For the Love of Nigeria

There are so many things going through my mind right now and I can't even find an appropriate title for this post. I don't intend it to be a long post but I'll see if that's possible.

So I saw 'Welcome to Lagos' last night. A 3 part series of life in Lagos, well life in the slums of Lagos. In the the program makers words, "We were heading for the ghettos and slums" and when they got there they said "the dump became symbolic of everything we were trying to achieve in the films". So this people had an agenda, to feed into the stereotype that Nigeria is a lawless country, with poverty stricken people, rife with corruption and social unrest and home to creators of email scams.

What did they find? Yes they saw the slums, perhaps much worse than they could ever imagine but it must have been shocking for them to find decent, honest people who prefer a life of grime to a life of crime. "People who are proud of the fact that they earn an honest living, and are making a better life for themselves and their families through sheer determination and hard work". (Quoting Will Anderson, one of the programe makers.)

I've had tons of emails from friends who are unhappy with the way Nigeria was once again portrayed in a negative light. In fact when I saw the program last night I thought this documentary will show a balanced view of Lagos only to find out that was not the intention of BBC. The normal me would have been effing and blinding alongside my disgruntled friends but for some reason I've been smiling contentedly.

In contrast to most people, the program didn't leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I chose instead to see the positive message in it. The voiceover was more positive, almost a celebration of the resilience of Nigerians who live in such squalor. It may seem patronising because the images showed something different to the words but I'm ever the optimist.

The shock though is that as someone who lived in Lagos I didn't realise people lived like that. Even the bigger shock is the fact that the Lagos State Government is aware that these people exist and is doing nothing about it. I think that program needs to be aired in Nigeria to shame our politicians . Also the international community should stop allowing Politicians into their country until they fix our country. But we all know this is impossible. There's far too much to be gained from a country of both abundant natural and human resources for any sane nation not to want to be its ally.

What's my point. We can all be angry with these British Broadcasters or we can do something positive about it. We can paint the picture of the Nigeria we want them to see. Let's be frank, the media in most part of the world sensationalise everything. You think a successful tale of a country like Nigeria will make good TV? Heck no! That country is far too blessed already for Broadcasters around the world to air positive things about it. Instead they will concentrate on the ironies.

We have to go out there in numbers and in unity and not only tell the Nigerian stories we want the world to hear but also play out the Nigerian story we want the world to tell about our country through positive and influencing actions. It can be done and it starts with little steps from those people who are in the lowest ebb of our society through to the top.

NIGERIA! YES WE CAN!

Easter

...It's essence is lost on me. I don't know the real reason for this and I'm not about to dish out blames on the commercialisation of the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ by Westerners but I just know the period doesn't mean what it used to mean to me. There was a time when Easter meant a recalling of my sins to mind, a conscious effort not to participate in the persecution of Jesus Christ by eating meat on Good Friday and a true repentance of my sins on Easter Sunday followed by a heart felt celebration of the risen Lord on Easter Monday. That used to be me. Being catholic, I would have fasted one way or the other during lent and went for benediction every single day. I hated it but I felt a need to do it because after spending an hedonistic year eating and doing whatever I liked, I felt this was a time for me to be sober and be more reflective of how my actions may have displeased God and my fellow human.

This Good Friday gone, I spent the better part of the day driving from South Wales to England enjoying the comfort of the rented car I was driving, I had no care in the world and I totally forgot that some thousand years ago, as a Christian, someone died for me in order that I may have life and live it abundantly. After the tiresome drive, to show how insignificant the day had become to me, I cooked that night and ate meat. The moment I finished my meal I then remembered, OMD I just ate meat! Too late! The sheepish smile from my Muslim boyfriend did little to console me.

Saturday went by uneventful and I swore I was going to attend church on Easter Sunday. It was the least I could. However yours truly didn't wake up until 11:25 the following morning when church service was already underway. The baffling thing was that I did not feel any guilt, neither did I feel like I was missing out on anything. Now this is a far cry from who I used to be. I used to take church and my prayers very seriously. So what happened to me? Is it the environment or the fact that I'm so disillusioned by church and its activities rather than be inspired by it? I have developed such an acute sense of listening to my Pastor's teaching and I find myself I picking out everything he says. These days I tend to sift through the words, jotting down the ones I agree with and silently chastising him for the ones I feel are more 'Sales man type speech'. I never used to be that way. Before, everything my Pastor said was the word of God and even if it didn't sound right I just make it right in my head.

Am I well and truly backslidden or is this some sort of the awareness that I should just go with?

Why Doesn't Love Go Far Enough?

Okay so you know you love this person right. As in not a minute passes on your watch that you don't think of them. You're generally very happy and very contented with things. On the flip side though, you get the down times.

Like the times you get so angry you dont wanna speak to them. The times you just don't give a toss about being kind or doing and saying the right things. Why cant love intervene at these crucial times? Times where you two just speak but are actually not hearing or listening to each other, or times when every little thing the other person does just riles you, or you row about the simplest of things. Why cant love step in and save the day?

Where's love when that blinding fury comes to the fore? Did love take a flight at the exact moment those horrible words spurtered out of your mouth? Where was love hiding when all you see are faults? Why cant love help you to be patient, not to say unkind words, to understand the other person better, to suppress that brewing fury from the pit of your belly, to be more appreciative. Why cant it just be there always, present everytime and makes everything sail smoothly and guide you on the right path?

Dear love, why can't you just be damn enough!

Some Friends

...do go past their sell by dates.

In the past 2 weeks I've had some profound experiences and they are all connected to people that I call friends. It is nothing new that different friends play different roles in our lives, while some are important, most one can live without. I have a habit of calling everyone 'friend' but it's purely for lack of something better to call them. The ones I chat to almost weekly but hardly see, the one's I've never met but exchange emails with, the ones I went to school with, ones I met randomly. They are all friends but different kind of friends. Some of them I can't even stand either for their aggressiveness, inconsistencies or whatever but I put up with them anyway. Lately however, I've asked myself, why? Some friends I actually care deeply about and wish us to be closer but I hardly make a concerted effort to make that happen, again I ask why?

One pattern I've noticed about me is that the people who come through for me at the most dire times are those distant friends. Distant in the sense that I don't know them very well, we hardly hang out or even communicate. Only lately did I have one friend that I know she's done more for me and I've trusted more than I've trusted anyone in my entire life. Generally I've just lived my life meeting different people who have had both good and bad impacts in my life and those I question why I met in the first place.

Last week I was out of town in a foreign land and one of those I'll call a distant friend was there for me. I was extremely surprised about his magnanimity and that of his wife. This is someone I hadn't even picked my phone to call in a year until the week I was due to take my flight. I only just called him to let him know I was going to be in the neck of his wood but he dropped everything to show me round and keep me company. I'm still left wondering if I could do the same for someone I don't know very well.

This week however, another friend I've had for about 7 years let me down. He simply couldn't be happy for me with regards to certain developments in my life and that hurt me real bad. But I've asked my God to surprise him and sooner rather than later he'd be sorry. Sometimes we think certain people are our friends when in actual fact they are simply jealous of us. Some even think they are better than you while others are just interested in sharing the latest gossip with you. When you really look at it you have very little in common so why bother with the so-called friendship in the first place?

Today I celebrate friends, true friends. The ones worth having, the ones who love you in-spite of your flaws, the one who plan your future with you, the ones who laugh and cry with you, the ones who share silly nothings as well as the serious stuff with you, the ones you never see but who's got your back no matter what, the ones who scold you when needed and do not shy away from the truth, the ones who you feel comfortable to bare your heart and soul to. To Afrobabe and the special man in my life.

It'd be a Shame Really...

...if I let January go without even putting up one post. So here it is. Happy new year my peoples. Not that anyone will be reading this anyway since I haven't done blog rounds in eons. I don't even know what's going on here in Blogville anymore, well except that Aloofar put up a post. Wow! A little bird tells me that our very own loved up couple Chari and Buttercup are back too. Happy days. I'm not joining the am back crew as I didn't go anywhere but it's nice to finally get around to writing something. So hey once more, happy new year.

I know a lot of us would have made resolutions and broken them already. Won't say welcome to the club cos I stopped making them a few years back. Resolutions are one of those 'jump on the bandwagon' things that most of us do. They do it, we do it. But as we become individuals in our own right we realise what it is we really should be doing. I guess am there when it comes to that.

So what's the new year been like so far? It's been somewhat okay. I've noticed I've turned into some sort of rebel at work. Scary! Always the first to tell management where to shove it! Am loving my new notoriety actually. Home front things are not great. Not really getting on with Mama at the moment and I couldn't help but think am getting a little too big for my own boots. Maybe it's not arrogance, maybe I just want change and I know being a jelly and a yes woman ain't gonna work anymore.

Personally am trying to develop myself mentally. You know wean myself off some bad habits in readiness for the great things I know is coming my way this year. Omo e no easy. Does anyone out there have patience in abundance? Parakeet needs some biko. I think am gonna start a charity for patience donation. I also need to learn to relax. Worry is like my middle name. I'm obsessed with planning so if there's something in the way that causes me not to have a good idea of what the near future holds I start to panic. I like to be in control of what happens around me so much that I forgot that God is really the one who runs things around here. So I'm trying everyday to call to mind the mercies of God more and more and to remind myself that he is God after all.

I've missed the partying scene a bit. Girlfriends have gone and got themselves boyfriends so everyone is cosying up with their man. Not that I have a problem with that. My man won't be complaining neither would theirs so everyone is happy. The other thing though is this winter. This has got to be the longest winter ever. Weytin! The cold is mercilessly relentless and I know we humans are never satisfied but mehn this one too much. This winter practically finished my mojo so right now I wanna skip spring...bring on summer sharp sharp. But in this UK that'll probably last only one week.

A lot can really happen in a month...

Nigeria is My Country, I Have a Right to Discuss It

It is possible to live in decay and not know it
It started right before your eyes
You noticed the first crack but you procrastinated
I'll go back and fix it another day
Then that crack causes another crack
Yet again you noticed but failed to act
Afterall you have your hands full with other stuff that needs immediate attention
Until the whole thing bloody cracks
That you no longer notice it
Even though those cracks cut you here and there
It's nothing you're not used to it
So you don't see it as a big deal
People on the other side see how damaged things are
But you live in the damage so you don't know
When they mention it you tell them to keep shut and mind their own business
Yet in your mind you feel perplexed about your plight
Nothing a brave face in public wont cure, you assure yourself.
No matter how much you psyche yourself up
No matter how much you refuse to see the problem
It doesn't take the problem away
It is there and will always be there no matter how much your denial grow.
Nigeria has a problem, let us see it
If you're going to make an enemy of the person who points out a problem but profers no solution
and make a friend of the person who just fails to see the problem
then you're a bigger fool than I thought
I kid myself not
I am overwhelmed by the multiple problems we face as a nation
I dont even know if there's anything I can do to help
But please let no one tell me I cant discuss my country
Discussing a problem is not the same as tarnishing the image of the country
Please know the difference and keep your peace.

This Love Palaver Sef

So it's another Monday and while making my commute to work I was listening to songs on my Samsung Tocco. As I settled on my choice train seat my best heartbreak song came on; Think Twice by Celine Dion. Thinking of it now I don’t know which is my best between that song and that of Whitney Houston, Heartbreak Hotel. Having suffered two heartbreaks within the last two years those songs never fail to remind me of the pain I actually went through and the various things I did to cope with them. My dating life is rather chequered and full of drama and while I loved the highs in my early twenties, I think as I've grown older I've become less resilient.

I thought specifically about my heartbreak before the most recent. That happened more like a dream really because I wasn't expecting it. I mean we were planning on moving in together and starting our own family after deciding that the marriage route was not for us and zap! he was gone! I failed to believe I was never going to see him again after that fateful morning that he kissed my sleepy head goodbye. If I had known that was the last time I would see him I would have got my lazy ass out of bed and at least seen him off to the airport, hugged him tightly and cried on his shoulder. At least let that scene haunt him for the rest of his life…if he has a heart that is. How did I cope with it? Well I splashed out on a party and just hit the club scenes until I danced him out of my system. The anger and betrayal I felt kind of helped too and the fact that I soon got myself involved in a lusty relationship soon afterwards that I knew wasn't going anywhere. Lust did help me a lot but when that ended it was just as bad as the heartbreak because once again I felt empty and betrayed. I have no one to blame but me.

My most recent heartbreak started really from the inception of the short-lived relationship. Not having met someone to remotely like in the past year I met this seemingly plain looking man but with bags of personality. It wasn't love at first sight but after sleeping and waking up the next day and dreamt of him, I started to pay him a lot more attention. The sail went on from there really and I didn't know what it was but I just couldn't get enough of this guy. I wanted to speak to him all the time and spend all my days with him. He on the other hand was trying to be cautious and he claimed he didn’t understand how I am so into him since I seem to have a healthy social life. He was right, even I didn’t know especially as he didn't have a good profile. Here, I was dealing with a divorced father of two who listened to dodgy music and had zero social credentials. But who understands how these feelings work eh? Apart from that he clearly had a lot going on in his head because he kept questioning my 'realness' and he was pretty mean to me on so many levels. I didn't mind though. I wanted to prove to him that I was the real deal and while doing this I over-compensated for my worldliness and did a few stupid things which marked the end of the relationship. He called off the relationship out of the blue and all my plea fell on deaf ears. I literally felt my world was coming to an end. As a fighter and not ready to let go yet I somehow brought things back on track but really things were never the same again except for the sex which could never be bad even if we tried.

After we got back together, his questioning of my realness didn't stop and coupled with finding out some unpalatable facts about him I decided it was time to dump his ass and I did. I revealed what I found to him and said hurtful things to him thinking that was it. Only my stupid feelings for him wouldn't let me. I went back grovelling and true to his meanness he told me where to go. He even spurned my friendship. That was a first. Looking back at how I coped, I figured I actually didn’t cope because the whole drama started two weeks into our relationship and it was a real rollercoaster. So this wasn't one massive heartbreak, it was a systematic one and one which when I had the bad days it was pretty bad and the good days were really good. It was hard for me to be angry at him. In the end he came out of the relationship smelling of roses and me as the scarlet woman. Somehow in the whole charade, what really went down was lost on both of us and I was left with heaps of blames even though deep down I know I wasn't to blame. We were just two mis-matched people who couldn't make things work.

I am on the other side now looking back, enjoying the little things of life. I guess in life we go through certain things so as to appreciate little blessings.

Have a good one guys.