Can't groom? Won't groom!

When I was younger, I was the ugly duckling; my sister and brothers were relatively alright so beautiful, spectacle-free and didn't look like oil had been withheld from their diets. And I knew it. I really don't know which is worse, being an unattractive kid and not knowing it( a bit like those people on American idol who claim everybody in their community thinks they have the voice of an angel and Simon Cowell just goes ' that was the worst rendition of Celine Dion I ever heard and I'm just pressing O on my speed dial for my Otologist)or being an unattractive kid and there being no doubt about it, being reminded of it by the whispered comments around me and being confronted by it in the mirror on a daily basis.To compound matters I was an NSK you know, a non-smiling kid who was nicknamed 'serious baby'- the prefix has been dropped and I now go by the name Baby within my family- because I never laughed. According to my mother there was nothing anyone could do that could evoke the sound of laughter from my throat, all I did was read and not eat.
Don't worry this was 15 years ago.

As a result of getting my fair wear of the invisibility cloak quite early, I was forced to develop other traits to get noticed or seem interesting.I never made too much of an effort with my appearance because I didn't think you could hide the obvious. My now-legendary sarcastic tongue developed to keep critics of my lanky frame at bay. My quick tongue also ensured that before you asked me whether I could count how many fingers you had up with my four-eyes I already had you in stitches of laughter and gasping for breath. Ask my sister, I'm the funniest one. I did not pluck, tweeze, shave or do anthing to tame the forest I had above my eyes until my first year at university when one of my good friends referred to in my 'friends stop you from making friends..' post positively manhandled me onto her bed and deployed her arsenal of eyebrow care products to give me the natural arch that I currently sport.

I bought my first compact powder in 2005, not because I did not know what it was or where to get it but because I will just never be that girl who wears a full face of make-up, day in, day out and whips out a mirror to double-check that the war paint is still on at the traffic lights, during lectures and even in the darkened cinema with their camera flash as light.My friends say to me: E, you look the same wearing make-up as you do not wearing make up and I choose to take it as a compliment even though I know that what they mean is a bit more blush and lipgloss would make you look better!I will just never be that girl who spends hours and hours curling her hair before she goes to bed or hundreds of thousands of naira buying Brazillian or Italian hair or hundreds of pounds waxing my whole body or sheds buckets of tears whilst affixing fake eyelashes or hours and hours in the shower doing God-knows-what-and-can-someone-please-tell-me-what-girls-do-in-the-shower-for-upwards-of-10-minutes?!My make-up regime during the day is simple: no make up and brush my eyebrows. Especially under the unforgiving Nigerian sun and since I can never really locate my oil-blotting sheets for my face so its easier to just run my palm over my make up free nose when it gets oily.
Guys say they like the au naturel look but we all know men lie and are secretely intimidated by the high-maintenance chic. Yes?No?

I do admire my friends when they spend hours doing their hair and make up and come out looking a million bucks for their effort and the Brazillian hair sways to the beat of the music when they dance and their skin glows under the flash of a 10 mega pixel camera and I do wish I could be bothered to get nail extensions because they look so good on my cousin but I have come to accept that sadly, that will never be me. I have always been the quickest to get ready on any night out with my friends and almost always end up waiting at least 30 minutes for the next person to be even remotely close to being ready but that only means they can pass the curling irons or MAC eyeshadow to the next person on the queue and the wait begins all over. I just really tend to think it's not that serious and besides I'd rather know that on my off days when I'm just popping out to visit a friend or to get take away chicken and chips I dont look like an extra from Animal farm and I can sleep and wake up next to 'The One' without my make up bag under my pillow.

Friends stop you from making friends.....ponder that!

I have never been the most friendly of people. Synonyms used to describe me include 'stand-offish', 'snobbish', 'rude' so it kind of comes as a shock to me to realise I have quite a healthy number of friends. At every stage in my life and at work or school I always seem to make friends who , when they get close enough, end up thinking that I actually am the sh*t, the urine ...ah you get the drift. More recently though, to be specific, in my first year at university I made more friends within the months of September and October than probably in all my life.
It all started in my first week.



On my first day at Queen Mary, University of London I met someone on the train to my 'get acquainted with the library' event who revealed quite earnestly to me that it had been/was her first day at Imperial College to which I replied enthusiastically: "me too!" cue nervous first meeting, shared experience laughter. She was the first person I met in the university network and the dominoes just kept falling.


In quick succession I met 5 girls at Queen Mary who ended up being my best friends for the entire 3 years at university second to none and who in no particular order I proceeded to get not-the-best first year grades with, get banned from the library and get embroiled in quick fire correspondence with the head of the law library with, run down the clubhouse formerly known as Establishment with (everytime missing the one o' clock free entry curfew and having to pay £15 each) with, drink all night with and turn up at my part time job drunk(alone).....ah fun times. In the midst of all of this I was so cocooned by this close knit blanket that I hardly ever had a solo moment. Even going to the bathroom we would be 3 or 4 at the same time in our loud Nigerian accents causing a stir and generally being very intimidating to would-be joiners to the crew.Ahhh, fun times.



Fast-forward 5 years and I'm back in the university system trying to get an LLM in far away Nottingham. Okay it's less than 2 hours away from London but the life I'm living couldn't be more different from what I remember of my heady 'uni' days or even my days at law school where 3 of my above mentioned besties came with me to wreak an even higher degree of havoc on Bwari society. Yes, I am now one of those people who turns up at the supermarket alone and buys one apple, one banana and 6 eggs -yes, one of those people who I used to look upon with pity and wonder how they could carry on with life without even a shadow. But the plus side is I actually have time to prepare for seminars and (gasp) contribute to every single class without a friend of mine sniggering in the background saying under their breath 'allow it, and allow those who have sense to talk' or passing me notes for the duration of the lecture and thus ensuring that I stay distracted enough not to gain one.single.thing.
I am actually able to look upon my neighbours in the cafe or in class and because I have no one with me actually notice things about them- a bag Ive seen in the shops, a book they have which Ive read that prompts me to smile and say "Hi, my name is Erenma you're in my Human Rights class, right...." even though they aren't a friend of a friend and no, certainly not from Nigeria.