So I’m in Bromsgrove, Birmingham for the weekend; it’s the 3rd installment of the Women and Leadership residency programme for us 14 African women resident in various parts of the United Kingdom.
Yeah? First off, it was great to meet up with everyone last night, see all the ladies again, catch up on what we’ve all been up to since the last time we saw each other in May, and all of that! The weekends away are an absolute blessing, a time to reflect/take care of myself, build my leadership and community interaction skills, and enjoy fabulously prepared food!
The Center is set on a sprawling estate – loads of green, peace and quiet, and because the farmers and butchers are local, all the food we’re served is fresh, organic, authentic, and so full of flavor!
So, first night we had baby potatoes and chicken wrapped in bacon and cheese. Incredible. I brought my own veg (anyone say team #FitFam), and I truly enjoyed the meal. Dessert however was toffee cake in a lovely toffee pudding (did you see my weight loss plans jump out of the window)?
Dinner over, we did an interesting exercise which was to randomly list things that influence our values on a flipchart (so things like society, environment, other people, education, religion, etc.), and then we did drawings depicting our life’s journeys and talking through them in groups. Very nice to do that, basically plot our life’s graphs and explore how different things that happened to/for/around us have shaped who we are and how we do certain things.
After all of that happened, I retired to my room to try to connect to the WIFI in the place. And then Amanda came over, and it was really nice to have a ‘catch up’ type conversation, a little more in-depth than what happened in the group. We were up till 1.20am (yes I checked) and then I went to sleep.
I woke up laughing about 5am because of some hilarious dream I was having (involving PSquare), and heavy as my eyes were, soon as my phone beeped to tell me I’d connected to the internet, I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. We are currently expecting the same miracle for my computer.
Decided to go for a run about 7am and I was reminded that I’m such a wuss! Walked for like 7minutes, and then it dawned on me that no one knew I’d left the building. Remember the entire gist about green and farms? Here’s a look!
Beautiful, serene… I could live here forever! (Long as they give us wifi jor…)
And then I thought, hian! What if something/someone comes out of nowhere and grabs me? Think ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘CSI New York, Miami, Aba, Oshogbo (since it seems there’s a different CSI for every city)’, or my recent favorite, ‘Person of Interest’ (which I started watching because of something Gbenga Sesan said at a training I attended in August).
And so ladies and gentlemen, I started running, and back to the Center building! You can say what you will, laugh all you want; I’m not listening! Lol!
That’s it really. I showered, had breakfast, and joined the morning session, where I wrote this.
*Written on the 19th of September.
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