Here Lives a Flawed Soul

I'm dope as fuck!

2012-01-09T02:21:00.004+09:00

How did I survive the Shoah?
Me, in my corner, the devil bringing his army?
No answer.
And the self cutting, loathing, self taught to hate?
Devil, in his corner, me taking my stool for a sit-down.
Let's talk.

Silence.
I wear my scars like David did his coat. Scabs
on heart. Tender. Raw.
Hope the scars on skin will keep
from reopening. Fuck it. I'll just slap a band-aid on.
In the end I am.

Phoenix. Rising from the ashes. Over.
No one is responsible for my pain. Live it. Move the fuck on. Heal.
Pause.
*Insert Bassey's voice*
I'm dope as fuck!

Ènìyàn L’aso Mi

2011-11-05T05:03:00.003+09:00

Right now I am smiling and dancing; excited partly because I just wrote a piece and writing for pleasure always makes me high, and partly for no reason.

I wasn’t like that this morning. No. This morning I fell apart in a really unpretty way, for almost no reason.

I woke up and the BIS monthly I paid for 4 days ago was suddenly no longer active, thanks to Airtel. I called customer care and when she told me it would take 24 hours to fix, I started crying and shouting at the rep, and apologising to her for shouting at her but not stopping. She was nice, trying to calm me down and apologising to me. I think she realised there was something wrong with me.

After I dropped the phone, I lay on my bed and cried, shoulder wracking sobs, for about 30 minutes.

I am the first to admit that there is something wrong with me but it took me a while, and a psychologist, to admit that I am Bipolar. My responses to situations are not always ‘normal’, like the tears this morning. I had been having an 'episode' for the past four days, not that anyone looking at me would know.

This isn’t a post about my problems though; it is one about the people in my life. Ènìyàn l’aso mi, I don’t know how to translate that to convey what I really mean but loosely, it means “people are my clothing/covering”. I am blessed with wonderful people in my life. People who, when I am in my weird zones, don’t judge me, or tell me not to feel, or cry, or scream, but instead talk, hug, or just listen through it.

This morning, I called one of them to talk me through it and even though I know he will later tease me endlessly for it, at that point instead of telling me to grow up or snap out of it, he listened, made the right noises and talked me through it. That was all I needed... well, and my chocolate and strawberry yoghurt fix.

He has been on the receiving end of some of my hypomanic and depression episodes but still he is there, even though the last time I asked him if he thinks I am crazy, he said he doesn’t know (which I know is code for “crazy don’t even begin to describe you, woman!”).

Three wonderful women in my life have constantly done, and do, this for me in the past couple of years; Tolu, Tayo, Lati, I could never thank you guys enough for keeping me sane, happy, loved. I remember when Tolu moved away from Lagos, I sat on my bed in Kano and cried for three hours because I felt like my constants were all falling apart in my brief absence from Lagos. Tres unpretty, I tell you. The gods made these women specially for me.

There are those who see a facebook, BBM, Gtalk status or tweet of mine and immediately know I am in a bad place, and call and even though I always say it is just random depression (which it mostly is), they still call the next time. Thank you guys.

Indeed, Ènìyàn L’aso Mi.

Not a 9-5

2011-10-17T04:47:00.005+09:00

I need the nights of insomnia,

early morning scribbles accompanied.

Need me sleep till 12p.m.

flip-flops, tee-shirts, tank tops, jeans well worn,

Hung dresses haughty, unworn. Shirts un-owned

No stuffiness here. No formality, yes sir!

No four inch click-clacking. ankles strained.

Love me words, letters all day long,

making sense, making pretty...

Love fulfilment and wind in hair on bikes.

When I got back from Law School, I immediately returned to my job at 234NEXT, left there a couple of weeks ago for another media house. Everyone expects me to get a 'Law job', I can't. Won't.

Finger speak

2011-10-12T07:46:00.005+09:00

Once said speech makes loco,

makes tongue tied like child’s shoelaces.

Easier to hide in the light

of this screen. Pecking words; strong

confident. No ‘erm’, ‘uhh’, ‘what I’m trying to say is’,

'forget I said anything'...

Will try to pick out one thought or emotion everyday and write short lines about it. I haven't been writing, haven't been listening to myself... someone forced me to admit that recently... thank you.

Writing Opportunity

2011-09-16T01:34:00.000+09:00

Melrose Books and Publishing Ltd is seeking manuscripts! If you have written, or you are interested in writing prose fictional works for pupils in Primaries four to six (4-6) and students in Junior Secondary School one to three (JSS1-3 send your manuscripts to melrosebooks@yahoo.com and copy amaka.ukwuegbu@melroseng.com.

Melrose Books and Publishing is a company founded on the basic principle of introducing new ways of publishing through innovative and modern methods of creating content that would make learning easier, interactive and interesting to the reader or user. In addition to educational books, the company is interested in promoting and exploring the creative minds of Africans home and abroad through literary works. One of their goals is to create a reading culture among Nigerians, whilst sustaining it.

Here Lives a Flawed Soul

2011-09-04T15:21:00.006+09:00

I have never been one to hide my flaws. Not because I don't want to, I just don't know how to. I've never been one to pretend about things, for the same reason I can't hide my flaws.

When I was younger I tried so hard for normal, especially at home. Tried so hard to toe the lines that I'd lie or pretend but I always outed myself. Always! After 15 or so, I just stopped trying.

This place has been a good place. I read through my old posts, from the days when I was 19, to the person I am now. I have grown. In some great ways, in some not so great ways.

For more than 2 years now, this place has not been about the creative aspect of my writing; it has been a dumping ground. In the beginning, for the random things that clustered my mind, life. After a while, for the sad and mad. The things I'm carrying that I have no business carrying but which seem to cling to me.

I have constants. without my constants I fall apart in unpretty ways. This blog, like my creative writing, has been one of those constants for over 3 years. Sometimes I blog and I know that no one else will understand it, that whoever reads it will probably misunderstand it completely but I do because this place has, for a long while, not been about who read it, if anyone read it. No, a lot of it has been for the times I am Sade's 'King of Sorrow', "crying everyone's tears", taking on too much of other people's pain but never able to take on their joy.

I am like a swing set - up and down - never quite still. Tormented by some wind...

Some days I cry. Some mornings I wake up with tears, like this one. I was about 9 the first time I can clearly remember it happening; I didn't understand the needless sad, couldn't stop it, couldn't tell anyone.

Some mornings I wake up with tears, like this one. There is no reason for the sad, it's just there. When I am done writing this, I will get out of bed and go take a hot bath, put on some clothes and a smile and face the world like normal people do.

Limbo

2011-07-13T21:51:00.010+09:00

As the plane descended, she thought how very unlike the place she had left this was. An hour and forty five minutes ago, it had been glinting colored aluminium roofs and a cluster of houses which became tinier as the plane ascended. Here it was just land, and trees, and very few houses that welcomed.

She hated landings, her stomach lurched as it always did, her ears filtered sound as though through a thick cloud, she unhinged her jaw to relieve the ear pressure. Last time her mom complained about how her ears felt during flights, she had tried to teach her, Ma hadn’t understood the unhinging, she guessed it was in the doing.

The cab men insisted, from the airport to Bagauda 6,000, she remembered falling for that once, never again. Even the airport cabs in Lagos were not as expensive as the ones here, and they at least were air conditioned. She did not bother haggling.She pulled her bag by its trolley and took a rickshaw out of the airport instead. A cab outside was 2,500.

She remembered another place. A market in Lagos. Lingering over it. Dithering. Reluctant to buy it at 250, afterall it was just a water melon. In Kano, I buy it for 70 she grumbled, under her breath she thought... not, as the seller’s screech and hands shooed her away, telling her to go and buy it from Kano or did she think the melons rolled down to Lagos all by themselves? Did she know how much fuel cost? Nonsense!

Now, She glanced at the man who got in the rickshaw beside her. Then she did a double take and moved away from him discreetly, trying not to stare or cringe as he picked his nose.

Black wires slithering along her neck, disappeared into her ears as her head bobbed up and down to B.O.B's Ghost in the Machine. She frowned as she watched Nose man's mouth move. He nudged her,
She pulled out one of her ear pieces, what?
He muttered in Hausa, gesturing at something in his right hand, she looked and saw the nylon filled with sugar cane he was offering. She smiled and said no thanks.

String of words spewed out, fuzzing her brain. She took out the other ear piece. I don’t speak Hausa. He was taken aback.

Why you no speak hausa.
Because I’m not hausa.
Yes, why you no speak hausa.
I don’t live here.
Wey you going?

She did not like inane conversations, but the smile on her face would have said that was a lie. Bagauda.

Ha! Law school?
Why you no want sugarcane?
I’m filled up thanks.

Everytime she passed through these roads, she felt like she was stuck in a Cyprian Ekwensi novel. She raised her phone, zooming in on the baby calves being herded by 3 boys not as tall as the calves themselves. She smiled as she recalled Bliss asking her why she only took pictures of the poor North and accusing her of pandering to what the West wanted to see of Africa. She was about to click when the man nudged again, she watched her shot disappear through fields of grass, then she pulled out the earphones again, trying for a smile to mask her irritation as the last of the calves and man cubs disappeared behind the tall shrubs.

Me!

What?

Photo

He pointed at her phone. She lifted it, took a quick, not focused picture of him, showed him then scanned the road, hoping for another scene. That was one thing she loved about this place, the roads and the shots that lined them; the nomads and farmers, almajiris and hawkers, sometimes widening brown stained teeth for a click from her. No matter what Bliss said, those photographs were true. They were life as a lot in these parts lived it.

She stared at a cow wrapped strangely around a tree, head twisting - up, down, side, down, side - spit dropping, an unending transparent swinging rope anchored to the ground beneath. She wondered if it was a mad cow then realised it was only scratching an itch...

She thinks about this last lap and hopes that after this, the feeling that has plagued her in the last 8 months will fade. That feeling of neither going nor coming, being neither here nor there...

P.s I'm back in Kano, writing my bar finals in about 3 weeks...

P.p.s this was me trying to write about stuff I experienced in a detached way...

The Scientist

2011-06-01T01:30:00.004+09:00

When I get home, I’m going to write to you. Let out these words that are creeping around my head. They won’t come out as they should; these words that make loco fishwife. I don’t like that I should tell. I feel like this space is haunting me, taunting me, but I feel like this space is empty of me still.

Every time I feel this way, I remember the words; to never forget that I have it all. I remember that I have it all. I can’t remember what it all is. I want badly to remember. What is it all? What it all is. I know my head knows. But it won’t tell. Not this time. Not any time when I need it to. In that way, my head mirrors you. And the things left unsaid. Always unsaid. Giving my mind space to create. Create things to hurt. But it does not matter. Does it. I ask myself. Tell myself. That it should not matter. But it does. Does it?

I want here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t feel here. Unwanted. Unloved. I don’t want this space. But I will stay. Because I want here. I wish here was different. Warmer. I wish this space could love. Make me feel like its love did not lie. But it doesn’t. I feel. Strange. Stranger.

I say speech makes loco, but do these electronic words fare better? I need new words. Yours. Mine.

This is neither space nor time for this. But it’s never space or time till it’s choking me. Till the winds whirl and it’s all a jumble I mumble through; emerging scarred and wrong on the other side.
Tell me, my love, am I making any sense here? I think not. Coldplay says it better. The Scientist.

You see, I’m stick drawing and weak of mind, holding off a requiem, and seeking a resurrection. But you know that already.
You’re stick drawing but better. Always better than me, stronger, straighter lines, less imperfect.

It’s like meditation; the only thing I can think about is what I shouldn’t think about. That’s all i do, think... and want.
In the end, I am seer; telling this before it came –“they are just fucking words, innit? Breaking, barely holding, cementing”, breaking once more. Right? Breaking this soul.

And I, I’m sad. And fishwife, loco fishwife; screaming, and lashing, and flailing, and trying to build back, and failing... failing so bad, and falling. I am weak, and tired, and sniffling, and tired of bright eyes. I’m stumbling, and walking streets and not looking, stumbling, in my head, in my being, my fucking soul. I’m memory; of lessons taught but not learnt.

And I am envy; of calm, apart. You.

It’s heavy fuji music blasting, and alleluia, and tomtom beats, and allahu akbar, and fierce winds. It’s chaos; a reflection of my soul. It’s a beggar, and a wish horse.

Finally, I am child; regressed to eight and you pushing me off a swing set, and hurting, but seeing you jaunt around the place. I am child, putting on my ‘it did not pain me face’ so that when you ask, how are you? I smile, and say, I’m very fine. You? And hope you don’t notice the stuttering symphony playing in my head.

Opening the blinds...

2011-05-30T02:14:00.003+09:00

There's so much I want to say.
I hate talking. The words come out rushed. Wrong.

I should write. Sort my thoughts and pen 'em.
I'm trying for sanity. It's tougher than I expected.

I sometimes feel. Like I'm programmed to self-destruct.
10,9,8,7,6,5,4...

I'm trying for sanity. I'm trying for an absence of bipolar.
There are things I want to say. I forget them now.

It's Not Take Your Wife To Work Day

2011-04-08T16:58:00.001+09:00

Sometimes, feminism confuses me. Do we want to be by the side of our men, or do we just want to be?

When a woman runs for political office, nobody expects her husband to campaign for her. I personally find it distasteful that the Nigerian society has come to expect a woman to drop everything she has going on for her, kids, work, and go prancing from state to state soliciting votes for her husband. I wonder, if this woman has a job, does she take time off? Will her job be waiting for her in the event that her husband does not win? I don’t know, and really that is not the point of this piece.

Some women might relish campaigning, supporting their husbands with everything they’ve got, but others like me would abhor it, so i find it presumptuous to say Ribadu and Buhari are keeping their women under wraps. Do we stop to ask ourselves, what if she has no interest in campaigning for him? After all he is the one running for office not her. During the last General Elections in the United Kingdom, I watched impressed as Nicholas Clegg’s wife spoke about how she would be willing to help, but she could not take time off her career in international trade law, and her kids to take part actively in her husband’s campaign.

In the end, it should not be about ‘the woman’, it should be about the particular woman -should a woman’s wishes and aspirations become subsumed in her husband’s? I don’t think so.

I have seen Zara Ribadu, and Hajara Adeola on TV at different times talking about their husbands’ ambitions and soliciting votes for them, that’s all well and good. If Buhari’s wife chooses not to, or Buhari chooses not to let her, it’s their private business. Let us not be hasty to assume that because these men are of a certain religion and culture and our minds have been pre-conditioned to believe that women of the Islamic faith are subjugated to their men, that is what is the case here. It very well may not be!

In her article, Lola Shoneyin said “we have been cursed with two types of first ladies: the overbearing money-grabbing ones and the colourless, invisible ones.” So far, I agree, but I also it’s think it’s time we had the third type – the independent first lady.

I have always found the position of a ‘first lady’ distasteful, especially in Nigeria. We elect the president, not his wife. She should have no business in the running of government, and neither should government resources be used to fund any of her interests. It starts from the point of campaign. A man runs for political office, and his wife runs around campaigning that he be elected into said office, when he is eventually elected, it is payback time. There is naturally the office of the first lady. She gets an entourage of her own, one that is almost as impressive as her husband’s. The office is a drain, pet project after pet project, funded by tax payers’ money I believe, projects that almost always amount to nothing but a waste of resources. But this is where it all starts isn’t it – campaign. This is why we can have a first lady who tries to run the country for months in her husband’s absence. It’s appalling to go to the official website of the office of Public Communication and find that, right after President, and Vice-President, comes the Office of the First Lady, then the Federal Executive Council. Do we elect these women? No! Should they have any part in government? No! In my opinion, a woman, or man should only support his spouse in his or her duties from behind the scenes. No one takes their husband to work with them, let us not ask that first ladies be allowed to go to work with their husbands.

i wrote this in response to Lola Shoneyin's article 'Some Patience for the Dame'

God... and a Dog

2011-03-10T18:34:00.000+09:00

You think of home as a fortress, your space, the place where you can keep all the world out if you want, have only those you want, trust, and like wander in and out of. It’s the place where you have 19 years worth of memories, some good, some bad, some neither good nor bad. But right now it’s the place that leaves you cold and scared even though you are thousands of miles away from it. His call this morning left you shaken

“Disregard any call from your mother’s phone, it got stolen but we are o.k” and he cut the line in his usual abrupt manner that never leaves room for questions or exclamations. It’s never ceased to amaze me how my father conducts phoneversations; no niceties, no greetings, just straight to the point and off the phone, even when his phone was post-paid with a particular limit, he never reached half the limit, well except when I helped him.

I stare at the phone and ask my roomies, “If he says we’re o.k, does that mean he was there when it got stolen? What does it mean?”

So I call him back, “what do you mean we’re o.k? was it at home?”

He says yes, “we were robbed at gun point at home last night”

It’s me calling but I know he’s about to cut the phone again

“What did they take?”

He says money, one of his laptops, your mother’s phone but we’re ok. He cuts the line.

I want to call back, to ask questions, questions I don’t even have, but instead I lean against the wall and shake, fight back tears. In 19 years we’ve never been robbed, at first i think it had something to do with us having the fiercest dogs on the street, then... I don’t know, but we’d never been robbed. And now I’m scared coz it dawns on me, the parents are home alone, they are no longer young and I’m scared because I hate to worry. I hate to have my balance disturbed, I hate to worry because once I start, I don’t stop.

There will be no police report, it’s not the movies. No one is going to come around and dust for finger prints or take statements and all what not. Maybe if your car is stolen, they’ll take you serious, and even then maybe not, but laptops, phones and money, i don’t think so.

You provide your own security, the tall fence which has been raised to even higher heights 2ce in the past 19 years, the fierce dogs who have since grown old and only bark once in a while. It’s one more way in which you are your own government, one more way in which the government that was selected for you by a few crooks in high places has failed you once again.

I think about the tenants, and hope they did not go to their building. They have 3 little kids, i don’t think any of them needs to see a gun pointed at their mom. I have never seen a gun up close, oh well, except that one time a police man pointed one at me. That’s the shitty part isn’t it, no concrete gun regulations, not for those who are supposed to carry it, and not for those who are not supposed to carry it.

I need this feeling to pass, this fear, the ‘what ifs’. But I am grateful, I’m grateful it’s just what ifs. I’m grateful it’s just money and stuff. I’m grateful for life. I’m grateful to God, and I think it’s time we got a new dog.

Re-Memory

2011-03-03T23:34:00.003+09:00

Read my new short story, Re-memory, in the new edition of Sentinel Magazine

"Old men sit in the courtyard, moving draughts pieces as local gin burns paths down their throats. The house itself sits like an old woman in the sun - faded clothing hanging loosely about her, the wrinkles on her face telling her years; her seldom open mouth, a dark, toothless, smelly cave - it has roof the color of coffee, the type one only ever sees when driving into Ìbàdàn. Layers of paint hang from the walls - blue from the last painting job 17 years ago, beneath that, cream peeks – kids peel off what they can, fighting about who can tear off the longest unbroken strip..." Read More

I Write Because... Just Because

2011-02-09T04:29:00.003+09:00

Who says writing is not a divine gift, and how dare you diss the muses? Anyway Sis, let me tell you why i write:

1. To keep my sanity –Short Stories: sometimes I see, hear, smell, or do something and it’s like a trigger! The voices in my head go to work in their little factory; taking what happened, breaking it down, diluting it, till they have created what they will. This first part I don’t mind but next they start to whisper whatever they’ve come up with to me, when I pay them no heed, they scream it till I feel my head will implode and I have no choice but to let them out of my head, inflict them on whoever chooses to read.

2. To keep my sanity – Crappy Poetry: I am like a swing set –up and down- never quite still, tormented by some wind. Lots of times I can’t sort through emotions. I’ld like to be able to pick them out strand by strand, make a weave out of the ones I want and snip the rest away but instead I get into a bad place, so I write my way out. Strings of dark, incoherent words later and I can almost feel the pain and the mad seeping through my fingers.

3. To keep my sanity –brokeassness: Someone asks me to write something for them, i find my mouth saying ‘yea, sure’, but my mind goes, ‘I’m just supposed to conjure those words you just promised right? Wrong!’ So I don’t write. And suddenly a deadline is creeping close but it still doesn’t bring the muses out of their hiding place. The deadline is looming and suddenly my brain is calculating my bank balance and the muses start to peek. We can always use more money innit? Blah! I think my muses are just scared to death of not being able to buy books and pretty dresses on a whim... and so I write!

4. I write.... coz how else would I frustrate my dear friends? This one is sort of connected to 1. See, I’m something of a cross between a conceited, and an insecure freak when it comes to my writing; I’m good and I know it... or maybe I’m not so good *shrug*. I write a short story, then take a mental chisel and work on it till it is as near perfection as I and my slew of editor/critic/writer friends can achieve. I read the story and get on a high (I still haven’t found any substance that gives me an equal high and I think I’ve tried all the legal ones). So I get on this high and for days nothing can touch me. Then I read the story again, maybe find a sentence or scene that doesn’t sit well with me and it’s like a pin stuck in a balloon *KPOWWWW!* For every high there is a low and so it’s earth to Rayo. I mope, snap, pick a few fights with certain folk(s) and I banish the story to the dungeons of Microsoft word. Finally, I write a crap poem to get over my beautiful prose. This is why my friends are tired of me –they believe in my abilities more than I do.

5. I write because... just because.

This post is in answer to smallie over at Bookaholicblog because ‘why i write’ would be too long for your comment section

In other unrelated news, after careful consideration, I have decided to suspend my hate for vals day this year. I will thus be using the excuse of that day to shamelessly beg! All I want for Vals day is a turkey sandwich and a glass of red wine delivered to me in my little village in Bagauda, Kano. Thanks in advance

THE CORPSE IS NO LONGER JUST A CORPSE

2011-01-11T22:01:00.002+09:00

I like to think I have some of the most intelligent friends, so it’s come as some sort of shock to me over the past couple of months to hear some of their views about politics in this country. Yes, these are people who spout incessantly the need for change in this country but I hear a lot of them saying they aren’t going to vote in the coming elections and all I can think is what is the point of asking for a change if y’all aren’t ready to be the change or bring about the change you seek?

I know it is frustrating talking, and voting, and not seeing any change but should we stop doing right because wrong prevails? I’m especially tired of the ‘they’ve already decided our next president so why should i vote?’ argument. My answer to that is always the same; if the PDP decides for once not to rig elections, they’re still going to win and the only reason they will is because those who should vote against them don’t! If you’re going down, the least you can do for your sake and your children’s is go down with a crazy ass fight the likes this country has never seen!

I don’t write about Nigeria, because it frustrates and depresses me, so that i can’t come up with coherent thoughts in that state, but I’m doing this because I am fucking tired of hearing people give up their rights so easily. What the hell is wrong with my people? Why are we so complacent? We are so used to incompetent governments we’ve come to accept them as the norm, well I refuse to. I’ve said a few times that I’d very much love for someone to wipe out all of our leaders, yes! I cannot wait for their generation to pass and please don’t tell me how I shouldn’t be wishing people dead, do you know how many die daily because of the constant failure of our government? But you know what scares me shitless? The attitude prevalent amongst a lot of people in my generation too; the ‘let me get there and chop my own’ attitude. We need a change for the better and we need it now!

‘THE LESSER EVIL’
Oftentimes people talk about how they don’t know who to vote for and isn’t the devil you know better than... Fuck that shit! How hard is it to examine the track records of all the candidates at the moment? Then again, I forget that we are a people so quick to forget. The present government is a thinly disguised sham in my opinion and we should do all we can to vote them out of power. Most of the presidential candidates have held public office at one time or the other, we all know the things they did or did not do while in those positions, so I say, pick the lesser evil. The lesser evil isn’t the devil you know, we all know these ‘devils’... pick the person who isn’t a devil, or who is the mildest of all devils. That’s why I will be voting Nuhu Ribadu! Far as I’m concerned, he’s the only one who has shown the kind of integrity and discipline this country needs in public office. Please don’t come and tell me how I should be voting for someone else or all what not, coz you see I’m not telling you to vote Ribadu (even though i believe you should), no, I’m telling you to know your candidates and choose wisely. The future of this country depends on it. And if one more person tells me Ribadu should run in 2015 because he can’t win now, I am going to have a hissy fit! In John Legend’s words “the future started yesterday, we are already late!” Time is running out for us and I wonder why most people refuse to acknowledge that.

Someone said to me, ‘I’m not voting. You are. Is it so you can feel self-righteous, like you did your part?’ No! I’m voting not just cause it’s my civic duty but coz I’m tired of ranting about this country, coz I truly want a change and I will do all I can to see it brought about. It’s not just politics, it’s my future. I don’t want to be my own government when I grow up, I don’t want to pay taxes, yet have to supply my own electricity, water, security and other amenities. Plumbtifex tweeted once, ‘a corpse is just a corpse till that corpse was your pops...’ or something along those lines. I lost an uncle to the Jos bomb blast the night before Christmas, but see it’s not just me, it’s all of us, we all know someone who died because doctors were on strike, because the roads are bad, because the police are incompetent, because our government is fucked and doesn’t care about us! For how long do we want that to continue? Till it’s you or till it’s me?

On Leaving and Living

2010-11-09T16:43:00.002+09:00

Every memory of looking out the back door

I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor.

It’s hard to say it, time to say it.

Goodbye. Goodbye.

These days i hoard them. I don’t use them all up at once. I don’t bring them all out at once. One at a time. Take it out. Look at it. Polish it till it sparkles. Till reflected in it is a smile on my face. That’s what I do with the memories I’ve made. I hoard them. To get me through days of darkness. Coldness. Sadness. Bring out each memory. One at a time. When I need them most. To remember not to forget. To get me through days of coldness...

I miss that town. I miss the faces.

You can’t erase. You can’t replace it.

I miss it now. I can’t believe it.

So hard to stay. Too hard to leave it.

Sometimes I shut the doors just as soon as I open them. Days when the memories of joy sadden me further. My head starts to get messed up and the tears won’t stop falling...

Bye bye bye bye,

Don’t you cry when you say good bye.

There was the teary goodbye. And the sweaty one. That was the part where i felt my heart was being ripped out.

TK: I wonder what mornings in Kano are like...

Do dust particles hang in the air?

Does the muezzin give a consistent musical beat?

I: ...cold. That’s what they are. Cold.

Hot. That’s what they also are. Hot.

if you were to read my life from a-z,

decide to live inside my head, I’d still be a puzzle to you

‘Coz I’ve been to lunch with mystery...

I could explain but you wouldn’t understand...

bí mo p’òwe, bí’m p’òfò... ògbéni, o lè mò...

just let me be...

“Why are you so cold? Why are you so mean?” Why am i so me, you mean? Run along now little boy, ain’t got time to play with you.

This place is ‘deadening’ my brain cells. I need eegits to not ask stupid questions. I need this babe to not ask me to search for it on ‘gurgle’, or that it was in ‘lorkorjar’. Bitch please!

Got lost. Walked in circles with K. Always knew i was directionally challenged but this place is making me look like a retard when it comes to getting around. Too big. All the buildings look alike.

Long pauses.

Sparse lines.

Mental prison.

Deadlines. Dead Lines.

How about me enjoying the moment for once?

How about no longer being masochistic?

How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out?

Tisn’t so bad you know, at least there are no mosquitoes and we’ve only found 2 scorpions in my chalet so far.

This place used to be Bagauda Lake Resort. I remember Fela talking about staying here in the 70’s in ‘Fela: This Bitch of a Life’.

There are the rats, big as cats. And there’s Gamzaki who stocks everything. Bet if i asked him for a human head, he’d have it stashed in some corner of his store or ask me to come back for it tomorrow...

The lake is nice. I like to go there sometimes. Twice now i have rode (is it rode or ridden?) a bicycle. I loved that.

We’re not allowed to cook, not even noodles. There’s the Edo woman i buy food from. Bread. Rice. Pounded Yam. She looks like an àdògán.

Spent my first weekend here with a friend’s family in Kano City. Twas Bliss.

Baby whether I’m high or low,

baby whether you’re high or low,

you gotta tip on the tightrope

If I keep telling myself that I’m aight, I’mma be aight, right?

These smiles are starting to hurt.

You’re free but in your mind

Your freedom’s in a bind...

N.B. got posted to Nigerian Law School, Kano. It’s on the outskirts of Kano, in Bagauda. They have all these rules and things; sober skirts, class + light timetables, compulsory attendance and exeats... my head doesn’t do well with so many restrictions. Internet network is very bad. Writer’s block. No escapism there for me. For the first time in over a decade, i actually have to go to school.

Nigeria at 50 - Day 17; I'm Done Bitching!

2010-10-17T17:55:00.006+09:00

Nigeria at 50 - Day 16, Nutty J

this isn't poetry, but it was easier to write it this way...

It’s hard to love someone who is broken, but sometimes
You love them in spite of the cracks, and you hope
That your love will nurse them, mould them back into wholeness...

It hurts to love someone who don’t love you...
I know you don’t love me right now,
I know you don’t care for my needs no more,
But I love you, in hope of a re-awakening...

Last night at the estate gate, the security man asked for the gate pass,
Then he asked for the Nigerian gate pass...
That’s what the Motherland has become;
Poster child for all things crooked.

It’s hard to love someone who is selfish,
It’s a hundred and sixty million babies screaming
For candy. Me! Me! Me! Me!
What the fuck happened to US?

It’s hard to love someone who don’t love themself,
It’s Jesus and a miracle,
It’s òpèlè Ifá divining my path,
It’s a desperate belief that t’ení bégi lójù, igi á rúwé*.

T’ení bégi lójù, igi á rúwé is a Yoruba proverb meaning whoever cuts a tree suffers himself needlessly because the tree will rise again. It’s what I believe for this Country; that the impostors who call themselves our leaders might think they are hurting us now, (and indeed they are) but in the end Nigeria will rise to the height it should. So let’s all stop bitching and get off our high horses and do something, anything, from voting in the coming elections, to always following due process in the things we do...

Nigeria at 50 - Day 18, Aribaba

Memories Are Made of These...

2010-10-11T19:18:00.002+09:00

This post is mostly a tribute to You

It’s been a see saw all year like I said . Some of the most awesome moments I had this year were thanks to you, us…

All them outings –every time we went out- how much fun and laughter it was. The silly things we’d do, you’d do;

Like how we can’t watch a movie together without throwing popcorn at the people in front or doing equally nasty stuff like you putting your feet on the empty seat in front, just to get the ‘look’ from whoever was sitting next to it.

Jeez, or how I can’t walk into ‘normal’ MedPlus at the Palms without smiling coz I remember 'that night' while also praying they don’t remember us.

Ha, your trips into the country these year were some of my best time :D going out, or hanging out… or just knowing you were just a cab or a bike away…

Remember that day, when one of us did something and how it put me in a panic, and I cried and begged you to come, and you came, and it was such an awesome night. Not because of anything but just because…

Gosh, and going to that awful market with you, and sitting on your kitchen cabinet dangling my feet, giving you ‘moral support’ every time because you pamper me and cook for me when I’m around. Gosh but that morning you wouldn’t cook for me because I was disturbing your sleep, and then I couldn’t find the knife to cut the yam…I wanted so badly to find the knife and cut you :P

That trip we took in April, was it? to that club, and how we spent all night looking at each other and smiling and whispering. Lmao. Its no wonder we never went another time.

Or just competing to see who can slide farthest using the tiles at The Palms…

And talking, about anything, and everything…

I love our conversations, and the silence. Gosh I love the silence, when I don’t have to say anything, and neither do you, and it’s not awkward even if you, erm one of us is moody.

Oh, and I love wearing your tee-shirts to sleep :D

And everyday, everyday, talking to you, chatting with you, tweeting @you… you keeping me sane.

Remember the time in July we fought, and didn’t talk to each other for two weeks, and when we finally did, all the screaming and crying. Lol. And then it was o.k... better than before.

And you writing my epitaph, even if all it says is "Fuck Off". smh at u

Like you said one time "memories are made of these..."

then the other things outside of you...

like the workshop, and just spending 10 days with the other participants. Writing. Talking writing. Bliss.

The little unexpected things, like Chimamanda reading a story I wrote as a lunch break exercise at BookJam in May. Gosh!

Or having the then editor of Elan call me up and ask me to model for an edition even with me insisting I couldn’t do it and it turning out to be so gorgeous my mom stole my copy, even though she went on about the dress with the open back 

and having writing pay, and not badly too...

P.S you should know I tried to find a way to put ‘conversate’ in this post but I just couldn’t ;)

P.P.S hope you could find yourself

MY LAST BREATH

2010-09-30T02:45:00.004+09:00

It rained on Ol’ Hangin’ Field,

And Death can play no more.

It rained of pain again,

And the green and the grime only grinned back

From the muddled, bloodied turf...

And now, Death can play no more.

No more shall his sword

Drip with black or blue or red blood.

No more shall the white turf

Be stained with silent screams

Bequeathed to his silenced voice.

Beneath this tombstone, the soul lies dead;

And no accursed lyric shall raise it again.

For it rained on Ol’ Hangin’ Field,

And Death can play no more.

Dear Friend,

A spade is my last gift to you.

Take it! Take it, you coward.

Call it a spade if you like,

Or shovel it down my throat. I don’t care.

Always confusing the thoughts in my head:

So, I can’t trust myself anymore.

Hit me on the head when I turn;

Hit me still when I fall.

Hit me till all that’s left is blood and gore,

Then dig a trench and push me in.

Be your brother’s keeper...just like Cain.

Burn up all my scrolls, each damned one!

Sprinkle the ash, the dust

From those lost relics of my being.

Sprinkle it all over my grave.

Just your labour, I require from you.

That shouldn’t be too much for a dead man to ask.

III

Depart! Acccursed Muses! Depart!

Peadophiles! Perverts! Depart!

Subtle seducers! Finger fucking my brain!

Don’t want your hand this time

I’d save myself!

Depart!

Spare this sad soul some senseless sorrow;

Inhabit this labyrinth of brain no more.

Before me there were many,

After me there shall be many,

I am not the only one!

Depart!

The sun shall rise no more

Above this darkened sky.

The white light has blinded the sight,

And darkness is all that remains.

How can you see into my eyes

Like open doors?

You stare at the light till it becomes you

You stare in rebellion, in defiance

Till its scorching glare stares you down.

Till the light becomes you, and you it.

...only that the product is darkness...

Molecules and molecules of darkness...

And I shall see no more.

I have wept in the rain so much

That its drum drumming on my eardrum

Leaves nothing else to be heard.

How often did I deceive myself:

Rain and tears are but the same

Only in the sun do you feel the pain.

And when Silence screams,

Everyone else keeps silent,

Silenced by Silence.

Atoms and atoms of silence...

And I shall hear no more

The dearth that shall come is here!

The hoarse is no longer a whisper.

No more shall it speak of ravaged market places,

Nor of broken calabashes.

Nor of desolate village squares.

The praise of Òrúnmìlà shall it proclaim no more.

Ifá shall will it to speak and it shall refuse!

Holding my last breath

Safe inside myself

Particles and particles of muteness.

Molecules and molecules of blindness

Atoms and atoms of silence...

And I shall speak no more!

by S.S

2006

On Deep Talks and Long Puffs…

2010-09-21T00:19:00.003+09:00

When I am done…

It’s been one of those years. The kind that you just want to end…that’s why I’m writing what should maybe have been my end of the year post now. It’s been a year of lessons. Of learning that the ones you are there for will not always be there for you, or even want to be there for you. Of finding that the ones who claim to love you don’t, they only love themselves, but also learning that there are those who claim it and mean it and act it.

You will be gone…

It’s been a see-saw.
There have been times when I felt I could not go on. This year, it wasn’t so much feeling like I couldn’t go on, I knew I could go on, but I didn’t want to, like months ago. But those 3 in my life, they wouldn’t lemme lie down and die, they’d drag me along - two by my hands and one by my hair (you know urself bwitch) - till I got up again, skinned knees, sore scalp and all. It’s been a year of so much love and laughter for me but also of pain only very few knew about, cared about. It’s been a year of joy and big steps for me. Of movies and vodka. Of deep talks and long puffs. Of living in my head so long, I was too disoriented when I finally dared to venture out.

When I am, you will no longer be
A memory…

Saw my results a few hours ago, was scared before I saw it. I must admit, I was so scared. Why, I can’t really say, except that all through in my 5 years in law I never failed any of the over 20 law courses I took. I was scared because although I’ve always been the ‘pick your books 2 weeks to exams’ kind of student, I’d never been the ‘almost no class attendance all year round, miss 2 tests and pick your books 1 week to exams’ one, but I did that this year(I’d lost whatever zeal I ever had for classes). And yet my irresponsible self made it through. Never did I think a ‘D’ would look as good as the one I saw today. I was scared I wouldn’t but God saw me through. I swear the prayers of my mother and my friends…and mine(stop laughing O. you too B) don’t go to waste!

p.s. There will be no markers for your grave.

Next stop –Law School!

...

2010-09-01T00:22:00.001+09:00

Weekend with my girls, it feels good to be free even if its just till October when Law School resumes :D

It is Finished!

2010-08-26T21:14:00.000+09:00

Human Rights and Civil Liberties Law 2...wrote my final paper this morning...

On Crushes...

2010-08-20T09:09:00.006+09:00

"when everything is wrong i dance inside my head, like a schizo running wild, that's when i come alive"

so i have this extremely weird crush on Janelle Monae,erm, weird because she's a girl but its a non-sexual crush sha...i think. lol. but really that chic ROCKS, she's my fav artiste atm, and believe me when i say she does pure art. gosh, i could listen to 'Cold War', 'Tight Rope', 'Come Alive (War of the Roses)'and 'Many Moons' all day. those are my absolute favorites! sometimes, i think she's intellectual Gaga, but then i think that's an insult to her. *sigh*

"take me 6ft under but while your roses died i came alive..."

i keep thinking the more i play her songs the faster i'll get tired of them, but no, a new fav just creeps in. i wish i could put up videos but they aren't loading properly :( nd gosh, she's so cute too...

"I'm trying to find my peace,
I was made to believe there's something wrong with me
And it hurts my heart"

"Some people talk about ya
Like they know all about ya
When you get down they doubt ya..."

her songs touch this deep place inside of me and sometimes i listen and i just want to cry coz i can relate to a lot of what she's saying. can't quite decide which i like more, her first album 'Metropolis, Suite I: The Chase', or 'The ArchAndroid'

my other major crush at the moment, not a weird one, not an entirely non-sexual one at that too, is Eminem. i dunno if it's the raw emotions in 'Love the Way you lie', or 'Not Afraid', or 'Won't back Down',but i can't stop listening to those songs. and everytime i watch 'Not Afraid', which iTunes seems to be telling me is very often, i just want to... well, i need help, that's all i know. Damn, 'Recovery' is an awesome album, its turning out to be my best Eminem album.

p.s, i'm supposeda be readin but all i've been doing for the past hour is watching videos from these two, so i decided to blog about em...

He Loves You...NOT!!!

2010-07-22T20:46:00.007+09:00

These are the Rants of 2 die-hard jaded, cynical realist. Proceed with caution!

So, I’m wondering; do you call them half a doz times a day like you call me? If you do, do you repeat the same stories you tell me? Don’t you get bored, like, telling all of us what happened at work and all… or maybe you don’t, maybe I’m the main girl. Haha, that’s the lie I tell myself to help me sleep at night btw. But seriously, don’t you mix us up when you are fucking, like you are fucking me and thinking about how she moans or the other way round. Dunno sha, guess fucking ain’t conscious.

Bearing in mind that I never love the sweet (they’d prolly become unsweet once I love ’em anyway) ones who love me…the following are the things (and then some) I’ve learnt from love!

If a guy says he loves you, that don’t mean he loves you…but it also don’t mean he don’t love you!

If a guy wants to date you, he’s gonna ask you; don’t try to help him along, or even read meaning into anything he does, that last part is very important o!

If he says you are his girlfriend, well that don’t mean you are, and if you are, that don’t mean you are his only girlfriend, if you are though all well and good, it still don’t mean you are the only one he’s fucking!

If he cheated with you, doesn't matter if you knew it at the time, doesn’t matter if it was almost over… he’s going to cheat ON you! Oh and you don’t have a problem with the other woman, women, man, dog, whatever; you have a problem with your man! So keep it between you and him, calling or tweeting her about it only makes u look like an insecure freak. its unattractive abeg.

He has ex issues? RUN! Whether it was over 2 years ago, a month ago, before you were born, just run! Chances are, while he’s with you, he’s either gonna fuck her, go back to her… something untoward will sha happen!

If a guy says he needs you, that don’t mean he loves you!

If a guy says he misses you, hell no, it really does not mean he loves you.

Someone asked me recently what happened to make me so jaded, I said nothing. Well almost nothing. But everyday, everywhere I turn, one of my girls is having boy trouble… that’s when me I’m not having o!

If he takes you out and buys you the world, sweetie that still don’t mean he loves you.

Cooking, cleaning, and buying him stuff is not gonna make him stay with you, not gonna make him love you and definitely not gonna stop him from fucking around so please don’t do any for those reasons.

Don’t fuck him! for any reason… except that you want to.

If he cheated once and he tried to justify it, we were having problems, blablabla, he’s gonna do it AGAIN and again!

If you can’t stand him cheating, abeg don’t take him back after the first time.

He’s cheating; please don’t cheat on him just to get back at him.BTW, it doesn’t matter if he’s fucking a different girl every night; your slutty ass is not allowed to hop dicks.

Oh, my daddy doesn’t cheat, my brother doesn’t cheat, my boo doesn’t… not all men are like that! girl friend, mine don’t either! Erm, so all these cheating men, I guess they aren’t anyone’s boo, brother or daddy eh? hmmmn, yea.

Ha, you’ve met his mom. O.K *whistling past. Mama Lasisi style!*

All his friends know you, they even call you Mrs. *insert his surname*, or iyawo. Of course, but see, they know the drill, they are also fucking around!

He says you know all his movements, yea right, in fact, it doesn’t matter if you are with him 24/7, dude is still fucking around! maybe

If you think endearments such as “baby” makes him yours, you are fucking kidding yourself. Your guy called me his baby few minutes ago.

All his nameless friends? Probably just one girl…oh, btw, he’s fucking her!

He’s fucking around! That don’t mean he don’t love you. Remember John Legend’s ‘Number 1’? Let’s face it, most of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with you. In fact, don’t let him push it off on you in any way, well, except you chooked his dick inside her pussy sha:D. It’s just him being…erm, lemme be a bitch and call him a DOG!!!

They make excuses for all their misdeeds. Sorry lads, if you think your fucking dick has a mind of its own so does my vagina...but there's this remote control called self-control, you can like to press pause!

He’s fucking around…that don’t mean u aint too. D difference is, a guy just has to talk but a girl, she will carry her secret to her grave, or at least wait till it’s all over before telling. Methinks

women are unreliable. So you got to have options. My male friends, my uncles, they say this. The girls don’t want to lose either so the eggs, they start to nest in different baskets. The game of deception. Iro nparo fun iro.

My advice to men, t’eyan ba ma sin oku, ko sin ko ma je ki ese e yo sita! Abeg!

As for you ladies who put your all into a man. what is he? the new Jesus?. Fucking wake up! This is the real world! You are not on Disney Channel, neither are you a character in a Mills&Boons.

P.S NOBODY is responsible for your happiness (just had to slip that one in)

P.P.S these are actually the rants of 2 paranoid, die-hard, jaded, cynical, ~~realist~~ pessimist. Tautology much?

My Mother’s Daughter

2010-06-29T18:34:00.000+09:00

I did not like her very much when we were growing up, maybe it was because she was the perfect child who did no wrong, got perfect grades and toed the lines deeply engraved in our souls. She was the one the rest of us (especially me) got compared with (I was always found lacking). she's still like that, the first class graduate, the one with the oil company job...

I remember the one time she woke me up about 3am. I musta been in JSS3, she SS3 and there she was crying, telling me she just read some book called ‘four hours interview in hell’ and how she just had to wake me up and talk to me. E be like say dey don stamp HELL for my forehead teytey! I remember being annoyed but agreeing to everything she said just so I could go back to bed. Her 2nd preaching attempt came about 4 years after that, she picked the wrong time again, midnight which I always spent writing. I told my dad the next day; that was the last time she did such but I bet I’ve never stopped topping her prayer list.

I remember being 7 or 8 years old and staging a ‘revolution’ against her together with my 2 other siblings. We wanted her ousted and replaced with D, the 2nd child. We were tired of her dictatorial reign, of her being the ‘supervisor’ who did nothing yet claimed to do everything. In true revolutionary spirit we even chanted songs ‘B must go, we want D! monkey dey work, baboon dey chop!’…

I remember having to bribe her sometimes so she would not report me, so I’d bribe her with meat, sometimes I’d be owing her 17 ½ pieces of meat... Lmao.

She was the buffer, probably what kept my mother and I from forever hating each other. She was the moderator and mediator when I was in my teen-psycho stage (though she was the one who got me in the trouble initially by reporting something or the other I had done). In many ways she is still the buffer.

Mom and the Aunts get mad when we call her by name, I don’t think she cares one way or the other. She was however quick to tell baybee bro and I to delete the ‘Mr’ we affixed before her fiancee’s 1st name because we couldn’t bear to use ‘brother’ or ‘uncle’, and ‘Mr’ is our cop out in such situations…

My mother’s 24 year old first daughter got married last weekend. He and her have been about 6 years. He’s a great guy, plus he’s cute (abeg im allowed to look jo). I hope they have it good.

P.S it was tiring hearing the aunts and mother’ friends telling me ‘yours will come soon oh’. There I was silently muttering I reject it while smiling broadly. Mscheeeew, abeg, not only is there someone between us but I have no dreams or hopes of getting married anytime in the nearest future.

Pilgrimages: Thirteen African Writers. Thirteen Cities. Thirteen Books.

2010-06-28T23:09:00.000+09:00

The Pilgrimages Project

Pilgrimages is a ground-breaking,pan-African project organised by The Chinua Achebe Center, Bard College, in partnership with Kachifo Limited in Nigeria, Kwani? Trust in
Kenya, and Chimurenga in South Africa, in celebration of Africa’s first world cup.

The project involves 13 African writers visiting 12 cities across the continent and one in Brazil for two weeks during the World Cup. At the end of the project, each writer will produce a book of non-fiction travel literature based on their experiences, forming a series to be published next year.

The Writers

The writers and cities involved in the project are Funmi Iyanda (Durban),Alain Mabanckou (Lagos), Abdourahman A. Waberi (Salvador,Bahia), Akenji Ndumu (Abidjan),
Doreen Baingana (Hargeisa), Chris Abani (Johannesburg), Uzodinma Iweala (Timbuktu), Billy Kahora (Luanda), Kojo Laing (Cape Town),Binyavanga Wainaina (Touba),Yvonne Owuor (Kinshasha), Victor Lavelle (Kampala), Nicole Turner (Nairobi) and Nimco Mahmud Hassan (Khartoum).

Alain Mabanckou in Lagos

Alain Mabanckou from Congo-Brazzaville is considered one of the most talented writers in Francophone African literature today. His most notable works are Verre Casse (Broken Glass), Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red) and The African Pyscho. His work,
Memoirs of a Porcupine, won the Prix Renaudot, one of the highest distinctions in Francophone literature.

Alain visits Lagos from the 25th of June to 2nd of July 2010, during which time he will crisscross the city,from the ‘highbrow’ to the ‘slum’. Each day of his stay will alternate stops at football viewing centres, local bukkas and beer parlours,upmarket bars and relevant cultural events, and will include interviews with local denizens, artists, writers and other social commentators. Alain will be guided around the city by architect, writer and publisher, Ayodele Arigbabu, who will also blog about their daily experiences on the Pilgrimages website.

The Website

A dynamic and state-of-the art multimedia website has been launched as part of the Pilgrimages project, at www.pilgrimages.org.za. During the 13 Pilgrimages the writers and their local guides will blog on the website. Correspondents, artists and
photographers in each city will also post topical content on the site.

The Books

The Pilgrimages Project will culminate in the launch of twelve books in four African cities in January 2012 during the African Nations ’ Cup. The collection promises to be the most significant, single addition to the continent ’s archive of literary knowledge since the African Writers ’ Series of the 1960s. The books will be published by Kachifo Limited in Nigeria, Kwani? Trust in Kenya, Chimurenga in South Africa and a francophone publisher to be announced.

For more information on the Pilgrimages Project, please visit the website: http://www.pilgrimages.org.za/

For more information on Pilgrimages and Alain Mabanckou in Lagos,
please email info@kachifo.com
rayosword@gmail.com

FUCKWATTAGE

2010-05-25T16:42:00.002+09:00

Google reader is the reason I don’t drop comments on blogs so much again. Wish they’d incorporate a feature that allows you drop a comment on the blog from your reader 

If we all walked about naked there’d be no such thing as indecency.

Dido. Enya. Nneka. Alanis Morissette. Ese Peters. Chris Daughtry. ColdPlay. Patrice. 9ce. John Legend. K’Naan. Erykah Badu. Colbie Caillat. Sunny Ade. Tracy Chapman… most played artistes on my iTunes atm.

I miss you… every time…

One idiot is chasing me. One idiot is chasing my friend. One idiot is married. I am very bitchy to one idiot.

Why is there no emoticon for ‘fuck you’ or ‘waka’ or ‘mscheeew’ or ‘smh’

I like to listen to Pater Noster every time. Since before I found it’s the Lord’s Prayer sung in Latin by Ysabella Brave. It calms my soul. I can’t remember the Lord’s Prayer in English.

I am too hard on myself.

I believe there is one God. I believe we all find him in different ways.

I wonder; when this intermission is over will I fade into the shadows again… there are monsters there… Ghouls masked in robes of light.

K’Naan is currently my desktop background. He’s drool worthy. I have a thing for tall and thin men.

‘So you met someone and now you know how it feels. So you gave him your heart just as I gave mine to you, and he broke it in little pieces… so you lie awake just singing the blues all night…’ -Goody Goody by Frankie Lymon. I can hear 1 of my exes singing this song in my head

Today is day 6 of the Chimamanda Creative Writing Workshop. I am one of this year’s 20 participants.

According to my girlfriend Bliss, 'fuckwattage' is the meter used to determine how fucked up one of our lives is at the moment.

‘Piece by piece is how I let go of you, kiss by kiss will leave my mind one at a time…’- Katie Melua

Having to cope with me must be enough penance for all of my mother’s sins; present, past and future… and then some.

I Know

2010-04-29T20:31:00.003+09:00

the hands of the clock are spinning out of control...
the end looms, threatening to crush my soul...
the past has crept into the future. It waits...
nothing can hold these demons back any longer...

What Twitter Won't Do To You... not yet anyway

2010-04-07T19:15:00.013+09:00

Some kain jobless people on facebook (who are not my friends)won’t stop coming my way with their bad grammar and odd requests even though my privacy settings are supposedly strict. Most of them are laffable, here are a few recent ones;

What a wonderful and fascinating profile you have. I honestly don't know. I'm puzzled by your interest. You are a young good-looking lady. In short, I can see how something between us can lead to anything positive (HIV maybe). Sorry to be so blunt but surely there is no point in wrapping it up. i dont mind having you as a friend…

Hey Sexy
CAN I TAKE YOU OUT FOR DINNER PLEASE!!!!!!! YOU ARE SO SWEET I WILL BE SO GLAD TO TAKE OUT TO THE FINEST RESTAURANT JUST TO HAVE DINNER WITH YOU SWEETNESS
Rotflmao, if u see the pishure of the pesin who wants to take me out to dinner… chei, himsef neva chop properly

What a great day it was to create you, i must say you look so gorgeous. i went through your profile and i found it so interesting and decide to say hey...it would be a great pleasure if i could get to know you more better(abeg which one is more better o), you can add me on XXX@yahoo.com .....ERNEST CARES

hi am bond, like ur profile and would like to know u,
U can pls contact me via my mail blue_bond0007@yahoo.com or dis site . If u dont mind, pls also remember to send ur mail add and phone number (my house address nko) so we can chat or talk and get to know each other. lots of luv, bond. (you go fear james bond)

omo u to gbassskkkkkyyyy,,,,,wud u rather give me jst a pleasure 2 b ur friend(olorun maje!),,,,,am kennnedy,,,,,if u care rply (wats with the multiple commas, another kind of ellipses?)

hi i got you on facebook and will like to know more about you babe...please get back to me when you get this mail....i will love to be a friend with a charming beauty
NOTE: your picture is beautiful...i guess just like you are, i admire your cowries(send them a friend request too nau, mscheew).

I saw you profile on facebook which gives me the confidence to get in touch with you and I do hope you will return not get biased (insecure mofo) but get back to me so we could get to know and know each other better.

mehn, baby you are not bad. i kinda like d smile u'r wearing...very cute...jst wana b ur frnd..plsssssssssssssssssss (sorry, that pls just wasn’t long enough)

ON PENDING/IGNORED REQUESTS

Greting
hi baby,i'm still waiting to hear from you. thanks

why skip my friend request??
coz i dont know you!
if u dont accept,how will you know me??
(jamb question)

HI,could u do me a favour pls,reject my friend request,ur updates keep showing up on my page.Cheers
(na me send u? btw how do I stop such from happening o, is it even possible?)

Are you still ignoring ma request.
C'mon, am still holdin on.
Happy Millinium (gbagaun!), 09/09/09.
In 9Hrs,9Min,9Sec

do i know you (attached to friend request)
(abeg shouldn’t that be my line?)

P.s all gbagauns were theirs o, this was a copy and paste job!

Damn, He does it right!

2010-03-25T04:22:00.013+09:00

‘She says she wants to fly

way across the sky,

the only problem is

I don’t have wings…’

He sings! He writes his own songs! He plays the guitar! I know it might sound weird that I’m so excited about that but seriously how many Nigerian artistes can boast of more than one of the above? I don’t know if it’s because it’s very obvious that he takes great care to write beautiful, deep words, or because he has an awesome voice, or if it’s the instrumentals… I think it’s probably all of the above. I’m not a big fan of Nigerian music; I think it mostly reeks of mediocrity and a lack of respect for the intellect of the listeners, so when I find a Nigerian musician (very rarely I tell you) who delivers good stuff I can’t help but fall in love with his/her music. ESE PETERS does GREAT stuff!
Can't wait for the video of 'Wetin I Go Do'(song quoted above) to come out next month. It better be good coz that song deserves a gr8 vid oh, no naija nonsense abeg.

‘Will I see your face,

I feel you slipping away…

Will I hold your hands,

run my fingers through your hair?

I can’t believe this is happening to me…’

‘This is love’ is a great love song. I won’t lie, I’m a sucker for slow and somewhat sad love songs and I think I’ve just found my new favourite in this song!

So Ese is releasing an acoustic cover of Wande Coal’s ‘Taboo’ today and I must say I’m tripped by his guitar skills displayed with that song *sigh*. I’m wondering how he took a somewhat ‘crude’ song and transformed it; for real you even forget that he’s talking about your ‘ibadi’. You just get lost in that strong voice, the instrumentals, and the song takes you beyond places that our dear Wande couldn’t dare. Wande’s fans please don’t take this wrong (I like some of his songs too), but Ese has made this song into something I won’t mind playing before my mother. Lol.

O.K. by now I bet y’all have figured out I’m in love with this guy’s music. I want him to sing for me. To me, Just me! Lol.

You can listen to ESE on reverbnation

and watch out for his album release towards the end of the year; that seems so far away :(

I LIED

2010-03-14T22:49:00.001+09:00

I Lied

As though by waiting
I could make you come.
Ella by your cinders:
choking on the smoke of dying dreams.

I cannot promise you love...

Fool I was who loved.
Lone stars and fountains.
As though by wishing
I could make you love.

This is not working. Mistakes…

Gods whispering salvation, along
streams of mascara running by.
Still I loved.
Still.
As though by loving
I would make you stay.

We are in this together. You. I.

If by my belief
We could have,
Happily ever after, the story was told.

But like Humpty,
We would have no redemption.

You know I love you…

I clutched.
Lurched; puppet to your strings.
As if your words would
speak your love to life. To me.

Don’t you know I could never hurt you…

I smiled.
I believed.
The raft in the storm, even as
Widely, wildly distorted worries
Turned nomads in the harmattan,
Roaming the scorched land
That is my head.

A Friend…

Secrets, hushed secrets
Hurried along, buried among
Jokes and laughter,
Heaps enough, to cover a daughter.

It’s not worth it. It’s over…

I paused.

I waited.

For when the earth would quake.
I waited.
To crumble.
To hear the shards as they fell.

Still.

I miss you…

I miss you too.
I lied!
I see you. You lied.
I lied. I see you.
Who you were.
That I’d hate you.
You lied. I see you.
Who you are.
The other one.
You lied. I lied.
I miss you!

Bye Bye Blog...

2009-11-09T20:49:00.001+09:00

If I see tomorrow,
I’ll never see 20 again!
I am tired of being.
I no longer want to be.
Here.

This is an end.
The End...

Let the darkness come,
and with it, a death.
May the dawn break
So my soul can have her rebirth...

on DROUGHTS and DOUBTS...

2009-09-03T23:53:00.005+09:00

I lost my voice, I have a cold.
I lost my words, I don’t know why.
There are things I want to say, things I want to write,
I Want! I Dont! I fucking Cant!
The words have flown away and its frustrating.
My head is filled, my thoughts are roaming, screaming, drowning!
Questions, doubts, half-formed words, thoughts, buts, ifs and nots...
There is no release, no orgasm...
I lost my words. I hate the thought!

1008; A Fluttering Leaf from my Journal

2009-08-11T18:52:00.001+09:00

I don’t think about him, people expect me to but I don’t and I don’t find it weird that I don’t, not at all. I don’t miss him, or what we had, all that talk about your first love, well its not true, or maybe I’m just a freak.
I thought about him today, this evening, as I sat in there. I go there at least once a week and I don’t think about him. I don’t know why today was different. I thought about him today and it was because of them. I’ve seen them there before, the two of them, him; very cute and boyish, her; tall, slim, cute, sexy. I saw them again today and I thought about him.

I had to suppress a sudden violent urge to stand up and walk up to them, ask him to excuse us so I could talk to her. I wanted to tell her how that was me, that was my yesterday, she is me last year. I wanted to tell her. Tell her that it wouldn’t last, that they might be laughing now but very soon the fights would start, the fights that had no ending. I had to force myself not to go over.
I wanted to ask him for how long he thought they would last. I wanted to tell them not to give too much of their hearts to each other.

I thought about him, how that used to be us. Teasing, smiling, laughing, just sitting there. How that used to be us that’d walk into the eatery and joke with everyone there coz it was our hang out, but its no longer us. Nature abhors a vacuum. There is no vacuum. There is no us. They took our space. I don’t mind. For me I don’t. For the cute boy and the sexy girl, I do. I want to tell them about the frowns that’ld soon crease their faces and how it would end with them not even being friends. I want to tell her to run before she gives him her all. I want to tell her to make sure tomorrow never comes. Because when the dawn breaks, she will be me today.

I don’t miss him. I miss some of the things we used to do. The silly meaningless calls a zillion times a day. I miss the silence. The one filled with laughter. The one where I could still hear the love; loud and clear. I don’t miss the silence that came at the end. The one filled with the fights and anger. No I don’t miss that silence. I don’t miss him. I don’t think about him. I don’t feel guilty that I’ve moved on, that there’s been someone else since almost immediately after him. No I don’t. I don’t feel guilty that less than 2 months ago he still told * he couldn’t believe I was gone. I don’t.

I want to tell her about how the paths they walk together today she will skip along tomorrow. Alone. I want to tell her to run and not look back. I want to tell her that love sucks. It sucks away all of your innocence. When tomorrow comes she will no longer be able to recognize love. I want to tell her about how I’m fighting so hard to accept love these days. How I can no longer hear love when its screaming. How my silence no longer rings with love. I want to tell her love always hurts. How she will give him her all and have it not work out. How she would leave and then he’d see what she’d been screaming in his face for years. I want to tell her love always hurts. I want to pull her away from him.

I don’t. I listen instead to the sound of their laughter, I watch her tickle him. I watch him hold her. I listen to the sound of their joy, I watch, I listen. I hope that for them, tomorrow delays, just a little bit longer. Because when tomorrow comes she will no longer remember what his smile looks like. He will no longer come here because it reminds him of her. She will come though. Alone. I don’t think about him. I don’t miss him.
I turn, allowing Coldplay’s ‘Fix you’ waft over me, letting it soothe wounds I thought had become scars. I bury my face in Biyi Bandele’s ‘The Street’, finding my laughter once more, in Nehushta’s little trick…

p.s. forgive me if this does not read easily. it is straight from the folder journal (diary if you like)and this is the disjointed, repetitious way I write in it. I am jaded.

2009-07-10T01:20:00.011+09:00

1. 3rd mainland bridge from unilag lagoon front.
2. this is what happens when i'm 4cd 2 cook
3. boredom induced.
4. daddy's room. not his library oh. room
5. earthworm.
6. rag day in sciences
7. animal rights?
8. another rag day
9 & 10. sarcasm?
11. view from sciences.
5,6,7,8,11 taken by my baybee bro

DELIVERANCE (POETRY)

2009-06-22T18:22:00.001+09:00

let's have a pentecost;
a turmoil of tongues
leaping
tongues of flame
to purge this
soul

wondering,
wandering
words

flashes,
distorted images
Racing
in
my
Head!
a m i l l i o n p i e c e s o f a j i g s a w
scattered bits floating in the wind

wandering,
wondering.

No padded walls
No strait jackets
for this demented soul.
Asylum. This body.
trapped for an eternity.
breath shortening,
choking!

no more.

There is no tomorrow,
only yesterdays of sorrow.
As shattered dreams pierce my sole,
like thorns driven into my blackened soul.

hv no idea wat this is abt btw. please check out Chizitere.

FUNLOLA DIED

2009-05-20T16:45:00.001+09:00

She died in December and I only just heard yesterday evening; saw her sister and asked her ‘how is Funlola, haven’t been seeing her and not getting through to her phone?’ she said ‘didn’t you know Funlola died in December, I thought you knew’ I can’t stop wondering, how can Funlola be dead.

I met Funlola Bakinson in November 2004, when I had to re-write s.s.c.e; for a year she was my partner in crime, she was my Bliss and Reni rolled in 1, she was the one I got into trouble with a lot of teachers in the school with, she was the one I gossiped with, gisted with, played with, laughed with, expressed my frustrations to. I dreamed with her and in that year we were close, so close we’d see each other Monday to Friday and still talk during starcomms free calls on Saturday and Sunday evenings. My equally petite friend (I don’t know who was thinner in both of us), with the glasses and her hand gestures and God, I can hear her voice in my head, see her habits now, we called her ‘Baki’.

She had sickle cell anemia, we grew apart after school sec school, rare calls but when we chanced to see, we’d gist and laugh together and then she got into lag the year I got into year three and coz she stayed in Moremi too, she’d come over to get novels, watch movies on my laptop and just gist. I tried calling her, wasn’t getting through, I never imagined she was dead, never imagined that was why I hadn’t seen her since the beginning of this year, I thought she was just in a different hostel, till I saw her sister and asked about Funlola.

I haven’t cried in months, never cried for a death, and never had anyone I was that close to die. I got into my room and broke down, had to let it out, had to get past it and I found in my tears that amidst the repeated ‘how can Funlola be dead’ running around in my head, I was crying for others, for my 10year old family friend who’s been lying ill in the hospital since January coz he’s got sickle cell anemia, for one of my two best girl friends; Bliss, who has sickle cell and though she looks healthier than Reni and I, sometimes has unexpected attacks, like the day she suddenly fell while crossing the road and couldn’t get up but was lucky enough some guy in the gawking crowd rushed to pick her up just before a car went by. I was crying for the pain they feel coz of their genes, crying because Funlola never got to turn 21, because she’s not going to walk delicately by my side, by anyone’s side ever again, because we’re never going to have a passionate argument or even a girl talk together anymore. I was crying, hard sobs that shook my whole body, and when the tears stopped, I didn’t want them to; I wanted to cry away my pain, my hurt, my frustrations, my questions, my helplessness.

She was the last child of her parents, can’t imagine how they must have felt. She was a good person, a good friend, God, what kind of friend am I if I didn’t know for 5 months? What kind of world is this where beautiful, young people with so much ahead of them go thru pain and die? I want to cry my sadness away but the tears won’t flow anymore, so I’m writing; for Funlola, my dear friend who didn’t get to live the possibilities ahead of her, for my Aunty Kemi who had only 2years of her marriage before she lost the fight, for Papa, who’s gone thru so much pain in his short life, more pain than I could ever imagine, so much pain that all of us around him hurt for him, for Papa’s mom who lost her 1st son and has to watch her last fight thru so much pain, for Khadijat who came to school one Thursday in Jss3 and died on Friday, for Bliss who has to take drugs almost everyday and who gets tired so easily when we have a girls’ day out, for all those who go thru so much pain because they or their loved ones have got sickle cell anemia.

I’m crying for myself, coz I’ve known 4 too many deaths this year alone, I’m crying because this is the first time I’ve been able to. Writing because that and crying is the only way I know to let things go but God it hurts so fucking bad I want to go somewhere and rail at the heavens, but most of all I want to not feel pain, not feel hurt because I can’t bear it, because I feel lyk tomorrow is somehow diminished, somehow marred by the death of the beautiful people I have know. I can’t handle this grief, I’m falling apart at the seams, my head aches so much right now I want to curl up in a corner and not feel. I can’t sleep, I can’t block the thoughts out of my head, I want to be able to block out the knowledge and not feel. By tomorrow, I have to not feel, I can’t afford to feel, to fall apart anymore than I already have…

I can’t believe Funlola died, I don’t want to accept it, don’t want to think about why God let it happen. I don’t want to know that Funlola died, I don’t want Funlola to be dead. I don’t want people to be in pain, I don’t want Funlola to be dead. I don’t. I hope she’s in a good place now, somewhere where there’s no pain and people don’t hurt through no fault of theirs…

HER

2009-05-07T01:32:00.002+09:00

i don't like to remember her,
the girl who clung and hung,
the one who had dreams of forever...

and when she felt it slipping,
how she turned into ice...

but when the sun came out,
she wouldn't melt no more.
i don't like to remember her;
the girl i used to be.

Strange Addiction

2009-04-28T10:04:00.002+09:00

these days i've been getting hooked on the strangest songs, my roomies think i'm bonkers when i start singing stuff lyk 'fokasibe' in my horrible voice, or 'koni koni love', orr 'pass me ur love' (this one actually has a line that's as dumb as 'she say i dey smoke too much igbo, e no mean oh'), 'shayo' (i looooovvvveee this one. the vid rocks), 'Bumper to bumper', 'yankuliyan' nd all d other 'mad' 9ja songs, even Wande Coal's 'Taboo'. i have them all on my lappie, i listen to them all the time, alongsyd my normal Enya, Sade, Dido, the corrs... these songs don't fit, my playlists look wack these days but i'm addicted. i get this silly smile on my face when i hear 'fokasibe' and i start singing along, my mom used to get pisd about it when i was home or 'alanta'; that one takes the cake for stupidity nd the vid is so hilarious...
it feels so odd, oh i'm also loving Darey's 'not the girl' nd 2face's 'Fly', Naeto's 'ashawo' and M.I i'm an M.I freak, i no fit shout!
its 2:15 am, never mind what my blog time says, i'm too bored to read school books, i've been hopping blogs and liisteningg to music, ryt now its Durella singing 'enu oshe', whateva that means...
i'm still blocked, heelp someone, my pink journal is seriously beefing me, so is microsoft word...

Mismatched

2009-04-06T18:39:00.001+09:00

I'm wondering why people are so quick to tag others; 'loose, proud, bitchy, snob...' the list is endless. I find myself doing it sometimes but I'm quick to cut myself short though coz most times i remember tags that have been attached to me too. There's this chic in class, her clique is the kind about which you think, 'if they were white, they'd be blonde', so i thought till i got to know her on a deeper level. We're not friends but i got to know a different person from the one i always thot and honestly i was ashamed of my past thots about her.

just because she dey my video... e no mean say the girl na ashawo

its horrible when the person being labelled gets to know about it; for some, it rolls off their backs (a roomie calls them the 'awon da?' type; people who dont give a hoot about haters), some others begin to see themselves in that light, yet some get bitter about it and take it out on other people. I have been called all sorts; 'bitchy', asked all sorts; 'could you be any colder?'(this one particularly rankled coz the chic who said it is thot to be, well... cold).

I remember the first time I heard the bitch word used in relation to me; Omolarah came and told me how some chic in another faculty had come to ask her about me (name, surname nd all), saying she heard i was a very bitchy person. I felt lyk wow, excuse me? but shrugged it off, my faculty peeps don't even know me (or so i thought) so where did she get the crap from, only to get it from a couple of faculty guys (one hurt real bad, the other i thought, wtf hater?)

Does holding yourself apart from people make you cold? Does not giggling at stupid stuff and not taking crap from people make you a bitch? I dont think so!

I know there are times I'm in my hazy moods and I don't notice people or things but is that snobbery? a roomie couldn't stop talking about how surprised she was that we were getting along coz she thot I was snobbish and that there were tyms i'd snobbed her in the faculty. now i wonder, and she probably does too, if i snobbed her or if she just felt snubbed. There's a difference isn't there, people seeing what they want instead of what is.

i might be the way everybody likes to say, i know what you're thinking about me...

I cant write this honestly without talking about my faults too, rmb those hazy moods I talked about, well they can be really bad. I remember meeting Laolu sometime last year; i had a farafina mag with me and he asked if I write. we got chatting, got on so well I was surprised when he asked me what made this time different from the other times he'd tried to talk to me.
I went 'we've neva met'
'we have, twice before, he said, first tym you just walked out of the faculty lounge when i spoke to you, the second time, you flung your name at me and stalked out again'

I think my jaw musta dropped, I could almost swear it wasnt me. so, I got to making a conscious effort to keep my head present in faculty when my body is there but did it change anything, nope, I still get to hear the back talk.

see, I don't need anyone liking me, I just need people to not think I am someone I'm not but I guess some people just live such boring lives that the only way to spice it up is to modify other's lives and talk nonsense about them. Its wrong to assume stuff about people, yeah i know with some people, who they are is so obvious (once labelled someone a BWITCH (bitch + witch) and i still think she deserved it) but most times the tags are in relation to people we don't even know much about, people we only know from a distance. Its wrong, it hurts people and i think its just plain spiteful!

Haters they don't like me coz they ain't got it like me...

2009-03-31T21:46:00.004+09:00

so i haven't had my lappie with me for a while, no lappie means i haven't been writing so i haven't been updating, also coz i only check my mails nd facebook via d phone these days nd celtel charges too much when i try to load blogs. see, i'm on holiday so i'm broke, the two always go together abi. no school, no allowie!
btw 'm in a cybercafe ryt now, i h8 them cafes coz its filled with u know them YY kind of boys plus ryt now there's this guy telling the chic selling tickets that if no be say them no dey beat women for im village e for break her head. nice one. were oshi.
shld be back by the end of the week sha...

A WTF RANT!!!

2009-03-02T22:13:00.000+09:00

Was going to put up the answer to my last post when this came up and I’m spitting mad right now…

Roomie came in and went ‘I just heard some very bad news’, I’m lyk, ‘did someone die?’ and she’s lyk ‘I wish!’ but she won’t talk nd when I finally get it out of her, I hear the last thing I expected to hear; ‘a friend of mine just got raped!’
Rape gives me the chills, it makes me shudder, it makes me mad, makes me want to hit someone, cut off someone’s balls too, maybe…

Her friend is close friends with this guy and she goes to his place on campus, I’m guessing the boy has a bq coz girls rnt allowed in boy hostels and the guy who claims ‘he wants her to be his girlfriend, he loves her, he’s serious about her’, rapes her!.
What kind of perverted soul is that, what kind of monster rapes a ‘friend’, schoolmate of his, what kind of sick wacko is that?
After the event he’s still claiming he wants her to be his and he dint mean it to happen in that way. You hold a girl down, divest her of her clothing, forcefully have sex with her and you don’t mean it to happen? Wtf? the fool did not have the sense to even use a condom and she’s scared she’ll get pregnant so I told my friend to get her postinor tomorrow, but then 2mrw’s Sunday so it’ll be hard to find an open pharmacy…

I’m wondering what kind of diseases the asshole myt be carrying nd I’m wondering if there’s a way to prevent these things before they rili set in, something to prevent HIV too perhaps.

Exams start on Monday, how could he have done that for God’s sake. What’s the poor girl supposed to do, can’t begin to imagine the trauma she’ll be going through right now. I said she should tell her friend to report him, I got a ‘look’, u know those looks that ask ‘r u loony?’ Why do we women still keep such things inside? I don’t want to hear that she went to his place, is there something wrong with going to a guy’s place, yep a girl’s got to be careful but in the event that u do go to a ‘friend’s place, is that a license for him to jump you? y r there still beasts lyk this, even on campus where u’d think there’d be some enlightenment. I have this sinking feeling that her friend nd the guy r in my faculty coz she wouldn’t tell.

I’ve heard of girls getting raped at nyt when they go to read, an ex-roomie of mine almost got raped wyl coming back from the staff quarters, that’s without going to his room so why would anyone claim she sought it? ryt now I’m so pissed nd I actually do not feel so safe on campus. wtf? I like to take walks at nyt, to think or to clear my head, should I fear some idiot will jump out at me from a corner or what? Where does one get tasers in Nigeria, or at least pepper spray… a pocket knife would be nice too!

wtf is it with men who cant keep their dicks in their pants or at least find legs willing to part for them and barring that they should do us a favour and please jerk off!

Hurtin someone

2009-02-20T05:59:00.001+09:00

I see him almost everyday and he looks lyk someone keeps flipping his switch; sometimes looks normal and other times so sad. Everyone is asking me, telling me… I’m the bad guy here I guess. Was reading Honeydropz’s on how she felt about her boyfriend breaking up with her after 2 years and twas as tho twas him writing it coz tis stuff he’s been telling me non-stop since it happened.
Close to 2 years and I quit (technically, he left, but I was the one who refused to come back). He won’t stop calling, won’t stop texting. He wants me back, I don’t want back!

A friend asked me how I fell out of it so suddenly, here’s what I told her, it wasn’t sudden tho it looks lyk that on the outsyd, it was that 4 a long tym, about 5 months b4 it ended things had been downhill, one issue after the other, he pulling the break-up card so often, me building a wall around myself coz the only way to stop hurting was to stop loving, to stop caring.
I did and when I did, I left for good and then I find that his pride had probably stood in the way coz now he’s saying things, showing things that I had no idea he even felt a tiny measure of but its too l8 coz it already died for me and I find that what once meant the world to me now means nothing more than maybe a headache at the thot of ever going thru that again…

Its true when they say love is a decision, its so easy to fall out of love, so so easy, u just decide to stop and after a while, u find that u have… or am I just weird?

My old roomie came by yday and we got talking and when I told her B nd I were no longer 2geda, she went ‘r u serious?, after all the stress that boy gave u last semester, Rayo u were always crying at the end of last semester’. She told me about how she and the other roomies hadn’t wanted to interfere, bless those girls, I so miss them!
She was shocked when I told her I was the one who dint want to be with him anymore. she said she never would have thought I’d have the strength to leave or stop loving him, I never thot I would either… increasingly I find that I do or say things even before I know I want them and once I do there’s no turning back 4 me…

I don’t feel guilty when I see him, I feel sorry that he’s hurting, that I’m causing him pain coz rili, he’s wonderful and what we had was good for a while and then it just wasn’t anymore, not for me at least.
Its been a while now and the knowledge that he’s still hurting kinda makes me glad that’s not me coz I doubt I’d have been able to pull thru a break up while I still loved him… I guess what made the difference was that while I was in I stopped feeling anything.

Don’t know if u still read my blog B but I’m sorry u’re hurting and I know u probably think I’m being selfish and maybe I am but it just wasn’t working for me any longer, twas causing too much pain…

I'M HERE NOW, THEN I'M NOT...

2009-02-07T21:55:00.005+09:00

so, its been school as usual had a test i'm not sure about yday anyway, my lyf's been hmmn what's the word oh... interestin i think.

so i asked a guy out 4 a friend. lyk, he lyks her, she lyks him but my friend is goin on 23 nd she's neva had a boyfie. trust me she doesn't lack male attention, far from it, in fact, she is veeeerrryyyy 'boyfriended' but she has some issues about gettin into a relationship and so she always chickens out. lyk she lyks a guy, rili does, nd then she kills it or she just won't take the chance.
anyway, i dared her (she always takes a dare) to ask him out nd she didn't take the dare, that was when i knew it was really serious, so i called him up and asked him 4 her. tada, they r an item now, in my mind i'm the perfect matchmaker now abi, here's me hopin it'll last, partly bcos she'll break my head if it doesn't and mostly because i rili want her to be happy.
she was mad at me at first, now she's happy i did it sha.

It was crown troupe last weekend, if u're in lagos u rili should come for the next one; first sunday of every month, Segun Adefila and his wonderfully wild troupe (damn, u shoulda seen them do Jumoke Verissimo's poem on sunday, it was so damn HAWT), Footprints; the kid dancers, Nefertiti...
Its Writer's anonymous in about an hour, u should come for that too (seye, hope u r still comin oh, first saturday of every month...
got a test on thursday (yup, the lecturers are comin at us from all angles). btw, is it just me or is Law of Conflicts lyk the most horribly borin course ever?
haven't been here in a while, misd it lyk hell, school is kinda sappin all my strength. i shall talk about what is makin my lyf interestin in a wyl... or not!

I'M NOT DEAD, HONESTLY!

2009-01-20T19:03:00.001+09:00

just swamped in work nd i got a test on friday, anor assignment due that day too. SCHOOL SUCKS!!!

Becoming our Mothers

2009-01-06T19:07:00.002+09:00

Hanging out wiv my girls these hols opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. We had so many deep talks and I could not help smiling; we really are all grown up now (almost).

I remember when we just got outta sec school and one of our *sort of friends* went *wild*, u know guys, making out, sex and all of that, all we could predict was doom, in our eyes, she’d end up knocked up coz she’d changed, she had become a *bad girl*. It didn’t take so long, 2 years down the line and some of us had gone down that lane too, maybe not become wild but we were doing the same things she was doing, the things we had termed bad and all of a sudden, we were discovering it wasn’t so bad after all.
Some of us (the ones who had the no sex b4 marriage view) were losing our convictions, for those of us who didn’t, it was just thee next thing to do, just a part of life but I guess in our own little ways, the 3 little girls who had spent the best part of age 9 to 15 sheltered from boys while in Q.C and locked behind their fathers’ gates were growing up. Eyes wide, we were taking tentative steps and trying to find who we were and not get lost in the crowd in Uni.
We were doing things we coulda sworn we wouldn’t do anytime soon, dating, making out, having sex, all the things we once thot were wild. We were losing our innocence.

Now, I’m proud of my girls, proud of myself, of the decisions we made, the people we’ve become. Though we’ve stumbled through stuff, muddled some things up, we’re not in over our heads, we’ve grown up, we r better people today coz of the decisions we made, people we can be proud of. We’ve not gotten lost in other people, or in paths expected of us, though we mess up, don’t always get things right, don’t always make the right decisions yet we’ve made choices we can live with.
For the first time in a long while, we see things the way the adults see them, the way our mothers see them, that’s y Reny says being an adult is boring; it probably is, all of that hindsight and u just cnt resist tellin people ‘don’t go this way’, its coz u know what it ends in.
I wonder if it will be any fun at all, living with memories, instead of making them.

I never thought we’d say it, but it was freaky finding that the 2 of us in relationships agreed that tho we hadn’t made mistakes in d guys we dated, we’d rather have waited, (bet momc will say I told u so, if she hears that) and I wonder how I’ll tell my daughter not to date till she’s a few years away from marriage.
Most of what we talked about ws boys( how dumb they are, o.k I’m kidding eesh), our relationships and how we’d rather have met those people later on coz it makes it harder to find yourself while tied to another, coz somehow they influence, they shape and all d responsibilities and restrictions that come with relationships when sometimes all u want to do is explore and I guess tho we have no regrets, if we had to do it again, we’d prob not do things the same way.
Try telling that to Bliss, she’s d one who’s single, she’d rather be in 1 right now than out of it, gues the grass is always greener on d other side.

Felt some sadness coz we rarely get to see eachother these days, we r in 3 diff schools with 3 crazy school calendars. It also felt weird, I was kinda jealous of them, my girls r both doing what they love in school and both on the edge of a first class while I’m doing something I don’t like very much nd tho I’m on a 2nd class upper, I’m no where near a first. Wish I’d had the courage to change like Bliss; she was a straight A’s science student nd twas concluded she’d go for medicine, she switched to economics. Wish I’d done the same when it wasn’t too late.
Wish I cld dredge up d enthusiasm to at least make a 4.0 g.p coz I just wanna do wel in wat I’m doin even if I don’t lyk it plus d siblings came out wt abv 4.0 g.ps nd d girl friends r d same…
My life, our lives, myt be filled with what ifs but its still awesome and I’m glad we’re doing well for ourselves even if it means someday we’d wake up to find that we’ve become our mothers as we once dreaded becoming. My only prayer is that we’d be able to sift through the good and the bad and pick only d good.

In d midst of it all, we’ve learnt not to judge others (there r no good or bad girls. Lol), we’ve learnt to love ourselves and others and learnt that d choices we make today determine 2mrw.

Some choices we are able to live with, not because they were right nor because they did not alter the course of our lives but simply because we made them, not recklessly but cause we thought them right at the time…

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

2008-12-21T02:46:00.005+09:00

everyone's home, ma two sisters, parents, my brother and almost brother, its peaceful now, we all are still gisting and getting along but i give it until monday, by then everything's sure to go to hell in a hand-basket. i can't wait for the squabbling, the accusations and counter-accusations, call me masochist but i'm sure to make someone mad (my mother), someone cry (@least one of my two sisters), make someone insult me (my father) and make someone ignore me (baybee bro). its sure, as sure as my mother's name which i also bear; Rayo.
i'm not feeling xmas, i neva feel it, its my least favourite holiday of the year coz its so long; xmas + newyear, and everyone stays home and i just can't get along with people for an extended length of tym, at least my family. yep i know, i'm not terribly alright, so?
i wish, i hope, i pray something will happen to turn this year around, to erase the memory of the year. i wish something'd happen to make me not say '08 was the worst year so far. anywayz, the bright side is there's no where to go but up. yep i got blessed this year, in unexpected ways but the year was equally very crappy in unexxpected ways. '09 better be better else i will go stark raving mad, aaarrrrggghhhh.
it hurts and is so depressing to admit that i don't know if i grew this year coz i am just so messed up, emotionally and its starting to tell physically. i look stressed, i feel mega-stressed, i still ain't sleeping properly and i've been broke off and on for the last 3 months, i totally h8 being broke, eeesshh! whatever mehn, i'm tired of ranting, i seem to do a lot of that these days.

after squinting really hard to read the inscription on her top, here's what i got for my cat-like curiosity; 'you nosy little fucker' in extremely tiny letters.

Where Rayo has been...

2008-12-14T07:26:00.003+09:00

WRITERS ANONYMOUS
Last saturday was the second edition of w.a, was there again and i enjoyed it. Joy Isi Bewaji was reading from her new collection of short fiction set in lagos when I got there and a subsequent reading of the entire book did not disappoint me, I particularly like the way she ended it.
Alongside the other readings, Steve Ayorinde the editor of punch talked about his new book which is a collection of reviews on classical music concerts spanning years in Nigeria. His romance with this music genre was evident in his entire talk so much so that I was almost persuaded, almost I repeat to listen to my sister's collection of classical music but I chickened out and opted to stick with my usual rock, country music and of course naija jamz.

BEAUTIFUL NUBIA + CROWN TROUPE
Anyone who's ever seen the Crown Troupe in performance would probably not want to pass up an opportunity to do so again so when i got the flier for their performance which was to hold on the University of Lagos campus i was determined to be there, not just to watch crown troupe but because Beautiful Nubia was also performing and that guy's music just inspires me, has since I first bought 3 of his albums at LABAF '06 and still does.
Thursday evening met me at the main auditorium and though the show did not start early, it kicked off with Adunni and Nerfertiti, their performance was pretty good, better than the last time I heard them.
The show went on with a saxophonist performing and i have to confess i was pretty bored with his performance and by then i was startin to wonder when the show was really going to start and then they came on...
Crown Troupe did not disappoint, they came on and performed 'Voices and Dreams' with their usual wonderful eccentricity and the message behind the presentation could not be missed and I found myself wishing the 'people in power' would get to see such. Crown Troupe also presented 'I pass my neihbour' and while it was neither as interesting nor captivating as 'voices and dreams' it was equally a good performance.
Then came the highlight for me; the children group called 'Footprints'. Twas the first time i saw them in action but twas so hard to believe kids that young (like under age 10) were performing so wonderfully; the drama, the dance, the message they passed with as much creativity as Crown Troupe, it was purely amazing to see children's boundless energy being channeled into something so positive.
Beautiful Nubia; the excitement could be felt when he mounted the stage,he performed with the roots renaissance band and when he kicked off his perfomance the crowd was held spell-bound with his rendition of songs like 'tables turn', 'mama agba's twilight', the student crowd kept asking for more and by the end of his performance, the stage was crowded with students who had joined him on it to dance. i loved his performance so much that i was singing along with him and dancing (on my seat though). It was wonderful seeing him in a live performance and he did look cuter than the pictures and videos of him...

THE FARAFINA EVENT
That was my saturday trip, the event held at Bambuddha restaurant and i was greeted with the 'no tee-shirt, no base-ball cap' on the restaurant's entrance (eessh, talk of stuffy). Really looked forward to this event but I was somewhat disappointed. The sound system was not loud and throughout the event i had to strain to hear what was being said. I got there right before Jumoke Verissimo read from her newly released poetry collection 'I Am Memory' which by the way is a wonderful collection and i found myself mouthing some of the words along with her. Kafayat gave 'spoken word' perfomances and Timi Dakolo sang, as usual, Bob Marley's Redemption song. Timi had me wondering when he'd start performing his own songs and as though he read my thoughts, he performed a bit of what he said was his single to be released next week and it was pretty good, better than i expected from him i have to admit, given the unhealthy doses of Bob Marley he'd been doling out. He also performed Aerosmith's 'Don't wanna miss a thing'.
There was the video review based on a clip from Molara Woods' interview with Ben Okri and i did not hear a thing coz it was just too low. Someone said afterwards, 'I had to be convinced me not to throw my shoe at the projector'. Farafina did deliver on their promise of the 'names' to be there as Chimamanda Adichie, Biyi Bandele, Eghosa Imasuen and some other 'writers of the moment' were at the event.
If not for the poor sound quality, i might have truly enjoyed the Farafina Event but as it was, i came away wishing i'd spent my day someplace else.

so everyone, this is all i've been doing besides school and the backlog of assignments i have. can't wait for friday when i can finally get these braids off and get outta school at least for the next couple of weeks.

Insomnia, 20, Enugu, Plugs, Nevada?

2008-11-14T03:22:00.002+09:00

Enugu/Nevada?
i've missed blogging, i havent rili been readin blogs or dropn comments on d ones i read, havnt sat down to write in a lng while. i am stressed! been preparing for the national rounds of the international client counseling competition and thank God I got picked. So I’ll be representing d faculty, alongside M, my partner in this at the
Enugu law school campus at d end of this month. Hope we win d national rounds sha coz then next stop is Nevada in February. U guys missed me yet? No, I kno I wasn’t gone long enough.

20
I turned 20 on Monday, the 10th. I know I did not say anything here but it was
annoying coz I was working in school throughout and I dint get to go nowhere. Was so tired by the time twas evening sha. But twas o.k, d usual, friends cal, text, wateva, cakes, food but twas just my roomies and I sha. i was kinda disappointed, may d rest of my 20th year not go the way it started by God's grace, else i'm pretty sure i'll turn 21 in a psych ward!

Plugs
Blogville, wats wit me and laptop plugs. My Hp’s power cord blew in june, lucky me popc had just got a 2nd lappie 4 himself. Lyk d good girl I am, I hijacked d 3 day old lappie nd claimed it as mine, till last week when its plug went Kaput. I am extremely careful wit plugs so kilode. Now, I have 2 laptops, 2 useless laptops. Good thing is, yl I’m home there r other available plugs to use on d Dell. So that’s y I cant blog away from home. Shld get money to get a new one by d end of d month and it has 2 b my money coz popc dsnt kno abt d dell nd he msnt, he’ll blame me…

Insomnia
I have or think I have it. Its been goin on 4 lyk a year, I dnt get to sleep till lyk btw 1am nd 3am plus I wake up lyk 5-7 tyms wyl I’m asleep nd it ttakes a yl to get bak to sleep. Result; I’m in a constant state of fatigue where I want to sleep but can’t. if u see me yawning, its not coz I was busy last nyt oh.
Wat else?
I’v not rili been getn around but I went 4 writers anon at d end of last month, went 4 jumoke verrissimo’s reading from her poetry collection last weekend and both events were fun. My lyf is annoying ryt now, personal lyf I mean. It bothers on crappy sef… now I think I’m too tired to go on.

crescent

2008-11-06T19:01:00.001+09:00

Tonight
A chubby, bald man…
Face lit-up
With the brightest of smiles,
Grinning down at me…
No friends out with him,
Its just the both of us
In my little corner of the earth.
The moon,
Deserted by the stars
Shining and smiling down on me…

once in an extremely long while, i write a poem.

...

2008-10-23T21:52:00.002+09:00

So I’m on facebook when I c sum1 wants to chat with me, I h8 facebook chat but its one of the guys I met in S.A (lg, he’s d one who wanted me as his international fuck buddy) nd I don’t wanna give him my yahoo so here we go nd he’s asking me, ‘what did u say to my girl?’, me, I’m lyk; ‘who’s ur girl?’. Background; immediately I got back from S.A he sent me this msg on fb nd @ d end he wrote ‘still wish we had sex’ nd I’m lyk wtf, see this oloshious fellow oh, so I delete the msg, I don’t want drama wit boyfi if he ever sees it. Now guy is asking me if I kno his girl coz his girl found out nd now he’s in deep shit. They’ve been dating for 7 years oh nd now she knows this nd she’s raking 4 him. He mailed me the msg she sent him abt it nd it goes ‘wats this, u telling sum1 named rayo u wish u guys had sex?’ nd she’s lyk ‘I would have called u ‘love’ but u even called her that’. see me c trouble oh, I asked him if she has his facebook password nd he’s lyk ‘yes but he deleted the messages a wyl back’ me I dint even kno u had a girlfriend when u were soliciting me, lucky me I wasn’t foolish enough to fall 4 his B.S nd now he wants to kno how she found out, nd to hear him say it ‘I’ve never hurt her and now I’m so fucked up’, me I tell him to tell her it’s a standing joke between us nd he asks me to send her a mail to that effect, I agree coz they’ve been 2geda 7 years so she must c sumtn in him plus nothing did happen tho not 4 lack of trying on his part sha. Poor babe with a were boyfriend nd then he goes ahead to tell me, ‘I meant all those things I told you even if that’s what got me in this shit’ i go; ‘lol’ nd he goes ‘I knew that’d be ur reaction, u always take my words to be B.S, tele nko? What else will I do, let one smooth talking Kenyan boy come nd pour sand 4 my garri abi, I’m smarter than all that oh. So I go ‘u r not even remorseful, I wont bail u out if u don’t behave’ nd he’s giving me B.S that he rili lyks me nd he’s neva done this to her nd all what not, plus babe thinks he’s a teetotaler, mehn this guy downed vodka, beer nd all sorts wyl in S.A, his room was the joint 4 drinking guys, so I’m thinking this guy is on his own oh, it seems he’s been lying to this chic for 7 years nd now he wants me to help propagate his lies, oniranu. The irony of it all just struck me, after all these years of playing her its some naija chic he dint even get to kiss that’ll ruin his runs. Rotflmao.

MEET THE PARENTS!

2008-10-14T20:50:00.001+09:00

This rant is not about me nor does it have much to do with me personally plus it is a long-ass rant. See, my friend jaal came to see me on Sunday afternoon and she’s all torn up nd teary, so I’m thinking, this has to be something big. We’re tight but not tight as in tell personal stuff except when we need advice. Let me give u some background, Jaal is 18, going on 19 in December, she came out of convenant uni this year with a 1st class in banking and finance and is currently doing her Nysc, one would think she has it really good ryt, plus a boyfi who is gaga about her. So first thing she shows me is a text message from her dad and it goes along the lines of ‘no boyfriends who r non-yorubas because he does not want his grandchildren bearing chukwu-dozie or Ayuba’ his words not mine. This is 2008, my mom has issues with inter-tribal marriage but at the end of the day she tells u to do ur thing coz she wont live with you in future nd she doesn’t want any blame, but here’s Jaal’s dad telling her to break up with her boyfi coz he’s Ibo. So that’s lyk the first issue on ground.
She just took her CIBN exams and her mom comes to meet her on the day she finished (she wasn’t staying at home) and goes, r u still a virgin and gets all teary coz she thinks the devil has taken over her daughter. This is not the first tym her mom will ask d virginity question. What nonsense, see Jamb question oh, my mother knows she’ll probably get a biting comment from me if she ever asks that question, or I myt just be naughty enough to tell her the truth lets see what will happen next. Reason for question; she’s been using Tampons. Oh another friend , Renny has also had her mom go so far as to include a pregnancy test in the list of tests at the lab when she wasn’t feeling fine. Like I tell my mom whenever she makes false accusations; ‘the things I don’t do, you’ll be the one to teach me how to do them’. So part two is her mother crying all over her daughter for her alleged sins. Jaal’s losing so much weight and looking so depressed I wonder if they can’t see what they r doing to her, and of course, there has to be a 3rd part.
This is the most pissing part of it all, listen to her parents say it; ‘we have decided the best thing for you to do now is go into the academic world, we don’t want u in the corporate world yet, so your H.O.D called, after your NYSC, u’ll be going bak to C.U to lecture’. Arrrggghhhhh, I felt lyk tearing my hair out when I heard this part and she says on that, u have to syn a 10 year contract or so. Jeez, she doesn’t want this not in anyway at all and so she has resolved, she’s not coming back home after her youth service, lets see how they swallow that. Btw, she’s the first child and all these years I thot she lykd how she was, u kno 1st class student and all and for the 1st tym she’s tellin me she wanted to be a science student but they made her go to commercial class, she didn’t want to have to work so hard in school (as in she had no social lyf for the 1st 2 years in uni), but they told her only a 1st class was acceptable. For the 1st tym I could see all the pressure from the years beginning to take their toll.
Jaal’s only 18 bt she’s lyk me, she’s wiser than her years, so, so much wiser and here they are, having controlled the last almost 19 years, they want to control the next 10. Why don’t parents ever get it? So I told her, u got to save all u can this service year and trust nysc to post her to a school in my village, a bank wants her but the school principal refused to reject her, my popc sha called one of his friends to go see the woman, I’m pretty sure she wont need anymore convincing after that, except she’s a witch. So me gan I will hoard money if I have to but she’s not coming back to have them take away all that makes her who she is.
Is it something in the air? Coz Seun’s parents have also gotten crazy ideas in their head, first is the whole ‘family picture’ kinda lyf they’ve suddenly started. Seun is 21, his youngest bro is 16 and all of a sudden the parents want this togetherness that has never been there, cinemas every weekend, together. No way, if I have to go to d cinemas wit my parents I’d have a bird, not to talk of constant family dinners at protea and all sorts of stuff. Then the new rule, everyone stays downstairs from 6:30 to 10 pm, for what? some togetherness. All 4 of them kids hate it, that’s plus his two older sisters. His parents also have a reward system, as in u get some amazing stuffz if u’ve been ‘good’, nd their idea of good is u falling in lyn with all of their plans for u. jeez. Lyk recently he put his foot down and insisted on staying over at his cousin’s place, result; he’s not getting the new 250gig vaio his dad got him, at least not any tym soon. My friend’s got lyk too many designer stuffs as in his dad can take him to 2ce as nice nd let him pick any no of shirts he wants, if he’s good. His allowance is amazing, I can only dream! but is he happy? nope, infact, we had an hour long conversation on his up-coming revolt. His baby bro’s walking round wit a permanent scowl on his face, that boy’s got some rage nd I fear he’ll explode soon. But the parents just don’t get it. Seun says, ‘once I start making my own money, what’s tying me to them?’
At the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do. I feel a fierce wind blowing, and its going to blow some of my friends and I’s parents’ minds. We’re abt 5, including jaal nd 1 of my sisters, and we r so bored with church, as in the church we r forced to go to at home. I haven’t gained anything in my home church in years, neither have my friends, I stay away from home during weekend when school’s in session coz I don’t wanna go to that church. My mother is a deacon in church so all those rules, lyk my short skirts. Jeez. We all want out and we will all shock them soon. We all slept off at one time or the other on Sunday and while we weren’t sleeping, we were gisting and doing gbeborun, so whats the point? I’d rather go to yaba nd go to d church I attend in school but the parents will hit the roof if I say so. Very soon, they will just have to shoot out of that roof, coz very soon I’ll stop caring!
Me, I could write pages on my parents but it doesn’t touch any of Jaal and Seun’s drama, maybe because I revolted early, as in 12, 13. All my friends are doing now, what I did a long time ago. If u have overly strict parents u have to stand ur ground early in lyf else u’r in for some long-term shit oh. As in 13, I was already having my own opinions and standing by my decisions, its not that I cant do what you say, its just I don’t think its best for me, no matter how much you think you know a kid, it gets to a stage where the kid knows himself better than u do nd u have to stop imposing, you have to let them grow into their own, you have to let them choose. Choice is everything, let me make my own mistakes, I’m the kind of person who’ld rather regret doing something than regret not being allowed to do it. Kids shldn’t be stifled especially not when they are no longer kids. Jaal’s not a baby anylonger so y shld they try to choke their dreams down her neck? I see parents who’ll be alienated from their kids in future coz they overdid it, I have a prayer and its, God I don’t wanna be the kind of parents my parents were. Don’t get me wrong, they r wonderful people but they have a stereotypical view of what a child should be and when u don’t fit that bill, like I did not, u bcom d black sheep, its not right. I’m not goin to get out with a 1st class or even a 4.3 lyk sis 1 and 2 respectively. Baby bro’s a straight A’s student (his ssce results were mad 5A’s 2 Bs nd 1 C), so stop being disappointed in me, it wont change me one bit, it does hurt not to be accepted but the bottom line is, I have to be able to live with myself and my choices and that’s what I’ve been doing 4 almost 7 years. I only pity my friends who have succumbed to so much pressure in their lives and r now finding it hard to break free.

pretty messed up in the head

2008-09-28T22:45:00.003+09:00

i'm havin issues, simeon and rita know what its about, they saw the posts b4 i took them down, but there's some complicated eesh related to that. anyway bottomline is i have to make some decisions that'll hurt someone either way it goes and thats so hard 4 me coz there's someone i dont wanna hurt in anyway, he means so much to me and on the other hand i'm just so confused and my head is pretty messed up as to how things should go. i know i'm rambling, i'm just scared that one day soon i'll wake up and think, girl how could u have been so stupid. i hate regrets.
i need to get my life back on track and i need to stop being selfish, maybe i'll do my blog rounds, i neva can seem to keep away anyway, maybe i wont but eida way, i've gotta decide soon and its killing me, coz i dont wanna hurt him, not again...

pills, pins and pricks

2008-09-23T02:15:00.002+09:00

i went to the salon on tuesday morning, got my hair retouched dried and all and wanted to straighten it, the girl had gone like halfway when i couldn't take it no more, felt like there was a complete orchestra in my head. still did my blog rounds till friday afternoon when i couldn't get outta bed no more. twas so awful, i hate drugs and i kept throwing them right back up, couldn't keep food down either. its been like 4 years since i've been ill, last tym, twas just this bad.
sis nd lil bro were the ones takinng care of me, lil bro's own was by force sha; left to him alone, i'd have probably stunk 4 like 5 daays before he'ld have realised something was wrong and then you'd have to convince him to drop his psp long enough to dispose the body, o.k o.k he's not that bad, but almost sha. weird thing is, i couldn't keep normal food down, i asked for pap. that's crazy coz in my house no one drinks pap, sis could have almost cursed me coz she had to ask the tenant's daughter to show her how to make it and even then twas always filled with lumps, large sized lumps all over. jeez, i've suffered, lil bro surprised me on sunday morning, with a mug of pap with no lumps. sis u rock, but ur pap sucks, jeez.
momc's been in benin on some course from work but she came in on saturday mornin and that's when the wahala began, she had to put me on drips and there was this little needle that looked like a butterfly that she used at first, then she said my veins were collapsed and blablabla, it went in at the side of my hand, as in almost immediately after where my thumb stops (sis once got it in the thigh or leg), then there were complications with that and she brings out this needle thats so big, like the one we ladies use for weaves (really twas that big) she called it a cannula or something, by then i'm crying, as in crying like a baby oh. twasn't funny, no way was that going up my arm, she ended up having to use another butterfly when i wouldn't let up.
then the injections, thot they'd never end, they finally did, this morning, but i guess it no longer matters for me if piriton is there, anything quine makes me itch, i'm still itching. some injection had me so woozy, i think i was hallucinating, twas crazy i just kept cryin. i'm like gettin my strenght back now sha but twas pretty awful, couldn't even have the lights on, had one hell of a migraine. guess it mmust have been the stress from my exams plus the mosquitoes from my all-nighters.
now i have to get back to the salon coz my hair's all messed up, had to let it get all wet everyday, my head was just aching so bad.
p.s butter cup, you're de best, fineboy agbero you are so dead, aloofar i am still considering you!

I'M BACK

2008-09-15T18:36:00.003+09:00

Exams are finally over, twas so frustrating, had some personal issues and then the time table was crazy with two papers and the latter one, industrial property law suffered a bit. So annoying. I haven’t been online in about a week, what prize do I get for that lg? lol. So, I’m officially in 400 level, aaarrrgggghhhhhh, my mates in mass comm are claiming final year, kai, if not for momc oh, anyhow sha.

To today’s post… Ehhnnn, my multiple personalities order, disorder ke! There’s Ade, that’s the law student, she wears shirts and short skirts with high heels. She’s an introvert, a lot of people think she’s a snob, truth is, she isn’t, she’s just not a people person and emm, she tends to walk with her mind elsewhere so she isn’t really where her body is, please don’t ask me how she does it. She’s real picky about who she rolls with, she’s the one who pulls all-nighters, she can’t read without music but she’s into country music, R&B, she’s got the serene playlist; Shania Twain, Enya, Anna Nalick, Alanis Morisette, Jordin Sparks, Kelly Clarkson, Gabrielle, Sheryl Crow, The Corrs...

There’s Rayo, she’s the nutty, naughty one, if she’s with her friends they are all loud and jumpy, she’s got a child’s soul. She writes, she’s moody, fluctuates between depressed and extremely hyper-active mode. Rayo is a gossip, big time one, she’s the jeans and tees one, and she loves slippers, ehehen? Oh, she’s the internet junkie and she rules this blog! She’s the one who’s a mad rock fan, oh and she loves Naija songs. She’s got 9ice, Avril, Amy Winehouse, Asa, Ty Bello, Linkin Park, Five For Fighting, Cold Play, Nelly Furtado and she still likes Nickleback, Tu pac

Finally there’s Tomi, wait oh, why do multiple personalities always come in threes? Anyway, Tomi is the bitch, she knows all the looks, it seems she’s the one who went to Q.C . She’s mostly reserved for pests and stuffy occasions. She ignores when in a fight, Ade gets all assertive and argumentative though. She loooooovvvveeessss break up songs, so she incorporates anything from Rayo or Ade that sounds like a break-up song, she loves Dido.

Anyway, the issue now is, Ade wants to get a vacation job, like the one that bored us all last vacation, she hates being at home doing nothing, D’uh. Rayo wants to spend her holiday blogging (lazy brat shey), Tomi couldn’t care less. So we want to get a job that will suit Ade and Rayo, maybe something in the media, and definitely not stressful. The question is how? I don’t wanna exercise the popc option coz then it’ld be some newspaper place and I think I’ll be bored there, I think I want a magazine place or Ad company or something. I’m so lost right now…

p.s heard the sbr rocked.

2008-08-30T05:58:00.000+09:00

Things had changed yet it was all the same, the sun shone still, perhaps a mite brighter, it sure burned hotter. The words, the look, the slight droop of chin and the impatience that though so carefully concealed peeked out in all he did were all mannerisms I’d picked out over a while and as he cocked his head to a side and stared at me trying to look regretful all I could think was that he was loving every minute of it; the hurt he was sure I’d be feeling, the tears that shimmered behind my lashes but refused to fall, the fist I’d involuntarily clenched and longed to bury in his pretty nose though that I was sure he didn’t know, but I knew for sure he relished having power of any sort over me.
The fight raged within me, the urge to shout, scream, silently weep, crawl into a tight corner, curl up and cease to exist, beg, promise him the world, serenaded me but instead I heard myself saying,
‘Anything you want is fine’ my legs were threatening to buckle, I stared down at my toes, I couldn’t believe those words had slipped past my lips, I’d just agreed to a break up when it was the very last thing I wanted, he wanted space, he said, he didn’t know if it would be permanent and I’d agreed. I sighed and looked up at him just in time to see the last vestiges of shock and disbelief on his face then a quick smile.
We sat outside his house talking, reminiscing and saying what we would do in the future… we lay on his bed, sated I tickled his chin… in the pool, splashing around and laughing like a couple of kids… he slapped me and I got on my knees to beg him, crying and telling him I was sorry even as he turned his back on me and walked out…
I couldn’t stop scenes from flashing past; it was like my mind was determined to recapture it all…
‘So I guess it’s over’ why did his statement sound like a question, didn’t he want it to end, if he didn’t should I… yet instead I heard myself utter wrong words once more.
‘Yeah’ curse my tongue I thought, I was waving the centre of my life away, we stood looking at each other for a while, just staring, each with diverse thoughts running gamut, finally I held out my arms to him, he took an hesitant step forward and then we held each other tight, I wished I could hold on forever…
He grasped my arms not even noticing my flinch, shook me hard, demanding to know who sent the messages, who was the other guy who sent me Val messages, didn’t he know I was in a relationship or was I the one putting out for him? He scrolled through my messages once more, smashed my phone against the wall even as I choked out that he was my brother and that was his new number, his hand cracked against my cheek, did I think he was a fool?... he brought flowers and chocolate, took me to an expensive dinner, smiling into my eyes as he said happy birthday then kissed me…
My arms went slack around him, and then dropped, I stepped back and smiled at him, smiled while my heart was breaking and I could hear its tinkling, like tiny shards hitting the floor, silently breaking. He looked solemn as he said good bye, I stared at his retreating back for a few seconds then quickly walked on, I couldn’t bear for him to look back and see me standing, looking like I was waiting.
His smile was so easy, that was what got me in the first place, the dimpled smile as we were introduced at a friend’s church, his easy going manner, the subtle hints about his interest in me; I thought I’d finally found my God fearing partner, I said yes when he finally asked… I went to his place early on a Saturday to tell him I had to leave town and there she was, another girl, in his rumpled polo, I needed no one to tell me she’d slept over… I can explain, she’s just a friend, yet another girl; he’d dropped her off and kissed her, hard…
I jumped every time my phone rang, thinking it was him, thinking he’d realized he couldn’t bear to let me go and each time I sank deeper as I realized it wasn’t him yet I wouldn’t switch off my phone, no, all I did was drench myself in tears, wallowing in my wide pool of misery and when I could cry no more, I slept, woke, thought of him…
Maybe I was foolish, but I still waited, three years couldn’t go down the drain, I must have meant something to him, he would eventually call… I called in sick at work yet again, truly I looked like I was in the throes of an illness, my face puffy and my body gaunt instead of my usual thin frame. I slept in the pajama bottoms he’d left over in my wardrobe till they stunk. I still jumped when the phone rang but not as hard, I didn’t want to leave the house, what if he called my house line instead of my mobile, eating was a chore of sorts, my tummy constantly rebelling at the thought of food.
I wouldn’t have any other girl, if you agreed to sleep with me’, ‘so you admit to the other girls?’ ‘ No… I… not like that…’ then,’ you know damn well I didn’t mean that besides its my business who I fucking take to bed’, he yelled… church had been just that one time we’d been introduced and every Sunday till I’d said yes, but I didn’t mind, what mattered was his heart, he had a good one, he loved me, he said it every time, it was true… wasn’t it?...
The phone rang, with laden steps I walked over and my heart went into overdrive, beating erratically when I saw the caller i.d. It was him; finally. I tried to calm myself but was still breathless when I said, ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, how’ve you been?’ without waiting for my answer he went on ‘I wonder if I could drop by your place this evening?’
My place, this evening, I threw a panicked look over the disarray and finally whispered a yes; he hurriedly said goodbye and dropped. I went into a frenzy, picking up my clothes, books, sweeping all the dirt behind the cabinet before I rushed into the bath, I hadn’t bathed yesterday, I couldn’t remember the day before, had I, or not? I lost my train of thoughts as I stared at myself in the mirror, I looked horrid, puffed face and disheveled hair yet I was revitalized within, adrenaline pumping, edging me on as I made my face up, tidied my hair and then cooked.
‘I love your meals, they’re delicious especially your african dishes… weekends, I stayed over and cooked for him, I had to protect my interests, give him what he needed so he would be happy with me, I cooked and cleaned up and tried to satisfy his seemingly insatiable urges…
When the knock came, my nerves were badly frayed, it was 10pm yet he’d said evening, I had chewed my nails, worried he wasn’t coming but now he was here, I stared when I opened the door, a ready smile on my face, he smiled back and walked in but didn’t sit and turned to face me,
‘I can see you’re well… good, good’
I stared at him puzzled but smiled, I couldn’t let him see my weakness, but I waited for him to tell me he’d missed me, maybe he didn’t know how to start, we could make up over dinner.
‘Yes. I cooked dinner, would you like some?’ I smiled knowing he couldn’t resist my meals but I was surprised to see him hesitate,
‘It’s o.k. since when did you become shy, come on, I’ll have it served right away’ I persuaded.
Over dinner, a strange silence reigned, I wondered what to say, he just kept looking down at his plate, he might not know how to start, he finished his food and we sat before the TV.
‘Actually, I came over for my clothes and stuff that I left behind, I thought you’d have them packed together by now’
For a moment, the words refused to penetrate the fog that had descended on me and I stood up, staggered into my room mechanically flung his things into a used nylon, went back and picked the pajama bottoms, stalked to the sitting room and flung it at him.
‘Is it my fault girls flock around me or what do you want me to do, chase them off?’...‘ no girl’s ever left me, I do the leaving he bragged,‘ oh so you have a trail of broken hearts behind you, hope I wont soon be a part of them?’ I’d teased, ‘never’, he tweaked my nose ‘you’re my one and only, my darling’…
‘Get out’ I spat the words, he rushed to his feet, puzzlement written all over his face as he walked out. I crumpled behind the door after I’d slammed it shut, there were no more tears, there was acceptance in its place, resignation. Nothing had changed, he was who he had been, I’d just not known was or had refused to see it. He was gone, I would still pine a bit, but now I knew for sure that one day soon, I’d get over it, get over how much of a fool I’d been for the bastard, I would…
‘I still miss you B…’ I read the text and looked at him puzzled, ‘why won’t she leave you, its been over between you for so long now.’ he shrugged. ‘That will never be me, if you leave, I won’t even bat an eyelid’ I’d sworn. He laughed ‘you would think that now wouldn’t you?’

i'll b ryt back

2008-08-26T18:15:00.002+09:00

so my exams start on monday and i average lyk 9-10 hours starin at my books now. its so effing boring, i cant even blog d way i want, oh nd multilnks is givn me serious issues this morning. anyway, i myt (myt oh), not be makin my rounds as i usually do till sept 12 (final paper), dont forget me b4 i get bak (lyk u all could). so for this morning, my intellectual property books and commercial transaction books are my companions. eeyah, they'r so jealous they'r already screamin 4 me 2 get bak 2 dem. lol. gtg.

PRINCE CHARMING

2008-08-21T01:38:00.002+09:00

So I finally got to see Cinderella marry a dish washer, now that’s what I’m talking about, an animation where a kitchen maid did not marry a prince just so she could get out of the drudgery of her present life, nope, she married a dishwasher because she loved him despite the lure of a prince in the background. Now if only real life could be that way, don’t get me wrong, not like I support marrying for riches but in these times, some things just don’t happen. How easy is it for a girl to fall in love with a guy who is a ‘nobody’ and doesn’t look like he’s ever going to be a ‘somebody’?

Our society has created an ever growing chasm between the rich and the poor. I sometimes think some people are going no where, and it’s not because they are lazy, nope, it’s just because they were born into the ‘wrong’ families. A lot of people say that its coz poor people don’t want to work or that those clawing their ways out of the pits don’t have two heads. Yep they don’t but lets face it, how easy is it?, didn’t they get breaks along the way, didn’t heaven send the rain down on them at some point, yes it takes a lot of hard work, determination and blablabla, but I have also seen determined people who just never seem to make it, who seem to be jinxed and everything they touch fails. There must be an enabling society, else how can a person grow when he is being choked by thorns all over?

So who’s the educated girl who’ll fall in love with a very hard working okada man, say, Yakubu, who, though he tries hasn’t been able to get into a university?, where will they get to meet? When he gives her a ride and she’s screaming at him to ‘take it easy oh…’ Girls nowadays go, ‘weeellll, he doesn’t have to be rich but he must have potential’ and I’m thinking, o.k, what the heck is ‘potential’? is it how high the probability of him becoming a somebody is?. I guess so and this just goes to show, the dishwashers can stick with the kitchen maids and we educated ladies will stick with the princes charming who’ve got ‘potential’, lets see, a university degree is rarely sufficient now, maybe throw in a masters, It would be swell if he’s got a bank job or works in an oil company (that’d be just perfect), or maybe he’s just got a rich daddy, barring that, his family has to at least be middle class. The bride’s family can’t wear the latest lace in town while his family is wearing the Ankara they used for his grand-father’s burial oh. I refuse to live in a face-me-I-face-you, or fetch water, or even enter molue because there is no money, did I do any of that in my father’s house, so why should I come and suffer in one man’s house, is love what I’ll eat?

Wait oh, I’m not saying I want to be dependent on my husband, of course I’ll have my own money, but you know they say a rich man in the midst of a lot of poor men, is also a poor man. My kids have to go to the best schools, they have to get what I got and even more, its not spoiling them, nope, its giving them every advantage they can get in life, do you know the kind of contacts one can make even from primary school?

Its hard to fault this kind of thinking, because as is obvious, she isn’t looking for an extremely rich man with whose money she can jet around the world, she’s just looking for someone with whom she can build a comfortable life, a life devoid of constant bickering about money, a life of stretching money to go round. She’s looking for someone in her class, or just a bit higher. She’s looking for happiness, coz face it, do I love him enough to jump buses from ojuelegba to wherever and sweat and cringe everytime a market woman’s sweaty arm is rubbed all over mine?, do I love him enough to manage the three day old meat I got at a discount, or the rotting peppers I get cheaper?, do I love him enough to send my children, our children to public private schools?, shouldn’t I think of them, should I banish them through no fault of theirs to dish washing lives?

The simple truth is I don’t, I can’t, I totally won’t, because after a while I’ll be wishing for what Titi in my class has, or looking wistfully at Tunde who wanted to date me and is now a big politician…

*inspired by ‘happily never after’.

Memories I

2008-08-12T19:44:00.001+09:00

My earliest memory is of when I was three, I wasn’t told, I remember it, I remember trying to kill myself, I really do and its been corroborated. I took a sharp kitchen knife to my belly button and wanted to cut it off (what is this thing shooting out sef), anyway, my 6 year old sister stopped me in time.

I remember ten-ten, tinko-tinko, suwe(hopscotch) , catcher, who is in the garden, stop!, and all the other fun games we played. I remember making amala with sand and play driving popsi’s abandoned beetle when I was 3.

When I was 2 I’d collect the nebo’s child’s food and throw it away, he was so dumb (or I was such a bully) coz he was older than me.

I rmb throwing my drugs out the car window whenever I was sick as the driver drove me to school, I remember flushing them, throwing them beneath the freezer and now palming them and throwing them in the bin, or sticking it in the sink holes.

O.B and I running up the stairs in kindergarten with our arms around each other, I was still 3 going on 4, there was a riot in town and we were stuck in school (now I think it probably had to do wit june 12, twas around then), we ran into our class and they all went ‘husband and wife, open the door and kiss yourself’, for real we were all 3 and 4 year olds, jeez…

I was 4 and miss B’s class pet in pri1, we went to her house to get my earrings during break and when we got back, sum kid in class had stolen some ribenas, chips, biscuits and other break stuffz from sum of us, we were just 4 or 5, I wonder where he is ryt now…

I was still 4 and M.A and O.Q fought over who’d get to sit next to me in class during lesson period, I chose O.Q coz I was defender of the universe (he used to get snubbed), regretted it for the whole term coz they used to call him my husband; oh no, I dint mind him as a friend but husband arrrgggghhh, he wasn’t cute. (c, I’ve always been popular, pretty and smart…lol). Oh, T.S changed my 1 to a 0 on a sum only I got right in class so I hated her till pri6

5, and L.S who was so sophisticated and world wise for a 5 year old said L.O’s mother looked like a jelly fish, and proceeded to throw L.O’s joker jelly into a hole in the fence. Hi gals, wir r u all now?

6, Lano left our school, I misd her so, still remember her face, cute, fair, low-cut…

9 and had this gateman in scul, uncle ak who was so nyc we all loved him, only 4 dem 2 sack him(he was doin gals instead of his job, not scul gals oh) hehehe

I remember little rascals ‘dear daula, I hate ur stinking guts, you make me vomit…’, Richie rich and all the others, I remember chakademus ‘murder she wrote’ which I used 2 sing as ‘marrasimo’ coz it sounded lyk dats what he was singing, or shabaranks ‘mr lover man, shaba…’

I remember marching songs ‘tim tim tim, we are marching tim tim tim, along the way oh, tim tim tim, so see us moving like soldiers…’ did I get that ryt?

10, I tif momsy’s money (cant 4 d lyf of me remember the why or the how), she beat the shit outta me, now I don’t steal, except maybe biro sha… sooooo! can u say u’ve neva pinched a biro, especially when sum1 has just stolen yours?

11, started writing consciously… hated Q.C wiv all of ma being, spent most of my tym in d library readin novels (unabridged (I think) 1001 arabian nyt, loads of African novels, history books) and anything that had nufn to do wit what I was in scul 4 (if popsi hears, I’m minced meat)

15, lost my 1^st admission in2 lag nd officially bcame 1^st person 2 rewrite waec in my house (no I am not an OLODO, I’m smarter than you, and you, yes and you too), I aced everything and had a freakin D in maths, h8d d shit, anyway my pops wld have nutn of getn dem 2 waive it til I got in2 2^nd year, I had 2 re-do d whole thingie, plus gce, neco, gbogbo e, (wrote lyk waec +neco abt 5 al2geda, in 2 years oh). Got the title of ‘Most examined body ‘ in the house, (yeah I got them geek types @home, one 1^st class in engineering, eessshhh).

16, got into first boy trouble (I went 2 a gals only and my popsi dey lock us behind gate), sum useless omo ibo lyk this who comes to luk 4 my almost useless nebo sat b4 the gate and winked at me wyl momsi was drivn in (shege at the boy), momsi ke (no boyfi till u’re 21, me ke 4 wia?),, on top of dat na ibo boy, my mama hit d roof, even tho I explaind die. she told popsi abt d boy dat winked at me and claimed I knew d boy (I h8d her 4 a wyl, I did a lot of h8n 4 years then), popsi sha put mouth coz she’s always on his case abt him being 2 lax wiv us.

p.s I cruised past said boy not long ago, drivin one of popsi’s babies (he msnt kno which one oh), d boy dey on top okada and kept lukn bak 2 make sure twas me, anofia!

17, got seriously propositioned by sum1 who musta been in his 40s, he was so british(not 4mn oh) he even kissed my hand (whhhhaaatttttt!)

I wrote my favourite, if not best stories at 17, including ‘into the night’

18, I dated a school boy. Me! me wey dey make mouth say lai lai I no fit d8 scul boy (how I no go misyarn?, dir wir 2 many agbayas wit rides chasin me), ehn and u c, I dint just d8 a scul boy, I dated one in my class, whoosh (sumtyms I stil think, how come?).

20, still dating that same school boy oh, hmmmn after all my yarns and jam mouthing.

So there’s my short, boring, uneventful life in black and white…

P.s help me beg fineboy agbero oh, he always says I’ll die young (I’m reporting him to everyone who knows him, so if anything happens to me…) and the last person he said that of, is dead, so please, I fear for my life even though he says he’ll also die young (isn’t that to be expected of a paraga drinking, ganja smoking agbero?) but please I wanna c my great -great- great- great grand kids oh (ehhn, so what, if I want to live 4eva?)

STALKERS

2008-08-09T21:54:00.005+09:00

C mi c trouble oh, won ti fe so mi lenu… ok I keep thinking I haven’t reached the level where i’ll only pick calls from numbers I know, u know how yorubas say taba diju keni buuru koja, eni re na ma lo or sumtn lyk dat sha (if we close our eyes so bad people will pass by, good people’ll also pass by), so I pick all my calls and till recently had this bad habit of calling back whenever I c a missed call (the thing that killed the cat, ehhnn, that’s what is worrying me oh).

Anyway b4 I digress too much, in the past semester (my lyf is in semesters for now), anyway, I’ve had about 4 phone stalkers, serious ones, oh, as in call me for 10-20 mins in a day (not free call oh, I’m mo than that), and for the life of me I cant figure out how they get my number, o.k d c.u one, dat used to feel soooo cool wiv himself said he got my no from a class mate, not even up to 15 classmates have my no now, anyway this guys knows me, knows the novels I love, knows d b.q boyfi rents in scul (I don’t do small boys), dis c.u boy is a masters student I think and it took sum divine intervention b4 he got off my case oh, coz guy don dey piss me off, dey tell me say do I kno I could be happier, that’s lyk stale but isn’t it a chance I’ll take, we could always be happier wit sum1 else but will I kip jumpin guys coz I think I may be happier with d next guy, iranu.

Then there was my physical stalker, as he said; official stalker, who I met where boyfi nd I eat and who kept offering me rides (even to boyfis room, haba), knew my faculty (came to law library just bcos of me), tisnt his fault its dose id**** that thot up wearing whyt nd black 4 us now, knew my hostel nd orishirishi, guys r so useless, coz I c this guy wiv a gal frequently oh, wtf…

Then now, I have this virgin atlantic Abuja boyfriend, ti o fe je kin gbadun oh, this guy will call me in the morning to tell me good morning (@past 10:00am, pshaw), call to say good nyt. I don tire, I gave boyfi d fone to pik twice, oponu actually conversed wiv my boyfi oh, nonsense nd he did not stop callin me, now I ignore his calls, yes I kno u think I shld always do that, I try but it seems they usually have lyk how many numbers to call me wit, wetin…

At least I’m lucky, my friend Hala, piked up dis stalker (real live one) at sports centre when we went to watch our class guys play, if u c this guy, oh my god, he was so, so, so not it, ugly, short, riff-raff lukin guy lyk this, who bugged her lyf for a wyl after that, following her abt campus, as if that’s not enuf he’d follow screamin at the top of his voice, Hala (he heard her name), why are you ignoring me, you said you loved me now you want to leave me, you were the one who first looked at me (probably in disgust oh), and this fish actually pushed her to the point of tears coz not only was he embarassin her, he tried to enter her hostel (guys rnt allowed into the girls’ hostels), i swear!

So maybe I shld be thankful I have only tush and bucksed stalkers abi but all the same its tiring when there are guys all over the place who know so much about me and they wont even tell me their names or reveal themselves. Please oh, whoever know Ibrahim, who works with virgin Abuja shld help me beg him oh, mi o wa oko (I’m not lukn 4 a husband).

p.s I think I’m mad, exams are in three weeks, I don’t know jack nd I spend my time blogging and sleeping, help me somebody, I’ve taken laziness to a new level oh, besides last semester result wasn’t good, popsi must not hear, I’m still on a two one (u know how it is in law, a 1^st clas is lyk almost impossible), but g.p dropd from a 3.74 to a 3.52 last sem, but I have two results not added yet sha, hopn those’ll boost sumtn.

down in the dumps

2008-08-07T19:08:00.002+09:00

so, exams start in three weeks nd i havent even done parties to an offence (first topic in criminal law this semester), ++ i was rili rili rili hopin to get in 4 d chimamanda/binyavanga workshop, nd notification of acceptance was supposeda b aug 5 but i dont think i got in coz i dint get any mail, nd i wanted that so bad, shit, i'v got tears in my eyes again, plus boyfi nd i had a minor altercation yday nd i just wanna curl up sumplace nd cry... i'll b o.k soon, i'll b back soon but i dont kno how soon i'll write again, 2mrw, 2 weeks, wateva...

2008-07-24T19:07:00.007+09:00

1, me in my gele, openin ceremony

2, moi, shoppin

3, thaline (namibia), deola, moi and romola
4, openin ceremony, yemi from naija, a cameroonian, caleb from naija, myself in gele and anor cameroonian

pix5; view from the hostel

pix6, the ethiopian gus and caleb from 9ja, (openin ceremony)

7; cole, my crazy american friend studyn in egypt, who made me go to the cinemas wt sum oda 9ja guys nd him at nyt and come bak @past 1am(my moda mst nt hear)

8; ebi from niger delta uni @ d hector petersen memorial

9; me, in red sweater, and sum oda participants

10; sum 9ja guys wt d cameroonians

11; romola from lasu, myself, and winifred from unilag @closing lunch

12; participants.

13; me, huma, tabitha from kenya, caleb 9ja, oscar from kenya

14; 9ja ppl, lugard, caleb, ebi, gbemi, me and matt

15; moi

16; myself and teammates

17; ebi, matt, cole, romola, deola and moi

18; hector petersen memorial in vilakazi

LEPA

2008-07-23T01:35:00.003+09:00

once upon a tym, i'd stand b4 a mirror and go God, y aint i pretty, if only were taller, pls just 3 extra inches to push me to 5'7 or, god pls make me fatter, pretty please. yep, i was down on myself and felt i just was so not it, i mean see my pretty sister and me i look lyk wat?
in my teen years i was this depressed person who cldnt manage to keep her grades above average tho i wasnt even tryn to but the parents were always on my neck and i had personal probs, cldnt they c that, i mean , junior sec school, my classmates and i were all d same size but senior school and everyone had sprouted legs, grown big boobs and put on significant weight. i did grow boobs, considerable ones 4 my size but i never got to put on weight, i was thin, still am. the only time i ever weighed 49kg was when bro reset the scales, ryt now i'm on 42. i got into uni and d friends i had were no help, i dont find clothes i like in my size (except now in s.a, yep got a size 4 top, thot tops stopd at 6 but i'm a 4), so i resort to my good tailors to slim fit, clothes werent a prob but i was stil thin and my 'friends' dubbed me 'mosqui' coz they said i had mosquito legs, (now i think it was spite, they r all fat, oops, i dint say that), so anyway i was constantly goin on abt bein thin, i get cald lepa all d tym, bus conductors, passers by, everytn and it was all so frustratin. now i look back and kno i let them get to me, coz i was always goin on abt wantin to get fat but u see i hate eatin, and my genes dont lean towards fat, nope. so i had this really insecure thing abt myself and i'd think i was too thin 4 anyone (guys, now) to like or not pretty enuf and when i got told i was pretty, i'd look at the person with my bored, tell me somethin else look (i'm good with looks, i went to q.c), nyway, then came my boyfi and he'd always go i love ur size, u're perfect and bla bla bla, and i'd think he was lyin, but after a wyl i started seein it too, so many others were telln me i was pretty, even girls and its like, am i blind? i got more confident, started returnin teasin with sarcasm or just ignorin them, i got happy, as in real joy and i'd look at myself and smile, and even my body and go yep i look rili good, and as 4 my 4ma friends, i just think of wat boyfi always says; 'when they're rili fat in future, u'll b just ryt', so too bad 4 them oh. so now blogville knows the source of my addiction to mirrors and reflections, its coz sumtyms i look in a mirror and see me grinning back at me and i'm thinkin, jeez, god did a good job with me coz now i know, i wasnt ugly back then, i just blvd i was, ihavent gotten my three inches but i'm fab the way i am, nd i have such great legs oh.

Obrigado!

2008-07-11T23:15:00.002+09:00

o.k title, has nutn to do wit post, except being one of the few portugeese words i learnt in S.A, yeah, so next question is; S.A, Portugeese?, yeah, yeah, the competition i went for had about 73 african universities, anglophone, francophone and lusophone schools in all, and DrumRooooooooollllllllllll, Unilag was runner-up, along with 2 french schools and university of pretoria, the host school was first along wit uni of Ghana and a portugeese school. so i've been back since sunday and this is lyk 1st chance i'm getn to browse, been so busy, but being in S.a was soooo mucch fun, dint learn a word in any south african language, i mean there were so many schools there from all-over, that i barely noticed the south africans, will post some pictures later but for now this is just to say i'm back to naija and back to blogville, its been sooooo long, oh and savin the best for last, got to talk to buttercup, the blogger on phone, she stays in s.a but we dint get to hook up bcoz i had a tyt schedule and she was a bit far off from wir i was.
p.s. all the kenyans i met are crazy, as in really crazy people, jeez, oh and clpothes are so cheap in S.A, or at least they were, so many sales all over the place, trust me, i found time to cram shopping into my schedule.

oops, tagged

2008-06-17T01:51:00.003+09:00

chi-grace tagged me oh
here are the rules,
link the person(s) who tagged you to this post
tell six unspectacular quirks of yours
tell the rules on your blog
tag six fellow bloggers by linking them
leave a comment on their blogs letting them know they've been tagged.

o.k so here goes;
1. i always wear a silver bangle on my left wrist, as in i've been wearing it for about four years now, and its nothing spectacular nor of sentimental value, just the last of a set of about seven.
2. i paint my nails very frequently, i find it relaxing
3. i hate eating coz i think its booooooorrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnngggggggggg but i'm always praying to put on weight because my weight has never exceeded 44 k.g and dont ask what i weigh right now.
4. i don't particularly like people, as in i'm very picky about who i talk to, if we dont connect then i'll probably not talk to the person ever, even if we are in the same class or whatever.
5. i love fantasies, i lose myself in them and just forget everything else.
6. i'm really obsessed with my face, o.k not obsessed but i cant pass by a mirror without looking and that includes car windows, my phone camera and anything that'll give me a reflection... narcissus?
o.k so there they are, very unspectacular and pls i dont know how to link anybody so i'll just leave comments on blogs and who am i going to tag, seems everyone's been tagged, so o.k i'll go think of who to tag or wait, i tag whoever's reading this and is male.

on another note, please if you are a student of the university of Lagos and you write, there's a group of writers on campus who meet wednesdays to read, critique and comment on each other's works, so if you're interested, the Pen Circle re-convenes this wednesday at 4:00pm, drop a comment here or send a mail to rayosword@yahoo.com

Mark's Theory

2008-06-17T01:24:00.002+09:00

its been a week, or a it mo... been so busy, school's resumed fully as in lectures and all and twas worse coz i dint have my system and i h8 cyber cafes. so my life's been uneventful for quite a while now but what i'm writing about today is something i choose to call Mark's theory, seeing as its all Mark's opinion, Mark being a roomie's friend.
sso Mark thinks that a guy and a girl cannot be close friends without one of them feeling something more for the other, well i'm naturally programmed to argue with everything and my first instinct was to do that till i thot, girl, what the heck are u tnkn, remember P, D, O, J and even your boyfi, weren't you close friends with each of the above and dint each of them feel somethin more for you at the end of the day? oh oh, just saw that i've been tagged by Chi-Grace, will get on to that soon...
so let me start wit D, see, D and I grew up together and were oh so close and all that and then in our teenage years, he started feeling things which i did not reciprocate, now we dont even talk anylonger...
then there was J, met him thru a friend and we were close for a wyl till i started sensin that he wwas feelin more than he ought to be and that we just weren't on the same radar anylonger and i drew away and well he finally sed it one day and i'm so ashamed of myself because i went 'its ur problem, deal with it' and after wards i got a P.A for his cals, i.e a friend who'd pik my phone whenever he calls and go 'sorry, she's not around'
and of course there was P, much older P, whom i liked coz i cld talk to but he felt somethin mo and oops, there goes...
and O, oh we were so close, he was one of the rare people i could connect with, two of my friends had told me, chic, this guy likes u, but nope i chose not to c it, he was my best friend, he dared not like me especially coz he knew my policy on guy friends falln 4 me, it just ruins good friendships, so one thing, one thing, it sha came out sha, after almost two years, he liked me like that, eeyah...
and of course my boyfi, someone else i was rili close to, stil close to, so we cld talk 4 hours, liked the same music and all nd he finally asks me one day and i find myself saying 'yes', wow, i finally broke my own rule, fell 4 a best friend and well it was worth it sha...
so what do you think about Mark's theory?, i agree with him coz well, i haven't had a male best friend who did not end up feelin sumtn more, (not yet anyway).

Naira Abuse

2008-06-01T16:23:00.000+09:00

saw this picture on my sister's phone, couldnt wait to bluetooth it to mine, apparently one of our uncles had the note in question on his person, and he got it from, yes indeed, a bank!

this is a N1000 note, the highest currency denomination in nigeria, makes one wonder what the naira really is, i mean i've seen twenty naira notes that have been cut with scissors or had its edge dipped in fire, i've seen a note that had been plastered and what about those notes where its apparent that two halves of different notes have been taped together, and of course the worst are the five naira notes which are sometimes so rumpled and old that you wonder how many market women's bosoms they've passed thru, how many beggars bowls they've dwelt in and how many school children crumpled them in their pockets and finally purchased sweets with them. Is it really possible to spend the note in the picture, and for pete's sake wouldn't cellotape have sufficed as usual, why staple pins? we all know what we do with these notes, either you pay it into the bank or you spend it at a filling station coz even bus conductors no longer accept such notes and on the rare occasion when they do, please trust that you are getting a worse note as change.

Stressed to the max but loving it

2008-05-29T20:53:00.000+09:00

Been running on coffee for the last three days, so much so that the days have blurred into one another and I’m on auto pilot at present, doing things even before I can process them because I know if I stop then I’ll crash and I’ve still got till tomorrow before that’s allowed. School hasn’t resumed but I’ve been in school all week coz I and some other guys from the faculty are preparing for a competition, pulling all nights and working most of the day, its strenuous work but its also fun, we’re preparing for the annual All African Human Rights moot competition. We’ve been given a hypothetical case, we have to prepare memorials for both the applicant and respondent and we’ve been working on this for months coz slight changes are made to the question every month but May’s was the final and most significant modification and our deadline for submission to the commission is tomorrow so we’re working round the clock to make things as near perfect as they can be.
Jeez I never thought it’ld be this strenuous or tasking but its also so much fun, all the gist and getting to know people I’ve only had a passing acquaintance with in the past and this is just marvelous but I think I’ve not slept for more than 6 hours in the past 72 hours, its that bad, its also beautiful seeing as I’ve always been a lazy person who never stressed herself, (I pick up my books like 2 or 3 weeks to exams and I still wonder how I manage to get good grades), but now I’m pushing my limits and I’m not finding new limits, no, I’m realizing that there are no limits to what I can do, I’m filling my life with so much, writing, a relationship, working on this competition, blogging, and the best part is that no aspect is suffering because I’m learning to find a balance for things, and well I’m breaking new grounds for myself so excuse me if I’m too ecstatic but its new for me to do some serious multi-tasking and its putting me on such a high, o.k. well maybe that’s the coffee…
p.s. I’m writing this while waiting for the meeting to start coz I know I might not be able to write again today so I’ll post this later.

facing my fears

2008-05-27T03:55:00.000+09:00

today was such a boring day, can't wait for this hols to come to an end, any way saw p-square's 'no one like you' video and i think that's my fav p-square video now, oh and saw the video of D'banj, Wande Cole's 'pere', was kinda disappointed, i mean i really like that song but that video was a bit boring.

yeah, let me get to what i want to blog about today, i'm trying to shame myself into doing a lot of things, facing my fears and all...

I don’t dance… no, no that’s wrong, I do only in front of my mirror, I’m a legend in church, ramrod straight and folded arms during praise, for the 15 years i've been in that church. See its not that I can’t dance its just that I’m too stuck up to do so (yeah right!), actually I’m too scared to do so coz I think I might not look so good digging it… the one time I let myself get roped into being a bridesmaid, it was a disaster, all the maids and the grooms were getting their grooves on, on the dance floor and I was just standing, my partner beat me… a woman at dancing, pathetic, he didn’t even have to try hard, simply swaying would have been enough…but ta da, roll out the drums, I decided to let go of my fears and let myself be coaxed into doing a dance routine in church with some friends and everybody thought it was really good, so yep I dance well…
Haven’t been writing in a while, its not that I can’t anymore, the ideas still flow, its just that I’m scared, scared that what I write won’t be as good as in d past I mean for a while I seemed to have the golden touch and all my stories were turning out good and then wrote some stuff I could not even bear to re-read and then just kind of got scared, been putting it off so much that time’s passed, a lot of time and now I’m trying to face my fears by accepting that its not that I can't, its just that I’m scared to, scared of what I’ll write…
Its dawning on me how many other things in my life I have ignored or let lie fallow because I don’t think I can do them and I know its not just me, most of us are like that about some things and we lose a lot, a whole lot and it just reminds me of a friend telling me, ‘you’re lucky to have talents and even if you have a lot, you should not let a single one go to waste’. Its time for me to stop thinking about stuff, stop dreaming, get my head out of those wishes (I’m good at losing myself in them). Its time for me to start doing something, write a word, a line, a page and before I know it I’ll have another story and if it’s not good, I’ll just have to work on it and if it still isn’t good, I’ll tear up the pages and write me a new one. I’m still scared, still skeptical about my abilities but I’ll just never know if I don’t do it will I?, and I think there’s only one thing worse than failing and that is, not starting… because of fear.
Well so I guess its time to bring out my dancing shoes and a pen, yeah, yeah, I’m kind of using this little piece as a defense, I mean, I just wrote right? O.k. o.k. I’ll go write a story now… phew!

p.s. if what i write is passable, maybe i'll post it someday

finally!

2008-05-26T05:32:00.000+09:00

so, here goes my first post, like, finally i'm blogging... been reading blogs for over a year now and i've been dreaming about starting mine since like forever, got talking to this guy last week and from my own words discovered how lazy i really am and how much stuff i've been wishing and dreaming i could do for years without ever taking steps to start doing any of them so here's what i'm starting with, a blog, i hope twill be the blog of my dreams and maybe dancing will be next, then photography, then maybe i'll write a novel some day too, but first i gotta stick to this blog... i'm like wow! i'm finally getting off my lazy behind.