I'M MOVING TO AUSTRALIA 🥳🎉🎉

I’m moving…. AGAIN?

Call me Kwaku the traveller cos I do be travelling… but not this time. I’m actually moving.

By now, most (if not everyone) reading this blog knows I've moved to Sydney, Australia. When I first posted about arriving in Australia on WhatsApp, I think some people thought I was just visiting Australia because I have been travelling A LOT this year. In just 9 months of this year, I've been to 6 countries, including Singapore and Australia, which is A LOT! If you didn't already figure it out, the reason I was travelling like a headless chicken in summer was because I sorta knew I was leaving the UK. So I wanted to get the most out of that location proximity and visa while I could.

Few people fully understand how and why I made the move, and posting this on Twitter revealed this very jarringly. Especially since the tweet referenced me having worked in Cairo, London and now Sydney all by the --- very ripe (I quickly rued my choice of "very ripe age" as opposed to big/small age, cos some people on Twitter can be very very weird/marriage obsessed?) --- age of 23.

The most popular question I've been asked since I posted about moving to Sydney is, how did I do it? "It" being: work in Egypt, the UK, and now Australia; 3 continents, 3 countries, of which 2 of them are a bit unconventional choices for the average Nigerian. And even just landing one would be a dream; talk more of landing 3 within just 4 years of leaving university and at 23. 

A few people didn't believe that part 🤣. Asking questions like, how are you 23? When did you finish uni if you're 23? When did you finish secondary school? If not for some restraint, I'm sure some would have even asked when I was born 😂. They shouldn't worry. I'll be 24 soon. Perhaps that'd be more palatable for their minds 😅. But more seriously, I thought it was pretty well established now that the average person finishing uni from most private universities is 18/19? Some federal universities are even producing teen graduates. This isn't much of a big deal in quarter to 2024, naaaaa.

I recognise that this blog may come across a bit shalaye-eyyy & I know I don't have to explain myself, especially to strangers online who don't care and really are just asking intrusive questions for whatever reason (positive, nefarious or just for aproko). But, I try to approach strangers with an assumption of good faith, and I believe there may be some people who honestly want to know how I managed to travel and work in 3 continents just 4 years out of uni. A few people have asked me via DM and replies to "show the way", and this is precisely that.

I'll just preface with saying that it's doubtful (nearly impossible) to recreate my career journey precisely the way it happened, nor should anyone really want to, because today is different from when I did what I did. I'm mainly sharing this for people to learn from my story, open people's minds to the possibilities they can tap into, and share some lessons I picked up along the way. Also for anyone just curious, I'm naturally curious, and I wish I always get my curiosity fully satisfied. I'm also a firm believer in the golden rule; thus... 

Let's break all the rules of all CRS (Christian Religious Studies) textbooks and just put the moral lessons first, shall we 😈

General advice on how I did it:

I was in the right place at the right time (call it luck or being blessed, this part I didn't have full control over); I was prepared; I had the right skills required and had done some research to put in suitable applications for the opportunities. Also, I had missed out on other opportunities that meant I was free to take up these opportunities, and I FAILED at other things that gave me the experience and put me in the right place mentally & physically to take these opportunities.

To the question of how I worked in Egypt, the UK and Australia, this is well documented on my LinkedIn and Twitter btw, but let me connect the dots.

Egypt

In 2019, was very fortunate to be part of a program called the Development Finance Internship program done by SEO Africa in partnership with the Ministry of Finance that aimed to get young Nigerians internships at top Development Finance Institutions like the World Bank, IFC, African Development Bank, African Export-Import Bank (AFREXIM Bank) (which I ended up interning at) and several others.

OGs of this blog know that this internship made me miss my CU graduation. So, while I graduated from CU in July 2019, per this tweet, I didn't attend the ceremony because I was in Egypt.

How did I know about this program? 

I was sent an email to apply, and I got an interview, was selected for the program, and was eventually assigned to AFREXIM Bank in Cairo, Egypt. It was about a 3-month internship.

Interestingly, I even got to be part of this mailing list because I had applied for a Goldman Sachs internship in 2017 that I did not get. Pointing to the fact that failure in one thing put me in the right place to know about the next opportunity. 

I learned about the original Goldman Sachs internship at Covenant University, talmbout being at the right place at the right time. 1 of the advantages of attending CU was (is?) we found out about several opportunities from formal channels, fellow students and lecturers. Not every university has this privilege.

UK

Also, in 2019, as I posted in this tweet, I was blessed to be selected for the Development Trust Africa scholarship at Loughborough University, which covered my full tuition for my Master's degree in Finance and Investment. I found out about the scholarship from my project supervisor in final year. Shout out to Dr Efobi!

In 2020, I landed an internship through the 100 (now 10,000) Black Interns program to work in an asset management firm in London. The 100 Black Interns program at the time aimed to get young black people internships in asset management.

I learned about the 100 Black Interns program on my Loughborough Church workers' WhatsApp group 😅. Shout out to Redeemed Christian Church of Group (RCCG) Loughborough, particularly Sis Uju, for posting the opportunity. If I wasn't part of the choir (thus a church worker), I wouldn't have found out about the program any other way. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

After the internship in 2021, I landed an Investment role in London working in Asset Management. 

Cut to 2023; as explained in this tweet, the company I was working for in London had a job opening in Sydney that I was interested in. I applied, and after a few interviews, I was offered the Investment Analyst role and took it. Which leads me up to today.

To this person's point that "isn't it a problem that I had worked in 3 different countries over 4 years?" how would all I've explained above be a problem? 😅

To other rants.

Omo, having a Nigerian passport is incredibly inconvenient! 

So there's no direct flight from London to Sydney. You have to transit through somewhere in Asia or the Middle East. In the course of trying to book flights to Sydney, I was mudded on several occasions when I saw the countries I simply couldn't transit through because I have a Nigerian passport 🤦🏾‍♀️

Let's just use Hong Kong as a case study. There are about 193 countries in the UN. Hong Kong clearly says on its website that 170 countries can visit HK visa-free. But guess who cannot visit visa-free: ojikpakpa Giant of Africa. Even Niger! The people with the political unrest can move freely to Hong Kong, but Nigerians have a giant asterisk beside our visa required line. OK, which other countries are in the same group as us: Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea... like see the company we are keeping 🤦🏾‍♀️

Anyways, chileee... in case you didn't know, Singapore has no transit visa requirements. There's no such thing as a Singaporean transit visa. So I freely transited through there from London to Sydney. And their airport is soooo beautiful. 10/10 would recommend.

Finally, I have to say that migrating for work vs. migrating for school are 2 completely different experiences, and if you have a say in the matter, please migrate for work.

And migrate with an employer that caressssssss and isn't a broke ass bitch 🤭 (pardon my French). Cos I was put in the LOVELY serviced apartment, which made settling in much easier. I already knew about a few things to set up before I came, etc. I had the same experience in Egypt. I was set up in a lovely hotel and given time to find a place to rent.

So the moral of the story is move with company >>>>>>>>>>>>>. But if that option no dey, no wahala, the school route still dey, albeit rugged!

How easy was it for me to leave London after spending 4 years there?

It was sad to leave my friends as a number of my friends had moved to London in 2022/23, so I was starting to build a community there. And I maintain that London is the 37th state of Nigeria. It's so easy (and sometimes even cheaper than in Nigeria) to get good Nigerian foodstuff to cook the food I grew up eating. Though I lived in the UK, I ate well. Regularly eating my Banga soup, egusi, okra, jollof, fried rice, palm oil beans, palm oil stew, etc. 

While I've found some of the foodstuff here in Sydney, they are a bit more expensive (as you could expect considering the distance from Naija), but I'll live with it. For the community, I guess they say home is where you make it (nobody said this; I made it up 😂). But they did say the grass is greener where you water it. So I can make some new friends here and build those relationships. And also, thanks to NsukkaBread (Zuckerberg), everyone is always one call away. I can always keep in touch with my peeps. And in London, it's not like I saw people every day, so...

Also, the time difference is MUCH! Another reason why London is the 37th state of Nigeria is that the time difference is pretty close. In fact, the time is the same for half of the year (during British Summer Time (BST), i.e. March to October). It's only in the other half that London is 1 hour behind. It's why I also find it incredibly HILARIOUS when people say things like "Good morning from here" when they message me. In my head, it's also morning here; why are you talking like this? You'd never tell someone in Lagos, "Good morning from here," because you live in Ibadan. So why the foolery 😂

On the other hand, Sydney is 9 hours ahead of Nigeria (and London in BST) half the time and 10 hours ahead of Naija (11 ahead of London in standard time) the remaining half. So calling people would require some calculation, some checking world clock and whatnot. Thankfully, I've found a rhythm. Calling people in the morning as I'm heading for work or in the evening on my way back is a shared waking time for both sides.

On the "bright" side, this time zone puts me on pretty good terms with North America as they're about 16-20 hours behind, so they're about a whole day behind, which means they're in the a.m. when I'm in the p.m. and vice versa.

The weather is, of course, much better in Sydney than in London. So I DEF will not be missing that.

But yeah, this is my life now.

Look forward to my blogs incorporating stories from my life in Sydney and what that entails. Provided I find the time between living life and having fun to write more blogs 😅🤭

Till next time. Ciao.

Fun fact, you can connect the title of this blog to the title of the previous blog to make a sentence 🤭 You're welcome