Kennedy's bicycle was stolen from his yard in the Šančiai district of Kaunas

Kennedy's bicycle was stolen from his yard in the Šančiai district of Kaunas

By Hafiz Adewuyi   March 18, 2020   No comments :

As part of my ramping up to get out of bed routine every morning, I check WhatsApp. A bad habit I know. But I think it helps to keep me from snoozing my alarm for another cycle. This morning, one of the first messages I saw was from a group that I and Kennedy, a fellow Digital Explorer are in. My heart might have skipped a beat the moment I absorbed his message.

This is where my own bicycle sleeps in Kaunas; by the entrance to my apartment building

Instantly, the picture that you see above appeared in my mind. That's my bicycle, and every day, I park it outside, close to the entrance of the apartment block where I live, close to the city centre of Kaunas. It is secured only with the bike-lock which came along with the bicycle when it was handed as a gift to me by my colleague and buddy, Mindaugas in late 2019.

L - R, then background: Mindaugas, Hafiz; their colleagues

I was overwhelmed by a sudden but fleeting fear that a band of bicycle thieves had swept through town last night and that like Kennedy's, my bike must have also fallen victim. I felt the urge to quickly go check that my bicycle was still in place in front of the apartment but my laziness made sure that instead of doing that, I opted for the option to ask Kennedy if his bicycle had been chained down when he had it stolen. It surely wasn't worth the 0.5 calories it would cost me to go down one flight of stairs from my flat to go check that I still had a bicycle before I confirmed whether or not Kennedy's fate had been due to his lack of basic care in making sure his bicycle is not easy picking.

I felt some relief a couple of hours later when I read a WhatsApp reply from Kennedy that indeed, his bicycle was not chained up when he left it outside last night. Indeed, his bicycle was easy picking and that is the primary reason why it was stolen. "Yay, I have no new thing to worry about", my subconscious declared with the victory of knowing that no new vaccination needed to be invented today!

I am fundraising to get Kennedy a new bike as summer is on the way and he will surely need it for all the exploring that is ahead of him. Click here to support this brotherly cause

The story of the theft of Kennedy's bicycle is one that is particularly important for me because, for me, it's an important source of information to update my belief about my environment. "I feel really safe"; that was one of the first things I said when asked about my first impressions of Kaunas two months after my arrival in the city, in an interview with the media arm of the Kaunas city municipality. Even though I'm not the one whose bicycle was stolen this time, for me, this single incidence will make it less likely that I'll repeat that statement again if asked how I feel about living in Kaunas.

Of course, I still feel safe. Just a tad bit less safe than I felt that four months ago when I granted an interview to KaunasIN. My apartment is in a building right by one of the larger and busier streets in Kaunas, yet it's got nothing of the semblance of a fence. To enter the building (of which once you're in, all you need to get into my safe space is give a nice sturdy flying-kick to my wooden door), all you need do is open a transparent glass door with metal frames. There's an electronic keypad lock by the door which is meant to keep the door locked, but it stopped working several months ago and entrance to the building is now free for all. I guess the main reason that I haven't complained about this security vulnerability is the same thing, I still feel safe (partly due to the fact that I actually desperately want to feel safe here).

I feel safe. But I think that this would be less surprising to you after I tell you that since I came to Kaunas, I've not seen a burglary proof on any window in a residential or business building. Yes. In case that electronic lock starts working, don't fret much - if you've got your eyes on my goods. All you'd need-do is scale the "pseudo-balcony" behind my bedroom windows and again, give what?... You guessed it, ... a sturdy flying-kick to those metal-framed glass windows and in you are, into my bedroom. My goods are yours for the taking.

Because I'm opportunistic about sharing details from my life, I think that now is a perfect time to talk about the fact that I actually have an experiment that has been running since shortly after I got my own bicycle from Mindaugas. This experiment is designed to help calibrate my safety-meter for Kaunas. Here's how it goes:

THE DETACHABLE BICYCLE-LIGHT PAIR EXPERIMENT

The lights look just like this. (Source: Amazon.com)

I bought a pair of flashing bicycle lights for my bicycle: a white one that goes in-front and a red one placed at the back, along the rod holding up the seat. Each of these lights is peculiar in that it is attached to the bicycle by a clip-on which is designed into the body of the light. This means that it's very easy for any passerby to detach any of these lights and walk away with it.

The pair of lights cost me around 5 or 6 Euros but I thought that a small enough token to sacrifice for the sake of true knowledge. I really value true knowledge because growing up has taught me that everyone sees things through different lenses and that taking advice from people at face value about any subject matter at all without any allowance for yourself to test the claims safely can be quite, limiting.

So, apart from the first couple of days after I bought these lights and affixed them to my bicycle, I never detach them from the bicycle when I park it in-front-of my apartment building. Even when I ride the bicycle out and have to park it in a public place that has much more human traffic than the front of my apartment, I only detach the lights in the rare situation that I feel like the parking area has a heavy footfall and increases the chances that I will lose my bicycle lights.

Again, this experiment is so important for me because every morning that I come out of the apartment exit and find that the bicycle lights survived the perilous night is a morning that my preferred (and naive) belief that my environment in Kaunas is safe, loses some of its fictitiousness.

The results of my detachable bicycle-light experiment (so far) are astonishing! (at least for me). After over four months of leaving my bicycle in several public places in Kaunas (chained-down, of course), with two flashy detachable lights, actually, one of the lights has been stolen: the red one in the rear of the bicycle. If my memory and observation serve me right, this theft was performed right at the spot where I park my bicycle at home: under the porch that holds the door which I use to access my apartment building entrance.

I still feel safe though, as I've been waiting ever since then for the other half of the light pair to be stolen as well, so I can just get another pair and once again, become a fully-compliant night bicycle rider in the Republic of Lithuania. When I do that, you can be sure that I'll be apt to detach these lights every time I'm leaving my bicycle outside for an extended period of time.

Back to Kennedy's bicycle, I feel really sorry for him. If I were in his shoes, I know how much new suffering it would mean for me to start doing small errands on my feet again; and I don't say that lightly. As far as I know, he might consider reporting the theft to the local police and is seeking some advice from some locals on how to approach the situation. Can't wait to see how that unfolds and I really hope that somehow, he gets the bicycle back. Cos' I know how important of a possession it was to him. Kennedy is in love with the outdoors.

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Travelling by bus in Kaunas, Lithuania - a Nigerian's perspective

Travelling by bus in Kaunas, Lithuania - a Nigerian's perspective

By Hafiz Adewuyi   January 19, 2020   5 comments :

Troleibusas Kaune snieguotą dieną (Trolleybus in Kaunas on a snowy day)

I have found it to be super convenient to travel around Kaunas by bus since I arrived Lithuania in October 2019. My office is a 10-minute walk away from my house, so I don't have to use any vehicle for my daily commute. However, whenever I am travelling farther from home than my office or the nearby Kaunas Akropolis mall, I usually opt to take a bus.

One working day in my second week in Kaunas, a member of Afriko came over to my office to hand me my Kaunas bus card which was preloaded with 5 Euros. The bus card has a wallet which can be loaded with money for buying bus tickets. Also, each bus card is tied to an individual passenger account which can be accessed through through the Kaunas public transport website. Via the website, the card wallet can be loaded, period-based subscription tickets can be purchased, the wallet balance and travel history can be checked among other things.

Kaunas public transport account online dashboard

The night I dumped my Kaunas bus card for a Žiogas eBus-ticket profile

Not long after I got my Kaunas bus card, I took my first bus trip in Kaunas to only God remembers where. One evening, when I had almost used up the initial 5 € on my bus card, I recharged the card at the Narvesen retail shop in the Kaunas bus station. The cashier took my bus card from me and in three seconds, the transaction was done. I was a bit worried though when she gave me a slip of paper and referred to it as a ticket. I feared that I might have bought a 5 € paper ticket instead of having my card wallet loaded with that amount. However, when I took a moment to sit and login to my online account, I discovered that contrary to my fears, I now had 5 € more in my Kaunas bus wallet.

Another evening in early November 2019, I was about to get on my way back from an appointment in another part of Kaunas where I had traveled to by bus. I checked my online bus account and saw that I had only 70 cents left - just enough money for a one-off bus trip. However, I had noticed from my previous bus trips that sometimes, it takes a few minutes for the balance of the bus card to synchronize to the online account. So I feared that I might actually not have enough money to take a bus trip back home.

Fortunately, there was an IKI retail shop close to my location. I walked into the store and asked a uniformed staffer who was busy with some shelf arrangement to confirm if I could reload my Kaunas bus card in that store. "Unfortunately, you cannot do that here", she said. Disappointed, I walked back out of the store onto a sidewalk inside the same 'prematurely' dark Tuesday evening where I had stood earlier while checking my online bus account.

Žiogas: Kaunas bus tickets mobile app

After taking a few moments to contemplate my next steps, I remembered that Eglė, my main contact at Afriko had mentioned on the Digital Explorers Lithuanian culture training day that we could use a mobile app: Žiogas to buy bus tickets. I went on to download the Žiogas app from the Play store to my Tecno Android phone and loaded it with 3.5 € - enough money for 5 trips. Ever since that evening, I have abandoned the Kaunas bus card in my wardrobe on a shelf on my home wardrobe, as the convenience of funding the Žiogas app outstrips that of the bus card. 

Thinking about it, I can actually also fund my bus card wallet online. But ever since I tried to do that and abandoned the payment, the button for online funding of my bus card has disappeared from my profile on the website. Apparently I need to complete that payment which I have no easy way of finding my way to ever again.

One thing I quickly noticed about the Žiogas app which I liked was that it actually adds up the amounts of your one-off bus tickets in a calendar month until it's up to the price of a monthly bus pass, after which all your subsequent trips will be free. I like this because it actually removes the incentive to buy a monthly pass upfront at no extra cost. Sweet deal!

I don't take a lot of bus trips in Kaunas so I've never spent up to 28 € for one-off tickets in a month

Cross section of your typical bus trip in Kaunas

1. Planning your Kaunastic bus trip

A bus trip in Kaunas always starts in the mind and then proceeds to your phone or computer. If you have never been to a place in Kaunas, days ahead, you would consult Google maps and apply some considerations to the different routes that are applicable for the intended arrival date+time:

• How long does it take to walk to the target bus-stop?
• How long is the trip for?
• How long is the walk from the target bus-stop to my final destination?
• What side of the road is the bus-station on; will you have to cross the road on your way to/from the source/destination bus-stop?
• Is the destination close enough and the roads level enough for you to cycle in sub-10 degrees Celsius weather?

Based on a combination those considerations, you would then make a mental note of your preferred route and if the search was done on a PC, send the route as a push notification or text message to your phone.

2. Waiting for your Kaunastic bus

The next step is to remember to get yourself out of the house or office early enough to reach the bus-station at least, 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Yes. Even though the buses are more often than not, either right on time or at most, 1 or 2 minutes late, it has happened a few times when you reached the bus stop just a few seconds short of catching the bus, even though you were 1.50 minutes early according to the schedule on the maps.

Enough of you for a minute. My most frequent bus stations to leave from in Kaunas are:

• S. Daukanto gatve - the closest stop to work at TransUnion, Zalgiris arena; howbeit a long 7-minute walk away
• Kaunakiemio gatve - a paltry 2-minute walk away from home; the closest stop to home
• Geležinkelio tiltas: This is a 5-minute walk away from home; the second closest stop to home

Except for once in a blue moon, you often have to walk between 3 and 10 minutes from your departure point to the nearest bus stop. Once there, you step under the bus stop shelter in the hopes that they do something to reduce the effect on the cold wind on your real temperature feel while you await the bus. You would consider sitting on the chair in the shade but a look at them suggests that it's been a while since anyone bothered to clean it. 

So you stand in wait, hoping that the data in Google maps is accurate and that your wait this evening is not in vain. Sometimes, your paranoia would drive you to open Trafi (another bus mobile app which also has local bus routes) and confirm that the suggested route matches that on Google maps - the one that told you to come to this stop in the first place.

Your first impression of waiting for a bus in Kaunas is cold hands. Those few seconds of bringing out your phone to cross-reference your bus route on Trafi often cost some precious body heat from your poorly circulated hands.

3. Getting on board your Kaunastic bus

With up to a 2-minute error rate, your bus will arrive at the bus stop right on time. It always fills you with relief; seeing the bus approach from the distance. Even after 4 months, you have not been able to do away with your fear that the schedule might change because for example, the bus broke down at the previous stop.

As the bus slows down to let alighting and boarding passengers do their thing, you divert your attention to the Žiogas sticker close to the front door on the right side of the bus. While waiting, you had taken a moment to open the Žiogas app. The Žiogas sticker displays a 3-digit code and a QR code, either of which can be entered or scanned respectively into the Žiogas app on your phone. 

As it takes some time to scan a QR code and people typically hurry into the bus, you memorize the bus code at a glance of the sticker and enter it into Žiogas at the same time as you step onto the bus. By the time you're passing by the driver's cabin, your one-off ticket is ready for inspection. You turn your phone screen around and show it briefly to the driver through his tall cabin window - if they are paying any attention and not just staring straight ahead.

Most times, the Kaunastic driver seems not to care about your in-app e-ticket. You never used to display your ticket to the driver until that one time when you had the driver request to see your ticket after you'd breezed through him to a seat right behind him. During that trip, you read the instructions poster in the bus and learned from it your obligation as a passenger to display your ticket to the driver while boarding.

[Picture of Žiogas bus sticker with QR code]

The boarding process is a little different if you're using a Kaunas bus card. In that case, there is no ticket to show to the driver. Instead, you would simply have to tap your bus card against one of the yellow NFC scanners on the bus: right by the driver's cabin or near the back of the bus. This was the case for me in my first several weeks in Kaunas before I ditched my card for Žiogas.

[Picture of Kaunas bus NFC card reader]

After ensuring that you are not a freeloader on the current bus, the next priority is to find yourself a good spot for the rest of the trip. As it appears that the people of Lithuania generally love their personal space, your ideal seat is a vacant two-seater and that is what you try to spot initially. If that is not available, the next option is to find a seat next to a person who based on mental heuristics, is least likely to be flustered by having you seat beside them.

If I could guess, I would say that a friendly face/welcoming aura is the most important factor in this calculation. Which in your opinion is not so easy to come by. Your understanding of a friendly face is... far fetched from what generally obtains in this new home of yours. Or maybe you're just paranoid; still have not recovered from the culture shock.

4. Riding on a Kaunas city bus

The seats are pretty comfortable; wide enough for an average person to sit comfortably. Also, while not all the seats have a lot of leg room for vertically gifted folks like yourself, it's easy to find that kind of seat on any bus that is not much more than half full - which is often the case in Kaunas judging by your bus trips so far. 

The most crowded bus that I myself have boarded since my arrival in Lithuania last October was in Vilnius last Friday on my way back from a Digital explorers Deep Learning training at the Vilnius Tech Park. The bus travelling towards the Vilnius Stotis stop was so full that it felt like I was in an Oshodi Molue all over again. However, after 4 or 5 stops, the crowding reduced and I was able to find myself a seat.

Most of the bus trips that you take are 30 minutes long - or more or less. Anywhere that is not that far away by bus is likely better reached on foot or by bicycle. During these short bus trips, you would spend your time doing one of three things:

• Taking in the faces of the people around you, hoping not to catch anyone's eye because someone might find that creepy?
• If the bus trip is up to 30 minutes long, you might pop out a physical book to occupy your mind and make you look smart to absolutely no one
• Sometimes you also enjoy looking out the window to get a better sense of your new city

Knowing that all of these are activities that you quite enjoy, I dare to say that many an intra-city bus trip in Kaunas passes too quickly for you.

5. Alighting from a Kaunas city bus

But as an adult, you've got to do what you've got to do. You noticed from your first couple of bus trips that passengers would move from their seat to a standing position close to one of the two exit doors of the regular sized Kaunas bus/trolleybus. At first, you thought, "Why the rush? Why not just wait till the bus arrives at your target stop, then walk briskly from your seat to the exit?". However you stopped asking this question and just learned to follow suit after that time when the driver opened the door at your target stop and closed it almost immediately before you reached the exit door. Just before opening the doors, he must have seen from his camera and/or convex mirror view that no one was standing at the door to alight.

As you always have Google maps navigation on during your Kaunas city bus trips, the voice would prompt you one or two stops before your final stop to prepare to alight which is really useful as there is the thin chance that you get carried away reading a book and also not hear the stop announcement since you always have your ears blocked with headphones.

Ears covered with headphones on a Kaunas city bus

That one time I encountered passenger control in Kaunas

In the "getting on board" section of this article, you might have noticed that there is easy opportunity to be a freeloader on a bus trip in Kaunas. 

First, if you're using a bus card, you have total justification to enter through the back door after which you have the choice to tap (or not) your card against the reader as there is no official on the bus to get you to do that. Even if you are using the Žiogas app, the driver more often than not looks like they don’t care to see your e-ticket or if they do, do not scrutinize it. Hence, even if you are going through the front door, you can choose to just walk past the driver's cabin if you notice that the driver is not intent on the queue of passengers streaming through the front door.

The white passenger-control bus has "Keleivių kontrolė" written in blue just above the window. The red bus (taking off) has just been checked for freeloaders

The Kaunas city bus transport company's response to the ever-present risk of freeloaders is a system known as Passenger control - Keleivių kontrolė. This is a group of uniformed officials who drive in a labelled minibus between bus stations, conducting random checks on the passengers of buses/trolleybuses that stop at whatever bus station they happen to be at. 

To be found on a bus without a valid ticket or e-ticket is to be liable to pay a fine of up to 30 Euros. Despite this control measure, it is pretty clear to see that the Kaunas bus transport operation is relying mostly on the propensity of the commuter to do what is right. I have been in Kaunas for 16 weeks now and in all that time - after at least 20 bus trips - I've had only one encounter with passenger control officials. 

If someone is really intent on freeloading, it is pretty easy because they could simply keep watch from the window and buy an e-ticket as soon as they spot a passenger control bus at the next stop which is rarely. Every other time - most of the time, they actually get the chance to travel for free. But I guess that's not how Kaunas people do, so this trust based system works just fine. In Kaunas, I have encountered several instances of public systems that betray an assumption of trust on the public, but my impression of this unfamiliar reality deserves an article of its own.

My cold-room experience on an old Kaunastic Trolleybus

An old Kaunas trolley bus - KaunasIn

Two weeks ago, on the way back from an appointment in another part of Kaunas, I took bus 14 from the Pakraščio g. stop to the S. Daukanto g. stop where I had parked my bicycle when leaving home base a couple of hours earlier. From the street art on the trolley bus, I could tell that it was an old bus, perhaps one of those that had been in an exhibition in Kaunas in late 2019.

After settling into the bus, I removed my gloves and unzipped my jacket as I am wont to do when I step into a newer model Kaunas bus/trolleybus - whose internal temperature is always conducive for that. However, after sitting for a few minutes in this case, I realized that instead of getting warmer, I was actually feeling colder! Well, the moment I realized this, I promptly jumped back into my warm clothing (winter jacket and woolen gloves).

Inside an old Kaunas bus with a cold interior temperature

My Vilnius bus trips compared to Kaunas bus trips

Two Saturdays ago, I traveled from Kaunas to Vilnius by train for a Digital Explorers machine learning training. From the Stotis bus stop (right outside the Vilnius train station), I had boarded a bus to Sauletekis Valley Science and Technology park - training center. A few things about this bus trip were different from the typical one in Kaunas.

For one, the mobile app for buying tickets in Vilnius is Trafi (versus Žiogas in Kaunas) - I had first learned of this difference from Emmanuel (a fellow Digital explorer who lives and works in Vilnius) during one of our training sessions in Kaunas. The Trafi wallet operates quite differently from the Žiogas one in that while you have to buy one or multiple one-off tickets (or other types of longer-period tickets) in Trafi while paying, Žiogas allows you to fund your wallet with any amount and buy tickets only when you're checking in to a bus. Hence, while you can have a one-off ticket that is not attached to any bus in Trafi, all one-off Žiogas tickets are attached to a single bus number.

Another major difference between the Vilnius and Kaunas mobile bus e-tickets is that while for Kaunas, a one-off ticket is valid for a single trip irrespective of how long it is, the Vilnius one is only valid for either 30 minutes or 60 minutes. This means that as a passenger, one needs to do the added trouble of mapping the expected length of their trip to a ticket that covers for that period; if they are not a dishonest freeloader that is.

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My favorite feature on Revolut: Request payment

My favorite feature on Revolut: Request payment

By Hafiz Adewuyi   November 21, 2019   1 comment :

Two Saturdays ago, I and three other fellow Digital Explorers took a Bolt cab together to a 'friend''s birthday party. I was the one who requested the ride, so at the end of the ride, a payment of €6.8 was deducted from my Revolut virtual card (which I now use for all online/in-app payments since I arrived in Lithuania). As we made our way towards the party house, I vocally broadcasted the total ride cost to the other explorers, as well as the per-head cost: €1.7.

Now, refunding me was pretty straightforward for everyone. Upon arrival in Lithuania, we had each opened a Revolut account. This was one of the few viable options for us, as we had found out (shortly before arrival) that to open an account with a Lithuanian bank with our class of visa, we would have to pay upwards of €100 to the bank (as account opening fee, not as account opening balance). On the other hand, it is completely free to open a fully-fledged European bank account with Revolut. Besides, Revolut lets you send money in a few simple steps to any other Revolut user anywhere in the world, as long as you have their phone number or there are somewhere nearby.

Because I really like money, know how easy it is for someone to forget a debt so insignificant and also, how wary I am of reaching out in person to remind someone to repay a debt (especially peanuts like €1.7), I became uneasy when 10 minutes into the event, not one of the explorers had sent me a refund.

By this time, every one else had settled either into playing the PES 2019 soccer game, being an enthusiastic spectator, doing jackshit on their phone or enjoying some of the treats at the birthday party. It was surely a bad time now to remind my micro-debtors to send my money (lest they forget all about it by the end of the day). At some point, I remembered the "Request payment" feature of Revolut which I had noticed many times before while using the "Send payment" feature.

Without further ado, I opened my Revolut app and sent e-invoices of €1.7 to each one of my three debtors, using a simple three-step process (Select contact => Enter amount => Request payment). There are two optional steps also (see picture below): you can add a description (narration) and a GIF!!!

Fancy how my mind won't let go of Bolt's old name: Taxify

The fact that you can add a GIF to a transaction is what I consider the icing on the cake of Revolut's peer-to-peer payment suite. In the case of requesting payment, for me, being able to add a GIF to a repayment request presents an unmatchable opportunity to introduce some humor, which mitigates the tension that can often surround financial exchanges such as the topic one.

While at it, I also requested payment from Abib* who had requested me to help buy him Aboniki balm and a tub of Vaseline petroleum jelly, shortly before leaving Lagos for Kaunas (he left Lagos for Kaunas a week before me). It was at least, 6 hours already since I had delivered the package to Abib and sent him the payment details (my Nigerian bank account) on WhatsApp, yet a quick check at the party revealed that the payment (however insignificant: ₦1100) was yet to be made. I kindly converted the payment to Euros at 400:1 and sent Abib a payment request on Revolut.

By the end of the day, I had received my 4 payments (3 from fellow Bolters, one from Abib), all without saying a single word to any of my debtors. Soft life 💯! There is no parallel universe but I would put a stake on the chance that at least, one of these 4 people would have needed me to remind them about their debt at least once within the next few days to not totally forget about it. I hope you see now, why I am stoked enough by this feature to spend 2 irredeemable hours of my mediocre life writing about it?

Interestingly, after the "Request payment" transactions had been finalized, Revolut automatically reminded me (through an in-app popup) of the "Split bill" feature - which would have significantly shortened the process of requesting refunds from my 3 co-Bolters. The Revolut "Split bill" feature allows me to select a single transaction from my Revolut debit history and split the amount between myself and any number of Revolut users in my address book.

Split a bill with other Revolut users

In recent days, I cannot help but think back home to Nigeria and how this kind of feature is long overdue, at least for the mobile banking app of many of the country's commercial banks. While I am not ignorant of the challenges to adoption that having 23 commercial banks with mobile apps which are for all practical purposes, isolated from one another, a "Request payment" feature would still be really handy for small groups which are by formulation, a cluster of a single bank's customers. Think a group of Access bank staff turned fine-dining/drinking buddies or a nuclear family that is loyal to GTBank.

Writing this story also reminds me of my not-so-long-ago days at Carbon when similar peer-to-peer payments were an almost daily occurrence between me and my colleagues. One of us would make a payment for some product or service on behalf of several others and we would simply have to settle him/her with a refund to his/her Carbon wallet.

Every so often, when I made a payment on behalf of Titi*, I usually would have to remind him in person at least, once and at the worst, up to two times, before I received a refund. In the period in-between two consecutive reminders, I would severally waive the instinct to remind Titi of his debt, telling myself: "Come on! You earn so much more than ₦700 - and probably Titi -, so you can easily waive this change. Abeg, let it go". Unarguably, my life would have been much easier back then if the Carbon app (which is a great app actually) had allowed me to request payment and/or split a bill, just like I can with Revolut. In addition, it would have spared me having to watch Titi vocally beat up himself for being so forgetful, whenever I reminded him of a debt, like 3 weeks after the fact.

* Name was changed for anonymity as I did not inform any of these persons before mentioning them in my story. IOW, be intentional in how you treat a writer, as you never know when you will end up as the subject of a story that the whole world can read. And they needn't be as discreet as I am being here 🦊.

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From Lagos to Kaunas

From Lagos to Kaunas

By Hafiz Adewuyi   October 10, 2019   6 comments :

I'm writing this one from a living room, in a one- (or two-) bedroom flat which lies along on Karaliaus Mindaugo avenue, Kaunas Lithuania. I'm sat behind a stark white four-seater dining table that is right below a chandelier whose white light beautifully illuminates the keys of my silver-painted HP laptop. It's been nearly 4 hours since I closed from work today and I'm feeling cheerful, positive, happy, grateful, privileged, blessed. Right now, there are no negative feelings in here.

This living room that I write from is the one which if all goes as planned, will be my abode for the next 11 months. It is hands down the best living space (by multiple indices) that I've ever lived in since I started paying rent in late 2016. And arguably the best overall space I've ever lived in since I was born (definitely top 2 though). I moved in here last weekend: Saturday. Since then, there's been no power outage in my flat.

Digital Explorers advert from the daily TechCabal newsletter

I've come a long way to be here, 7000+ km if you draw a sort-of-straight line between Lagos and Kaunas. It's a journey which all started serendipitously in early March 2019, when I learned about Digital Explorers from the daily TechCabal newsletter. At the time, I was over my then job at Access Bank and was eager for the next thing already. The first time I noticed the Digital explorers advert, I opened the link to the website, read about the program and found my way to the application form. The form looked intimidating though: about 20 questions and on top of that, I had to submit a video of me talking about myself. I can imagine that I started filling the form; with all the basic details about myself and then I must have stopped at the "Why do you want to be a part of the Digital explorers program" question. Difficult question, you'll agree? Looks too much to me like one whose answer is most likely to make or break your application. Nonetheless, I left the Chrome tab open.

Around the same period, even though I didn't complete the Digital explorers application myself, I made sure to inform a few colleagues of mine at the Access Bank head office: budding developers who were looking for opportunities to accelerate their programming skills. As chance would have it, one of them: Bayo actually followed through and completed this application.

April 1, 2019: the day that applications were closing for the first-ever track of the Digital explorers program, I got into an office corridor chat with Bayo. That was when he told me that he had actually completed his application. Remembering that one of the reasons I didn't complete my application was that I had to record a video 🙍‍♂️, I asked Bayo for how he'd crossed that hurdle. He explained that he had not uploaded the video as the application had requested. However, he was ready to send the video when Digital explorers got back to let him know that the video was missing from his application - who's to know if that’s the only reason that he didn't move past the application stage?

Not having much to do at work that day - I'd actually already dropped a resignation notice at Access Bank, I decided to go through with it; if Bayo can do it, why can't I? And so was it that I soon made my way that fateful Monday afternoon to the loo of the staff recreation centre to record myself talking about my career and my motivation for applying to be a Digital explorer. In another one or two hours, I had submitted my application and that came with a tinge of fulfilment.

Less than 24 hours later, I received an email with a link to a Codility coding challenge which I had to complete. If I remember correctly, I had a perfect score and I finished in good time. In other words, the test was not a tough one for me - who knows, maybe it's because I've been programming professionally for almost 7 years now. Within the next two weeks, I had completed a motivation and personality interview over a phone call with a member of the Afriko team (Afriko is the Lithuanian company leading the Digital explorers program). One week after the phone interview, I was invited to the final step of the program: a week-long training and hackathon program in Abuja Nigeria, happening in the second week of May 2019.

Interestingly, when this invite came, I was less than one week away from resuming as a software engineer at Carbon. For that reason, it was impractical for me to request time off to attend the Abuja Digital Explorers event. How would it sound that I was just three weeks into a job, still learning the ropes and then I'm requesting for a whole week off of work? First, I valued the opportunity to work at Carbon quite highly. Also, one of my highest values at this time of my life is honesty (it's actually because it's hard to think up lies and I'm mentally lazy), so going the route of lying about why I could not be at work for a whole week was not an option for me.

My response to the invite from Digital explorers was first of all tentative, then after I had discussed with my manager about me wanting to try out this opportunity to work abroad, I decided not to take time off work to attend the Abuja event. "Abroad work opportunity will come when I become even more adept at what I do through my job at Carbon", I consoled myself. However, the strong, personable and empathetic people of Afriko would not have it and they ensured that I attended the program, even if only for the last day. "The trip from Lagos to Abuja is an all-expense-paid one", they said. I had nothing to lose, so I said yes and flew to Abuja after work on May 10, 2019, for a jolly weekend of mixing with an ambitious crop of Nigerian techies and sleeping two nights in a room that is much nicer than my Lagos one at the time. Since I was aware that my chances of getting a job offer from a Lithuanian company after the program were slightly reduced as I was not able to participate in most of the week-long program, my main mission in Abuja was to chillax big time; mini-vacation if you will.

Just as I had expected, at the end of the hackathon Saturday (May 11, 2019), none of the companies who had representatives in Abuja had offered to interview me. I resigned myself to one more night of blissful sleep in a nice big Abuja hotel room and promised myself to double-down on my new Carbon job so I'd be better prepared to grab the next desirable abroad-work opportunity that I found.

Roughly one month after the Abuja hackathon - when I had absolutely no more hopes of becoming a Digital explorer, I got an email from an Afriko person. Receiving that email made my day. I remember jumping up from my office chair and telling my colleague Precious that I had just received an email that has made my day. This was before 8:00 in Lagos and I felt fulfilled enough to not do any other work for that day. Of course, my employer would have begged to differ, so as you would expect, I stayed back at work.

The email said that I had been invited for an interview for next week Tuesday by a hiring Manager at TransUnion Baltics. I confirmed my availability for the proposed time and went ahead to prepare for the interview. I went to the company website, read enough to get a sense of what they are all about - I was interested. Afterwards, I compiled a few questions that I would like to ask the panel during the interview.

Because the interview was on a weekday morning, I asked a friend to let me use his office for the interview. My plan was to complete the interview - which based on schedule would eat at most, one hour deep into my workday and then head to my office. My interview with three members of the engineering team at TransUnion went well, even though I couldn't place a bet on that I would proceed to the next stage. I made a few oversights in the live coding session and I didn’t even finish the tasks in the allotted time. I considered it a positive sign though that the hiring manager took his time to explain to me what it was like to work at his company and in his team after I had asked one or two of the plenty questions that I had prepared beforehand.

Roughly a week after the interview, I got an offer letter to join the TransUnion Baltics as a Senior Software Engineer 😭😭😭. After a bit of back and forth, I accepted the offer and well, here we are.

Welcome to Lithuania picture - Vilnius Airport

Tomorrow (Friday) marks the start of my second week in Lithuania. I am a pacesetter and I would love it to be that at the end of this journey, my company is happy to hire many more willing people from Nigeria who want to explore their world through working abroad. I am an ambassador for millions of talented humans back home with inadequate opportunities and I will be keeping some doors closed if I mess up this opportunity. Hopefully, I don't get carried away and I am able to keep that active in my subconscious throughout my time in Lithuania. Also, I am in for a year-long adventurous time in this beautiful and cold Baltic country. Care to come along?
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Ačiū

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PS

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