My Journey Begins Here

Hello Hive Community, I am a newbie here and I would like to appreciate my very good friend Hive account@samostically for constantly encouraging and introducing me to this great platform. It’s been my dream to finally come out of my shell and put my creativity out there but it’s been a battle with anxiety and I’m happy I finally have the courage to be out here. I know this is a great opportunity for me to grow, meet new people and interact with the Hive Community.

My name is Ajuma and I am currently a college student in my 2nd year and I am studying History and international studies. Studying History wasn’t as easy for me at first but with dedication, hard work & vigorous research on global knowledge, helps me understand my course better and it’s evident in the good grades I’ve been getting. Life in college is a bitter-sweet experience, I made a lot of wonderful friends and memories but sometimes the academic struggle is depressing. I desire to graduate with a first class and one of the best graduating students in my class at the end of my degree year and I’m working towards achieving that goal.

I found out about the game of chess in 2011. My friend who was my neighbor at that time, was taught about the game of chess in his school and hired a coach. The coach had lessons with him in our compound and my sisters and I would watch them as they train. I picked interest out of curiosity and never miss a training session with them playing even if my mom had chased me severally to no disturb them. In no time I had learnt all the names of the pieces and the “queen” was my favorite piece, not because of how powerful she is on the board but because I was obsessed about being called a queen when I was younger. His coach noticed the dedication and seriousness and then offered to be our coach and we accepted with so much excitement.

We had the rest of our friends in the compound join us during our training sessions and then we formed a team of 6. Our coach introduced us to our state’s club and we became regular members. Saturday’s and Sunday’s became our regular training days at the club. In 2012 we were all strong enough to play interstate tournaments and so our coach took us to our first under 14 tournament in Lagos, Nigeria .

It was an amazing experience for myself and the rest of my teammates as we met a lot of chess players from different parts of Nigeria that I’m still friends with till date. Our performance was beautiful as we all made it to top 10 and even got a silver medal from one of our players. Winning was a norm for my teammates and I as we were winning back to back interstate competitions. Sadly, i couldn’t keep up with the regular training sessions and competitions cause I went to a boarding school for high school and leaving the school environment wasn’t allowed. This affected me a lot and slowed down my chess performance and strength as starting over when I got out of college was really difficult. A few of my teammates had gone really far, playing international competitions and are big names in the Nigerian chess family and this discouraged even more. I still play chess & train in college but the zeal and passion I began with isn’t as much. I hope to become a better chess player and a big name in the Nigerian Federation soon as chess will always be my first love.

I’m an entrepreneur as I own a small crochet business. I learnt about crocheting firstly in secondary school where it became one of our elementary subjects and I picked interest.

I became a full time crocheter in 2018, I watched and practiced a lot of crocheting videos on YouTube and that helped me get better and then I decided to go it into full time business when I realized I became very good. To reach a wider range of people and not limit my pieces locally, I created an Instagram page where I advertise each piece I create with their prices for more people to purchase. Even if it was a really small business, I wanted it to look more professional so I went ahead to make branded paper bags that hadmy brand name printed on it for delivery. Combining business and college was really difficult as both are time consuming and tasking.

Sadly I had to put a pause on my business first as I wasn’t really concentrating anymore as crocheting can be positively addicting. Of course I still crochet during leisure time and even still take orders from students.

Crocheting is therapeutic for me as it helps when I’m depressed or sad and it helps keep me busy when I’m idle. It’s also a good source of income as crochet pieces have become a high demand as it is a trend and norm recently.

In Conclusion...

I look forward to meeting a lot of creative crocheters in the Hive community and I also look forward to sharing ideas, playing chess, collaborating and creating different beautiful pieces together over time.

Here is a picture I took with Hive account@samostically about 4 months ago

Thanks for reading my post!