Lagos population and news:When I was 15 my parents and I went on a trip to my state (Ekiti) honestly, I didn't want to go on that trip. It was 3 days to the New year and I wanted to do things that didn't involve sitting in a car for 6 hours to go to a village. Yes, it takes 6 hours to get to Ekiti and it was a very long journey.
I remember sleeping through half of it, I was extremely bored and exhausted. It didn't help that my dad was the one driving and he'd wake me up whenever he saw an interesting landmark that he wanted me to see, I didn't want to see them and the only time I showed interest in my surroundings
was when we stopped at a market in Ibadan to get bread and Akara. It was interesting to see the traders scramble to get their goods to customers first and the Akara was everything I needed to energise me. Of course I plugged in my earpiece and slept after that, in my head there were better things to do in my dream than staring at rocks.
We got to Ekiti around 2pm and it was another 1 hour to Oye Ekiti where we'd planned to stay for the duration of our visit. My dad was from Ado Ekiti but he had friends in Oye and preferred staying there. The first thing I noticed from being in Ekiti was the cold. It was extremely chilly and the only thing missing was snow. My mum claimed it'd snowed once in Ekiti but obviously I didn't believe that. Our first night there was stressful, the thing about going on trips to your state is everybody wants to pitch in on how they were there during your birth and how they knew your mum from when she had pampers. No one needs that mental image, it was either the horrifying stories or people treated you like a machine they hadn't figured out how to use because you came from Lagos. I was exhausted by the time I had dinner and hit the bed, I woke up by 10am the next morning, freezing.
Mum made it a compulsory thing to take me to the market that day, she wanted to show me the price difference between the market in Ekiti and Lagos, which was actually interesting to see. The traders in Ekiti were extremely friendly and trusting. They were okay leaving their goods without anyone watching it and going off for hours, the part that shocked me most was they'd come back and meet it in one piece. That would never happen in Lagos.
Later that day we took a trip to Ikongosi, it was this hot and cold water spring in Ekiti. It was beautiful and my favourite part of the trip, I had something to go brag about in school. We spent the night at my grandparents house in Ado and we had the famous Ikokore and it was amazing. That was another fun part of the trip.
The day we'd packed our things and were leaving Ekiti, despite my dislike for the trip at first. I was a little sad to leave. I'm 19 now and I haven't gone back since then but it's one journey I'd like to make again.