All posts filed under: Berlin

“Water No Get Enemy”: A Thing or Two About Running.

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I am in a different mood today. So I am going to write about running. But first, let me say that this post is not about grandiose achievements. It is about little steps. I have been running for months now. Although I cannot yet call myself a serious runner, I have learnt a thing or two about my body and mind since I took up running on a more regular basis. I am in Berlin. As I write, it is as cold as February can be. Despite the fact that there has been some talk about how this is one of the mildest winters ever, the temperature is at a range of minus two to one degree. In the week I arrived from Lagos – that was some two weeks ago – the temperature went up as high as 11 degrees. I thought then it was too cold to run. This week, I have been terrified by the thought running. This cold messes with my head big time. But yesterday, I summoned the courage and …

Once upon a cold Berlin – Part 1

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I traveled out of Nigeria for the first time in 2003, and since then I have not stopped. I am one of many Nigerians who are usually harassed and humiliated even before there was a reason for it – and usually for no reason other than my “green passport”. I have had the opportunity to live in the so-called first world, to integrate as much as becoming one of them through opting for nationality, but my mindset has always been simple: “I am a Nigerian by birth and by lineage, whatever comes after that is secondary and I can do without”. I consider myself a traveller and not an immigrant. So I carry my Nigerian passport everywhere I go, bracing myself for the worst at every checkpoint. In February 2010, one of my trips within Europe was brutally cut short and I was forced out of the continent. What did I do? I exceeded my visa for a period of eight days! I was stopped at the Schonefeld airport in Berlin by the Polizei (German …