In the many days and many travels of my existence, only one thing has been constant: the recurrence of the same faces on different people, or the same people in different faces. I’ve now called it the feeling déjà rencontré – an upgrade from déjà vu which only relates to having experienced seeing something once before.

Before anyone else, of course, were my parent and siblings, who became replicated in a hundred different ways as soon as I stepped into the world. In the secondary school were individuals that I can now point to as having played a role of each one of my siblings, and parents, at each point in time. In the university, the situation was the same, and in church, clubs, groups, and everywhere I’ve “lived”; in Kenya, and America, and now back to Lagos.

I’ve not spent time on google trying to see if some studious philosopher from ages past has an idea about it, and I yet may.  But I find it fascinating that the skill sets imparted in every one of us seems to attract the same kinds of people wherever we go. It must suck then to have had to grow up under very debilitating, humiliating conditions.