Sojourner

The Sojourner's sojourn ends here.

As a minimalist, is it too much to ask for simplicity that actually works ALL the time?!

For five days now I've not been able to blog on Shoutpost. Maybe the site admin is working out some bugs - there are always bloody bugs to work out. I love the concept really, but I don't have the patience to leave my thoughts hanging in limbo till they get around to fixing it so I'm leaving Shoutpost.

If anyone is interested in keeping with my blog they may drop by here.

Peace.

10/07/2007

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Down but not beaten

~ What happens when too many opinionated people get together in a room?

~ It's confirmed. I'm down with either malaria or a very terrible flu. I normally sleep off my illnesses. This evening however, when I woke up from a rejuvenating nap feeling like a truck had run me over in my sleep, I knew there was more to it than a bad flu. I can't even describe how my head feels right now. It's not a feeling I wish on anyone.

~ My hand made journal is coming along. Sticking bits of paper together is the most interesting thing I can do when I'm sweating like a goat while trying to breathe through stuffed nostrils. Besides the monotony helps me think. I've got the front cover... unfortunately I don't know how to make it stop bending and folding up at the edges when I put it to dry under the sun.

~ Now that I have lots of time on my hands I don't know what to do. I considered learning a craft, maybe bead making, sewing, knitting, fish rearing... one of those. Then I remembered how continuous monotony drives me mad! Maybe if I had a baby... haha! Having babies out of boredom. The malaria has definitely entered my cerebellum or wherever it is the thinking takes place. Imagine hubby telling our child one day, "Son/daughter, your mum and I decided to have you because she was bored, you see, and needed something to play with."

~ I was looking through dad's old pictures. He grew up in the funky seventies with afro hair, platform shoes, tight shirts and fitting bell bottom pants. I found it hard to believe it was my dad. Back then he was young and free and lithe, without wrinkles and knew not what the future had in store for him. Someday I'll be old too, God willing. And my skin, my beauty, the gleam in my eyes will be remembered only by those who knew me in my youth. And my kids will probably laugh at how I dressed. According to hubby I'll be alone there because he will be the cool dad.

I often joke with him about how we'll look like when we're old with most of our teeth missing. He says God forbid he should still be alive when his teeth are falling out. I share some of his sentiments. Wouldn't want to be old to the point of being an invalid. Even if you had loving, caring kids, they will still wish deep down you were gone already so they could move on with their lives.

08/07/2007

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Mini Bytes 

~What I thought would be a story about us is turning out to be a mini biography. A lot of things came a' pouring once the bolts on the floodgates loosened. That's so typical of self. Give her a millimeter and she wants ten thousand miles.

~I'm coming down with something. This afternoon as I lay on my bed with a stuffed nose and blanket pulled up the way to my chin, an idea popped into my head. I said to self, "Make a journal. A life journal. Start from scratch then put everything in it." I'm going to soak the newspaper tonight for the papier-mâchéd cover.

~This writing-for-a-few-hours-daily thing is unnecessarily frustrating. When I want to write, I write OKAY! Two nights ago I was up almost the entire night writing. Look, I write when the writing is good. Don't make me feel just because I don't religiously write from the hours of seven and nine every morning I'm not good enough. Screw you!

~When we were courting I noticed hubby took a lot of sweet drinks. Sometimes he drank as much as two bottles per day. When I complained he said everyone is entitled to their own little vice. After all he doesn't drink, smoke, gamble, fornicate or blaspheme God. Be that as it may, I told him, diabetes runs in your family, you have to be extra careful. He told me it was difficult to quit. I told him change takes time...This was when he promised he would stop after we got married. I wasn't happy he had to postpone it till after marriage so I promptly filed it away as one of those things men promise women they'll do/not do after marrying them.

After we got married I noticed he gradually stopped taking them. I woke up one morning and realized he quit! When I offered him, he refused! I was so proud of my baby. When I told my mum about it - I'd complained to her several times before - she said he must really love me to actually kick a since-childhood habit. I beamed then.

Yet there I was thinking he was making empty promises, that everything I said was entering one ear and coming out the next. Sometimes we women ought to give credit where due.

I love that man!

*

You fill up my senses

Like a light in the forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again

Come let me love you

Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

Come let me love you

Come love me again

- John Denver, You Fill up my Senses.

08/07/2007

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Self, I think I'm finally going to get around to it. Remember hubby has been hounding me about writing our story. And we do have something beautiful together, don't we? You know the reason I've been hesitating don't you? Yes, you do self. I've been too jealous and possessive of what we have to want to share. But sometimes we forget. I don't want that to happen. I don't want to search the recesses of my mind and poke through the folds of my memory for those magical moments. So here goes:

Our Story

September 8^th 2005. NYSC temporary orientation camp, Okada Grammar School, Okada, Edo State, Nigeria.

B was sitting on a bench in one of the classrooms that was being used as registration hall. There were hundreds of would be corpers milling around clutching white files that contained academic transcripts and all other relevant documents. The sun bore down hard, the heat unbearable, making it difficult to comprehend the madness. Outside there were several queues that snaked all the way around the block. A handful of disorganized camp officials were struggling to contain a volcano of frustrated corpers from erupting.

I was being tossed from desk to desk. As a foreign student my center didn't follow the order of local universities. I must have been ambling around the hall seeking reprieve from the sweltering heat when our eyes met. The first thing I remember about B is his smile. Not all, but a particular smile. The kind you want to frame and hang on your wall because you only experience it once yet want the memory to live on forever.

When our eyes met he flashed me a coy, non-committal yet acknowledging smile. The kind that creeps unto your face when you're unexpectedly caught staring. Coming from a seven year old, it would have made you want to ruffle his hair affectionately. Coming from him, my world tilted a teensy bit.

Not knowing what to do I nodded at him and walked it off. Hoping he'd go away yet not wanting him to disappear.

To be continued...

07/07/2007

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Umar Abubakar Sidi

I don't know him. I only know his poetry and it moved me.

I WOULD NOT MIND...

Asma'u

I would not mind

If you

give me your face

I would not mind to cut to pieces:

Slice off your long pointed nose

Soak it in vanilla ice cream

And swallow it up

I would not mind;

To plant a tulip of poetry

On your lips

Pick up your eyes and paint on them

The poems of my heart

I would not mind

To sculpt a verse of love on your cheeks

And hang it where it will swing freely in my heart

And the essence of your face

I'll gather together, bake, smear in honey

And chew as the gum of love

Then I'll rise through the pillars of bliss, fed with love

And chant Ayyuruuruiii

Or does that sound odd?

I would not mind

If you will give me your face

Even if you have to cut it

Off your head with a blade

As long as that blade,

Is the sharpest blade of love

I would not mind, Asma'u

I would not mind

**

I'm still speechless. When I get over the euphoria of my discovery, I'll be able to articulate why his poetry speaks to me so profoundly.

06/07/07

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Some things never change

Today I went to the passport office to get my international passport redone. Reason is I don't like the photo, though it was issued just two weeks ago. Heaven knows what I was thinking. I looked like a market woman! The day it was taken I wasn't prepared at all. I look at it now and I think to myself, "Is this the woman I want to be identified as for the next ten years?" (cause after five years, self, you get to do a renewal!)

This time around I was rolling it in a grey suit on a pair of black pants, a striped black and white shirt and a nice scarf. I felt confident leaving the house. Walked with my head held up high, in confident strides. I had a sense of purpose, like my life had meaning. Then I thought to myself, "Yes! This is how a woman should feel everyday."

Unlike the ‘other' picture. Whenever I look at it I feel like I have a basket of fish somewhere I need to be selling.

So I arrive at the passport office oozing with charm and confidence. My cup was half full baby! And all that... I stroll into the office of the person I was supposed to meet. As soon I 'emphatically' explain my crisis, the whole room busted out in a guffaw of laughter. You'd think I just pulled up my shirt and spotted three green nipples.

That was when Mr. A, the man seated at the table across took it upon himself to try and convince me out of it. I got the lecture of my life from a self-appointed-unrelated uncle figure.

"Haba, madam, it's okay now. Your face is clear, now. Anyone seeing it will know it's you."

"It's not about my face being clear. It's about looking like a market woman instead of a professional business woman."

"You don't even look like business woman to me.  You're dressed more like a banker"

"Do business women have uniforms? And is being a banker not a professional job?"

"In fact you don't even look like someone that has a job." He continues.

(Great logic there!)

"Whatever. You still don't understand, I don't like it. I want it changed, period." I said.

At this point Mr. B, a diffident soul who had been quiet all along and who I had no business with, and who, apparently, couldn't bear the blatant display of ‘stupidity' any longer opened his mouth.

"You this woman,'" he said, indignantly, "You have nothing better to do!"

My eyes flared wide open and I said, "Don't insult me. DON'T YOU DARE INSULT ME! It's not you came to see and I'm not using your money. You don't even know me, so?"

Mr. A told Mr. B to pipe down and begged me to ignore his statement. Then he whipped out his national ID card and showed me the picture. I couldn't help but laugh. It was utterly murderous! He looked like Mike Tyson had been doing practice punches on his face when it was taken.  I got his intention and said, "Well, that's you guys. You don't mind such things, but we do."

"Aha," he said, like someone who just received a revelation, "I see, you're one of those women."

He turned to the man next to me and said, "You see, it is women like this that kill their husbands."

I heard myself screaming, "Oga, I dey here O! No dey talk like say I don comot from your office."

He looked at me and said, "Madam, no be you I dey talk to." And promptly ignored me.

"As I was saying," he turned to the man again, "Women like this make life hell for their husbands. The poor man had to fork out the money for a new passport, and for what? Because his wife insists she looks like a market woman. Won't this sort of thing be the end of the poor man?"

I sat all through the lecture not directed at me. He finished it off with a story about a judge that had to dissolve a marriage because the wife was ‘bad' for the husband's ‘health'. He said unfortunately the man loved the woman so much after the marriage ended he died because he couldn't stand being apart. (Whatever I'm supposed to make of it, only he and his Creator knows)

Some things never change. Nigerians still feel their neighbors business is their concern. I have to mention before the lecture, they earnestly begged me not to waste my money. I guess they felt if they couldn't convince me, they could yab me (make fun of someone in a friendly way) and have a good time at it.

I love our communal spirit. Nobody will ever pass you by when you're in need pretending not to care. I love that even in a big bustling metropolitan like Abuja people still care about one another in their own way. When something goes wrong people warn you. And if they see you making a mistake they try to talk you out of it. And if they see you bullying someone that ought not to be bullied they rally round and make sure you don't get away without a beating or two.

Though it can be misapplied sometimes, I love this about my country people.

05/07/2007

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Wooot!

My short story finally appeared on AfricanWriter. If I had been a little more patient I would have noticed the front page is updated monthly.

Finally I can proffer links to my writings and mouth rather smugly, "I have some finished works, too."

It's a step.

04/07/2007

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Standing Naked

That's how I've always felt blogging. As if I am standing naked before the world. As if I were a cadever lying on an operating table with students poking and prodding every part of my body. Exposed is the word. But it sounds forced. Naked is more voluntay.

Yet I find it irresistable. The writer in me wants to express herself. The privacy freak in me castigates her for being too obvious about it. These two will never reconcile themselves. Thats why I tend to slaughter my darlings... how many of my works have I murdered because I thought they were too revealing?

It's becoming a real problem for me. One part wants to fly, the other part tells it, "Your armpits will be exposed when you spread your wings."

My teacher once said truth is one of the greatest mysteries of good writing. I recall reading somewhere else that the world will not end because some woman told the truth. It's all true in a warped philosophical way... yet I can't stop wondering if the world is really ready for the truth. Or more importantly, if I am ready to tell it.

Truth doesn't have to be scandalous. It doesn't have to be a vivid description about how you lost  your virginity. It doesn't have to be gauche or tawdry either. All it needs to say are three words: I am human.

*

Hubby called this evening. Hearing his voice over the phone always makes me weak. And for reasons known only to me I can't think straight. I just love the way his words languidly roll into one another. He's wholly masculine with a deep baritone voice. I once joked that he needed to tone down the bass in his voice because it was being muffled up by the signal and I couldn't hear him clearly. He laughed out loud and that instantly short circuted a part of my brain.

03/07/2007

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Between me and her 

Never ask a man to choose between his wife and his mother. As a wife, try not to put him in a situation whereby he's forced to choose between you both. You'll only make a miserable man of him. And he might even hate you ever so slightly by putting him between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

*

After getting married we had to stay at the family house for sometime, pending when we sorted ourselves out. It still being our honeymoon period and all my mother inlaw pampered us a bit by treating us to her special dishes. It was quite a treat too, I must say because she's a professional caterer with decades of experience to her nimble hands. 

Unfortunately mum number two cooks with more oil than I'm used to. Twenty something years of eating mostly my mums cooking made it difficult for me to accept the sudden change. Even if my mind wanted to excuse it, it told on my body. In that short time my face, chest and back were infested with pimples. My T zone was so shiny it could almost deflect sunlight, thus contributing to the worldwide malady of global warming.

I made the sorry mistake of pointing it out to my husband one evening. I practically refused to eat the food because it was too oily. If that didn't already peeve him, I made a show of dabbing with a serviette the edges of the dish were the oil had oozed unto. Then I commented, "Your mum cooks with too much oil." And yapped on about it for the next five minutes.

He didn't say a thing. He was distant all through till the following day.

Later in the evening I don't know what I said that made him spark. All of a sudden he was in my face about me disparaging his mother!

For someone who is rational and logical he was quick to take offence. His eyes were wide open and his nostrils flared. He drummed on about how ignorant I was to make such a remark. Didn't I know his mum has been cooking many,many years before I was born. Blah..blah..blah..

It was a matter of fact that his mum cooked with more oil than my mum did. But he took it to mean a negatively implied statement on her overall culinary skills.

I stood there feeling small, and insignificant and on the brink of tears.

It was much later I realized the pain he was going through. You see, my hubby noticed the sudden pimple infestation and was bothered by it cause it was ruining my skin. He also knew I had a change of diet. He knew too what was causing it. But because he loved his mum he couldn't bring himself to accept the fact that she may have been responsible. Rather than admit it he lashed out on me for stating it. A real life instance of killing the messenger, if I had never seen one.

There are things I will accept and there are times accepting it depends on who is relaying the message. If the truth involves someone I love being put down and I didn't love the person doing the relaying as much as I did the person concerned, I would have a hard time accepting it. I'd even get mad too. It's only natural. But deep down when I'm more settled I'll reflect and something will tell me, if I know the truth, to accept it and find the best way forward.

Hubby later apologised in the best way he could. He had to when I turned monosyllabic, sulked and effectively ignored him the whole day. He took me to his mum and said, "Mum, we have to do something about the oil, its upsetting my wife's face."

As soon as he said those words the curve of his arm suddenly seemed the perfect place to be.

I have come to learn my hubby is the type that gets defensive when it comes to those he loves. He'll probably take down the next person that complains about my own cooking. Knowing that the lesson here is now I know how to better manage such situations in future.

03/07/2007

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Nyanya

What I find most appealing about Abuja is its newness. Unlike other major cities it doesn't have that beat-down look; romantically put, that 'rustic' look. Buildings are well planned and the roads slice through the city in an organized criss-cross. I've never been to the boreal regions where I heard the roads are excellent. In my book Abuja compares only to Calabar.... for now.

But that's in town. I stay in Nyanya (pronounced 'NYANYA') one of the least fragrant parts of Abuja. And that has got nothing to do with the smell. Nyanya is about 20minutes drive from town. It just about straddles the border Abuja shares with Nasarawa state. On a good day Nasarawa is a walking distance from my house. On a bad day I prefer to stay home and blog, read a book or suck on a mango.

Which reminds me, why are Nigerians fond of saying "I want to lick an orange." or "Would you like to lick an orange?" How the fuck do you LICK an orange??? The first time I heard it I thought it was a rotten fad trying to be made popular by uneducated ignoramuses. Apparently it has come to stay.

Anyway, Nyanya is quite famous.  You'll often hear it being mentioned along with Mararaba, New Nyanya, Karo, Masaka, Ado, and Keffi - as I am doing now - because majority of the Abuja work force live in these places. Since the ex-Federal Capital Territory minister declared Abuja was not a city for the poor, over 70% of the energy that drives the city commute daily from these micro towns. If the minister hadn't provided mass transit busses for the aforementioned routes I would have included raining curses on him and six generations to come in my daily prayer repertoire.

You don't want to find yourself in Nyanya in the middle of the night. Least of all under the pedestrian bridge. That's where the shady characters hang out. A six foot plus lawyer was robbed there once. After collecting his valuables he was beaten black and blue by gun wielding thugs. Now if they can do that to a six foot plus lawyer I shudder to think what they could do to a-not-much-over-five-foot-non-lawyer me or anyone else for that matter.

Nyanya is so flagrant, on a good day (And again, that depends on a set of variables) the atmosphere brings out the best and worst in people. In most cases, say 99%, it's the latter. If Nyanya were a soup, it would be one that too many spices have been thrown in it lacks any distinct character of it's own. All you know is its garishness assaults your taste buds in a very peculiar way.

As I write this two women are fighting down the road. Here people are wound up so tight they are about to explode, never mind the spirited manner neighbours salute one another. At the slightest provocation insults are tossed, slaps are hurled and before you know it they're tangled in the mud and you see people rushing to their rescue. While others like me stop to enjoy the show.

Our house isn't all that either. If I were to describe its in reference to a smile, it would be that inch-wide pimple that mars the otherwise flawless landscape that is a pretty smile. The house is sandwiched between a clinic run by a 'greedy' doctor and a restaurant - drinking parlour sounds somewhat crude albeit that's precisely what it is. In front of the house is a bar that doubles as a Church on Sundays. When the doctor isn't trying to throw out one of his tenants the bar is blasting hiphop music. The does not encourage you to 'discover yourself' because in the first place you won't even be able to hear yourself.

A wise person once said; mingling with the powerful makes you arrogant, mingling with the rich makes you sinful while mingling with the poor keeps you humble. Or something to that effect. Living in Nyanya keeps me humble. Because when I look around I'm able to appreciate all I'm blessed with. When I see people struggling to eke out an honest living for themselves, I appraise myself and ask; why not you? Surely you can do better.

It's all good really. Aside from the random freak incidents, like that of the lawyer, Nyanya is quite safe. There's a lady that sells bbq'd fish across the road. I'm saying it (self) becuase when I move out of Nyanya, she'll be the first person I miss.

01/07/2007

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