little.
There are still so many things I have not bought. My sitting room only has a rug, and I sit on it like some black arab to watch TV when I can (I hardly can because of how busy I am). I don’t have a wardrobe yet either, and I have had a real struggle organizing my clothes. I believe these are issues that will eventually get fixed. But at least my kitchen is sparkling (I can’t cook). We bless the name of the Lord.
The last time I was home, my aunt teased me; now that you are a man, do you think it is time to get a girlfriend?
A Man
I can’t stop thinking of that video. You know? That popular one. Where a man goes to meet the parents of his girlfriend, and they start grilling him about the things he has. They ask him if he has an AC (I have one), a deep freezer (I have one), a car (I don’t have one), and finally ask him where he lives. His reply; I control a room and parlor. I find that answer very poetic.
That is what it means to be a man, isn’t it? To have your own sphere of control. Your own place where you are the alpha and omega. You could say a man’s journey is a journey to creating that sphere of control and expanding it. From your room, to your room and parlor, to your flat, to your family, to your company, to your country. It is impossible, according to our social dicta, to be a man without having that sphere of control. When people tell me; you are now a man. They do not mean it lightly.
This sphere of influence also means a sphere of responsibility. To be a man you have to be responsible for something. The bigger your sphere of responsibility — the bigger your house, the bigger your company, the bigger your family — the more of a man you are.
I don’t find all of this fun at all, and I suppose I have no choice but to bend my head and work hard to avoid falling through the cracks. I won’t lament and say it has been particularly hard for me to adjust to these responsibilities. I know many other men who have had it worse.
But it has been bewildering, for lack of a better adjective. At heart, I still want to just sit and play video games, read books that interest me, and not have to worry about eating (I have skipped breakfast multiple times because I just could not find it in me to cook — this could never happen in my mother’s house). However, I can’t. You see, I am a man.
That is what they call Bukata. You are now a man.
They are not lying. At least I now control my own room and parlor. What man doesn’t?
Congratulations on becoming a man.
Congratulations on being a man.