I truly miss the old days...

I am very glad to have experienced how life was in the early 2000s and considering the way things are today, I totally miss those years. Maybe it is because I was still a kid and didn't have many responsibilities then but aside from that, Nigeria was truly a very enjoyable place. I mean, I'm talking about the era when petrol was around N60 per litre, Indomie noodles was N25 and cowbell milk was still N10. But today, the price of these things has increased more than 10 times, meanwhile, the minimum wage has barely been doubled since that time.

But technology has also improved over the years and made things a lot easier for us. When it comes to tech, I don't think there's any from the old days that are better than what we have today, that's the whole point of them being upgraded as years went by. Look at phones for example, do you remember the type of phones we used back then? They were the very best of the decade but now we have better smartphones that enable us to do a lot of things that would have only been possible with a computer many years ago.

What about black and white TV? I remember growing up watching cartoons on it but the first time I saw a colored TV, I was blown away. The funny thing is that we still have that TV in my house right now, even though it's no longer working. My living room looks like a museum because my dad never discarded all the electronics he bought when he was younger. Electronics like old stereo radio, vinyl record player, VHS player, etc are still in my house. Look at the picture below, how many of you recognize that video player at the bottom? (VHS) 😁 Then the middle one is a CD player, and the one at the top is the one that is now everywhere; a DVD player.

Anyway, the one practice I would love to bring back is the planting of fruit trees. In the neighbourhood where I grew up, almost every house had a tree and my house had over three fruit trees; orange, soursop and guava. I frequently pluck fruits from these trees (except the soursop tree, that one is even taller than the house 😅). Aside from the fruits, I also played under the trees as they provide shade during hot days. My neighbour had 2 huge mango trees and whenever they produced fruits, he let anyone pluck from them.

The house opposite mine had some banana trees, and then the next one had coconut and pawpaw trees as well. You can walk down that street back then and count up to 10 different fruits, which you're free to pluck and eat. But today, you won't find a single tree in the whole street, all of them have been cut down to build houses and stores. Modernization has eradicated the practice of planting trees and this has brought some negative changes. Let me even ask; when was the last time you saw a butterfly?

Right now in my current neighborhood, you won't find a single tree in sight but many years ago, I used to visit this same area and it was booming with a lot of fruit trees. The last tree in the neighborhood which was next to my house was cut down about 3 years ago and I don't even know why. It was a mango tree and was probably cut down because it had stopped producing fruits, but why not plant another one? The one thing I love about trees is that they help to control temperature. Everyone was complaining about how hot February was but I bet you that there will be a big difference between areas that have lots of trees and areas that don't.

There are still some areas close to me that have fruit trees but they are still being cut down one by one. People are building houses all over the place but they are sacrificing trees to do that. I guess many people don't even pay attention to trees because they feel there aren't a lot of benefits to them being around. In the end, I would still prefer the way things were back in the day when I could easily get any fruit I wanted for free.

Thanks for reading

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