I moved into a one-bedroom flat on Wembley High Road between Covid lockdowns in 2020. It was good riddance to that racist Turkish landlord in Borehamwood, who, in retrospect, may have been a gangster. Parting ways with my brother and sister-in-law, with whom I had lived with for eight months, was not as joyous. They were a newlywed couple who needed privacy to set out on their own terms. Moving to Newcastle was a stretch, but my brother was smiling all the way to the bank with at least 20,000 pounds. Wembley was the first time in my adult life that I would live alone, or so I thought.  

In my time in that flat with a fine metallic view of the Wembley Stadium arch, my front room and the two inflatable airbags I purchased were makeshift holiday inn for numerous friends passing through London for reasons that ranged from vacation to weekend revelry to Nigerian passport renewals to family pickups and drop-offs at the Heathrow Airport to international border Covid restrictions. For every request, there was an eager ‘yes’ on the tip of my tongue. And do I love to play host? Lamb chops melted in butter and rosemary sprigs flashed in a griddle pan (my air fryer recipe, too, bangs!). My oxtail pepper soup could closely rival that of Uju of Akerele Extension. I also make a mean smoky Jollof rice. I often joke that if I cannot practice medicine, I may start a Naija restaurant somewhere on some high street in NW London. My longest lodger left me with the most gracious testimony, even though he punctured my first inflatable airbag on his first night with his belt prong. Last Christmas, he hand-delivered a box of chocolate with a handwritten letter written in lush oxytocin-releasing prose. I felt instrumental in making another man’s way in this journey called diaspora. 

My wife says acts of service are my love language. It is a firstborn thing, particularly if you are from a Nigerian household or worse, if you are raised by my mother, who bartered with her aunt to babysit her kids in exchange for experiencing the inner walls of a school. I don’t see the ‘service’ in these ‘acts’; I see them as what should be done. As a young boy, my father’s second favourite criticism of my behaviour (the first was my feverish clumsiness) was my ‘lack of initiative’. Daddy, I have gained that initiative in ways that you cannot imagine. Sometimes, it means opening my door, my heart, and every dispensable article in my arsenal in service of others. I suppose this is an invaluable skill for a doctor to possess. A desperate need to help others. Some may call it kindness. And, because I traffic in extremes, my brand is a radical kind of kindness. But I am learning restraint, practising an onlooker’s visage, a sort of tamponade for my effusiveness. My wife is impressed with my progress.