Why I Decided To Celebrate My 60th Birthday In DUBAI

•Herbal Slimmer, QUINCY AYODELE’s Birthday Interview

A few days ago, Dubai was agog with a lot of Naija celebrities who flew in to celebrate with Mrs Quincy Ayodele who celebrated her birthday in that country. It was a grand event. Many people accepted to join Quincy in Dubai for that celebration because of her accomplishments in the Beauty world. Over the last 2 decades or so, Quincy had helped several celebrity women shed their weight, the natural way, through the use of herbs.  And so she has a large followership.

Usually one who shies away from parties and elaborate celebrations, pressure from family and friends to celebrate her 60th in a big way left her with no choice but to roll out the drums and pull out all the stops this time around. She had a destination birthday bash in Dubai on the 26th of January, 2019 at Atlantis The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. Indeed, Quincy has plenty of reasons to celebrate. Her Herbal company, Quincy Slimmers, which she started some decades ago, has gone international, making waves on Amazon and beyond.

Her two daughters, Tobi and Marita, both of whom have become directors in the organization, have completely taken the business to a whole new level. Quincy herself will be the first, like any proud mother, to regale with you gist about how her daughters have impressed her by taking the business to a level she could only have dreamed of. This has given her unending fulfillment. And what’s more, her kids have given her that joy that every parent craves for – she’s now a happy, doting grandmother with several grand kids under her watch, plus an absolutely fantastic engineer husband to go with it. Why won’t she celebrate this big?

City People’s Senior Editor, WALE LAWAL and Head of Photography Desk, FEMI ADELEKE, were guests of Quincy weeks ago to get a birthday interview out of her. And she obliged us, taking us through her humble beginning and sharing with us her thoughts on what turning 60 means to her.

Congratulations on your 60th birthday. It’s so hard to believe that the Quincy we know has already hit 60. Yet you don’t look it. How do you feel hitting this big milestone?

First of all, I feel very grateful to God that He has kept me up till level. And I feel very, very happy that I’m alive to celebrate my 60th birthday in good health. I feel great about that and I give God all the glory.

Many people who saw you in your red birthday outfit commended you that you don’t look 60, that you look far younger. What is the secret?

Its the Grace of God. It can only be Grace. But I must quickly add that looking good is my business. I help other women look good. The state of your mind matters.  Also, I am a positive person. I think positive all the time. I am a very happy woman. I love nature. I eat healthy. I love to work hard. And I am result oriented.

Do you have specific food you eat or avoid to enable you keep looking young?

Yes. I eat a lot of vegetables. No cabohydrates. I drink plenty of water. I don’t eat animals at all. No cow or goat meat. No fish. No protein. And I am enjoying it.

Why did you decide to celebrate your birthday in Dubai?

I decided to do it in Dubai in other to have a private and exclusive celebration with close friends and family members. It was also to raise an altar of worship for God in a place where Jesus Christ is not really fully accepted.

At 60 what are the lessons life has taught you?

At 60, there are so many things I would say life has taught me. I know that life is a journey, the most important lesson I’ve learnt is what my father taught me. He said simplicity costs you nothing but it buys you everything. Throughout my journey in life and in my business, I’ve learnt to be very simple and humble to as many people as I can touch. Life is a journey, and to be able to navigate through that journey, you must be humble, you must be simple. When you’re simple and humble to people, that action buys you everything. Simplicity has been my guiding policy and it will continue that way until I grow old.

How have you been able to stay strong and relevant in your sector after several decades?

Well, all I can say first and foremost is that I’m a Christian, and all I have been able to achieve has not been by my power, God has been with me. At the same time, it’s also about hard work, persistency, determination, and of course the works of my hand. God has been directing me all through my journey. He tells me to do this or do that, and so whatever I lay my hands upon, God makes it to prosper. Remember the Bible says God will prosper the work of our hands and that has actually happened to me. I never knew that God would take me this far and I’m sure He’s still going to take me higher than this in my lifetime.

Before the herbal project, what was your initial aspiration?

Way back when I was young, remember I used to work with he then Societe General Bank with Dr. Bukola Saraki and I was the Personal Assistant to the Managing Director. Even though I was in the bank, I had always wanted to do something better than what I was doing. I just didn’t want to be a good for nothing behind the typewriter lady. I was fulfilled though, I had perks, I had power, I had everything. I was comfortable in my job. I had everything good going for me. Dr. Olusola Saraki and Dr. Bukola looked after me. I worked very hard for them and they also cared for me and my needs. But I’d always wanted to start my own business. Despite the fact that I was comfortable, I still wanted to start my own business. There were times I was thinking about opening a boutique or hairdressing salon, fashion designing and everything and it was during that process that I started Quincy because while doing something that was boutique like, my customers were falling sick and I was helping out with herbal medicine because it’s been my field. It’s been something I really knew a lot about so I found myself healing people rather than doing hairdressing. I found myself prescribing medicinal plants rather than looking for relaxer. I just discovered that most of the time, I was practicing healing with herbal medicine.

Were you also doing this even while you were working at the bank?

Yes, even while I was working with the Saraki family I was the Iya Alagbo in the bank. Whenever my colleagues were ill, I would always tease them by saying, ‘so, you’re still taking all these chalks (Analgesics) they’re giving you, why don’t you go to Elewe Omo and take some herbs?’ Of course, some of them would yap me and say you have come with this your Alagbo medications oo. But I was going to the market to buy one or two medicinal plants, mix them together and prepare for them. And in most cases, they got better. Then, it became normal to find that whenever someone complained of headache in the office, they would direct them to me, or the person who’s ill would say, please, help me call Quincy, Iya Alagbo, and I never knew then that that would be my calling, until I started Quincy Herbals.

Who handed this over to you, mum or dad?

It was my paternal grandma. I lived in the village with her. When my parents were set to go abroad to further their studies, they dropped me with her in the village, that is Olounsogo village. In the village, there was no hospital, no infrastructure, and I used to be a sickly child, so my grandmother had no choice but to be giving me all the herbal remedies during the times I was sick. And to God be the glory, all these things healed me and kept me alive until my parents came back. Each time we went to the farm together, my grandma would tell me, this plant is called so and so, this leaf is called so and so. This is used for this, that one over there is used for so and so, and I’ll be like, ‘okay, ma’. She was showing me a lot of things and most times when somebody was sick and she couldn’t go to the farm, she asked me to go and fetch so and so plant for her. It was at that time I got to know all the medicinal plants and their uses. When I got married and came to Lagos, because it was marriage that brought me to Lagos from the village (laughs) and when I got pregnant and they took me to the hospital, I was like no, I had to take medicinal plants to look after this pregnancy. This is because in the village back then, if anybody was taken to the hospital, people would be crying because that person may not return alive. I had that phobia for going to hospital. So, when I got pregnant and my engineer husband said we should go to the hospital, I said, ah, I’m not sick o, let me call Iya mi to come and do whatever medicinal preparations she needed to do for me and that was what happened. I only went to the hospital to deliver and that was even by force. That was my involvement with medicinal plant right from my childhood days and I still have that belief up till now because I know that, to every disease, there is a cure in nature. Even though we collaborate together with the existing health care system with our own Alternative medicine, I believe that it’s only nature that heals. Medicinal plants will go to the roots of the illness and sort it out, rather than surpressing the symptoms. It will go to whatever is causing the patient to be sick and treat it. Yes, we collaborate. They have their limitations, we also have our limitations. And these days, we work together, particularly now that medicinal plants have been accepted worldwide and developed into formulations, dosages, we collaborate together for the benefit of the patients. But I tell you, that has not been easy because I happen to be one of those that fought for that collaboration at the WHO level.

How easy or difficult was it for you to convince your engineer husband to support you and see your passion for alternative medicine as something that could be developed and built into a business?

My engineer husband married me from the village, so he knew from the outset that I was a village girl, I grew up with medicinal plants and he knows about my knowledge of medicinal plants, so he had no choice but to support me because he knows that is what I know how to do best. He gave me a lot of encouragement most of the time because unfortunately, I used to be a shy girl. I am still a shy person, but because the work has exposed me to the public, but with his encouragement I have gotten used to it. I used to avoid television interviews especially but I wasn’t sure if I would be comfortable in front of the camera. My husband gave me the confidence I needed to deal with all of that. And I thank God for giving me a friend as a husband, my lover as a husband, he’s my father, my mother and my everything.

When you started, how challenging was it for you convincing people, especially here in Lagos, because at a time it was hard to see people embracing herbs and alternative medicine?

Back then, it was very challenging. In the 90s, for a lady to come out and be talking about the efficacy of natural medicine, it was an abomination. And to crown it all, I’ve been a Christian all my life. So, me, coming from a Christian background to be talking about herbal remedies was not easy. People called me all sorts of names. They said, ‘oh, she’s coming from mammy water, she’s using mammy water spirit. Don’t you see that she looks like mammy water?’ But you know, the bible says, my people perish for lack of knowledge. I know about the efficacy of natural herbs and I know that it’s only herbs that can heal perfectly. Thank God, like I said in the beginning, that God had been directing my footpath. He now directed WHO to look for me. So, it was that WHO platform which God used me through WHO, as an expert committee member on development of African traditional medicine and I was the only practitioner from Nigeria representing West Africa in those days from the field. It was a big battle between me and some scientist at the WHO level during our meetings and writing articles and stuffs like that. I had to fight and fight and advocate for the development of African traditional medicine. And God helped me. He was the one who directed me there so he stood by me and we defeated them. They had no choice than to accept that medicinal plants work. Then we did all the papers, we did the collaboration with the existing health care system, we did the WHO paper on The Journey So Far With Traditional Medicine. We did paper on Acceptability of Medicinal Plants and several others and what that means is that if you’re taking capsule of any type of medicinal plant in Nigeria, God used me to advocate for that. We talked about the dosage and administration and put papers in place, we came out with a lot of useful communiqués with WHO which are currently in use. We spoke about how they should include traditional medicine in all university curricular, I happen to be on that committee that fought for that. As a practitioner, I stood my ground and said, no, traditional medicine must be recognized.

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