YOU JUST HAD TO BE THERE
Up until Friday, I was just a regular Cowrywise Campus Ambassador, crawling around different channels on Slack, shuffling between that app and other platforms, attending webinars, and replying to threads. All that ended on that fateful day. Well, maybe that’s not totally true, but Friday marked the beginning of the end, because it was when I received a special invitation to the capital of the Cowrywise Universe. When I saw the link to apply for this month’s edition of the Cowrywise Ambassadors' Hangout, I was not confident that I would get an invite, but I weighed the possible outcomes of applying and not.
If I don’t apply, I don’t stand a chance. If I do, I do; either I get it or not. If I do, great. If I don’t, we go again next month.
Well I did, and I got invited. Crushing self-doubt one win at a time, innit?
It was a cool, wet Saturday wherein we navigated our ways to the Cowrywise Headquarters at 5C, Rev'd Ogunbiyi Street. The early birds like me were kept entertained by episodes of Young Sheldon while we waited for the others to join us. It clocked 12 and the hangout officially began.
If you think it started with introductions and all that stuff, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. It didn't.
It began with Timi Joel taking our phones.
Yes, you heard that right. We turned in our devices into a woven square basket passed around like those offering boxes during church service. This was supposedly to help us focus on getting to know each other better. The introductions began in earnest and I must admit the phone thing was a good idea. We stated our names, schools, courses and one interesting thing about us. It was fun meeting all those amazing people, some of whom I shared similar interests with; Zoe with the love for Greatman Takit, Ella who loves SpongeBob like (if not more than) I do, Princewill the fervent Obidient, and a whole lot more.
After the introductions, we had a couple of fun activities coordinated by Keji, Voke, Obi (behind the lens) and other Cowrywise staff. For the games, we were to place ourselves in groups of five and pick a group name. My group went by the name of Sporting Cowrywise, culled from Sporting Lagos and Cowrywise. The first task was to give a presentation centered on the Storytelling session held earlier in the month with Victor Fatanmi, CEO of Fullgap.
Get Miracle.’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The games were then paused for what turned out to be a major highlight of the day. Esther O. of Esthitude joined us for a thorough and insightful session on Storytelling. There are a lot of things I love about her and aspire to: her godliness, writing prowess and versatility. Let's not also forget her thriving natural hair. Some of the points I picked up were:
- Own your story! - even on a team, own your own part.
- Know who you are - if you don’t, others will define you (for you). You can get help with finding out who you are from other sources such as personality tests, asking your friends, etc.
- The Birthday Test - what do people write about you on your birthday? What do you want them to know and write about you on your next birthday?
- Be empathetic - listen, engage and interact.
- Leverage social media - you don’t have to be an (aspiring) influencer or post everyday. Be strategic, have a niche and build an audience.
Back to the games…
The next game by Keji was quite interesting. It was like musical chairs but instead of dancing in circles we passed around a box with rolled up pieces of paper, and whoever was with it when the music stopped had to pick one at random. The individuals then stood up and told the story of how they became ambassadors. Then we got back to our groups and played charades, anchored by Obi. It was my first time and the word for my team was "Spiderman". I just did the hand sign and made pew-pew noises. I know I looked silly as hell but we got our 1 point so who cares?😂
We then went outside for pictures and videos and came back in for food. Oh yes, food. You thought I wouldn't talk about that? I literally wrote it as one of my expectations so please bfrrr!
Don't even get me started on the rice, evenly cooked and perfectly tasty. And the chicken, mmm… so succulent and well spiced. Cowrywise did us well, no cap.
Afterwards it was time for karaoke as Timi promised (more like threatened) earlier on, but thankfully it was also time to go home. I said my goodbyes and hugged a thousand people—we were actually about 50, but we hugged so much it felt like we were way more than that. Timi stood at the gate and waved us off, "like a pastor seeing off his members after service". Saviour's words, not mine.
It was a good day, I had a swell time and I will be attending as frequently as I'm allowed to. If you missed out on this month's edition, don't let that repeat itself in August. If you're here and have no idea what I'm talking about, click on learn more to gain clarity.
If you enjoyed this read, don’t forget to long press the clap icon and leave 50 claps.
More importantly, please follow this user to be the first to get updated on her latest updates. Also do check out previous posts, s’il vous plaît.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, byeeee❤️
