SERVICE!!!...Begin from the very place you stay!

"...One of the privileges of having served under a great teacher is that you get paid in the currency of confidence and ability to repeat the things you learnt at the feet of your master!..."
HadassaH

Well such has been my conclusive thought about so many things recently...

I have been here quiet not that I don't have what to say but just observing...

Being in a new environment leaves you with abundance of things to observe if you are the adventurous and observant type...well, as a writer with the heart of a tourist, it's a huge plus....*observing the beauty of ARE*

So for the past few days,i have been quietly warming myself into the environment...well not exactly the whole of ARE-EKITI per say..my immidate environment...my house!!!

Acquainting myself with my landlord, MY TJ...and that has been fun....

Even though I have only been doing little cooking...Mr TJ is a very funny company and yes I must confess, an excellent breakfast/brunch maker...ruining my normal routine of missing breakfast (which I call my fasted life).....

Another thing is I didn't even come with any kitchen ware (just my camp gas and my cutleries)...Mr TJ has a fairly well-equipped kitchen good enough for two, except for maybe the need for 1or 2 extra small pots!

But asides that,we both seem to be getting along very well..he does alot of laptop repairs in the living room area of the house and he listens to a lot of jazz...(hmmm i love jazz too)..

Another amazing discovery about him is this:

A sneak view of some of the CDs...
It's a large chest-like box!!

In one of the room in the house, he has all these collection of CDs of so many artists....he had made me to look through all of them one evening...Arranging it the next morning was an *escape-to-the-classics* assignment that i enjoyed!!!

So living with Mr TJ has been really fun!!!!

"EVERY GENUINE CHANGE BEGIN FROM THE WITHIN....*FROM THE HOME*..ITS ONLY THEN THAT IT CAN SPREAD TO THE IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT AND BEYOND"

That's how I intend to begin....

I hate to be idle really!!...atleast not when you come from the kingdom community that i hail from....

I cant wait to put to practice all i have learnt back home..so I decided to take up some gardening work..the house could use a little bit of beautification and some feminine touch.

so I went round to see where I could get nice flowers to plant.

And the gardening begins...

it was one of the skills i learnt from PAPI ( rev WARD,my pastor) one cold December in 2013 after a bad breakup. I discovered I had all this joules energy and i was shedding them away in crying my eyes to sleep. So He(my papi) put me to work on something new...planting flowers!

"IT SURELY DOES TAKE A LOT OF ENERGY TO CRY THOUGH!"

My little flower nursery
And that's about 100flowers!!!

I had to put all the energy i could have wasted feeling completely sorry for myself and drowning in the crest and troughs of breakup blues to making flower nursery for beautifying of our campus church branch in Mawuko, Abeokuta.

Papi isn't just a good teacher of the word, He is also this amazing horticulturist...and I learnt deep lessons as he used that season of my life to teach me a lot of about flowers which wasn't just figuratively but also metaphorically....those lessons were deep and they stuck to my heart like glue...

When the work began!

How about knowing....

"EVERYTHING DELICATELY BEAUTIFUL FLOWER LIKE A ROSE HAS THORNS AND IT IS THE WORK OF A WELL TRAINED HORTICULTURIST TO KNOW TO HANDLE IT!"

"WHAT MAKES FOR THE FRAGRANCE AND BEAUTY OF EVERY FLOWER IS A MANURE AND IT IS SMELLY..."

(its amazing how fast and deep we learn when we have been broken!)....i think somehow I learnt a lot of skills in that season!..
All of those skills are pretty useful now!

Good! Don't you think? 

And that the spot where I got all i needed for
The flowers.
I even got some of those spikey flowers with thorns..

Well, that's how planting flowers entered my little portfolio...

So here I am again trying to repeat the same thing here in ARE-EKITI.

Mr TJ has been helping to save every pure water nylon for the flower nursery so I can begin.

Although I planned to go to school (my PPA) to get flowers i soon found a much closer place just few blocks away...a St Peter nursery and Primary school...a public school with a very lush green lawn on their school field.....

And boy it was great to have my fingers again in the soil...but this time the dark soil of ARE-EKITI!!!!

The lush green lawn of the
St Peter C/S nursery and Primary school 

CDS!!!

Community Development Service!..

Thinking about that!...there's only one CDS group here at ARE.

*EDUCATION *

The local government is too far from here..so I was told they hold CDS meeting only twice a month somewhere on our street(well i don't know where exactly). I haven't attended anyone since I arrived and because majority of corp members have travelled home!

THINKING ABOUT BEING A BLESSING TO THE COMMUNITY ...

The long quiet road of ARE/ AFAO commnuties

Well, i have been looking around the community for their needs...so i can also put my hands on a project for the community..

Xerxes has been very helpful in this regards too amongst many other things..*winks*. He did a project in his own service year and he also introduced me to Yemisi, an Ex-River state corper who was also a national awardee for having done a remarkable project. I guess with two people who have walked that path ahead of me, i can sail secure..

One of the several MDG tap system on the street.
It has become the cooking spot of
The community goats and chicken.

i have observed MDG water tap structures dated as far back as 2007 on our long ARE/AFAO community road( stationed like 100mtrs away from each other,all through the long steet)

But they seem not be be functioning any more....

That one very large tree inside
The ARE's king's palace!

*wonder what happened to them!*

I wanted more information about the community asides touring it. Who else has the key to such information than the king himself and he will surely be very helpful when I eventually embark on one. so I took a visit to the ARE king's palace hoping to see the king but the king wasn't home...i was told he goes to work from Monday through Friday...so I was advised to come back on a sunday....
It really was quite an interesting thing to know: The king goes to work!!!
It cool....i heard he is educated...i just hope when I eventually meet him, he will be a very warm and welcoming person....of course he has to be!!!

Off to see the king....
Hope i get a calabash for souvenir...lol

Well on a much lighter mood... the idea of seeing the king surely has been a hilarious topic between me and Xerxes...

Apparently we both had the same naughty thought lurking at the humour part of our minds when the idea of. Visiting the king came up...

*what if the kings decides he wants to make HadassaH his wife?* LOL!!!

well I guess xerxes has a lot to say about that..

@ the front of the ARE's palace

MEN!!!!

Well xerxes, i won't just be seeing the king of ARE, i would like to see that of AFAO too...atleast I was posted to a school shared by both communities...*ARE/AFAO COMPREHENSIVE HIGH SCHOOL *...LOL!

See which of the king would dare the idea!!!

Wow!...this is what you will see when you enter.
The palace is right in front of a beautiful
Mountainous rock!
The place is pretty cool!

FOOD FUN JUST BEGAN!
Asides the agenda of Mr Tj to overfeed me.....
I have always loved being fun with what I eat and experimenting with different things when it comes to cooking....(but am a safe cook though)...

So from observing the beauty of ARE!

I made my own homemade banana/yoghurt smoothie...

Now that my smoothie right there!!!
You can have some! 

Banana seem to be a cheap commodity around here so I have been mingling with the monkey's favourite!....i guess i might just grow a tail soon....

Banana and hollandia yoghurt taste GREAT!!!!....CREAMY AND YUMMY!!!

You should try it too.....

So tell me, how was your week?