Much Needed Break

Hello guys, hope y'all are keeping well (yea yea went to yankee for 5 days and now am saying y'all...lmao!). Yes o, I went for a short break in Maryland/DC and met the delectable Abbie. She's such a lovely person and I dont mean to sound patronising but frankly its refreshing to know people like her still exists. My good time started with her, she bought me lunch and showed me some lovely shops for me to do my shopping. This was all in Maryland and on Friday I hooked up with an old friend in DC who I hadn't seen in six years. I dont know how they do it in Yankee but this dude was so generous to the point that he paid for me to stay at the 5* Grand Hyatt, organised for us to go on a cruise and took me to the Baltimore Aquarium. Such magnanimity astounds me especially when it comes from someone not expecting anything back.

One of the highlights of my trip occurred in Baltimore. We had parked like a mile away from the aquarium as we didnt really know where it was. We had to leg it to the place and while walking his eyes caught what he thought was yoruba language written on a stone slab buried into the ground. He called my attention to it and alas it turned out to be the most shocking discovery. See for yourself!

The translation is this;

My only thinking is that this was carved into the grounds built by our forefathers who were taken as slaves. There were other languages such as Chinese and Arabic I think. He tried to explain to me that Baltimore is historically known to be a town where slaves where taken to when they were shipped off Africa. Does anyone know anything about this?

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On a lighter note, everyday I have reasons to believe that men are indeed from mars. I think I blogged about how my ex's best friend was asking me out and I told him to get stuffed. Well one of his chatting lines was that he had spoken to my ex and he agreed to him asking me out. Of course I found this ridiculous believing that my ex would never agree to such a thing seeing as he was my first and bla bla bla. In fact a while ago we were discussing getting back together but for the fact that he went to take this Charity job that made it frustrating to communicate so we forgot about that. You can imagine my surprise when his dear old friend told me he had given his go ahead for us to date. Fuming I waited patiently until he was out of the bush that he normally goes to work and after like over 6 weeks of waiting I finally was able to contact him. So I asked him if truly he had given his friends his blessing for us to date and he said well he cant strictly say that but he did tell his friend that if he was interested in me he could go ahead.

By now I was reeling from the shock of his revelation and wondered what he took me for. He tried to placate me and said the reason he said that was because it was not his place to decide who I now like no matter how special things were between us. He then gave me an analogy that if a master had taken his time to look after a dog from when it was a puppy and they had formed a bond and become almost inseparable. Then someone comes along and decides to take the dog from the master he said the natural thing the dog will do is bite and fight the intruder away. In a nutshell he expected me to say NO to his friend but he would not prevent his friend from asking me out. Obviously he was happy that I told his friend where to go but I just cant help but wonder at how men really think. I mean its totally abnormal. A friend of mine cant come to me and says she fancies my ex however long ago it was and I'll say to her to go ahead. Even though I may not mind them dating obviously cos I would have moved on, I will never give her the impression that I don't mind. Anyway I just find it rather funny.

Need to do my blog rounds now guys and it does feel nice to be back to my routine! Have a good week.

Drought

I cant believe I'm barely 3 months in blogville and I'm already experiencing drought of words. I give it to y'all who've kept faithfully to it...seriously I doff my hat. I dont know what brought on the drought, if its my recent challenges or simply that I dont have writing as innate as I would love to believe. Whichever the reason, I've got an even better reason to put up this post, YOU ALL. Blogville is really a wonderful place to be and thanks to all those who checked up on me...I love you all.

So where do I start? Of all places to think about slavery, I chose the bathroom to do it this morning. If am not wrong, October is black history month in the UK which inadvertently includes a reference to the slave trade. So why the hell was I thinking about the slave trade in June with lather all over my body? Well it must have been the Monday morning blues as I was trying to convince myself that slavery is not over yet. Its got to be slavery if I have to wake up at 6:30 am to go and push the pennies doing what I hate and what I don't wanna do. I tried to compare the slavery 200 years ago to now. Now, one deliberately subjects oneself to slavery while 200 years ago people were forced into it. 

Perhaps I got depressed that I will no longer have the pleasure to catch city boy's 'squaremile' gossip column any more as he quit for a better life. Well City boy is an investment banker. He makes shit load money and as we talk he has £3million in bank...that's just a million shy of what the company I used to work for had in bank. His slavery paid off big time. He worked graveyard hours, doing hideous tasks while having to kiss asses of clients he really hated their guts. To show his disgust, he wrote his article every week in the London paper breaking banking codes and exposing well kept secrets of city workers. We his avid readers pitied him and at the same time envied him. Well city boy packed it all in last week after he made sure his fattest bonus ever had been banked. Now I really wish I had that kind of a choice. 

While I was depressingly having my shower, my life flashed in front of me and I just didnt like the fact that I was going to that job. I know y'all will be like this parakeet sef, she whinges too much but welcome to the life of a 26 year old London gurl who still lives at home. Candidly, I thought extensively about the slave trade and the monotony that has become the life of many and I just wondered what the way out was. Not content, I linked the slave trade to nuclear power and the dominance of the West in world politics and the simple question I asked was, if at the time the west invaded africa and saw how helpless our forefathers were and instead of helping them, took them for slaves, how are we to trust that if the continued to advance on the nuclear power production, there wont be a repetition of the slave trade albeit in different ways? Are we to trust that where their fore-fathers were lacking in conscience that the new generation will have in abundance. Did I hear someone say food for thought? 

Well I moved on from there and got angry at our forefathers, why didnt they fight? Why did they just subject themselves to these people? Surely it is better to die once a valiant than die nine times a coward. But then I was like what do I know? As if I was there to be really sure and again I discovered that most of the things I know today of the slave trade were written by foreigner or shall I say scholars in the West. My history, written by someone else? How am I suppose to know the real truth behind the black race, of their struggles and there triumphs and it seemed to me like I have been cast into an abyss...I mean who knew that stories like that of the Great Debaters existed before Oprah and Denzel came together to tell it? I cant recollect where my trail of thoughts stopped but I marvel at my mind. Gosh, how did I manage to think of so much in the 15 minutes it takes to have my bath?

Anyways all said and done, I had a good day even though I had a slow start too the day. I have been happier these past few days as well, as I have learnt not to commit things to heart too much. I think that is what drags me down and am glad I've come out on top of it now.  Meanwhile am looking for my cousin...I will introduce her in my next post.

Have a good week everyone and keep smiling.