A guest shares his childhood in a Lagos fashion kiosk, where his family lived in extreme poverty with only two shirts and no food for dry fasting. He credits these hardships with building the determination he believes is necessary for greatness.
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I don't have a childhood picture of myself. What? Yeah, there's no money to take pictures, so you can understand where I'm coming from. Yeah. Um, where it got more interesting is that I stayed in a kiosk shop for 12 years.
In a kiosk shop?
Yes, kiosk shop with my— for your mom? My dad's kiosk shop. I mean, he's a fashion designer. I stay— me, my brother, my sister my mom. Stay there like you help to watch the shop, lived in the kiosk shop? Yes, we beat in the gutter, we dedicate in nylon, tie it, throw it at the other side of the— they say that water goes through. Yes, sir. In what part of the world? Lagos, Mafoluku Oshodi. I learned how to fast not because I needed to know how to fast, was because there was no food in the house. So that was where fasting really happened. Like, oh, there's no food in the house for, I mean, to eat like next 30 days, and then you're just like, yeah, I'll turn it into fasting. I did my first 7 days dry fasting because there was no food.
When you remember them, how does it affect you?
Most of the experience I had back then, I remembered them sometimes like it was yesterday. Major reason because I deprived myself of a lot of things as a child. I mean, while growing up, I only had 2 shirts. This is not even storybook, it's a real life story. A lemon Sunday service shirt and a white Sunday service shirt. And I looked at the mirror and I said to myself, "White olasu ka mi bari." What is going to take you to become great, you have to do it. If it's going to deprive you from not playing with your friends, you have to do it. Like, it was so bad that there was a family that doesn't even want us to associate with our own children. Like, she warned the three of us, "Never should I see you with my children again," you know. So once in a while, some of those experiences, the places where— the place rather where we're staying, that, you know, we're staying in the kiosk, the landlady gave us tough time.
The landlady of the kiosk?
Yes, gave us tough time. Got to the point that the only thing they would always say is, "If you don't see them in the kiosk shop, they went to church. If you don't see them in church, they traveled." I mean, I got I got to the point where I said to myself that I don't think I would get to where I am today if I didn't go through some of those things. Because if I had it very easy, I feel like I might have also misused it.
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