The issue of holiday is another big area of spending in my own household. So naturally, holiday is important in my family. So what we do is that because she [my partner] works in the hospitality trade, she is able to get rebates if we do holiday within the UK. So we now consider where our car is able to go, so that we avoid hiring a car for the holiday. So sometimes if we have decided to go on holidays, we look at it, say three or four or five days. Once we get it, we look at how far we can go. Can we go as far as London? Or, maybe Newcastle? Or, any where around. You see, once you are able to do that, then there is less pressure on going on foreign trips.
But, to us, foreign holiday trips to me, as an African, is supposed to be cheaper. For example, if we want o go on foreign holiday to the US, for me I have to look at staying with someone – say a family member or someone that I know. And when you stay with family you are not going to be buying food morning, afternoon and evening. You understand. So, if we at all have to do a foreign trip, then we have to plan a year ahead. So this year now, we are going to America in October. It is my younger sister’s 40th birthday and normally we will all be with her in Ohio. But, it is also my younger brother’s daughter’s birthday is in September. The wife’s birthday is in September. So we use the upper [other] weekend for both birthdays, I will fly from there to New York. We will all be around to do one birthday in New York. Then after the birthday, we will move back to Ohio.
So there are many ways people like me devise to get by. In Nigeria, there is a formula they call the ‘imo formula’. Let me tell you what it is: if a man wants to eat ‘garri’ eh, and he wants to use beans cake to treat it, but he cannot afford beans cake to do so, what he does is soak the ‘garri’. Then, go as near as where they are frying the beans cake and just start to eat his ‘garri’. So he gets some impression, satisfaction that he is eating the beans cake with his ‘garri’.