I Gave Up My Ikoyi Flat for a Narrow House in Accra With a Courtyard

For six years I lived in a four bedroom flat in Ikoyi with a view of the lagoon, a generator bigger than my first car, and a security guard who greeted me by my full title. It was, by every measure my friends used, a success.

It was also the loneliest place I have ever lived.

I worked from home as an interior designer, mostly on private residences. My clients were lovely and my calendar was full. But I rarely left the flat before sunset. The windows were sealed against dust and noise, and the air conditioning ran all day. I had large rooms I never used and a dining table for ten where I ate toast standing up.

On a Sunday in June, I realised I had not spoken to a neighbour in five weeks.

The idea

My sister lives in Accra. She had been telling me for years that I should visit, and when I finally did, in the harmattan season, I stayed with a friend of hers in a neighbourhood called Labone.

The house was narrow, only five metres wide, tucked between two larger buildings. From the street, it looked unremarkable: a plain cream facade, a wooden door painted dark green, a small brass number. I almost walked past it.

Inside, a short corridor opened into a courtyard.

It was perhaps four metres square, open to the sky, with a single frangipani tree in a terracotta pot, a stone floor, and a low bench along one wall. Every room in the house looked onto it: the kitchen, the living area, the stairs, even the small bedroom upstairs, through a screen of louvred shutters. The air moved through the whole building in a slow, cool loop.

I sat on the bench with a cup of tea and I did not want to leave.

The conversation with myself

I flew back to Lagos and stayed in the flat for three more months, which is how long it took me to admit what I had felt.

I had been designing rooms for other people for fifteen years. I knew about proportion, circulation, light and texture. But I had never designed a life. In my own flat, I had accumulated space the way people accumulate debt, slowly and without seeing the interest.

I made a list. It had three columns: what I need, what I use and what I own. By the end the third column was twice as long as the other two.

In September, I told my sister I was moving.

Finding the house

The house I eventually found was not the one in Labone. It was two streets over, in a quieter lane, a three storey narrow building with a courtyard at its centre, a rooftop terrace and a lease available for a very reasonable rent. It had belonged to a retired civil engineer, who showed me around in slippers and explained each design decision as though introducing his children.

“The air must pass,” he said, tapping a louvre. “The sun must visit. Everything else is decoration.”

I took it on the spot.

Moving small

Downsizing was the hardest and most useful thing I have done. I sold the dining table that seated ten. I gave away three armchairs, a bookshelf I had never filled and an enormous mirror that had followed me through four moves. I kept one sofa, one bed, a desk, a handful of books, and the pieces of art that I would grab in a fire.

A friend watching me pack said, “You are leaving everything.”

“No,” I said. “I am leaving everything I do not use.”

What changed

The first thing was the light. In Ikoyi, I switched on lamps at four in the afternoon. In Accra, the courtyard poured daylight through every room until dusk. I stopped noticing the clock.

The second was sound. Windows open, I heard the street: a woman calling to her neighbour, a bicycle bell, someone frying fish. In Ikoyi, the silence had felt like luxury. Here, it felt like company.

The third was the courtyard itself. I began taking my morning coffee out there, then my emails, then my sketching. Within two months I was running client calls from the bench. In the rainy season, I discovered I could sit beneath the eave and listen to rain falling into the open centre of my home, a sound I had forgotten existed.

I started speaking to my neighbours. A widow next door sent me kenkey on Sundays. A young couple across the lane borrowed my ladder and returned it with a loaf of bread.

What it cost

I will not pretend there were no trade offs. The kitchen is small enough that I cannot host more than six at a time. I have no parking. The electricity cuts out more often than I would like, and I have learned to love candles and a good book.

I miss some of the convenience of Lagos. I miss friends who have not yet visited. I sometimes miss the sheer scale of the city’s possibilities.

But my work has improved. My clients now ask me about light, air and movement before they ask about finishes. I have started proposing courtyards, even in small Lagos plots, and a few have said yes. One client in Lekki said, “I did not know I could have the sky inside my house.” I told her she could have it for the price of a wall.

A final thought

The Ikoyi flat sold for a lot more than I expected. I used a fraction of it to buy the narrow house, and I put the rest aside.

People ask whether I regret leaving. I tell them the same thing every time. I did not leave a home. I left a collection of rooms. What I found in Accra, five metres wide and four metres open to the sky, was the first space that ever asked me to stay.