No but yeah but no but yeah.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those people who say yes and mean yes and those who say yes and mean no or maybe. How can you tell them apart? You can't.

Just how honest is too honest? As a straight shooter, tell-it-like-it-is advocate I am constantly under fire to watch my mouth and be more diplomatic in expressing my thoughts and feelings. As a rule, I do not volunteer my opinion on sensitive issues or to sensitive people unless asked. Questions such as 'how do I look?', 'Am I fat?' are best directed at other people unless you really do want to know the answer. I don't see the point of lying unless I am going to get into trouble for telling the truth and so the only two people I tell fibs to are the traffic police and my mother.

Is it true that sometimes people ask you an apparently straightforward question but don't really want you to be honest with them? This concept really baffles me. If someone asks me whether they look fat and they look like a right hippo, they can rest assured that all their doubts on the issue will be allayed and what they will come to possess is the total knowledge that they are fat.

I have a friend who is a self-confessed two face and she is proud of it. In order to avoid hurting your feelings she will tell you the very thing you want to hear and then tell her friends the truth when your back is turned. I never ask her opinion on anything.

I have another friend who finds it extremely difficult to say no. This would be a wonderful personality trait if she actually intended to do the thing she has promised you. If I cannot do something I usually say no upfront because I'd rather do that than have to avoid phone calls and make up excuses and generally be a dodgy fellow.

I understand that you should sugar coat things sometimes,I'm not completely tactless. You should refuse the impossible nicely. An acquaintance asked me once to bring back an overweight suitcase for them because they already had two bags and I had just one. Plus they were leaving that night and I was leaving in a couple of days. Alarm bells immediately started going off in my head and I could all but taste prison food in my mouth as I was having flash forwards of the people at customs finding pure cocaine in the lining of the bag.I told him N to the O plus I do not know you from Adam. Okay not in those words, but I did make sure he knew why I refused to do it. I could not vouch for what the bag contained and I was not prepared find out.

I told this story to a friend and she said I should have said yes at first and proceeded to screen all my calls till the appointed time of departure. This appears to be expected behaviour.Another time my colleague asked me to take some money to her sister in the UK because she wanted to save money on the bank transfer charges. Once again I had flash forwards of forgetting the money in Abuja or leaving my hand bag on the plane and having to explain how I came to no longer be in possession of the cash. I could not do it. I did not think I knew her well enough for her not to think I was a liar and a thief and every other name in her language she would certainly call me if I told her I had lost the 2000 pounds. Of course I politely declined outlining the above explanation and what do you know this woman starts arguing with me talking about how rude it is to say no pointblank, how can I say we do not know each other that well and all sorts of Christian Religious Studies.

I am now confused,should I reverse and rewrite 20 something odd years of honest intentions and forthright behaviour just to please the faint hearted or are there many more people like me who just wanna hear to truth and have a place to turn for a good dose of it?


image:toddlaurensinclair.wordpress.com

Can't groom? Won't groom!

When I was younger, I was the ugly duckling; my sister and brothers were relatively alright so beautiful, spectacle-free and didn't look like oil had been withheld from their diets. And I knew it. I really don't know which is worse, being an unattractive kid and not knowing it( a bit like those people on American idol who claim everybody in their community thinks they have the voice of an angel and Simon Cowell just goes ' that was the worst rendition of Celine Dion I ever heard and I'm just pressing O on my speed dial for my Otologist)or being an unattractive kid and there being no doubt about it, being reminded of it by the whispered comments around me and being confronted by it in the mirror on a daily basis.To compound matters I was an NSK you know, a non-smiling kid who was nicknamed 'serious baby'- the prefix has been dropped and I now go by the name Baby within my family- because I never laughed. According to my mother there was nothing anyone could do that could evoke the sound of laughter from my throat, all I did was read and not eat.
Don't worry this was 15 years ago.

As a result of getting my fair wear of the invisibility cloak quite early, I was forced to develop other traits to get noticed or seem interesting.I never made too much of an effort with my appearance because I didn't think you could hide the obvious. My now-legendary sarcastic tongue developed to keep critics of my lanky frame at bay. My quick tongue also ensured that before you asked me whether I could count how many fingers you had up with my four-eyes I already had you in stitches of laughter and gasping for breath. Ask my sister, I'm the funniest one. I did not pluck, tweeze, shave or do anthing to tame the forest I had above my eyes until my first year at university when one of my good friends referred to in my 'friends stop you from making friends..' post positively manhandled me onto her bed and deployed her arsenal of eyebrow care products to give me the natural arch that I currently sport.

I bought my first compact powder in 2005, not because I did not know what it was or where to get it but because I will just never be that girl who wears a full face of make-up, day in, day out and whips out a mirror to double-check that the war paint is still on at the traffic lights, during lectures and even in the darkened cinema with their camera flash as light.My friends say to me: E, you look the same wearing make-up as you do not wearing make up and I choose to take it as a compliment even though I know that what they mean is a bit more blush and lipgloss would make you look better!I will just never be that girl who spends hours and hours curling her hair before she goes to bed or hundreds of thousands of naira buying Brazillian or Italian hair or hundreds of pounds waxing my whole body or sheds buckets of tears whilst affixing fake eyelashes or hours and hours in the shower doing God-knows-what-and-can-someone-please-tell-me-what-girls-do-in-the-shower-for-upwards-of-10-minutes?!My make-up regime during the day is simple: no make up and brush my eyebrows. Especially under the unforgiving Nigerian sun and since I can never really locate my oil-blotting sheets for my face so its easier to just run my palm over my make up free nose when it gets oily.
Guys say they like the au naturel look but we all know men lie and are secretely intimidated by the high-maintenance chic. Yes?No?

I do admire my friends when they spend hours doing their hair and make up and come out looking a million bucks for their effort and the Brazillian hair sways to the beat of the music when they dance and their skin glows under the flash of a 10 mega pixel camera and I do wish I could be bothered to get nail extensions because they look so good on my cousin but I have come to accept that sadly, that will never be me. I have always been the quickest to get ready on any night out with my friends and almost always end up waiting at least 30 minutes for the next person to be even remotely close to being ready but that only means they can pass the curling irons or MAC eyeshadow to the next person on the queue and the wait begins all over. I just really tend to think it's not that serious and besides I'd rather know that on my off days when I'm just popping out to visit a friend or to get take away chicken and chips I dont look like an extra from Animal farm and I can sleep and wake up next to 'The One' without my make up bag under my pillow.

Friends stop you from making friends.....ponder that!

I have never been the most friendly of people. Synonyms used to describe me include 'stand-offish', 'snobbish', 'rude' so it kind of comes as a shock to me to realise I have quite a healthy number of friends. At every stage in my life and at work or school I always seem to make friends who , when they get close enough, end up thinking that I actually am the sh*t, the urine ...ah you get the drift. More recently though, to be specific, in my first year at university I made more friends within the months of September and October than probably in all my life.
It all started in my first week.



On my first day at Queen Mary, University of London I met someone on the train to my 'get acquainted with the library' event who revealed quite earnestly to me that it had been/was her first day at Imperial College to which I replied enthusiastically: "me too!" cue nervous first meeting, shared experience laughter. She was the first person I met in the university network and the dominoes just kept falling.


In quick succession I met 5 girls at Queen Mary who ended up being my best friends for the entire 3 years at university second to none and who in no particular order I proceeded to get not-the-best first year grades with, get banned from the library and get embroiled in quick fire correspondence with the head of the law library with, run down the clubhouse formerly known as Establishment with (everytime missing the one o' clock free entry curfew and having to pay £15 each) with, drink all night with and turn up at my part time job drunk(alone).....ah fun times. In the midst of all of this I was so cocooned by this close knit blanket that I hardly ever had a solo moment. Even going to the bathroom we would be 3 or 4 at the same time in our loud Nigerian accents causing a stir and generally being very intimidating to would-be joiners to the crew.Ahhh, fun times.



Fast-forward 5 years and I'm back in the university system trying to get an LLM in far away Nottingham. Okay it's less than 2 hours away from London but the life I'm living couldn't be more different from what I remember of my heady 'uni' days or even my days at law school where 3 of my above mentioned besties came with me to wreak an even higher degree of havoc on Bwari society. Yes, I am now one of those people who turns up at the supermarket alone and buys one apple, one banana and 6 eggs -yes, one of those people who I used to look upon with pity and wonder how they could carry on with life without even a shadow. But the plus side is I actually have time to prepare for seminars and (gasp) contribute to every single class without a friend of mine sniggering in the background saying under their breath 'allow it, and allow those who have sense to talk' or passing me notes for the duration of the lecture and thus ensuring that I stay distracted enough not to gain one.single.thing.
I am actually able to look upon my neighbours in the cafe or in class and because I have no one with me actually notice things about them- a bag Ive seen in the shops, a book they have which Ive read that prompts me to smile and say "Hi, my name is Erenma you're in my Human Rights class, right...." even though they aren't a friend of a friend and no, certainly not from Nigeria.

Tick tock: now. is. the. time

Hey guys, yes for the first time I am actually addressing my audience directly. This is because I am actually about to seek people's opinions on a matter of extreme importance. This matter of which I am about to blog is a brand new phenomenon that has reared it's head out of nowhere and is so intense in its heat that everyone my age now has to sleep with the window open- the roof is most definitely on fire.
If you have not guessed by now, I am talking about the ubiquitous subject of marriage.

Since when did I become a person of marriageable age? Honestly I can tell you that for the longest time I kidded myself, or perhaps I genuinely didnt think I was qualified, that marriage was a far-off notion that I did not have to worry about. At least not just yet. Oh yes, I had friends who were single, some had boyfriends but you know the sort of thing where you are friends with the boyfriend, you go out as a group but I had not been to a wedding in over 5 years! All the weddings I had previously attended were amongst people in the older generation: you know, like my aunties and uncles or my older cousins who made me prefix their names with the word 'aunty' because they were that much older than me.....
Things are not the same. All of a sudden now, it's like I've just received an avalanche of overdue memos- when are you going to settle down? How come you are still single? You know you should be more focused and Why aren't you giving any thought to marriage? The most shocking thing is that I have been to more weddngs in the last two years than in my whole lifetime combined! And even more shocking is the fact that these brides and bridegrooms are like, my age.
Stay so cool. So every other day I have conversations with my girlfriends about themselves or about their friends dreading their next birthday because they are turning 28 on their next birthday. I think 28 is the unwritten point of no return where every girl who is not plannng a wedding or engaged to be married will officially get suicidal.


Since when did not having marriage on your mind make you an unserious person? Don't get me wrong I would love to get married asap but not at all costs. I have often fantasised about meeting that special man who sweeps me off my feet and then the surprise engagement and then the wedding. But these are all step by step right? I mean how okay is it for a girl(or a guy) to proclaim that s/he is looking for a partner. I mean, shouldn't it just happen? When you force it, is there not a possibility that you might overlook essential things like compatibility and how you get along simply because you have found 'a man who wants to get married and has a good job'? Doesn't it potentially put off a guy who may otherwise be your ideal guy if every second you remind him that if he is not ready for marrriage you aren't interested.
It makes marriage seem a bit like an ambition and a competition, the fastest to the aisle....forgetting that life carries on after the wedding day, yes the ring is on your fourth finger and your 28th birthday is in two weeks but does the man have a face, and a heart and a soul?

so I fell in love

Love is not something I would recommend to anybody to do, be in or feel.Why? Because there is absolutely nothing to be gained from it. When its going well you end up acting stupid and out of character, ditching all your best friends and totally making another human the centre of your universe. When you fall out of it, it gets worse- you hate yourself, you hate the person and you fall into this deep black hole. You think you have recovered, you meet someone else but then ironically they remind you of the one you lost.

Love- I've never really believed in 'the one'. I believe there can be several 'ones' for everybody. As a matter of fact I have 3 , 4 or even 5 soulmates. The problem is that people tend to irritate me, or bore me or annoy me thus the minute I find someone who I can remotely go for 24 hours without wanting to punch the lights out of them, I feel like Christopher Columbus when he discovered America. The thing is though, I do not do commitment which is sort of a hinderance to the longevity of any budding feelings that may rear their heads between me and an intended. There's always something that holds me back. Once it was the age- he was 3 years younger. The other time it was his complexion- much too Igbo-coloured. More recently it is his location- miles and miles away from me. Are these genuine reasons why I havent settled down? Or just flimsy excuses to hide behind whilst I carry on with my bohemian, lone existence?

Love- people always ask other people whether they have been in love before but I always retort with 'what's love?' But now I know that when you are in love, you just know. Everything is perfect, I have less fights with my mother, I start to believe more in myself, I plan for my future and include him in it only to be brought crashing back to earth, fall through and land in hell. And I'm still mourning.

Love.

Determination

She had an insolent pout and was unapologetic about it.
The tilt of her head showed pride and a hint of aggression.
She was a go getter, proactive to the core, She was not going to let anything stand in her way.
This was me....this used to be me

They say he that is down need fear no fall.
But I feel lower than low
My heart is in my foot
My head is filled with vacuum
I am numb, all I perceive is nothingness
It is his fault, he did this to me
All by being himself , it is his way
consigned me to these frenzied feelings of self-doubt, self-loathing, self-induced torture
And I feel this way every month

Abuja, Abuja youre boring me to tears

So I packed my bags and left London on the 11th of June 2008 where Id lived since early 2003, so almost my entire adult life.I had mostly lived on my own in a rented flat, I had a job the whole time i was there. I loved shopping, I loved dressing up, i hated studying. But the fact was that i had studied law, my options were limited and my degree results were not out; I could not possibly predict my grades because it could have gone any way.

So my mother persuades me to move back to Nigeria and enrol at the Nigerian law School in Abuja.i was apprehensive at first, wasn't sure what to expect but i was also looking forward to a new life. Thus began a new era of my existence in Abuja. Ive been waiting for Abuja to sweep me into its bosom but so far its only succeeded in making me a recluse. There aren't enough hang out spots to make it worth my while to actually dress up, put some make up on and head out into the night- or the day, if necessary.

I wish we had more shopping malls.Ive been known to snap out of the deepest depths of depression on entering Topshop. Just looking at the clothes and feeling the potential of the night used to be enough. Id look forward to going shopping from school, from work, from a hangover...it cured everything.

Silverbird looks promising.They have a Mango franchise whose doors are still shut and it says opening soon after at least two months that Ive known about its existence.Okay, what about bars at least, if only I had the capital Id open up a proper swanky bar where you can go and dress up and have a drink without feeling like you are in a night club or on the other hand like you're in an isi ewu joint. Abuja needs an in-between venue like this......

I will be patient, maybe it will occur to someone, because formerly Abuja was the choice city for top politicians and civil servants.However, now, their children have come over. We 20- somethings need an avenue to relax without feeling like were amongst okada riders or without having to go to a hotel where we feel like shalams or without having to go to a nightclub and have our parents tut- tut when we stumble in the next morning hungover and smelling of smoke.

Dream big

Ive often wondered if its really true what they say about "if you think it, you can do it" Is is determination that pays you off with achievement or success? Or is it pure luck? Or is it destiny? I started off thinking that destiny controlled everything e.g if you were born to be poor you would be and that some others were destined to be kings and so they were.

Somewhere along the line Ive switched gears and Im now thinking that if you put your mind to something, to a dream, hard enough you can actually achieve it.The most vivid example is with my graduating grades which were starkly different from the grades I started off with in my 1st year. Now, i dont want to go into detail about exact figures but somewhere in the middle of my final year i decided to start looking for jobs. I was shocked that majority of the big shot jobs wanted 2.1 or higher! At this stage, I decided to double my efforts and it paid off big time.
Another casestudy is Barrack Obama, who would have dared to believe that a black man, a person of Afro-American extraction could actually be the first citizen of the USA.It would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago.

Now I have a new dream, after much consideration and three weeks in the business i have decided to pursue a career as a trainee solicitor in England.Now if I could go back to 4 years ago, Id go back and join as many extra curricular/charity/ voluntary work as I could. I would also have worked harder in my 1st and 2nd years so that my grades would be a bit more consistent. However, I will not cry over spilt milk, I can only hope and pray that my determination alone will see me through.

I do not come to you by chance

I just finished this novel called I do not come to you by chance by a Nigerian Author Tricia Nwaubani. While I would not say that shes broken any literary records it was a very good story. An apt portrayal of the Nigerian advanced fee fraud industry, because that is what it is. I say she hasnt broken literary records because her style, in my humble view is not very solid. Her story, though, speaks for itself in the sense that the story sucks you in and you almost start to believe that the characters are your next door neighbours and you can see, smell and touch them.

She also does not end the story in that way that most of these stories end where everyone lives happily ever after. The ending is actually quite realistic appreciating that life gives you a bunch of lemons and you have to make lemonade.

Now its a common fact that we bloggers are aspiring writers/authors/novelists/call us what you want and I am no exception. If only a good plot would come to me, and I would find the time to put pen to paper, or rather fingertip to keyboard of my rather ancient 2005-model toshiba laptop with the quote mark key not working. I am inspired by Nigerian female writers such as Chimamanda Adichie and Tricia Nwaubani for actually believing in themselves and trusting their abilities and not restricting themselves. Their books can be found chest to chest with international bestseling authors in foreign countries.

Alas, I have to keep dreaming that one day I will actually be a writer like carrie Bradshaw, especially Carrie Bradshaw although I wont be writing anything remotely about sex. No, even I am not that liberal(yet). Instead i will pour all my thought into this my personal space, this blog I have been trying to write and sustain for the past two years(with a high fail rate) and I hope that one or two people will find the time to read and enjoy it.

To Have and To Hold

Is it really impossible for the Nigerian woman to have it all in the 21st century or are we still holding on to the ancient notion of a woman’s role in society? The family or the career. The family AND the career. Why do these two options seem to be mutually exclusive, two elusive concurrents. It seems like you can only have either one or the other.. you’re keen to start a family then be prepared to be barefoot pounding yam in the kitchen and making shopping lists all day till death do you part blissfully or otherwise unaware of what’s going on in the world around you. Or you want to be the regional head of a fortune 500 company then prepare to forfeit the aforementioned domestic bliss and come home to your luxurious Egyptian cotton sheets whose thread count you will have enough time to verify.

Are Nigerian men threatened by a woman’s financial independence? The answer seems to be a resounding YES! I have shopped around and the prevailing sentiment appears to be that no man wants to see his wife ‘suffer’. Interpret this as no man wants to let a woman into the ‘old boys club’. They would rather come back home at midnight and tell their loving housewives over a plate of just-made Egusi soup how incredibly volatile the stock market is, how rare it is to find an honest accountant or how frustrating the rising cost of steel is while said woman’s eyes glaze over is admiration. How does this man manage to understand these incredibly complicated issues? Now if said woman was out there in the labour market she would be able to challenge him with her own knowledge or her own take on the facts. She might know an accountant who can knock 50% off because business is slow or that steel prises have risen because of the corresponding rise in the price of oil per barrel- a knock on effect of the war in Iraq.

Shock! Horror! A woman who is actually worldly-wise. This is far too threatening to the status quo. Now don’t get me wrong I am certainly not one of those people who have literally been baptised and cleansed of all ties to my custom in my motherland and born again into Western societal androgyny. Far from it, in fact I strongly believe in the right of every man, woman, boy and girl to a steaming hot plate of home made food prepared by the oldest female member of their nuclear family with ingredients purchased from an open air market by the afore-mentioned female rather than some overworked underpaid, illiterate maid/nanny hybrid plotting with other overworked, underpaid maid/ nannies to elope with the driver.

This is the reason why our fellow homosapiens in the west invented the vacuum cleaner, the microwave and the fridge to name but a few of these now cant-do-without necessities. A woman is entitled to a choice. I respect, nay, admire a woman who has put herself out there and decided that the whole suit and boardroom thing is not for her and chooses to retire into the predictable routine of homemaking, carpooling and daytime television but I am afraid I want more out of life than this.

I want to first and foremost be able to go out and earn a living. For as long as I am able I will go forth and justify the many hours, months, decades spent in the pursuit of academic excellence. I need for a skill which I had to fine-tune by pushing myself endlessly and sweating in anticipation of countless examination results to be acknowledged and rewarded in cash. I was once told by a man that he will triple whatever it is I think I can earn from a J-O-B and pay me to stay at home 24/7 but that is missing the point. I need to be taken care of safe in the knowledge that I can(this is the operative word) take care of myself and that if I want it, that Chanel purse can be mine and I don’t need permission to go out and buy it just as soon as I put the finishing touches to the Isi-Ewu I have on the fire.

whos that girl?

I believe there is a perfect woman for every man and a perfect man for every woman. In other words I believe in soul mates. I don’t think any one person is just bad inside out, when people break up it’s because they were not with their correct match. One man’s meat is a another man’s poison, they always say. This is why some people realise that when they break up with their exes they ironically become good friends- this is evidence that they are not supposed to be in a commitment-driven relationship and they are better off with no strings attached to each other.

I’ve often had to adapt myself to fit into a role which I assume I’m supposed to be playing in any given relationship. I’ve been accused of being a good girl this is because I always want people (who I love) to see the best side of me. Thus, when a friend comes to me with a problem I try to be a shoulder to cry on without losing sight of the fact that s/he needs a solution. I have to be on their side otherwise they would not have come to me in the first place. Similarly , at home I’m often torn between being myself and being the perfect daughter. I scare myself sometimes with the level of detachment that I feel towards the status quo: I’m one of those people that if I didn’t have the parents that I have I’d probably never get married and just have a couple of babies out of wedlock for good measure. I’d probably have written one or two novels hoping to get published and for money, I’d be writing jingles for advertisements.

I don’t really know what men want. It’s all well and good that when he met me he must have liked what he saw otherwise he would not have gone through all that hassle to get my number but then after the first few conversations and especially if I like him I start to wonder whether I’m really his type or whether I should make one or two character adjustments. I don’t know if I’m really laid back or really high strung. I think different people bring out a different side of me. One thing is for sure though, I need respect. As soon as I feel like this is being compromised , that laughing joking me is gone and replaced with a snarling bitch. You don’t mess with me wildcats!

I’m not sure if I really care for any ideology yet I can be very argumentative- I think it’s just my pride and I hate to lose. This is why midway through an impassioned debate about whether Obama or Clinton deserved the republican seat, my brain just goes slack and the argument becomes a quarrel about other issues. Truth be told, I don’t really care for politics it’s society that dictates what topics of conversation are considered worth debating by a young woman my age(current affairs) and which ones are simply frivolous( celebrities and shopping). I have an acute phobia of failure , this is probably why I never put in enough effort into anything so that if I fail at it, I can simply convince myself that I never really wanted to do it in the first place.

I do have a conscience though. But I think I’ve been socialised into having this conscience.I was brought up in a semi puritan household where certain topics were not even brought up. Sexuality is not a topic of conversation in my household and I always feel guilty about it. Often I wonder why I even bother feeling guilty about certain things because the world does not seem to care. Apparently all is fair in love and war- I mean who cares if you’ve stolen someone else’s boyfriend, you’re not going to let love pass you by just because he belongs to someone else temporarily? But what about if some other girl feels like your man is the one for her, who are you going to call now?My mantra is karma comes back around.

I can never keep up with the rules of dating. Left to me I’d call a man that I liked whenever I saw fit and pick up his calls whenever I damn well please but oh no!This is not the way it should be- you’re supposed to make him work hard. As far as I’m concerned this is why we have so many rape cases supposedly by ‘men who we are close to’ because we don’t start early enough to establish these boundaries. Me, my yes means yes and my no means no, if I’ve been saying no for six months I don’t think there’s likely to be a change of mind, and if I say yes the first time you ask; mmhmm I think it means that I like you. All these love games are a waste of my time and I’m not very patient.

I really wish that there could be some sort of indication when you meet the right person. like a trumpet sound or a blaring horn so that you know that you have to go up one gear because if you miss this person, you’re only going to have a series of grave mistakes coming your way.