Hello ladies 🚺 😘, I see this challenge as a good opportunity to go back in retrospect and reflect on life as a young girl in a sub-saharan African country called Nigeria.
I grew up in a quiet neighbourhood in the North Central part of Nigeria. We had Christians and moslems alike all living together peacefully. I remember developing this great love for books at a young age. I loved to read a lot and I read anything I saw. I mean there were no phones at the time so, I had the opportunity of reading without much distractions. I would always go into my school's library then and read books, story books mostly. It didn't take me a long time to become friends with the librarian, she would leave her keys with me and tell me to lock up when I was done. I also had the opportunity of taking some of the books home so I could read at home. I would read while eating, lying down, going to the toilet. Lol, it was crazy. My mom got worried at some point.
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I grew up, went to secondary school (high school), luckily for me I became close to my principal, he noticed I had this great love for books that he always got me books as presents, I remember reading half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at just age 9, I was a fast reader and could finish a book with up to 200 pages in hours. Then, one day my principal announced that i was going to be made the school's library prefect since I loved books a lot. I was so happy. I screamed 😱. I called my mom and told her about it. My joy was intense, in my head i was already thinking of the new books I would read and have access to.
You know what they say about life happening to us at some point? Well, I guess life happened to me because I never thought anything would take the place of books in my life till I fell in love with cooking. Cooking suddenly became my first love and reading second, lol, funny right?. I don't know how it happened but i just started loving to cook. I would watch food documentaries, food shows, I took courses online to learn about culinary skills and all. I remember back in college I would beg my friends to let me make their meals for free most times, just because I loved to cook.
After sometime, I decided to turn my love for cooking into an avenue to make money, at this point i had learnt how to bake, I could bake anything from cakes, to pastries and waffles and what not. I opened up food pages on Instagram and Facebook where I make food and display for sale. I won't lie it is a profitable venture becaue I get orders to make food for birthdays, and cakes for special occasions in people's lives.
So, for me nothing has changed much. I still love reading as much as I did as a child but I also now have something I love as much as reading and it is also fetching me some money. That is cooking.
I want to invite @vickee to join this challenge, she is also a good Baker.
Have a great day everyone.