Oh, Nigeria

I've been told by my good friend Dax www.thirdworldprofashional.com that sporadic blogging is not cool, you lose your audience- her words. Thus, from this day forward I'm going to endeavour to be somewhat regular in my posts and updates, at least once a week....sounds doable...as long as I'm inspired. It's really not so easy writing about my thoughts. It would have been so much easier to be regular if I was blogging about current affairs, or gossip or fashion or hair or make up. But I'm not, I'm just a girl who has long thoughts once in a while and instead of kick-starting the first stage of madness by talking to myself in the mirror, I pour them out here...once in a while.

What are my latest thoughts?Moving back to Nigeria has been foremost on my mind ever since I went there over the Christmas period for 4 weeks. I swear to you I did not want to come back. The thought of the bleak cold weather, over-subscribed trains, monotonous work, people who are ever too busy to socialize and just the thought of leaving the cocoon that was Nigeria at Christmas was seriously depressing.

They say home is where the heart is and never did that saying ring so true as it did as I boarded my flight from Abuja to London on the 24th of January. It was with a heavy heart that I checked in and let the customs officers run their grubby hands through my nice clean clothes not even bothered to be offended that they made me lift two suitcases weighing over 20kg onto a counter as high as my waist. Surely there must be some aviation technology the Federal Airport Authority can acquire that does the searching and lifting without us having to endure silly questions as 'where are you going with this indomie and yam?' and 'what are these things?' gesturing at what are clearly panties and bras. But I digress.

I truly believe that Nigeria is the best place for a Nigerian to get to the top, firstly and more obviously because you have the home advantage. When they are not too busy adhering to federal character requirements and filling up the Niger-Delta quota. Secondly, because good business booms in Nigeria. You really need not have any sort of business plan whatsoever to start with, just bright ideas, determination and maybe a wealthy and supportive uncle. The late entrepreneur MKO Abiola always spoke of how he used to hawk goods for his mother when he was younger and rose to become a businessman,publisher, politician and aristocrat. Not overnight,mind you, but ultimately before his death he became one of the richest and most successful businessmen in Nigeria.

Where is all this patriotism coming from, some might wonder? Having lived in the UK for close to 9 years on and off I'm slowly becoming disenchanted with the supposed glitz and the non-existent streets paved in gold. No matter how much you earn over here its just a vicious cycle of bill-paying and catching up. Very few people- and I mean the Mohammed Al-Fayeds, David Beckhams and the Royal family can truly boast of wealth and comfort. Everybody else is a hustler. Admittedly there are different hustles- some people work at fast food restaurants and others work at investment banks, but the story is the same. You work all hours of the day, you think your pay is going to be decent but after the tax man has swallowed a ridiculous chunk of it, you're left with just enough to pay the bills and go to the pub.

Its all well and good when you're a student and relying on the merchant bank of mum and dad, there's no tax, there aren't any real bills, there isn't any real responsibility. However reality bites when you're suddenly unleashed into the pool of job seekers and later admitted into the club of the employed. Time and money are suddenly very scarce or perhaps one or the other. This is not to say that jobs in Nigeria are not demanding or there is no tax. Nigeria has a whole different set of issues. For instance, the lack of power/electricity is so ingrained in our heads that a lot of the time nobody bats an eyelid when the lights go off at the airport during boarding or at the bank when the cashier is counting out your 1 million naira deposit. We don't even notice the hum of generators when they come on, I suspect that a lot of Nigerians have lost at least 20% of their optimum hearing because of the kind of sound pollution we are exposed to from generators at every corner.

I have to say that my main issue with Nigeria is not to do with infrastructure, or even the advent of a new kind of oppressor- the Boko- no, it is the people that work in government. What do I mean by this? I mean the average policeman on the street, the average lecturer at a 'higher institution' and the very worst of the lot- the NYSC official. These people operate on a very different wavelength from the average other person in Nigeria who is just happy that they are alive and have something to eat. This lot are frustrated, oppressive and act like they are doing you a favour by sitting behind their desks and discharging the duties for which they are paid. Yes, I know that the paychecks are as sporadic in these jobs as rain in the Sahara desert however that is no excuse to treat people the way they do. The average police officer at a checkpoint believes that he deserves a tip for stopping you randomly at a dangerous intersection and asking you to show him your fire-extinguisher, despite the fact that the non-possession of same is not a crime however because he has 'let you off' he truly deserves your money.

I think this is ridiculous and I can honestly say that I have never parted with money for these policemen except for the times when I have committed actual offences such as hitting a policeman's bike whist fleeing the scene of a crime i.e the red traffic light and driving with an expired driver's license. The second class of offenders are the lecturers, now I've heard stories of lecturers at Nigerian universities turning up to lectures as if these were their very own chieftaincy coronation ceremonies with students pleading for reversals of F grades in their wake,others begging to be registered for the class, sauntering in, hailing their fans and reading from prepared, time-constrained speeches.I have experienced for myself the lecturers at the Nigerian Law School addressing university graduates as if we were preschoolers who were recipients of a special fund for the hard-up and mentally handicapped.

The NYSC officials are simply in a class of their own. For the uninitiated, the NYSC scheme is the national Youth Service scheme which endeavours to unite Nigerians from various parts of the country for the purpose of voluntary(read:compulsory) service to our country. All the officials I encountered ranging from the so-called para-military camp, to the community development meetings to the liaison offices, bar none, are unanimously living in frustration. Now I don't know what they put in their water for them to sip on that renders them acutely frustrated and overbearing. This is a scheme that I don't believe any sane person would undertake were it not mandatory therefore it beats me why I would ask you to sign my discharge form- put pen to paper and make an endorsement- and you look me up and down as if I'm begging you for money. They treat you like an idiot, send you from pillar to post forgetting that you could be somebody tomorrow even if you're only a mere 'corper' today.

Okay let's leave the matter of a select few ill-mannered class of people. The majority of Nigerians are cheerful and just happy to be alive and well especially with all the life-threatening possibilities that could manifest at any time. If its not kidnappers it's armed robbers, if it's not ritualists its the latest cult in town- Boko Haram who I believe should abandon all pretext of being a religious group and announce what they really are- an anti-PDP/Goodluck Jonathan machinery of brute force and chaos. Seeing a new day in Nigeria is a cause for celebration in its own right. Despite all its shortfalls however, Nigeria has strength in numbers. Even only children have cousins, there is the advantage of neighbours, ex-primary school friends, work colleagues you actually have something in common with to socialise with at the end of a busy, frustrating day.

Weighing up all these advantages and disadvantages, you can probably see why its such a huge dilemma(or maybe not) deciding whether to pack my things and head back to my fatherland where I will be simultaneously in the bosom of my great Nigerian people and at risk of one or more threats from the afore mentioned evil Bokos or stay in the land of the free and independent and liberal and be at risk of fading into the background of the dull brick and mortar that is London most times having not made one single impact anywhere or left behind any sort of legacy. What are your thoughts?

Valentine's Day

It's amazing how some people can blow this one ordinary day into the most extraordinary day filled with so many expectations which their partner inevitably will fail to fulfill. There's a reason why February the 14th is not a public holiday- that's because there is no distinctive feature to it. Christ wasn't born on that day neither did any political figure get assassinated. Its just a pagan love festival that puts pressure on people to spend beyond their means and brave the subzero temperatures so that they won't be left out the day after when their girlfriends are gushing over what 5-star restaurant their better halves took them to or which country they visited in a chartered jet whilst under the impression they were only headed to the next city.

It would make for a very interesting thesis why one day should be singled out to prove to your partner that you love him/her. Surely this should be a gesture that is upheld everyday, or are the proponents of this Valentine's charade trying to say that one rose/chocolate/champagne-filled day makes up for several days of horrible treatment, staying out late and not paying your partner any attention whatsoever. If you really love your man or woman, they should be able to feel it constantly rather than have to wait till Valentine's day to be presented with the proof.

Okay, lets say that you are going to observe the non-public holiday that is 'vals day' as my fellow Nigerians refer to it, I don't see why the organization of the day has to carried out under a clandestine conditions. Er, what is wrong with actually making plans with your man because I guarantee you that close to 90 percent of men will not of their own volition go about making random reservations in restaurants or buying last minute tickets to Paris or the biggest expectation of all buy that engagement ring. Okay I recognize that I may have gone a step to far with that last one. Sorry, romantics, Febuary 14th may just be the day when that romantic proposal will arrive, I didn't mean to dash your hopes.

Surely it makes more sense to ask your man what he wants and he asks you what you want. Unless of course, he knows you so well that presenting that nuclear physics textbook he thought you needed wont be greeted by your eyes rolling into the back of your head then he can hazard an executive guess as to what sort of gift you would like. A lot of valentines days for women end in major disappointment when that Louis Vuitton bag does not materialize and they find themselves driving not towards the Michael Buble concert but to Mr Biggs/Macdonalds because of a lack of communication.

Come on girls, be proactive if it means that much to you. If your man has told you that he is not 'into' Vals, please believe him for the sake of maintaining a normal blood pressure. Because once the clock strikes 12.01 am on 15th February then if you haven't already got your dream gift then it doesn't really qualify as a Valentine's day present the next day or the day after if/when something resembling a gift finally arrives. Therefore if you really want to go to that afore-mentioned concert do yourself a favour and book those tickets way in advance when they are still at a reasonable price and do mention it to your boyfriend way in advance because it is not unknown for Man Utd and Chelsea to be playing on Valentines day and no he will not miss that match for you.

Also, if you know that you suffer internal bleeding if you simply do not receive a befitting gift on vals day, I suggest that you drop clear hints(read= specifications and dimensions) of the sort of present you want so that you don't become the pathetic and desperate self-purchaser of your own Valentine's gift in a bid to safe face! This is a true story by the way, a friend of a friend was said to have gone to a lot of trouble to fully stock up a hamper with chocolates, lingerie,wine, perfume, a teddy bear and a strongly-worded card just so she could watch her girlfriends turn green in envy when her package was delivered and subsequently start 'flashing/missed-calling' their toasters to call them back so they too could be seen to be not without a suitor. Now I'm not holding this against anyone at all, everyone has their own thresholds when it comes to public displays of appreciation so if you have to send yourself presents so that you can walk a little bit taller on February 15th then why not?

It would be so much easier though just to drop heavy hints about how important vals days is to you though. If the man really cares, he will file this is his medula and set 5 or 6 reminders on his phone for the days leading up to vals and deliver the goods. If not,despair not, it doesn't mean that he doesn't love you, it just means you can take back that expensive watch you bought for him and use the money to buy yourself a hamper and send to yourself at work. Problem solved!

Calling all girls!

What do men really want? How to please your man? How to look your best for your man? 5 secrets for snagging Mr Right. These are the sorts of headlines that scream at us from our so-called women's magazines on a daily,weekly and monthly basis. Its not like getting advice on how to get the best value-for-money mortgage or how to take care of your car to get the best mileage out of it. Men are not toys, pets or aliens. They are human beings, every girl has at least one in her life be it her father, brother or friend. They grew up on the same planet as us, were fed the same food as us, taught by the same teachers in school and slept on the same sorts of mattresses as we girls did. Why are the two sexes so different then and why do we need a virtual manual to ensure the best relationship with our men?

Even with all the manuals that we pore over trying to understand why men think and behave a certain way, we girls are still pushed to our wits end trying to crack the matrix which is the mind of a man.

Now here is the thing- women grow up wanting attention and affection whilst men are bred to seek reassurance and boosts to their egos. These might sound like two very similar concepts but I assure you they are different. In the case of women, we just need to feel wanted and needed just for the sake of it which is why a girl will happily keep 5 or 6 'toasters' running at the same time even though she isn't interested in any single one of them. Men on the other hand need reassurance that they are the man, that they know everything; they are pleased when we appear not to be able to change a 'simple' flat tyre or a light bulb so that their macho sides can come through to the rescue.

Where am I going with this? I, along with 49.9% of the female population on this planet, have given up trying to understand what goes on in men's heads let alone mould ourselves into what men want us to be. We have given up trying to understand why men are the way they are. The other 50.1% are still teenagers and don't really care.Why do they refuse to understand the importance of affection and attention in the life of a woman whether she be their grandmother, sister or wife?

Men are so quick to point out when a woman is nagging but what they fail to realize is that it would not be nagging if they went ahead and took directions the first time around. Okay, I will narrow down this write up to the specific context of boy-girl relations. A girl would typically call her man just because she wants to have a chat/hear his voice/vent about her day. When she finds that she's the one responsible for most of the outgoing calls between her and her man she will typically request that he try and call her regularly. Maybe, everyday. Hence, this man is forced to call her out of duty, he is merely fulfilling an obligation. Meaning he has no desire to actually speak to her everyday, he is only doing it because she asked him.Why is this always so?

Second case in point is the busy man. Statistics have claimed that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Be it the more general multi-tasking involving holding down a career, raising kids and keeping the home spotless or the more specific multi-tasking involving painting our toenails, talking on the phone and dancing to music. This is what I've read over and over again anyway. Why is it that when men get busy, you suddenly cannot find them anywhere with a torch light, they don't call their women for days on end and when you finally find their brake lights, they say 'I've been so busy, I haven't had the time to call you'. This is one excuse that I will never ever understand. How busy is busy, really?

Thirdly and finally, before this sounds like the post of a crazy blogger with relationship issues, why is it that men find it so hard to say what is on their minds? The most articulate and eloquent men suddenly go all taciturn in the middle of personal drama in their lives. They call you with a rough edge in their tone, sounding like you owe them money. When you ask what the matter is, you must have faulty psychic powers because he is fine and that edge you thought you heard in his voice is just a figment of your imagination. Weeks later when the problem has blown over, they insist that you should have been more patient and gentle in getting the problem out of them.

Sigh.....men are baffling and sometimes I really do think that they are from Mars. perhaps if we women started to act more like men then we would have peace of mind because they don't seem to have the same sorts of heartaches that we have concerning all the petty stuff. Just get busy and don't pick up your phone because it really is impossible to walk and talk at the same time isn't it. And next time something or someone really annoys us at work or at school or even in our father's houses, pick up the phone and call your man and mumble a word or two without telling him the REAL reason why we are angry.

NEVER HAD TO LOOK FOR LOVE

I have been reading a lot about girl-boy relationships lately, even written a couple of posts on the subject myself. The material on this topic will never run out and I will never get tired of reading about relationships, and issues concerning it nor writing about it. Now I don’t want to get too personal and write about my issues here but I would like to say a few things concerning a few things.

I do not think there is anything wrong with a woman going after a man. Notice I did not use the word ‘chasing’. If a man has indicated that he is not interested in you, as a grown- ass woman you swallow the rejection and move on. The way I see it, it’s like being turned down after a job interview. As a matter of fact, I intensely admire women who go after the man of their dreams- it shows great organizational skills and burning ambition to know what you want, identify it amidst a sea of prospects and pursue it. Yes, we all 'know'(read: have been told) that all men like the thrill of the chase but I don’t think any man would disqualify a woman as a potential simply because she called him first or responded to his text within 30 seconds. The key is subtlety.

Now I’m no relationship expert, neither do I have any qualifications in psychology or what not, but I am a woman and you don’t get to my age without learning a thing or two about boys, girls and chemistry. As far as I am concerned, we usually know within 5 minutes of close contact with another person whether they are someone who we can ever see ourselves being with or admit to being in a relationship with. Yes, just five minutes. For some people it’s the voice- a person’s voice speaks volumes about them. Some people claim that a deep, booming voice in a man indicates that he’s a natural leader and able to influence people and wield a position of authority. Hence any squeaky-voiced contenders may as well fall back.

I was reading a recent post by my good friend at http://thirdworldprofashional.blogspot.com, which sort of inspired my current post. She was talking about men who string you along but do not want to marry you; I had so much to comment on that I decided to simply consolidate all my comments here because a lot of it is not directly related.
A friend of mine was telling me about this amazing man who she ‘dated’ for 7 months but never introduced to any one as her boyfriend. The reason being that he did not embody those values which she believed her significant other should possess as standard. This had nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, looks or even financial standing. It had a lot to do with the fact that, she came from a family of strong, commanding men and this guy, ‘M’ was the complete opposite of these things. He was a bit too sensitive, obedient and forthcoming. A little bit too adoring, reverential and had a bit too much time for her. She was used to the man wearing the trousers in the relationship and the woman having to seek the man’s face and beg for his time. It wasn’t that M did not have a job, quite the contrary he was a manager in his workplace and oversaw 12 staff- why did he have to time to spend 4 hours of his working day speaking to her on the telephone?

Another friend of mine told me how she met this gorgeous tottie at a house party and decided that he was exactly her type. He had the rugged good looks, the quirky individual style that involved the wearing of a lot of peg-leg trousers and bowler hats as well as being a music producer of techno and electro in his spare time. Let no one ever call him the typical Nigerian boy. She set about trying to present herself in the most girl friend-ly way possible- no foul language in his presence, cooking 5-course meals, confiding her deepest darkest secrets to make him do the same. This guy being the non-typical Nigerian boy, told her straight up that he had decided within 5 minutes of meeting her that she was not girlfriend material. Ouch, some of you may say, but this isn’t the most tragic thing on earth. It just confirms my theory that if a guy wants to ’wife’ you or ‘girlfriend’ you, even an infinite number of burnt meals prepared for him, him being 22 years old and unemployed or how many small, petite and light skinned girls he’s dated in the past even though you are a tall Amazon goddess with hips to rival Oprah Winfrey will not change his mind( and vice versa).I do not know the rhyme or reason for this.

Seeing is believing they say and I had to move back to Nigeria for two and a half years to confirm for myself the heights which to which some women will go in order to secure a band around their finger. This particular point is inspired by a post on a blog I just recently started following- http://www.miafarradaily.blogspot.com/- where the author was ranting about thirsty women and market spoilers, laugh out loud funny but it did get me thinking. Thinking about women who simply do not want to be alone, the thought of singledom is as severe as a sentence of life imprisonment with hard labour. Now I am not here to preach all that nonsense about being secure in your own company and enjoying being single as I believe everybody has their own threshold for loneliness . Some people rely on affection and attention and would simply expire if they didn’t have a steady stream of pingers on their case( where did I read that men don’t bother to actually call women nowadays except you’re their girlfriend) whilst others are happy to chat with men one at a time until they make that connection. I won’t tell you which category I fall into!

The first category of women are those that always have a pot boiling on the back burner so they never run out of samples to pick from if push comes to shove. The second category of women are more laid back leaving everything to fate knowing that the more you look the less you see and sometimes you cannot really engineer these things. I do know one thing for sure and it is that our resumes cannot be carbon copies of each other’s. Different men are attracted to different things and it is not necessarily the fact that you don’t wear short and tight dresses and have never stepped into a nightclub in your life nor that you are an almost-Michelin-starred chef and can whip up a three course meal with a blindfold on and one hand in your pocket that will make a man take you seriously. Sometimes these things are just your luck(destiny/fate/God's will/karma- delete according to your faith).
PS: I’m no saint but I’ve never had to look for love.

10 years older

I remember when my mum was 45 and I said to her 'mum wow you look so good even though you're almost 50', meaning this as a compliment.She turned to me with a look of steel and said 'even 49 is very far from 50'.And today,12 years later I myself have come to realise that this is the gospel. Last September I returned to the UK to start my masters programme in International law. For some reason, I imagined that I was going to have an identical experience to my crazy 3 years as an undergraduate in London.Nothing could be further from the truth!
Back in those days, I was known as a party-rider, and this was before the expression was patented by 9ce in his song. I was partying 2 weeks before my exams,the night before a 9am shift at work. My middle initial was S for spontaneous. I had no idea what the notion of planning entailed.Schedules were a foreign word, I never experienced tiredness and if anyone's swagger needed to be gingered, I was the go-to person. The library was a social spot for us in our first and second years, in fact it was so bad that my friend Adanna used to wear a disguise in the library just so I could not find her and come and distract her.
Fast forward to 3 years after my graduation from university, and 18 months after I wrote my last examination at the Nigerian law school.I am a post graduate student and even 24 year olds are positively new borns as far as I'm concerned.I'm consumed with a burning ambition like I have never had in my life. I curse my laid back attitude whilst I was at uni and I really wish I'd done better in my 1st and 2nd years.
If only I could get into a time machine, I would go back to my summers of lounging at home, channel surfing and party hopping and do an internship. I would have devoted more time to developing my writing, penning that novel that I've dreamt about authoring since I was 10 years old.I would have sought out and read all the literary classics from Jane Eyre to Things Fall Apart to Wuthering Heights.I would have done more travelling and explored this big wide world around me which I only started doing in 2007.I'm proud to say I now have 7 countries under my belt!
My little cousin who's 17, started university in Ghana last September and the last time I went out clubbing with my flatmate in Nottingham, I was easily 8 years older than everybody on the dance floor. I could not get myself to move my body, it was a parody. Whenever someone calls me to go out, I look first at my warm bed and then at my delicious half-read novel and I answer negative. I have outgrown those days of grooving left right and centre. I am a job-seeker,I am one-half of an adult relationship, I am an invitee to the 10 year reunion at my High school and I am currently receiving queries from my grandparents about whether they will be alive when I walk down the aisle.
I think it's important to recognize that life comes in stages though. I enjoyed my youth, I tried everything at least once, I discovered myself, I changed my ideology oh at least 5 times, I made some friends, fought some and lost some. I lived on my own, then moved in with my parents. I lived abroad then lived in Nigeria, made my own money and then taxed my parents. I met the wrong boy and then met the right man.Life is a metamorphosis, we just have to embrace the next stage.

Love is all around us...or not?

Nobody has ever successfully defined love to the satisfaction and agreement of the world at large. Someone once said it is a feeling that you feel that you've never felt before. That could be any number of other emotions though...even hate.

People 'fall out of' love too. This, I've never particularly understood. If love is the emotion felt by a mother towards her child then love is unconditional and pure, right? There isn't any one thing the child does to earn the love. A child can earn his mother's trust or respect by conducting himself in a certain way but apparently you do not get to experience what a mother's love feels like until you become a mother yourself.I guess this automatically expels all the men in the world from experiencing this particular brand of love. And all the women who never have children.

The other kind of love that I am aware of is between a man and a woman. The one between Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic that made him risk his life in the face of certain death by drowning to go and rescue her from her flooded cabin. Or was it the other way around? This kind of love is fierce( I've been told), it literally burns a hole through your soul and has a lot to do with the physical too. How then can we tell the difference between love and lust? Is lust a certain kind of love?

Then there's this other theory about 'love grows'. Back in the days, our grandparents and some people's parents said to them, there was nothing like dating or getting to know someone. It was really about finding a suitable man or woman and getting married. The love was sure to follow if the woman cooked the food in the right way and gave him kids of the right sex. Conversely if the man had a sustainable source of income and paid the brideprice upfront (no credit), all the boxes were ticked.The rationale behind this was that you do not stay with a person for 10, 20 years and not find something to love about them. We modern people today call this convenience. The last resort for the people who get to a certain age and think: 'that's it, the search is over'. See 'tick tock , now is the time' post.

Is love an emotional or a physical feeling? We're all familiar with pain but that too, it seems, is psychological. If you stick a pair of scissors into the leg of a paralysed person 5 times they do not feel it. Is there still pain but they don't feel it? Or is there actually no pain at all? I wonder if love is a bit like that, you close your eyes, put up a wall, disqualify the person but it's still there...only that you can't feel it.

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.