Lone Cactus

There are so many things that remind you of your loneliness. A mosquito that dances by your ear, buzzing until you slap it, is not the first, nor the least. The extra pound of flesh, dancing under your arms and hanging tightly to your laps is not an exception. The persistent lone pimple that finds its way to your face regularly, ready to pop cries out your status without effort.

You would look out your window on breezy Monday evenings, and find couples holding hands, trudging about the sidewalk. Or when you went to get a grilled chicken at the restaurant on Manson Street, you would find even teenage lovers, seated; grinning at each other—you’d shudder and hug yourself.

There are so many things that can trigger the insanity that comes with the increasing knowledge of your loneliness, but silence is not one, oddly enough. You like the silence of the walls of your house. You like to strain, to hear the story of the bees in the distance. You like the song of electricity, the hum hum and vibrations of appliances that silently penetrate the house.

Adamu left you in May, six months ago, but you would tell people it was almost a year ago. You would smile and caress your fingers around your smartphone and peep at his last message; his last words to you. I love you. You would savor it, and play his voice in your head a thousand times, until the person you were conversing with, managed to snap you to reality. Your goofy smile would dissipate and confusion would return.

If they asked you if you were hurt, you would answer not anymore. You wouldn’t mention the pain that stains the color of your heart from time to time or the way a knife stabs at the butterflies in your belly when you think of him. No, you wouldn’t give any of that away. You wouldn’t tell them you still reach out for him and whisper his name when you are alone—because you like the way it tastes against your tongue.

His scent comes back now and then. Sometimes you try to cling to it, you try to allow the euphoria to sweep you up, but it doesn’t. So you’re left, bitter and lonely, as usual.

What happened? You ask yourself ever so often. Was it because you added too much salt to his soup that last night? Or you wouldn’t kiss him on his forehead as customary, that morning? The thoughts would torment you in your lonely hours as you chew on your finger nails and nibble on chocolate.

You stand in front of the mirror sometimes when you’re not ashamed of the ogre staring back at you. You would frown at yourself and reprimand yourself, for letting him slip between your slippery fingers.

You asked yourself if it was because you were overweight he left you? But you convinced yourself, that wasn’t it.

Adamu didn’t approve of your eating habits, but he liked that you went to the gym every day. He would swat your bottom gratefully when you adorned yourself in track pants and chuckle.

He was a man in love. You were a lady in love. So what happened? When they ask you, you would smile your shy smile and reply “Life happened” they wouldn’t ask any further. But if they were family, you would tell them the lie he’d told you to tell them in his last messages to you. You’d say he disappeared and watch the confusion and amusement at once occupy their faces.

When Laide your big sister, the doctor asked, you told her he disappeared, and both of you had ended up laughing for several minutes. When finally you both caught your breaths and were able to talk, you answered the question of her eyes. You told her he left you because he was busy and you were a nag. You believed that was a part of it as that was what the major reason he gave in those last messages to you. But you knew there was more. Could he have found someone else? No, you didn’t want to know that bit. So you just left it there in your head for the kitties to bother upon in curiosity.

You would never love again you would tell yourself staring at the blue skies. You don’t want to feel the hurt anymore. You are tired of the heartbreak. But you know yourself, that such a declaration is only a fallacy. You know that you want to love. You know that you are craving love. You know that the distraction of novels and law texts are not enough for you. You are desperate, but you would do nothing about it.

You would sit in your apartment and think of the life you could be having with him. During Constitutional law lectures, you would fantasize about him walking back into your life through the same door he had entered.

The trauma had been great but you had somehow managed to survive. You ask yourself occasionally, “If I see him now, and he asks for forgiveness, would I take him back”. Yes you reply, nodding ferociously. You would take him in your arms and lock your eyes with his, eternally. Your answer betrays your twenty six years. Your answer betrays your two university degrees. Your answer betrays your person.

You saw him at the Mart on Sowemimo street at the end of the first year of your break up. You saw him by the wine aisle. He didn’t see you. He had his back to you. He looked well, all the same, and unbelievably, you hated it. The memories ran through you speedily. They mixed with your blood, and saw themselves around to different parts of your body. A fly buzzed in your ear. You were quickly consumed with anger. You didn’t know when or how you grabbed a wine bottle from the stall and hit it against his head that was backing you. You watched him fall to the ground and left without being spotted.

The implications of your actions do not dawn on you.

They do not dawn on you when the police come to deposit you in a prison cell, as prime suspect to his assault.

They do not occur to you when it is announced that he is dead and you were to be charged for murder. They do not occur to you when the Judge sentences you to life imprisonment. All you can think of, all these while is how lonely you were. How much you missed him. How unfair it was for him to have left you. You don’t look at your Mother when she visits you. You are thankful your father doesn’t come. You sit against the cold stainless bed of the prison cell and listen for the quietness. The quietness here is terrible. It’s a constant reminder of your now worse loneliness and lack of freedom.

You watch the birds fly singly or in pairs, and you wonder if you had ever really been alone and lonely all the time you had freedom? Wasn’t everyone experiencing one form of loneliness or the other? Weren’t people cacti on a dessert? You realized you were just a lone Cactus and only then, do you realize exactly what you’ve done and it’s implications.

The Beholder’s Beauty.

Papa warned me about you.

I would never forget that day. He pressed his chewing stick between the corner of his mouth, and with his hand gripping the iron, pressed it against the black trouser pants lying on the ironing board. I knew he was very serious as he wouldn’t let me touch the trouser. He just called me into his room that morning and without looking into my eyes, the way he liked to, he warned me about you. The depth of his voice resonated with the Fela music that was playing from a vintage radio on his work table

Zombie o, zombie.

It was strange because Papa never meddled with my love affairs as did Mama who constantly complained I’d die a spinster. It was also strange because he didn’t use words and sentences he’d normally use. He didn’t call you a fox. He didn’t call you a green snake in the green grass. He didn’t say you wanted what was beneath my skirt. He didn’t say you were Judas Iscariot. He didn’t say you were the devil.

I was to assume at that moment it was because he barely knew you and he wasn’t a judgmental man.

I’d come to the village to spend a part of my annual leave with my parents. The last time I’d been to the village, I was a naïve girl of 16 who desperately wanted to change the world with the law. Eight years after passing the bar, life bored me. I wanted excitement.
I decided to look for it on the streets of the village. I’d sit at the verandah of my father’s large house and study the little children as they rolled tires and chased chickens or the young women with their water gourds on their heads as they swayed their hips or the goats as the mmeeeehed, up and down. Other times, I’d be with Mama at her store where she sold wine and gins of sorts, a place that could have been exotic but was hardly close to it. I’d sit under the rickety fan as the heat raged and listen to her village gist or try to actively take part in sales. They dulled me more. They lulled me to sleep.

I met you on the fourth day in the village, right there in my mother’s store. I was planning to leave the next day because; the village had only turned out to be a non-comfort zone for me. I was reading an old novel from my teenage years, one written by Sidney Sheldon. You bumped into me as I paced, novel to my face. Maybe coincidentally, I do not know. All I know is, I fell flat, my skirt revealing my underside. I coloured, reaching to your hands to stand. I studied your Ray-Ban gold metal and green grey flash lens aviator sunglasses and smiled. I felt like Cinderella, weirdly.

But, I didn’t like you. You were the kind of guy that liked to brag. The one with an ego the size of truck. I could see it in your expensive suit, in your baby boy smile, in your calloused hands. I shunned your apologies and continued with the novel.

Someway somehow, I found myself lingering in the village. My subconscious, a rude 16 year old girl still in search of infatuations and terribly seeking lust, told me, I was only in the village because you had not asked for my number or even tried to make conversation with me.
“Face it, you need to chase him” my subconscious said, her childish laughter ringing loudly in my ears. I tried to block her out to no avail. But my Ego, a thirty year old uptight spinster helped block her out for a short while. Her voice was soothing and easier to listen to. It could get annoying, but it echoed exactly what I wanted to hear most times. She told me to pack my bags and run back to the city where I could find a man working in an international law firm to sweep me off my feet—wasn’t that what I’d been waiting for all these years? I wasn’t sure, but that seemed a better plan.

By the end of the second week, your car bumped into mine, just as I zoomed out of the compound of my father’s house—you seemed to be in the business of bumping. Thankfully, there were no damages. You ran out full of apologies. We talked, by the road side opposite my house, about everything and nothing. Amidst giggles that day as we sat together, my cheeks turning red, I noticed father walking into the verandah. I watched his eyes come to meet mine and I sort his approval by searching his expression. It was placid.

So when he brought up the warning the next morning, I was surprised and confused. When he shook stern hands at me that day, I felt like curling into my bed—or kicking my subconscious in the butt for allowing me to have that singular conversation with you.

Of course I didn’t listen to my father and fortunately, and unfortunately, he never mentioned you after the warning that morning.

Should I say you swept me off my feet, I would be lying. Should I say I stared into your eyes and fell in love with your heart, would be an even worse lie. I fell in love with your lips. The way they suckled at mine, the way they kissed my neck. I fell in love with your hands, the way they danced to the small of my back, the way they pushed back my hair, the way they caressed my skin.

You were a few years younger than me, but I didn’t care. It made the love or lust so much more refreshing and exciting—it was almost as if my thirst for adventure was being filled.
I met you at a time in my life when I was looking for excitement. I was bored and tired of the same old routine so you were very appealing to me.

We took long walks along the dusty road of the village and went to the square to watch the plays and the fights.

We walked under the rain and made love against the mango tree in your grandmother’s backyard.

We were grossly in lust.

It was the night we’d gone for a drink at the local bar. It must have been that night because it was a night I explored the world like never before. It was the night I’d gotten myself drunk for the first time in my life. My eyes were lazy and my mind relaxed. We’d told terrible jokes and made fun of other customers. We’d danced outside the bar, oblivious to mock stares and laughter.

It must have been that night I conceived Orekelewa. It just had to be that night because, I gave you my all. My heart, my mind, my soul. You became my savior that day and I was holding tight to the salvation you gave. It became my bible and rosary. It became my drug.

We made love other times after then—even the morning of the weekend I returned to Lagos keeping close to my heart, your promises to visit. But I knew it was that night as we lay like animals under the moonlight on the beach sand that your sperm met my eggs and life started in me.

I broke the news to you but you denied it. Father was furious. He laughed though. He said “didn’t I tell you he has supposedly fathered a good number of children in this village?” More mocking laughter “didn’t I tell you he was yahoo yahoo”
My mind raced over your lies, how you told me you’d only ever had one girlfriend who broke your heart. How you told me you came to cater to some things in your grandmother’s will. I believed you.

But I’m not sorry for what we had. If we didn’t have that thing we had, I would never had this single entity that gives me excitement every day. People ask me why I gave her a Yoruba name. They ask if the father is yoruba. I say he’s not. I tell them it means beauty. What they don’t know is, it’s not the beauty of the child I refer to, it’s the beauty of what I had with you I refer to. And Orekelewa fits that love or lust.

This tragedy.

I stare at her picture. I look into those deep brown eyes—and I remember.

My mind drifts slowly back to the beginning of time—when my first tragedy was of Mother disposing a toy I had. I remember as the tintan sound the toy played resounded in the trashcan. Blue and yellow keys of the toy filled the back of my mind and stretched until they formed the figure of my Bratz doll.

Watching Jade the Bratz doll lose a leg, not getting the flavour of caprisonne I wanted are the kind of tragedies I long for right now in my life. They are so trivial now, but so meaningfully tragic, to a two year old.

My mind paces forth a few years—away from diapers and bed wetting and moves on to the joy and sadness of adolescence.
The house comes to mind. It was a huge four storey house that overlooked a canal and some rural buildings in the Market, only if your apartment was at the back. If your apartment was at the front, all you saw was peace and serenity of the high-class. Creamy coloured buildings with wealthy inhabitants. They were professors who worked in the University ten minutes away, or bankers with offices in Victoria Island. Whatever professions, their children went to the University staff school—an almost prestigious school for both the staffs, and the non-staffs or the University’s International school, a secondary school.

Monday mornings, the green of our uniforms lined the roads sporadically. You couldn’t miss us—neither could you miss the nervousness that boiled up in our bellies, over forgotten assignments —or the strokes of cane we expected to receive from our teachers for entirely different reasons—these were the tragedies that occupied our mind when you saw us in the green uniform. If father wasn’t getting paid well at work, we took no notice. If a far off relative died, we felt no pain—it wasn’t our tragedy.

The Ogunnaike’s had two girls one of which was my best friend. I had just one sibling, a brother. So it wasn’t weird but natural that the Ogunnaike kids and I were close.

It was glaring that we were from different backgrounds even though we were all friends whose parents drank wine and ate samosas together on Saturday night.

Their parents were Professors in the University, mine were Lawyers. Our family went to church every Sunday; theirs rested on the holy day. Their Mother was a talkative half British woman who rapped on and on from topic to topic. Our mother was a conservative woman who only talked so much when she was in court—or scolding us. I didn’t wear earrings and trousers—they adorned themselves in gold, short skirts and skinny jeans.

Despite these—our differences, our hearts still matched and fused as one. We were unmistakably family-who hung around together, had sleepovers and stuff.. The story was a predictable one for us—we would grow up together—the older sister would marry my elder brother, Funke and I would work in the same Law firm and get an apartment together.
We’d planned our future—sketching the kind of house we’d like to build and the kind of businesses we’d like to start. We shared secrets under candle light and laughed to hilarious Little Miss Jocelyn scenes. We danced to Michael Jackson songs and mimicked Beyonce under the rain.

Even when we moved on to ISL; acronym for the University’s secondary school, and were unfortunately separated in different classes, our friendship strengthened. We spent breaks together, and brainstormed ideas to make money.
We were eleven when we planned our first estate party. A grand affair, no one expected eleven year olds to be able to pull off. It was a December party—an extravagant affair that grew even more extravagant as we advanced in age. With all the support from our parents and Siblings, Funke and I, almost twin sisters, made a dramatic career shift from wanting to be Lawyers to wanting to be Event planners.

It was the year I turned fourteen, everything changed—a one of a kind tragedy. Father was being transferred to a different part of Lagos—a promotion in fact. It was a good thing to them but not for we children.

Since the time we’d started planning our lives, we’d never envisioned that there’d be any change as having to move. We were to leave the four storey house in Harrison Estate and move to Lekki Phase one where another school waited for my brother and I. It was a tragedy, but we promised to keep in touch.
We kept in touch the first year but by the second year, we started to drift. She was reaching out to me but I was smoke in the clouds, ungraspable. This and other factors made our hearts unfuse and return to their rightful places. Time passed and sometimes, the name Funke won’t hit the right chords in me.

I was growing up I told myself. I watched as my dreams collapsed and made no attempt to start over again. Social networks somehow still kept us in touch, but there was the barrier that even the internet couldn’t prevent. The distance was there, taking a step further apart each day, until we were both at the far ends of the earth, on opposite sides, separated by a mass of people, activities and distractions.

We drifted.

I stare at her picture blinking back the tears in my eyes. She has a broad smile, one I loved and loved to imitate. I can’t smile back at her. It’s just impossible. My heart and head pound; one’s the talking drum; the latter is the modern drum set—hitting it on every side. I close my eyes. I close my mind. How can this happen? I ask. Her voice rings in my ear. I feel her skin on mine.

I long for the days when we ran in the sand at the backyard of the four storey house, or when we acted out beauty pageants. I long for the time when we were kids with big dreams. I wipe my eyes. I whisper her name.

There was this time I saw her before I got admission into the law school. . I was driving but she was in a bus—and I wove ferociously at her as I wound down the glass of the passenger’s seat. But that was it. I was too overwhelmed for words. And then the bus zoomed away.

Was there something I could have done? Should I have known she would be gone away from me soon? If I had known, I’d have come back to her. Because my heart was a magnet, always wanting to reach out for hers.

I’m overwhelmed now at her death. That she is dead is a shock. That she has been dead for over two months is another shocker. Is this how much we were far apart? How is it that I didn’t know?

I know that I kept on saying I needed to see Funke. I kept on promising to send her a message on facebook and get a date with her—I kept this in mind every day for three months and finally, yesterday, I made a move.

I went to their house in the university, a house they had gotten a few months after we moved away. I got the address from a mutual friend. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I planned to surprise them. I had no idea if she’d be at home—she was after all, a medical student now. But somehow, I found myself there, knocking.
It was Aunt Florence, their Mother who opened the door. She had tired eyes. She looked older than ever. What had time done to this once beautiful woman I asked myself? She broke the news after a glass of water and light talk.

I stared, too stunned to speak and after some moments of awkward silence took my leave. I observed the university roads last night, looking for the spot where she died–where she’d had the car accident. Her mother had said it was not too far from University’s secondary school. I stepped out and shouted at the heavens. I was angry at everything, mostly at myself.

This was the worst kind of tragedy—not one I’d ever imagined.
I stare at her fair arms. For moments, I linger in their embrace.

Then I drop the picture, move to the kitchen and bother about the kind of wine in the fridge not being the kind I want at the moment. It’s a fruity wine called Eva, but I’d asked my cousin to stock the fridge with alcoholic wine—something right for the sadness in my heart.

I let it bother me but I finally smile, remove the cap and drink straight from the bottle. This is the kind of tragedy I want.

Who stole the meat?

Strange things happened at night; really strange things. We considered them minor until Mother started noticing that pieces of meat would go missing in her pot. That was when I became an FBI agent—it was after all, a sensitive household security investigation. I created my list of suspects meticulously, ranging from Father to Mother herself, to baby. But I ruled them all out and settled on the most conspicuous.

Hannah was our robust Togolese maid. I didn’t like her. She couldn’t keep her hands off food. She’d even eat Baby’s Cerellac when he refused it. She was my prime suspect only because of her history of gluttony. Sometimes I caught her eating paper even.

The first time Mother said meat was missing from the stew she had just made, dad, barely raising his nose from a newspaper he had been reading said she obviously miscounted the meat in her stew. His voice was barely convincing—he knew it wasn’t possible. With a scrupulous Mother like ours, there was no way her count was incorrect.

He’d tried to patronise her when she brought up the argument
“You know we are both getting old Asake love—” He’d started to say but she hissed and left the room.

Two mornings after, her wails disturbed the peace of the seven a.m sleep that still lingered in our eyes. I thought someone was dying. I didn’t want to miss any action, so I stood up from my bed as quickly as my mind and body would let me and dragged myself to the parlour where she was seated on the couch, her legs spread apart, and the stainless pot on the floor below her. She held her head with her hands. She seemed aggrieved, a woman who had lost more than meat.
Motunrayo had her hands on Mother’s shoulders. She had a sweet U-Shaped smile spread across her face. She had obviously whispered disturbing words into Mother’s ears.

“Oya, kia kia,” Mother said taking no notice of me “Wake everybody up, I’m going to smell their mouths”

She clapped her hands and began to ramble in Yoruba. “Am I raising thieves? Olorun o ni je? I reject it. Let me embarrass you, before you go out there and embarrass me. Awon omo jati jati”

We all had to line up, even Motunrayo, the one with the idea lined up, while Mother inhaled our stinky breaths and inspected our dentitions. Since we all washed our mouths before bed every night, it seemed like a good idea. But she wasn’t able to find the culprit through those means. We were all good, even Hannah, my prime suspect was good.

“This theiv is more clever than athink and I will catch him” she said eyeing us all one by one.

The next time it happened, weeks had passed, the dust had settled. It seemed forgotten, almost like an occurrence that I had merely imagined. We were already way past the stage of being criminals. We were back to being babies. It was why I was so infuriated when it happened the third time, that I decided to investigate by myself. I was furious because we all received five strokes of cane on our buttocks. I had bent low without flinching as the cane tore through me. She had made remarks about drawing the Map of America on our back, so alongside plotting vengeance against the thief when I found him or her, I was wondering if indeed my back would resemble the map of America.

After she’d finished and was breathless, she said “Now, children, if you like don’t talk among yourselves and agree to cooperate to confess.” She stopped short, her breathing heavier. She began to speak slower in Yoruba. “Children please don’t give me hypertension. What I’m doing, it’s for your own good. I’m trying to make sure you don’t go out there and become criminals. Y’understand. Please, don’t kill me. E ma pa mi ejo. I don’t see why anyone should go into my kitchen in the night while the lights are out to steal from my pot. Is there anything I don’t give you? Sometimes, I even give you extra meat, ehn, children”

The little speech sent the appropriate wires inside of me sparking and I decided I would stay up that night to catch the thief. I had to be a better detective than I’d ever been. I slept all afternoon so that I could be awake all night but by dinner, sleep stole into my eyes. I promised to sleep only five minutes before starting my duty.
It was while I slept that I felt a hard hand hit my back; an Abara. . It sent me screaming. Had I fallen asleep on duty? What time was it anyway? My eyes wasted no time opening. I observed my surrounding. I was outside and it was almost pitch black, except for the electric bulb and the moon’s romance. I strained my eyes and then rubbed them. As I rubbed them, I felt a slap on my cheeks.

‘ah-an’ I grumbled, fully awake now. I was outside in my pyjamas, holding tightly to a small travelling bag. My father and Mother stood in front of me. Just behind them, above the steps, were two of my siblings and Hannah, peering through the veranda net.

There was a peppery taste in my mouth and meat stuck to my teeth. Meat???!! I swiftly grasped what was going on at that point. Hannah was framing me for stealing the meat. How could she do this to me? I glanced piercingly at her, knowing there was certainly nothing I could do. But it was still mysterious. If Hannah wanted to frame me, she could have easily rubbed pepper on my hands and mouth. Why bring me outside?
Probably amazed at my cluelessness, Mother and Father burst into laughter. Mother clasped her hands, Father held his back. What was so funny?

“Let’s go inside” Mother said, “Don’t let mosquito eat us”

Mother narrated the story without flinching but it was hard to believe. She said I’d been sleepwalking and sleep talking. She said she’d stayed awake to catch the culprit, only to hear shuffles from my room. She decided to let it go, maybe it was a mouse. Then I came out to the parlour, travelling bag in hand, converse at my feet. She asked to know where I was going. I said I was going to America, and that I had a map on my back. She decided to watch for my next move. She saw that I opened the stew pot and dipped my dirty hands to pick two gizzards.
She said that she had no doubt that I was the one guilty of the previous crimes, and the others including peeing inside the kitchen dustbin, setting our dining table in the middle of the night, rearranging father’s work table and so on.

I didn’t believe it. I was the police officer, not the criminal. Two nights later, they caught me acting out similar crimes. The slap I received this time was probably the reason I never sleepwalked again. I don’t know for sure but what I’m sure of was, I was both the executive officer and the felon.

Cookies with Christ

This was written by my brother @dami_maverick . Feel free to download

DAMIWRITES

Ever wondered what Jesus would say to you if He came visiting? Ever wanted to discuss with the Lord in the comfort of your home?

Well, Cookies with Christ details a series of thoughts stirred by an overwhelming sense of intimacy with the Christ. It highlights the Father’s wish for fellowship and reiterates emphatically the oneness that the anyone who dares to believe in the Son would receive.

Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship and in this book Jesus comes visiting with cookies to teach you about His Life.

Click here to download

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My months of the year

Hello, My name is Wuraola and this is my 2014 in months review, I have to say that while the year did go by fast enough, it seems like two years instead of one to me because of all that happened.

My January came armed
With battle axes of resolutions
But if there’s one thing sure about my January, its that she listens to no one
Especially not herself and before the month was over, her resolutions were naught.

My February is a three piece suit
Ready for business with little or no time for pleasure or love and turning the required heads of course.

My march was a discovery channel. I found my voice, my poesy, my art back…
My march also found solace in words albeit empty and fancied herself in love. She learnt soon enough.

My April is a bad decision with its ample share of drowning regrets
She gave her most prized away to the least deserving.
She bathed in her tears.

My may is a gladiator,
Fighting off many strikes and still standing
Beautiful still with that broken smile

My June had an August lover,
Friend and editor
Somehow his love for her rattled him
Too much.

My July decided it wanted a Christmas break
I couldn’t bring her santa
But she had tears for supper on Christmas eve.

My August is that sheep who wanted a little adventure.
Young, free, bored, couldn’t be confined…
Oh, she did eat shit I tell you.
After all, didn’t the adage say “the sheep that follows a dog will soon eat shit”?

My September was a tub of regrets
And I took baths in it every night
It had me becoming what I always loathed “distrustful”
But work soon made me too busy to trust or distrust

My October was of stooling and love and convocation.
All great events in my life but still pretty uneventful.

My November was an experience
She could have learnt from someone else’s
But where’s the fun in that?
Deserts and scalding sun beats any camp tales I dare say.

My December is a petulant child
Unwilling to accept the fact that actions though silent are always always
Louder than words
Because all she’s been used to are empty words.
But she’s on her way to rediscovery and she’s learning to “let people love you their own way”

Happy holidays guys, thanks for being a wonderful part of my 2014.

Written by @goldenwura

The good, the better and the happiness.

Zainab:

Her body was here, but her soul was already with her mother in the saloon across the road. There were about fifty reasons she stayed with Mama Supermarket and another fifty reasons she would prefer to stay with her Mother in the Saloon. For such reasons, crisscrossing in her mind, her heart galloped and studied the road that led to her Mother’s saloon. She stood keenly by the glass door of the supermarket and watched as the bikes and cars lazily drove out and into the estate. She observed the sandy road, filled with debris here and there and studied the pale green paint of the complex where her mother’s shop was found. It was the fourth shop. If she did what the adults did, she could get to the saloon in no time.
She made sure no one was looking and the supermarket was busy before stepping out. Yesterday, she had been on the verge of crossing as Her Mother’s apprentice beckoned to her from across the road. But Mama Supermarket caught hold of her, spanked her bottom five times and cursed the apprentice for being the devil in disguise. She had never crossed the road by herself. But it shouldn’t be that hard. She saw the children in pants and worn out clothing do it all the time. She could do it. She ran to the bottom of the slope of Mama Supermarkets house as the shop and the house were in the same compound. She stood, laughing cheerfully. Her glee stained her fair cheeks pink. She was going to do it; she was finally going to do it, something she had never done by herself. And then she ran, hands flying in the air. The warnings of her mother and Mama Supermarket disappeared in the meantime. They were suspended in the air in the same way she assumed time paused for her to cross the road. She wasn’t hit with slaps of guilt from their voices.
When she was safely at her Mother’s saloon, she looked back at the supermarket with a smile. She did good.

*****

My 2014 was an unusual unexpected year. The beginning of the year was filled with promises, especially after staying at home for six months. There was a delightful sun smile that first day of the year as harmattan broke our lips and whitened our skins. There was the hope that crowed with the cock of our neighbours, the animation that stained the darkness of my eyeball, and the faith that held the tree standing strong despite wild winds.

It was with the grace of a repented prodigal I entered the year. My decision to shed off a skin within the first three months was spontaneous. It came off exactly the way a snake shed its skin. Layer after layer after layer gradually came off. With it, I glowed. I became different. I was experimenting, stepping out of my comfort Zone.

I became the exact way innocent Zainab felt on the first day she crossed the road. I felt like a baby sojourning out in the world for the first time. The sun hit my skin differently, polishing it with a glow only it could give.

My workout routines gave me that new confidence; the pleasure of the skin I wore and the air around me. My feet were lighter and I constantly felt elated as a bird in flight.

There was the realization that I was my own person, with a vast land of dreams staring ahead of me and a mine of golden accomplishments, waiting to be tapped into.

I was finding myself, searching the recesses of my mind for who exactly this person they called Ope was. I was stepping away from old expectations of people that had given themselves their own meaning of my name and person. I moved away from my struggle to please them. I stepped away from my goodie two-shoes personality that I grew up with. I started to question things, starting with the so called “good” society proffered as the only good and the questioning the evil they claimed was evil.

I no longer wanted to be the girl everyone wanted me to be; mostly a 5.0 CGPA student like my older siblings. I wanted to be different, with my own accomplishments to be called at my name; for people to identify me, not as being a shadow of some other person, sibling or not.

I’m still in that search. But what I’m sure of was 2014 allowed me to cross that road, allowed me to break that boundary I sought to break. It allowed me to step on stairs I had never foreseen myself.

Everyone must have thought it dangerous for me to step out. They asked with care “Are you sure about it?” But there was the assurance in my heart that if I wanted to do it, I could do it. Applying Zainab’s exact situation, there were fifty reasons I stayed in my comfort zone; (being an introvert, my comfort zone was any comfortable place away from humans.) and there were fifty other reasons I wanted to venture into the world out there, to feel the breeze billowing on my face and speak out opinions and fears; things I only could do in soliloquy that resembled madness. I desperately wanted to be on the other side of the road

The age old statement, you can be whatever you want to be, only started to make sense to me in 2014.

I saw my beauty in my eyes and not my skin. I saw deep in my soul, a quiet fighter. I began to laugh with ease. I began to break guard of my heart and allowed new people in.

I met so many writers this year that have both inaudibly and piercingly, impacted good in my life. I opened myself to knowledge and I learned so many things.
I dealt with certain fears I never thought I’d be able to overcome.
In 2014, I crossed that road they believed I would never be able to cross. I was better, in 2014.

Farouk:

Lots of things irritated Farouk. If Mother didn’t come to clean him up immediately after a dirty duty, it became a problem that sent tears to his eyes. Apart from hunger, thirst and heat, other things irritated him. The inability to communicate his irritation was worse than the irritation itself. The tears that clouded his sight and turned his beautiful mouth into an angry frown irritated him. That grandmother would pat his bottom irritated him worst. He hated that his stomach went into knots when he was hungry and Mother’s breast wasn’t in sight. But he had found certain joys he clung to that could elude him from such irritations. Toys didn’t have that effect. Sucking on his thumb was able to help him totally zone out. Sometimes, it was that thumb that lulled him to bed. At other times, it was that thumb that made him peaceful. With other non obvious irritations, he would cling to his green napkin, it was able to keep him distracted. He’d keep the napkin to his lips or raise it up as he flayed his arms on his vibrating rocker.

Farouk’s habits to supress tears and keep a smiling face are to me, my struggle for happiness in 2014. I knew for a fact that I had to find happiness. Having left heartbreak and trying to leave insecurities, I clung to the thin almost invisible thread that was supposed to act as my happiness seed.

Taking baptismal classes, I also learnt of the joy that came from the Lord and I aspired towards that, on a daily basis. Through inconsistencies in studying God’s word, I learnt of a joy that could only spring from His well; the one that quenched our insatiable thirst. I was the fat kid in the candy store, taking all the candy, tapping into the Love of God.

Breaking out from the status quo of rejection, sadness and heartbreak, I have chosen happiness, a guide in all circumstances; one to ward off all appearances of evil.

As a child, my mother referred to me as a crying machine; producer of tears, yaddi yadda. Not for mockery’s sake but to make me aware of a weakness that threatened to become a part and parcel of me. It wasn’t the usual cry a child gave. In my case, it was tears that lasted hours unending and sent me to my room to be alone for the smallest thing. In 2014, I was able to break up with my worst habit, without a single tear.

This year, I loved and lost, but I know I would love again.

I am still in a quest of sorts, but for now, this is me saying I have found my happiness. Although when I look at the circumstances of my case, it seems happiness found me and not I, it.

So as at December 2014, without having to list any achievements, without having to mention the number of friends I have, without having to mention my CGPA, I can successfully say I conquered 2014, with a smile etched out on my face.

Untitled. Merry Christmas.

I once read that you could tell when it was your time to die. I think it was Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel.

I read that the angel of death would hover around you on that day. Yet, I had no idea that it would be my time to die. The smiling sun in the horizon held no secrets. It spread its wings and embraced me in a hot hug. The chirping birds as they flew around my balcony told no tales of death. They whispered romantic tunes in my ears, insinuating it would be a lovely day. The steep ground on which I stood wasn’t shaky as I assumed it should be when it was my time to die.

A lovely old lady like me had nothing to live for, aside family. I thought about death on a daily basis, catching glimpses of him occasionally with kisses on my cheeks that told me he wouldn’t take me yet; silent promises, really.

The day I died, it would rain heavily, the heavens would roar, a lion welcoming its cub. The angels would sing. The clouds would grace the day with darkness, the sun would shy away from the earth. The moon, its face ashen would finally come out the moment my ghost left. It would be full and strong but mourning my departure. In its eyes, there would be tears.

But today was sunny and though I had my umbrella, I let the sun caress my skin. My broken smile went to my neighbours as I walked past my tightly sealed apartment. I waved my wrinkled old lady hands at the little ones, inhaling the fresh smell of a vivacious new day. I informed Mama Iyabo that I was leaving to spend the rest of the year with my daughter in her home in Lagos.

I rarely ever went on a trip outside the state capital. My daughters always came to visit with their children. But this time, I thought it’d be nice to go to them. I had bags in hand; bags with gifts for seven of my grandchildren. I imagined it a delightful holiday. I pushed my half-white full hair back, as the harmattan breeze sent strands dancing my face. It danced around the nape of my neck—and the singular act, sent chills down my spine; chills that I quickly disregarded and rushed off to board my bus.

I couldn’t wait to see my grandchildren. I couldn’t wait to pinch their soft chubby cheeks and pat their little bottoms. Though, they dreaded my long brown cane that I carried as a walking aid, and an occasional cane, I knew they loved me, as I did them.
I reached the motor park in no time and quickly took my seat in a half filled bus. I must have been the first to spot her. She looked regular but there was something too regular about her regular. She was trying so hard to fit in; a square peg in a round hole. I was a school teacher. I knew when a child wanted to play a prank and this lady looked like she had a prank itching at her fingertips. She looked like she had just stolen a candy bar from the sacred candy box though she tried desperately to be indifferent. I studied her unattractiveness one moment and moved on to other thoughts.
I had a sack load of pineapples, bananas and pawpaw for my grandchildren. I was going to spoil them silly. It made me happy, to think that I had the opportunity to spoil them. Many people didn’t have that. I was grateful.

The bus was taking a while to get filled up, but as I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere, I waited patiently. The other passengers hammered on and on about the delay. I wondered what the rush was.

It was just as the bus driver was about to take off, just as he was about to leave the place where his bus had been idly parked for hours that it happened. I had been wriggling my hands nervously for some reason. I had peered at the full sun, it still bore a smile. Then  I heard screams of horror from another bus. The screams pierced my inside. My head shook and vibrated like I was some sort of bubble-head. A headache came through at the same time. Sweat immediately filled my armpits and stained my white shirt.  I was suddenly irritated at myself. I wanted to go home, but it was too late.  It was a new wave of fear that I had never felt in my life that I felt.

In no time, I heard screams from my bus. The heat of the fire gripped me slowly. It was warmth first, then the heat came slowly. There was no means of escape, so I sat petrified. It came to me, a long time friend and I watched it burn my skin as mild horror, covered my lips. I closed my eyes, trying not to feel it. The screams of the other passengers died slowly with them, but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to spend Christmas with my babies and spoil them silly.

I never once thought I’d be a victim of a suicide bomber—a female one at that. I never thought I’d die today, a few days before Christmas. I finally let myself be taken; a shrill scream escaped my lips as my whole was consumed within seconds. Silently, I wished my family a merry Christmas.

My love and sympathy goes out to everyone that has lost a loved one by unfortunate circumstances as this, this Christmas and this year in general.
It’s Christmas, and even though I don’t want anyone to feel saddened by my story, this is reality, slapping us in the face. As you eat your chicken and have a good day with your loved ones, remember to say a prayer for someone out there who cannot make merry as you are.

This is a short, under researched story of the experience of our fellow Nigerians in Dukku Motor-Park, Gombe, Gombe State, on Monday the 22nd of December 2014. 19 were killed and 40 were injured.

My prayers and sympathy goes out to them and their loved ones.

Saving Mankind.

In the spirit of Christmas, I bring to you this beautiful piece.

Angels from realms glorious,

bearing glad tidings of one virgin born,

cradled in trappings of humanity.

Divinity dressed in a cloak of clay;

“Emmanuel shall be his name!”

Forth came great prophesying;

“Governments & ghettos, galaxies & grottoes upon His shoulder”;

He that is called the Hope of Nations, of whom

Isaiah spoke & Micah wrote.

Jeremiah telling of tender mercies and of a

King, our kinsman redeemer and

Light of the world sent from heaven.

Men watching their flock heard the medley. That

night, nearer drew the eastern scholars,

on their camels bearing great gifts.

Pitch black darkness became clear as day.

Quiet was stirred by the Eternal rhythm

resonating with the chords of creation. The

Star shone sending serenity into shepherd hearts;

twinkling, telling of the tale of a baby born, a son given

unto us to unchain and unlock our souls, not

visiting but making his tabernacle with men.

Wild and unrestrained as the lily of the valley, a

Xerophyte; love planted in the hearts of men.
Yeshua! God’s very image and express glory

Zion’s best given to save mankind

Written by @dami_maverick
Blogs at: damiwrites.wordpress.com

Unashamed and Unafraid; Malaika’s story.

They just came to take papa, exactly seven days after they took mama. The day looks the same; the timing is almost the same. The only difference is the fear that is in our hearts this time is greater than the usual fear that lives with us in these turbulent times.

I was feeding the chickens out of my hand when the van, raising dust after it, sped to a stop outside our home. Our half blind papa had struck his walking stick twice when he heard the engine quench from where he sat at the verandah. It was basically a warning for me to run and hide in Mama’s closet. I only turned back to look at him and my little sister, Sara who was seated on his laps and continued feeding my chickens.

If there was something I could do, I would have done it. Neither parents owned weapons, so I was no match for the men in weird army like uniforms, coming out of their vans, fully armed. Yet, I continued feeding my chickens. Last Sunday when they took Mama, I had fought them hard, kicking and pushing at them, but they’d only laughed at me and kicked me into the dirt.

I managed a momentary glance up. Like my mother’s captors, these soldier like people covered their faces with black masks. Only their eyes were visible. They approached me and tried to scare me off. They only succeeded in scaring off my chickens. I stood up and turned to my papa who was beginning to stand up. Sara was thankfully nowhere in sight. She would be in Mama’s closet. It was the agreed secret hiding place.

I wondered what they would do to my Mama. I constantly wondered if truly they were torturing or raping her. It was what papa said they would do to her. She brought it upon herself, he said. Why won’t she allow the war times to be peaceful and quiet for them an average family, he lamented.
It horrified me to think they would do those things to my Mama. But what wrong had she done? Papa said the law of our land was crap. That the terrorist group that took Mama ruled the country, not the president.

I gulped hard hearing those words.
I watched my papa’s creamy brown skin glisten with sweat as the men finally reached him. They had no words for him and unlike Mama’s arrest, in which they’d had to resort to violence, papa’s taking was peaceful. Papa offered himself, hands thrust out. They cuffed it and pushed him down the stairs.

“Malaika, take care of your sister” he said lips trembling. I watched his full lips quiver, unable to cry. Why was I unable to cry? Why was I taking it all in as if, this was routine and normal? I placed a hand over my heart. I wanted to beg the men, convince them to bring back my mother, tell them I would die without my parents.

I heard my sister’s fast footsteps, I heard her sobs. I held her to my side, my chin on her hair. I couldn’t tell her everything was going to be alright like I’d done on Sunday. That would be a lie.
When my papa was finally in the van, his face looking out the netted window, I managed to talk to the last soldier.

“Sir, what about us?”

He gave a short nervous laugh “you don’t want to go where you papa is going. You’re in heaven, stay here” Was it sympathy I saw in his eyes or nervousness I heard in his accented English? No, the hard hearted man could have no sympathy.

I wondered how this, my current situation, and that of my neighbors, who were probably watching the scene through their window was heaven. I wouldn’t blame my hiding neighbors. Any resistance and the resistor would be in the van too with my papa, away from his family to face the fury flames of hell. I took a deep breath and watched as the dust circled after the van even when the van was not in visible sight. I turned to the elements. I watched as the sun spread its wings across the earth. It seemed a massive cobweb, ready to take domination of the world.

A few minutes later, Nkechi’s Mama was on our lawn, approaching us.
“Come,” she said “I would take care of you, everything would be alright.” She smiled sadly “your mama was a good woman. She said things that were true, things that didn’t make the bad people happy. She condemned the bad people”

It was unfortunate that Sara and I would hear a different story in a few minutes. “Mama Nkechi, I told you not to bring these children in here” Baba Nkechi said strolling around his room, bare chest as we entered his parlor. His stomach told tales of beer and drunken nights. It told tales of heavy meals after 8pm. It told tales of sleeping while his mates were working.

“Baba Nkechi, they are my friend’s children”

“oho, why din’t you tell your friend to stop running her mouth like water. Ehn? Abi you din’t know this evil would come upon her, da way she was always going paparampapa all over da place. As if she’s da only preacher in this town. da woman was a dumb fu—’

“Baba Nkechi, watch your language in front of the children” she warned

“I dun care” he said as he settled into a sofa that sunk under his weight “read my lips, I dun care, this is my house—”

“Children, please go outside” Mama Nkechi said

We went outside to sit by the steps with Nkechi. I didn’t know what to do; I just kept the weight of my head under my palms and looked at the approaching night darkness as it covered us with a cloud of doom and sorrow.

I wondered, thinking it weird that, if only my Mama had shut up, we won’t be facing this. I considered it strange because we’d been groomed to speak up. Mama taught us that there was nothing wrong with having opinions. I wondered who wanted Mama’s life for saying the truth. The person must simply be horrible.

The net that covered the front door of Nkechi’s house suddenly came to life as it was snatched open and slammed, and then snatched open and slammed again. Mama Nkechi was running after Baba Nkechi. “Where are you going to, there’s a curfew, you’ll get yourself killed”

He hissed and looked at me with blood shot eyes. “Now look here boy, I dun want you in my house no more. I dun want them to torture me as they’re doing to your goddamned mama. Do you know that they cut off her ear just yesterday because she was preaching Christianity? They’re making her convert to their religion, and it’s either she breaks or they kill her. You know that right?” he laughed, mocking me gently, staggering off like a stallion in a game. He wanted me to believe him. He was guessing. He didn’t know what was happening to my mother. No one knew.

I bit my lower lips, and let the tears flow down. I watched as it hit the floor and then covered my face in shame. Nkechi took my left side. She held my hands tightly. In another life, she’d have been my girlfriend. I tried to smile, but the more I tried, the more I cried. Mama Nkechi ran inside the house, her frustration, obvious.

“Your mama is a good woman” the older girl said. Usually, I’d have looked down at her maturing breasts, distracted, or studied her lips, enchanted, but today, my eyes saw her soul. “Your mama was helping us. We are a minority group in this area, we Christians. I’ve read in the books that the war is against western education and corruption. But I think otherwise. Teacher from down the street says this war is against Christianity. She’s right because they’re constantly killing and kidnapping our kind. Despite this, your mama was unafraid and unashamed, speaking at the market square and public roads. She was speaking out for all of us. My papa is a coward, I’m afraid. I want to be like your mama”

“Why did they take my papa?”

“It is part of the game of torture” she said carefully “i’m suprised they didn’t take you and Sara. You must be lucky. unfortunately, the luck won’t last. they would be coming after the two of you soon.”

She squeezed my wrist

“isn’t there something we can do” I asked

“the police don’t care, the army have a hard job catching this terrorist group, the pastors would pray, as they should, the president is giving silly excuses like he has or had no shoes so he cannot do his work, I don’t know.”

I looked at her disregarding the humor.

She looked back with a gentle smile.

“Be prepared Malaika. Be prepared”

****

My little way of celebrating human rights day (December 10th) has been to write this story and share with you Chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution, Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The following are fundamental human rights enshrined in the 1999 constitution and accorded to all Nigerians. –

1. Right to life – Section 33: Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life,save in execution of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria.

2. Right to dignity of human person – Section 34: Every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of person and accordingly no person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment.

3. Right to personal liberty – Section 35: Every person shall be entitled to his personal liberty and no person shall be deprived of such liberty.

4. Right to fair hearing  – Section 36: In the determination of a person’s civil rights and obligations,every person shall be entitled to fair hearing.

5. Right to private and family life – Section 37: The privacy of citizens,their homes,correspondences and telephone conversations  is guaranteed and protected.

6. Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – Section 38: Every person shall be entitle to freedom of thought,conscience and religion,including freedom to change his religion or belief.

7. Right to freedom of expression and the press- Section 39: Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions.

8.Right to peaceful assembly and association – Section 40:Every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons or political party.

9. Right to freedom of movement – Section 41: Every citizen in Nigeria is entitled to move freely throughout Nigeria and to reside in any part thereof.

10. Right to freedom from discrimination – section 42: No Nigerian shall be discriminated upon on the basis of his community, ethnic group,sex,place of origin and political opinion.

11. Right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria – Section 43: Every Citizen shall have right to own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria.   12. Right against compulsory acquisition of property – section 44

Can you point out one or two contravened human rights in Malaika’s story?