About Me

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Hiya! Just a quick intro :) I lived in Nigeria for more than half of my life (so far) before moving to England and I have seen the best and the worst of both worlds. I was greatly inspired by the #OccupyNigeria protests and this blog is my way of #occupying. A lot of us compare African countries to the Western countries and I will mainly be talking about the positive things that I have observed and learnt in my few years of living here. Payme’s 2Cents is for all who dare to dream to see changes in their lifetime. It is for those who dream to see environments where 'helping' thrives. I will be giving my2cents worth on how we can work towards getting things to change for better. It would be great to know your opinions, so please leave comments. Remember to keep sharing posts that you enjoy. Follow @payme_my2cents. Thanks a lot for visiting!!! Enjoy my2cents :).

Monday 9 July 2012

10 #EndtheStory Questions for ‘SeunWrites’


"I know we have a lot of beautiful stories in Africa and we must find the African writers that will tell them beautifully" 'Seun Salami
 
‘Seun Salami is the author of ‘The Son of your Father’s Concubine’, a collection of short stories. He also works as a full-time editor at a publishing firm in Lagos, Nigeria. In this interview with Payme, ‘Seun talks about his first writing competition End the Story with which he is encouraging young creative writers to complete one of his popular stories, ‘The Sex life of a Lagos mad woman’ published on Ynaija.com where he also contributes stories from time to time.

What inspired your love for writing?

Reading. I say that because I did not set out to be a writer early in life. I wanted to be first a pilot and then an architect at different stages of my life. I also loved to draw. But when I would read books, published books, I would often find myself using a pencil to make corrections in what people have written. Afterwards, I began attempting to write them the way I thought they should have been written and then one thing led to another and so on and so forth.

What do you hope to achieve with the ‘End the Story’ competition?

We have a lot of fantastic writers in Nigeria as you already know. I always say I’m your favourite writer’s favourite writer (laughs) and that’s by faith, okay, because that’s what I want to become. But then, some people who have read my work have said, Oh, ‘Seun you write so well and all the other washings they give you on twitter. But truth be told, there are several other aspiring writers that are exceptionally brilliant. How do I know this? I have quite a number of protégés already on and off twitter, even though I still consider myself an aspiring writer. I have never met many of them before. I would read some of their works and go, Wow! So I have always known I had to be able to find a way to engage writers and get people to tell their beautiful stories. Sometimes people just need some form of platform, and those platforms are not enough. You dear (Payme) for instance, I got to know about you after my friend (Omojuwa) did Superbloggers. So we need these platforms. With End the Story, we hope to find three exceptional writers that I can help in my own little way to improve on their art and get better at what they do.

Monday 2 July 2012

July 3rd...The Month After



"...and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him."

1 Thessalonians 4:14b

The carelessness of it all shook me to the core; that part about “it could have been prevented” kept floating in my head for days. 

Nigeria is a cause I believe in. There was a period of time that it looked like we had awful news daily. It was bomb blasts and then the tanker explosion with about 27 cars I think. June 3, while at church, my TL was filled with the news of the most recent bomb blasts, feeling numb, I went to bed and then woke up to gory pictures of the Dana Crash. I am sure that at that point a lot of Nigerians like me were at a loss. I kept thinking “when is this going to end?” I could not help the tears as more news about the circumstances of the crash kept coming out. First, it was that the plane was to be repaired before detouring to pick passengers in Abuja, then the one about how it was on the ground for about 20 minutes before exploding etc. etc. As time went on, although no one knew the exact circumstances surrounding the crash, the general consensus still appeared to be “it could have been prevented”.