Mama JunkYard’s

US born, London raised Kenyan living in NW England. Sometimes blogger; fascinated by identity politics

For most people in Abuja the sign below is nothing more than one of Abuja’s many street signs. For me (and indeed anyone else who speaks Kiswahili) two of the places mentioned instantly stand out: Nyanya is the Kiswahili word for grandmother and tomato ( I have never known why the two share the same [...]

I thought that Abuja’s Cherry Plus (bakery/coffeeshop) only specialised in amazing coffee; it turns out that according to their menu (pictured below) the Hot Chocolate has super magical powers! For those who are soon to turn a year older, worry not about your ageing eyes – here is a close up.

I don’t really want to be transformed into a four legged braying work animal but I have recently learned that there is Hausa phrase for foreigners who are fluent in Hausa; this being, “Ya iya Hausa kamar jakin Kano” which literatly translates to “he speaks Hausa like a Kano donkey.” Owing to the fact that [...]

Thank you to everyone, not only for the comments accompanying this post but also for the love, support, empathy, patience and friendship over the past month and a half. It is appreciated. The Lancashire sea-side resort of Blackpool is home to an Eiffel Tower inspired structure imaginatively named “The Blackpool Tower.” Standing at 518 ft [...]

I am blogging from the beautiful capital of Nigeria, Abuja, which shall be my home for the next 12 months. My internet access at the moment, while being 100% free and 100% unlimited is also 100% unreliable. Hopefully that will change very soon as there is so much I want to blog about. So far [...]