I like living in a rural area but with all the urban commodities within my reach. I always say with good electricity and internet, I can live anywhere. But these days I realise it's not all that simple as I ll also need a good road network, transportation, a good hospital, a good delivery services a good banking system and so many more things.
Life in the rural is sweet and peaceful, my love for farming was stirred when I last lived in a rural place as one of the doctors in the community. I had fresh food to eat and before long I was gardening and rearing livestock. Life was comfortable until I decided to push down the comfort for my career. I hope to still recreate those feeling maybe at a later time but for now I may have to challenge the game in the urban.
Living in the urban without a game is like being cheated if you look at it. Your plan is to come and be a prey to the businesses of the urban, the most urban of places that comes to mind is Lagos. I grew up there, but I doubt if I can actually live there. From the noise, to the air pollution to the competition, you don't even know who is following you. You have to pay so much to actually have your peace.
People think there is this balance, hustle in the urban and spend it in the rural, it is exactly the same Japa principle people have, jet out, struggle and come back home to chill. But the street gets its cake.
The urban takes it own no matter how hard you want to play the game, you ll pay a huge transport to get there and by the time you count how much to bring you back home, you ll be reconsidering coming back home. So you just build a life there.
Trust me, this was what many people thought they will be doing. They travelled far away from home to make a living only for the living to make a life away from home. We called it emigration, but we forgot that the now urban was once rural.
So then how do I conclude this my write up.. We need to make our rural places beautiful. It is 2024, the world has become a global village, I can be anywhere and any time and my impact will be felt as though I was there. Covid brought so many more possibilities to light. Zoom made headway, and some holograms will be a come thing.
We should build our so called rural places, to have all the basic amenities. The Urbans are densely populated and mostly filled with greedy people trying to rip others off.
Schools, hospitals, hotels, banks, good road, good internet and a portable electricity supply either windmills or solar or even biogas will set the urban places into hiding.
To conclude really now, though I love the peace of the rural, no where really deserves to be called rural. It is just people who are not seeing the opportunity in places and they should. I should. You should. We all should. We can have it here.