AKE DIARIES: DAY 2
Day 2 (for me) of AkéFest18 started with the Guests going for schools visit.
The previous night, Alex, the Administrative Manager of the festival had asked the volunteers who wanted to accompany the guests on the school visit to write down their names. For personal reasons, I didn’t write my name.
When my roommate came back and said that she had been assigned to go with Ayesha Harruna Attah, I was so jealous! Like Ayesha is my latest woman crush and I had shot myself in the foot by turning down the school visit thing.
But me being me, I consoled myself with the fact that I probably wouldn’t have gotten assigned to her if I had gone. I mean, what were the odds of such a fortunate coincidence?
While other volunteers went for their school run as I liked to call it, I was at the registration desk at Ouida House with Toby Abiodun. My registration desk padi, and popular performance poet. (I got to know that he’s popular when some of the guests invited by Lola stopped to say hi to him). Chai! He is humble sha. And it is one of the reasons I tell people to never underestimate someone simply because they look ordinary.
So many people came to get registered and it was interesting meeting people with different accents. From the lists we were given to crosscheck while we register people, I saw Okechukwu Ofili and NSG on the list Sterling bank, who by the way are the major sponsors of the festival, gave us. I was so excited because it meant that I would get to see them when they came to register. I waited for them to show up but they didn’t. Then Odafe Atogun walked in.
To be honest, I didn’t know that he was the one because he looked so different from the last time I saw his picture on Google. I greeted him as I had done to people who came to register and he answered nicely. While in the bookstore, Lola called his name and I was like, what?! Although I kept my cool, I couldn’t wait for him to pass by my desk again. And when he did, he smiled at me as he left the building. Oh, my heart!
My Registration desk face
Regardless of how stressful working at the registration desk was, I enjoyed every bit of it. Plus our line manager, Eniola made sure we were not stranded. One of the visitors even said that I looked pretty and was the perfect fit for the job. What a way to give a girl moral support!
Just before I call it a day, let me talk about how creatives tend to look and/or act eccentrically. While I won’t go into details here because I plan to write extensively on it in another post, I often wonder if it is something they do on purpose or whether it comes with the inspiration to be creative. Don’t get me wrong, I am a creative too but I do not think I am eccentric. At least not physically.
Which brings me to the question; are all creatives eccentric?
