Saving the Future

As a woman, many find it odd that I am who I am, but I am not shy to say I love conflict and even more than conflict I crave male company; the attention, flirting, teasing, the whole mating dance charade is like a well perfected hobby for me but even as much as I love all this, the best yet is turning people down. The thrill in the power of my sexuality controls my gait and mannerism even I know that walking anywhere I can stand tall.

Now who would have thought that at 27, the conflict I crave would have eluded me so much so that I have never ever had an open confrontation with anyone before. I just always have this weird imagination of somebody vexing me and me loosing it and shouting;

YOU DEY MAD??
DEM SWEAR FOR YOU??
ABI YOU WAN MAKE YOUR HEAD BREAK TODAY??

But never in all this years has this happened to me and the male company I so covet has afforded me the best friends I know. I have no female best friends or even friends at that and hence I have never had the pleasure of the so talked about girls night in or night out and I do not feel as though I am missing too much.

Having said that, the question I ponder on often is the strange fact that the women in the lives of my friends have never seemed to want me out. I would have thought this was going to be my very own conflict niche. It is all too possible that what it takes is an insecure woman and an uncertain man. I say insecure woman because she will jitter about with the very idea of me wanting to 'snatch' the uncertain man who cannot convince himself that he wants no other woman except her. Its either I know the most confident men on earth or they have managed to always find themselves the strongest women alive.

However, earlier this year I was to find myself feeling a bit like Jolene been told by Dolly Parton to leave her man alone! As you have expected I felt a slight sense of achievement and then slowly settled into a feeling of regret and a one time upbeat personality slowly died out and remained dim for about a month. I was struggling with certain feelings at this crucial time of my life. The most important one being that I was to turn 28, never had a single relationship of my own and I was being painted as the Scarlet woman.

Alas, the most desired all time altercation became my wake up call and jot to reality. I could no longer rely on my friends to be my sole companions nor could I expect that simply loving what I do as a profession is sufficient to keep me fulfilled.

The OCD Monologue

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce anxiety, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing anxiety, or by a combination of such thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions).The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and come across to others as psychotic.

However, OCD sufferers generally recognize their thoughts and subsequent actions as irrational, and they may become further distressed by this realization. (Wikipedia; I am aware of the bias of many with regards to wiki but I don't think I need a BMJ certified journal article to define OCD in this context).

The definition of OCD as described above could be said to be a general rule to OCD, whereas, there are bound to be people on the end of the scales i.e. mild and extreme forms. My aim isn't particularly to consider OCD sufferers but to consider the possibility that we might suffer it in our thought processes which do not necessarily convert to compulsions.

Even though these thoughts would not count as OCD, for the lack of a better word, I have chosen to parallel such thoughts to the afore mentioned condition. For example, the 'Internets' provides us an opportunity to vent our thoughts with mediums including twitter, facebook, blogging, linkedin amongst others. However, we end up with so much online presence that we can not be anonymous and the people we want to hide our thoughts from are right there. But alas, if we do choose to be anonymous, we can't really because our ego thrives on the opinion and thoughts of other people but the opinion of those that count are the ones we want to hide our thoughts from anyway.

Now, here in lies my obsession, how do I say what I'm thinking, what am worried about or what's tearing my heart apart in a clever way without being too cryptic for those that matter to decipher it and without being too open for the other three hundred facebook friends to figure out what I mean (I guess your answer to that would be to delete those insignificant three hundred but no I won't because I like the feeling of having 100 more friends than my brother does).

So I get tangled into this dilemma till what I really wanted to say looses its value and I end up saying absolutely nothing. Only it doesn't end there because the next minute, hour or day comes by and the same cycle is repeated.

Why are we so wrapped up in the fear of saying what we really feel? Why often is it difficult to say: I am sad, I can't go on or this is too much? Perhaps we think ourselves weak when we bear our minds, may be we feel that breaking barriers leave us vulnerable for after all our thoughts can never be known save we speak them. Therefore, the darkness of our heart is our weapon, our own secret weapon.

Wait a mintute! Did I grow older?

Its weird how a whole year passes and you sit down and wonder what you did with the last twelve months, I mean it feels like yesterday when I was trailing the Leeds carnival with my sticky out dreadlocks and now the Leeds carnival came back and I feel exactly the same. Is one supposed to feel different when one grows older, should there come with these passing years an intangible feeling of adulthood?

I repeatedly have people tell me "act your age", " you never dress properly", "you should take things more seriously" and the ultimate rib cracking most recent "those multicoloured shoes make you look twelve!".

In my opinion, I think people want to rush to adulthood and as a result they take decisions that steal from them too quickly their childlike innocence. I think its possible to grow older and yet hold in some shape or form our carefree childlike nature, however, it is not as though I am advocating the advent of irresponsible childish adults.

In life, everything is about balance and as much as one needs to put out a certain front of maturity, I do not think I necessarily have to wear heels, a second layer of skin (excessive make up) and bone straight weaves to prove to anyone that my mind and intellect grows everyday as I grow older; that irrespective of age I continue to advance in my communication and thought process.

Fixing the Fizzable

I had a discussion recently with friend on politics and culture in Nigeria. It was impromtu but insightful and you might hear a goat story; and with the master Fela Anikilapo Kuti himself playing on the background with Shuffering and Schmiling, there is no doubt that you'll enjoy it so listen and share your opinion and comment below. I have been able to put the audio file on youtube as a presentation which makes it possible for me to embed the file here!





Podcast by Sarah and Ai

Invisible Readers

Dear Friends,

Technology has advanced over the past few years and I am constantly amazed at the things we can achieve with them, you know things like MRI scans that can help diagnose multiple sclerosis. I mean how awesome is it to see peoples brains while they are still alive.

See I talked about the MRI scans so that nobody will insult me for talking about a trivial matter like how many people read my blog and how many people comment and why I have a neocounter that says I have had 88 visitors to my blog. I would like to add here that if you visit my blog a gazilion times a day you still only count as one person something about IPI or some other internet speak word (I know this because I kept visiting my own blog to see if the count of UK visitors would change but sadly it didnt).

Now, now people, I talk good sense, I know that because I'm just freaking awesome not because I am an incurable narcissist or anything like that (wink, wink, nudge nudge) but if I talk sense like I know I do why does it say I have visitors from like Russia and Canada and stuff and I only get one comment on one post, its not a good feeling people, now before I loose the respect you have for me .... am gonna stop pleading.

Bottom line: comment, follow, share

PEACE!!!

A fool at 40?

I think a thought;

There are approx. 150 million people in Nigeria and the jubilee celebration of Nigeria's independence (one that isn't worth celebrating in the first place) is going to cost 16.4 BILLION Naira. What is the sense in that when the nation is still being said to live on less than a $ per day.

If we are going to ruin our economy further by outlandish spending we might as well share money on the streets to the poor who are the ones that actually face the harsh realities of Nigeria. what justification is 6.6 or 16.4 billion to the Nigerian who struggles day in day out for their three square meals!

If we consider for a moment what Nigeria has managed to achieve in 50 years, I cant necessarily point out any particular Africa wide initiative talk less of a global achievement that suggest that we can be happy that we have been independent for 5 decades

While I do not subscribe to the school of thought that independence in 1960 was not the best for Nigeria, I do believe that Nigeria celebrating in any shape or form of its independence is like a slave whose master set him free and every year he celebrates his freedom even though he is no better than he was while at his masters house, however what is even more absurd is that he loans money from his master to celebrate his freedom. What a fool he is!

They say a fool at 40 is a fool forever, if we say Nigeria is 50 should we then resign and say she shall remain unwise till the end of time. I see no reason to insult my fellow Nigerians and call them unwise because a nation does not make herself, for she is her people and as long as the unwise irresponsible crop of Nigerians continue to make her decision she shall remain so.

We need nation builders, intelligent, hardworking honest people. Decision makers, leaders not rulers. Patriots who hold the tenets of our motherland to heart and are ready to move her forward in this fast growing globalised world.

I love you Today

I love you today

but will I love you tomorrow
Yesterday you plagued my mind
but today I thought of sewing
of drawing, of writing but not of you
will I love you tomorrow or will you have faded

your words made my heart beat
they motivated and inspired
they played over and over in my head
and I knew everything will be alright
now they are a screech I can't erase

I love you today
but will I love you tomorrow
when will I find someone
whom I ll love forever
and their constant presence
doesnt become a thorn in my flesh
I love you today
but will I love you tomorow
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I felt like writing this because of the concept of falling in and out of love. Are they actually feeling love??? What is love? How do we know we are feeling it? can it and should it last forever??

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I won't even pretend to have the answers to those questions and I know you don't expect me to have the answers but I have asked myself these questions so many times and I came to the conclusion that the word "love" itself is a very commercialized one. It is the name given to an emotion in order to promote the idea of valentine and the likes. Have you ever considered the fact that even though obviously you love your family, mama, brothers etc - the focus is always on the opposite sex the kind of love on valentines day, a movie or music video or whatever is trying to connote the idea of love. What they show is always the physical act of "loving".

I am not denying that you do feel something for someone of the opposite sex that you develop a relationship with but to give that emotion the name "love" is just totally destroying it because with that name comes some preconceived ideas of what "love" denotes ie romance, roses, chocolate, kissing etc and I really wonder, that’s not necessarily the kind of emotion I imagine it to be all about, neither is it what you feel for your family and those are the two relationships that are mostly about “love”, right?

I believe this thing called “love” is simply meeting someone you have something in common with, developing deep affection and appreciation for them and in the case of the opposite sex kind of relationship, you can add some amount of physical attraction and viola…love happens.
With regards to how to we know when we are feeling it, I believe you can feel it for anybody if you put your mind to it, but with the opposite sex, being attracted to the person for whatever reason – physically, intellectually etc assists you in feeling it.

Should it and can it last forever? You answer that…if you can make yourself love someone, I am almost convinced you can make it last forever, depends however on whether they want you forever. In as much as we want to believe love is completely mutual, it is the concious descision of two individuals. Love at first sight is total bullocks! Its more like lust at first sight!

Some of the words here are credited to a friend whose name I cannot mention
thank you for those moments of clarity

Who We Are

Many atimes in this strangely vast universe we inhabit, it is possible that we encounter things that confuse and shock us other times we encounter those that are surreal and beautiful.

I spotted her before she noticed me, half my height she is little and i wondered for a moment if I could pick her with one hand and not feel a strain. As she noticed me staring at her, I avert my eyes to avoid an awkward situation realising that she must get this a lot.

Having finiished wth my enquiry at the travel station, there was no reason for me to keep lingering and staying a second longer would solidify the fact that i had only gone to there because I had followed her in.

Walking away, I statred to create a permanent image in my head. I must not forget. That face must be etched in stone. The epitome of the diversity here in this space. A reminder that human as we are, we are different unique, mysterious, surreal.

Social Networking Withdrawal

A little over a week ago I made a deal with my younger brother lets call him young one. The deal was basically a challenge that I could not survive without my phone for a week, never mind the fact that I knew he was just saying that to get my phone knowing fully well that I resented backing off a challenge. So with a painful heart, I watched young one take apart my precious BB Curve swapping SIM cards, memory cards, ring tones and I cringed to the possible lack of push emails for a week. I thought to myself, snap out of it, you are not attached to a simple piece of technology snap out of it!.

So with that motivation from my inner self i summoned up some will power and let the phone go, out of my room and I found myself saying " you better take care of her or I will kill you in your sleep". The expression i saw on young one's face and I knew, I knew I had climbed to the very top of our weirdness scale of one to ten. I was TEN, TEN!, did I just refer to a phone as a person, did I just threaten to kill young one in his sleep?? Ofcourse I was joking, chuckling uncomfortably as young one left my room with my little friend and I almost waved it goodbye. At least there were no tears welling up in my eye or I might have just broken the weirdness scale and crossed over to the other side.

Day 1

This was not a fun day for me, I got lost on my way to work and if I had my phone google map was just one click away and here in lies my excuses why I needed my phone but my main was the lack of facebook, twitter, yahoo messenger, msn and instant access to all my five email addresses. I felt like i had been detached from the rest of the world and placed on a deserted island but i braved the day and survived it!

The remaining days were surprisingly uneventful and as i was almost congratulating myself for a job well done, i get a call on the makeshift brick that was my phone for the week and it my friends saying "why weren't you in class??, the exam resource was handed out" my jaw dropped and i almost screamed the house down. Apparently an email had been sent two days prior to change the day for the class and as I had become so attached to my phone actually going on the pc to check my email was no longer an impulse.

Now the world is back to normal and I have my phone but as much as i thought that my daily existence isn't being governed by the fast pacing world of internet, phone and computer but then i have become dependent on it and I have chosen to be actively aware of my actions so that I do not become completely inefficient without these gadgets. This journey will be tough but it needs to be done

The demythification of Magun

"An evil man makes his race bad even when that race is filled with angels; but a race is a race and a man a man."

This is a quote I got from Thunderbolt (Magun), A Mainframe Yoruba movie on the subject of magun, the superstitious ideology that curbs unfaithfulness. As much as I would like to be discussing why a man's action has effect on his race or whatever group he identifies with like how a catholic girl getting pregnant having an abortion and them marrying a divorcee might make people think catholic girls don't hold true to their Christian beliefs. That said, what I intend to rant about is how adultery is handled in the society and how this is another level in which women and men are differentially treated.

PLOT: A young married woman decides to go back and finish her uncompleted NYSC programme a compulsory year of service to to the country after one finishes from the university but gets deployed to a rural city far from her husband and child. The husband feels insecure as he believes his wife is very beautiful and would command many male attention and in his sour of jealousy he laced her with Magun after he believed rumours of her continuous affairs with co workers and a particular doctor. The film actually addresses the concept of a spiritual aspect to our existence that is slowly been eradicated by our lust after western civilisation i.e are Yoruba mythology and superstitions actually true?

MAGUN: A sort of voodoo charm (for lack of a better word) to prove/punish adultery and in the many superstitions surrounding it, if a woman 'infected' with magun becomes intimate with any man either the man or herself and the man crosses to the life beyond or remain alive and be worth no more than vegetables. The situation can only be remedied if the aggrieved husband was ready to forgive the cheating or in the case of the movie the not cheating wife.

Now magun from what I know about it can only be placed on women albeit there are love potions that a woman can use to enslave her husband. The fact that this potentially deadly mythology is only in place for unfaithful women causes me to think about the time it might have been invented and what the plight of women might have been then when it comes to adultery but the consolation to that is times have changed but looking at the modern and globalised society we live in today I still see discrepancies as to if a woman cheated to if a man cheated.

There is shame for a woman if she is found to have multiple affairs but a man is a conqueror if he can juggle a wife and three mistresses. But I am not trying to remove shame from a woman who cheats because that would be accepting something of which I am very much against but to put into our society shame for men who are unfaithful. Equality isn't about being able to do the same thing but about being able to take same amount of responsibility for the same action.

The Diary of the Sick and Tired

Being rejected is something we all resent, it stops us from taking risks and challenges because of the very fear that we might be shot down and stopped in our tracks. Rejection can come to us in every area of life, but often people talk about being rejected by love I say love (the feeling) as opposed to being rejected by a loved one (the person) because the feeling is what prompts us to take the step forward and it is this lack of feeling that causes the other person to retreat thereby hurting us, therefore it is love that betrays and rejects us over and over again.

It is the strong of us that rise above the storms of rejection and those that come short of strength may sink to a downward spiral that many of us cannot imagine, however,failure isn't about falling down, its about not rising up again and it is important to be conscious of our state of mind because we often run the risk of thinking that our shortcomings in life are our fault.

But I am not talking about love here as the boy/girl thing we see thrown in our face in the media. I'm talking about the love one could have say for a vocation or calling and then deciding that all our strength and devotion would be to achieving whatever that dream is but often, these things are not in our control; if its a job, somebody does the selecting and they can decide that we are not good enough and this can happen even when we think we are the best there could be.

There is need for rock solid strenght and determination to rise above this, it is the strong of us that can keep pressing on, pushing on until we reach our mark. So today friend, if you have been rejected and you know you are made for whatever it is you been deprived, don't give up just yet push on just a little more, reflect and find what might be holding you back and when you find it, fix it and try again and don't forget, all we need is one foot in the threshold of the door and our dreams would be on the palm of our hands.