Guava Days

I have begun to sleep naked. It’s been three months now and being apparently a new habit it sort of baffles me that I haven’t stopped to give it any considering- I am known to be the considerer of things, especially things pitifully unimportant.

I sleep naked, visit the library, attend lectures and go to the gym. I sleep naked, wake up naked, and spend hour and hours at the library, then I go to the gym. Sometimes I have a shower there. These days am at the gym every other day, I have a shower there each time I go.

If anyone asks me to describe what sort of person I am, my responds will be – 'I am someone who visits the library, sweats at the gym, attend lectures, showers at the gym and sleeps naked. That is the sort of person that I am’. I will restrain from adding that ‘but we are people who die; all of us.’ death is our lowest common denominator. It reduces us to dust.

There are things I want to say but don’t know how. I wanted to tell you something about loss, but it’s not a clever enough subject to talk about on a blog. Here in Hampshire the day dwindles before one is fully aware of it. What are we if our days slip away from us although it’s yet untouched? Vacant days that write nothing on us and we also mark it with nothing. Isn’t it too early in life to begin to bend backwards in memory over younger days when the day came at us full with mouth stuffed with guavas? The days you and I remember; where afternoons are hot and quiet because the older people are still at work and we are already home from school. Days we thought we would always know.

These are difficult sentences to write. I am trying to reveal something by hiding it. An extremity of personal absence* will overshadow this space. I said it before months before, I will say it again because you will understand now ( although I feel only the passing of time will make my meaning clear). I am unable to be here. But I will see you. Always, even now in the florescence of this room, the echoes of your footsteps walk the corridors of my thoughts. I will see you.

*phrase stolen from the master himself, Henry James.

Going and Returning

I never really gave closure to my NYSC year. I mean on this blog of course. On my first blog post I was moaning about how I was waiting to be enlisted for National service. I would often rant here about my experiences and I think it’s proper I give it a good wrap.

I spent my last weekend in Bayelsa with some friends. We went to an Island just on the verge of the Atlantic Ocean. Travelling teaches you; and being on a speed boat for hours and hours with nothing but a stretch of water ahead and around you sort of confronts you with things.
I found myself thinking, what made this people to leave all this land, all these forests and come here to settle. Nembe and Brass people have a grand history that throws back to hundreds and hundreds of years. Why did they come here? How did they negotiate this ocean? How did they survive the element? But really why was it so important to them to be far away from other people?

I shrugged my shoulders and prayed for a safe ride as I didn’t trust my life jacket. Ijaw people are proven themselves for generations to be amphibious. We were glad when we arrived. The experience of seeing Brass has stayed with me. I don’t know if it was because it was some parting ritual for all of us – we had arrived Bayelsa a year before complete strangers to each other, now we were friends, and in a week we would return to where we came from, maybe. We kept telling each other how we would meet at such and such a place in the future. Some of us will keep in touch, some of us will not. Some of us will meet again, some of us wont.

That week I was contemplating my choices- what to do after National service. Should I look for a job in Port Harcourt or do I enrol for an Msc in the Uk. Every thing was a dizzy flux. But On arriving the Kingdom of Twon Brass, walking the narrow streets of the ancient place in the company of my friends and the new local friends we had already made, my anxiety about the future subsided. I enjoyed my hot bowl of goat-meat pepper soup and washed it down with a chilled bottle of Guinness stout.

It was Martin Buber who said that all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware. I like this quote. And there is also one more; I don’t know if it is my imagination or uncertain memory; it says something about travelling being like a conversation with people of another time or generation. I felt all these in Brass. We stayed two nights and returned to Yenegoa. Later that week, on the Thursday, we had our passing out parade. We were handed our discharge certificates and we danced and cheered and proclaimed our freedom. I left for Port Harcourt same day. I didn’t stay back for the farewell bash organised by friends.



You need to come here. It feel like you are on the edge of the world.

our boat dancing about.
My first view of the ocean. It has a voice and a temper. There is something very quitening about it when you sit near. Picture taken with blog in mind. Was supposed to capture a certain mood but it failed. And it also was a concerted efforted at duplicating something a friend of mine Atutu had up on his blog when he flaunted pictures about his Geat American trip. You can look if you like.

I found her here, feeling very at home.
His name is Mike. An Isoko man. Warm and kind. He didnt overcharge to bring me here on his bike. He insisted on having his picture taken. When I asked him if he minded me putting it where a load of people could see he said ' no trouble!'

My friends. Generally horsing about. I want them clear in my memory, not all blurred up like this.

Of Mind

The thing there is that I look at people. I don’t mope or gaze or anything troubling like that. I just look at them. I notice the colour of their shoes, their bags and how it bumps along. I notice that they may be in thought, the near-smile on their lips, then something else I don’t know. How they walk…. Every body I‘ve seen walks funny.

I think it might be a problem that I feel comfortable to hold a person’s gaze and then look away without saying hello or feeling the pressure to nod at them; to agree with them that they are being seen.
I have a friend who says he finds stares unsettling. I agree it could be unsettling, depending… but it doesn’t have to be. Or you be can be covert. Were you not well brought up?

I went to Burton today and bought myself a jacket for the winter. It’s black. Handsome, cost forty pounds and fits perfectly. It sort of makes me happy. The girl at the till is good looking. I like it that she looks in my face and smiles as she hands me back my change and receipt. I look back too and smile and almost winked.

I get out of the mall and hurry along. There is a 3000- word essay waiting to be completed; there is a group presentation topic to be researched. I have moved from my home in Port Harcourt to a city in one of the southern counties in England. I have enrolled for an Msc and will haunt this place for a time.

On the bus, I am considering the etiquette of not staring. Here, people avert their eyes. They walk straight ahead. Single-minded. Like spirits. I mutter to myself that it is weird. I also agree that I hate how people in Port Harcourt can stare and even point, sometimes. Unbelievably rude.

My house mate asked me, when we first met, if I had lived in the UK before. I said not really, but I had visited several times. Wao, your English is so fluent. I said thanks and continued with the yoghurt. We guess at each other’s age. He thinks am 20, I think he‘s 24. I’ m wrong, he s wrong. He is from a little town is Sussex no one has ever heard of. I tell him that my tribe is such a minority that there are Nigerians who don’t know of its existence. But that it’s the language I often think in and sometimes wish I could write in. That is the only language I speak, apart from English. He smears jam on his toast. I much enjoyed the simpleness of our dialogue.

Upstairs in my room I don’t have to stare too long at the laptop screen for a youtube video to buffer and play. It s easy to forget how much trauma Starcomms had caused me.
I decide to write something. Anything. All I can think of as I stare at the screen is the obvious: That it is a Tuesday evening in November and it is windy outside. That I am a man who is sitting before a PC. Thinking, now this essay has finally taken shape. That’s all.
My eyes stray out the window, unto the street. I bring it back and instead decide to visit a place I truly miss. But I have to say I was a bit unsure that I would see you, that you would come....

Thanks for reading.

It's not as if an explanation would be too difficult, too painful, too irrelevant or anything like that. It happens.

Something is broken and I am unable to be here. [let the reader understand]

Daddy Bliss

Photo taken on Ididie Hotel Road, Ekeki, Yenegoa.

Photo taken near AdaGeorge/Wimpey Junction , Iwofe Road, Port Harcourt.

There are a few others scattered all about town. I didnt have my cam with me the other day when I saw the one that said

" Get pregnant in 90 days. Call Daddy Bliss"

or the other one that said something about

"Your appointed time of marriage has come."

I am weary of cynicism. That is not the point of this post. I however have learnt that as our faces are different, so are our problems. We dont always know from where our help will come.

For callers outside Nigeria dont forget the code :+234

Lagos

These people
Where are they all going
What’s this thing they are speaking
These people

And where the hell is AnTony?

Delaria

The fever. It won’t subside. There is just the fever, red and angry coloured.

Sprawled on the bed for two days, my head is too heavy to leave the pillow. The head ache. It has an iron hammer of its own.
Sleep stays away at night. In the morning strangers visit me. The clock on the table says 3.05pm. There is another message alert from my phone. The table vibrates. It’s ringing now again and I have exerted my mind all afternoon in a bid to determine what one ought to do with a ringing phone. All reasonable answers elude me. It’s a curious matter. It puzzles philosophy.

See, now the shivering has stopped. It just gathered itself and lifted. For a moment there it hung over me like a hat, and then it skipped off and sat on top the wardrobe at the end of the room, grinning . Like a naughty girl in skirts. Then it looked out of the window, but what was there to see?

There is the bungalow just behind. Cream coloured. Solid and unpretty. A lofty water tank and electric poles. But not only that, just ahead, by the cross road, there is a tree. A tree with leaves on it. And right now, as if the stage has just been set for them, three weaver birds whiz across, perch on the tree branch and begin to chirrup. Jaja! Jaja! They chirped. One... Two... Three... Four times.... then they pause to argue amongst themselves. The two older weavers say to the younger one, have you got a cold or do you just have the most terrible voice? Indeed your chirp sounds like a sneeze. You must look and learn, you little thing. You must hold your neck up. Flatten that tongue for a perfect tone. Your vowels come out completely ruined... why? Your elocution.... omg. Ohmygod. The older weavers went on with their grave admonition. However, when they were done, the younger weaver straightened his back and told them quite clearly that he didn’t give a fuck.

They are startled by the chattering of two girls who must be house helps returning from an afternoon errand. Out in the open, Tiger the pitiful mongrel is sprawled on the sand. Dozing and totally baffled in the heat. There is only the occasional, involuntary flicker of an ear.

A black hen is by the corner, scratching the earth franticly for pink worms. She is alone but she is cooing. Here is her story: Two weeks ago the rain swept away four of her newly-hatched chicks. Only yesterday a hawk swept down and snatched the lone chick she had remaining. She put up a tough fight. She flew after the hawk, far above the bungalows’ roofs. She shrieked, flapped and caused such uproar. But no. With might, the hawk had asserted its will. Today she is stranded in the habits of yesterday, scratching and cooing to lost children. As she scratches, only occasionally does a trembling seize her. But she doesn’t give in. She remains silent and stately, restrained by the dignity of her grief.

In my head in the room, meanwhile, the headaches subside. The relief is so unbearably pleasant the curtains begin to wriggles their waists. I doze off and I am at once ushered into this benevolent nightmare where purple colours wage war against octopuses on the Bight of Bonny.

I awake again to the steady inconsistencies of the afternoon. My tongue is clammy and as bitter as pills.

Still…

There is the wardrobe, the clock, the table and the fan up there that keeps spinning round and round. There is the bungalow, the tank, the poles and the trees with the leaves on it. There is the Hen, the weavers, girls returning and the dog that is pitiful. Then there is me, a boy ... no... a man sprawled on the bed, feverish. And even now, there is a young lady who has appeared before me. Full and big breasted. Black as night.

She is singing to me in Italian.

On a bus

You are travelling from Port Harcourt to Yenegoa. Everybody knows that the surest place to board a cheap bus to anywhere is at Mile One Park, right under the bridge. Mile one Park has not lost its sense of constant chaos. Although you haven’t been here in a while you don’t forget that here in Mile one there has been countless stories of pick pockets, missing wallets, handbags, phones, etc, etc. Here, men have miraculously lost their penises. Someone touched them and the thing between their legs disappeared by magic. It’s true. But these stories aren’t as common anymore.

A man is shouting and ringing a bell, “Yenegoa 500 naira! Three per seat...500 naira...Yenegoa! Two chance ... Who dey go? ... One chance one nyash one nyash!” You get a window seat at the back and try to make yourself comfortable.

You pay no attention to the hawkers who shove their wares in your face through the window: Garden eggs, banana and groundnut, agidi, moi-moi, buns, Gala, minerals, ‘cold iced water?!’ An Hausa man appears before you with a show case display of watches, bracelets, rings, necklaces. “All fure gold straight prom Kano” he flashes a shiny gold tooth of his own. You pay him no mind. You suspect you may soon snap at him if he persists at this rehearsed stupidity. He moves on. A woman in red gets on the bus, and a rotund man sitting at the front yells his irritation, wondering if you all were to sit at this park forever, “where is this driver for God’s sake!”

All around you buses are loading to everywhere: Bori, Omoku, Aba, Enugu, Warri, Calabar, Benin, Owo... the list could go on.
Conductors ring their bells and raise their voices over the din of the crowd. There is a stump of a man bereft of his torso begging alms, but not only him, there is a proliferation of beggars of every variety: blind, deaf, limbless. There is the old man with surgery-gone-bad claims; he lifts his shirt eagerly to show his ruptured abdomen. There are the long-haired children from north Africa- Niger or Chad perhaps- who pull at the clothes of passersby with their dirty fingers. Their equally dirty parents hover about at a near distance, supervising the children, urging them on. You don’t give to any of them.

But now the bus is full and it is only left to the preacher to hurry in a Word, a prayer of protection. His maroon safari suit is bad. So is his skin. His English is worse but he delivers with refreshing humour and gusto. He introduces himself as “Evangelist Lebanya Godwilling Chimaroke of Effectual Fervent Prayer Ministries Worldwide.” You smile even before he continues because you see that often times these days, reality assumes a ridiculous hyperbole that defies parody. Perfectly baroque in its excess.

You are indifferent to the prayers but captivated by the tremor of the evangelist’s face as he concludes: “we arrest every blood sucking vampires, every monitoring spirits, every territorial demons, positioned on the express to cause accidents and mayhem! We right now issue and tender their arrest warrants! We release the angelic supersonic spaceships from the seventh heavens to bOOm down and destroy!... To bOOm down and scatter! ...To bOOm down and rent in sunder!”...
“Are you not hearing me?!” he charged. “If you believe this shout AMEN!”... “I say If you believe this shout AMEN!!” “Oya begin to laugh at the devil.... I say laugh at the devil right now and claim your victory! It is done”.

He collects the freewill offering and the conductor shuts the bus. There is at once the communal sense that this journey will bring you all good. The bus begins to crawl out of the park but still there are the last-minute hawkers of cheap books clamouring,

“Collection of 101 most powerful romantic text messages .... buy now.. don’t regret later........N50 only” Or

“Find out the true story of who killed Kaduna Nzeogu”

It never ends in mile one park.

The bus pushes past old GRA and Ezimiro where grand colonial houses still sit on vast compounds of well tended lawns. Past Garrison junction where eminent banks erect shiny edifices in obvious competition. Further ahead, there is Rumuola , East-West Road towards a green horizon- and beyond that, in the mind’s distance, Yenegoa, Sapele, Okene, Abuja, all lying in the same sunlight.

The bus gathered speed and wind gushed in. Although she wasn’t on a window seat, the woman in red stretched her hand and shut the window with the gumption of one taking up a challenge. The man by the window was asleep, doubtless an argument would have followed.

You reach into you rucksack and bring out the book. A second-hand book yellowed with age, titled “Disraeli in Love”. She understands your apathy for Romance, but has sent you this still, insisting you have to read it. You settle in to it as the bus itself lulls and ply into that middle distance in every journey where most passengers doze off and dream of things.

You sink into the quick-pulsed certainty that somewhere, there is someone, someone who cares enough about you to buy you a book. A second-hand book yellowed with age. Someone who waits eagerly to hear what you think of it.

You open it and there on the first page, written in her smallest, finest handwriting is a note:

To J my sugar,

For your nice enjoyment.

From your sweet Scholarstica

Eyes Wide Open

Father said “why don’t you study Law?” I said “no I prefer Accounting”

I wanted to become like father, I didn’t know Law was father’s dream, only those days it cost more

“You could make a good lawyer” father said, but when I returned to school I dropped courses like English Literature and CRS, knowing they were prerequisites to study Law

Accounting it has to be, and then I stepped into my teens

To be or not to be a rockblues star, that became the question. I took piano lessons. I wrote songs about love gone bad. I gave up piano and took up the guitar. I was that annoying type: 16 years and with my uncombed afro, in love with a guitar, devouring John Steinbeck and Stephen King novels, cloning Tracy Chapman, writing my friends’ names on my baggy jeans with pens and markers. Spookily quiet, but angry at the world. Where the hell was tenderness and justice? Plus I also felt being young was a burden.

I immersed myself deep in jazz: Al Jareau, Betty Carter, Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Miles. I drank black coffee, started smoking Benson with my best friend, listened to Christian rap music, and spent all my savings on buying month-old Time and Economist Magazines, I wrote poems, stayed up night after night by a candle light, labouring over sentences in the short stories I wrote then but am now quite ashamed to read. I cloned Stevie wonders and was doing well with the C sharp octave. I hoped to scat-sing on three octaves like Ella or Al or maybe just settle for marrying Christina Aguilera.

I wanted to stow away on a ship, to somewhere far away and foreign. I would become the Nigerian dream: I got out, got discovered and made it. That is how it would be said of me. All that is required of me now is hard work. My voice coach said with the right exposure and luck I could be it. An uncommon voice with soul to carry; besides he also said my song writing was astute. [He often mentioned Sade and Tunde Baiyewu of Light House Family]

The dream did not fit in the general mode. I got into university in Port Harcourt. I graduated. I abandoned the guitar. I betrayed my voice. Poetry danced away from me. I don’t read as much as I used to and am still labouring over sentences. But all is not lost; there is the near certainty of a job when I pass out from National Service. [An accountant in trousers, long-sleeved shirts, a tie and a jacket perhaps. I will work hard, the job will pay well and soon after I will get married to someone I believe I can live with, buy a piece of land in a newly-developing area in PH, build on it, have two children and begin to worry aloud about what proper private schools to send them to].

Last week, I went to Orpheus House of music in Port Harcourt to buy a violin for my sister {she wanted it as a gift for a kid in church}, there was a beautiful acoustic guitar sitting there on a stand. I took it and strummed some chords I could remember. It’s true that you can’t really deny the things you actually love.

I will buy the guitar. Just for my personal pleasure. Like books, music feeds something in me. As I left Orpheus there was this acute nostalgia, this heightened singleness of someone who has slipped out for a minute from a class or meeting, ears still ringing, face solemn, into a world of corridors, the neutral gleam of the day.

On the 11th of July, about a week from today, I will no longer be 19. It is my birthday and I will be turning 20. At 16 I was pretentious and stupid at best. I was non conformist and, by principle, generally despised compromised, half and half life styles. I either cared too much about a thing or too little. A decade down the line, still a misfit but far more agreeable. And I realise it’s still the same things that stir me: Books, music, people [including the mumu ones], community, etc, etc.

Right now I want to say something I have never said before. It is something I have wished for, hoped for, but never really had the audacity to express directly, even to myself. I WANT TO BE A WRITER. Ok let me tone it down, I WANT TO WRITE A GOOD BOOK. It’s right here now as a witness. It will be here to sneer if this never happens.

Right now am sleepy, and have forgotten the original shape of what I was planning to say. Or what I ought to call this post. It has just occurred to me suddenly now that I am dreaming. This is a vice. I am dreaming with my eyes wide open.

14th and Serenity

Coming straight to your hood, Monday May 26th. Watch Out!!

More info here.

BLANK PAGE

naked paper

i cover you with my small hand

and frantic scribbling

eager to clothe you with inkblots

and clustered thoughts

but as i review your new apparel

i start to wonder

if you looked better bare

A Year, A Month and Some Days

It is common practise for people to mark events in their lives. Hook up anniversaries, birthdays, graduations.... etc. Atutu marked his probable 30th birthday by touring the whole North American Continent.
He flaunted and paraded pictures and witty writings all over the place as he travelled; one couldn’t as much as drink water and hang his own cup. We must all choke in envy.
That nothwithstanding, my faith is solid - God will remember me one day.

On blogsville, bloggers often mark their ‘blog birthdays’.

My first post on here was about a year and a month ago perhaps. You see I don’t remember when exactly, even checking the date of my first post won’t help. Listen. A friend practically forced me to start up a blogger account.
He supervised me as I registered the blog [He said he was tired of seeing pieces of my writings on scraps on paper scattered about my room]. I abandoned the account that day after signing up until 7 months after when I decided to go ahead and blog. I edited the previously blank post and it remained there... 7 months back-dated. The confusion set by these two dates doesn’t help but am determined (partly due to my superstitious nature) to mark small things so bigger things can come along.

Now that I have explained myself, you can relax and enjoy the party.

I will be unapologetically self absorbed today.

I intend to tell you what Cereals I prefer, the sort of things and people I like or dislike, my favourite colours, the best books I’ve read, best authors and artiste, my best beverage and favourite brand of beer... you know... those sort of things. I will try to sneak in an apology somewhere for being the most terrible blogger around. Even I know it. I‘ll try not to talk about my initial surprise at favourable responses on my blog. The feeling is a mixture of joy and suspicion. It is impolitic, nowadays, to express disbelieve at a compliment. It is seen as being too modest and even pretentious. It is never really expected to be mere, genuine disbelieve.
And also, I won’t say things like “I truly don’t deserve my blogsville friend”, it would sound gush.

It’s an auspicious day so I won’t ruin it by saying things about sex and breasts. Every fool knows that God hates sex and resents talks of it.

NYSC will soon be over. I will ‘passing out’ in about 2 months. Maybe then my life can really begin. Maybe then I will blog as often as I like because I won’t be in Yenegoa anymore where there is hardly ever power; where my eyes hurt from reading with candle lights; Yenegoa where I returned to writing on paper.
Perhaps then I will also quit all this whining, not just because the Service year is over but because I am older. And God will reward me- for slaving for NIGERIA- with my own Great American Road Trip or whatsoever they call it ( if you like don’t shout amen! And yes I haven’t gotten over it yet).

So, join me lets hum the birthday tune for Burntmelons.

Let him continue.


P.S. I cannot end this without mentioning my first readers: Bitchy , Spook e and Ide
" That thing wey ona dey find, make e fall make una catch am."

Away to Toro Ndoro

I shunned the boredom of Yenegoa, got on a speed boat (for the first time in my life) and went away for the weekend.

I like the way this first sentence sounds. Sort of bourgeois.... don’t you think?... as though it were a quick first-class get away to Monaco or The Maldives if you like...

Anyway, so I got on a speed boat and went away for the weekend.

My friend Femi (real name) who is a doctor (Corper) had been inviting me for over four months now to the little village he was posted to.

He had warned me that there was no electricity, no portable water, and no mobile phone service in the village.

He also told me that the community, as an incentive for him to stay, made his little flat comfortable. Made arrangements for a satellite dish to be installed for him so he could watch football ,CNN and American Idol...

I am glad I went. It was great!

These pics were my first. I was a bit scared but I tried not to show it. I gripped the side of the boat with one hand and my cam with the other...

Altogether it took about 4hours to get to Ndoro from Yenegoa. First you got on a bus from Yenegoa to Bomadi(2hours) then you got on a speed boat to Ndoro( Another 2 hours).

Safely at the Ndoro boat stop, when I said I was looking for the heath centre, a bunch of kids immedately took my Knap sack from me and rushed ahead, expecting me to follow. They announced to everyone on the way that I was "doctor's stranger".

Health Centre

Femi says that this Solar Powered Refridgrator is the most valuable stuff in the health centre. It would have been impossible keeping vaccines e.t.c....

It would have made you a little happy to see that some of these Governments projects are at least carried out. Although in terrible need of maintainace but see, here in Toro Ndoro, there is a health centre with a solar powered freezer. It certainly has saved many lives.

Names...

I made some friends. The names here are strange to me . The non-Ijaw ones of course... The Ijaw ones will crack your teeth. A few examples of the non-Ijaw names:

-Gandoki
-Governor
-Shell
-China
-Style
-America
-Handsome
-Endure
-Fynecountry
-Wednesday
-Money
-Sapele
-Sugar


I was under the impression initially that these were nicknames, but no, they arent. These are the names their parents named them with. The names on the front cover of their school excercise books...

There is a litle baby named Yar'adua, after our good president. He was born on the Presidential handover week.

These are toilets.

It made some sort of sense when I thought of 'food chain'. The Fish will always have steady supply. I spent the weekend trying to convince anyone who was listening why they cant drink the river water.

I tried distributing a supply of Water Guard and Alum but most people werent very keen. They laughed at my sense of urgency (...this river water we have been drinking since?) but they assured me that they liked me very much as a person. Was I a doctor too?

I didnt understand.

This is called a 'Rest House'.
The name says it all, its for resting. Chilling. Women have theirs not too far off. There is also a local prison in the village. With chains e.t.c.
If you missed bush clearing, or fieild cutting, you got fined. If you didnt pay up that same day you got locked up.

Palmy Sunday..

We were rolling with the top guys in the village. My friend, the doc, is very well respected as you would expect- I mean he has delivered about 20 babies, has cared for so many sick people in a community that had seen no doctor for years.

Some one overheard us talking about having not tasted palmwine in a very long time...

They next day they pratically forced us to the bush to drink palm wine.

The boys ran ahead with cups, chairs and other things to make us at home in the bush( it felt funny, am not used to being paid that much attention). All they asked of us was to drink the palm wine with our right hands. It was the custom.

Yea, from that bucket..

I lost the video i took when they all got high and began to gyrate

English Premiership

There was a football match on the Saturday: Arsenal Vs Chelsea. The match ended in a draw.1-1.

All the fans on both sides were much offended...

Step out of your room, into the boat.

Waiting for my Boat Monday Morning

I think finally it took me about 4 hours to get to Yenegoa... I got to work by midday on a monday. My boss was not pleased, but did I care?

This is not the boat I await mind...
This a canoe.. I know am a softie but isnt it beautiful the way it is sitting on the water??

Indigo

Amarata, Yenegoa
20, February, 2008


My darling Scholastica!

I am infuriated, and perhaps I shouldn’t be writing to you at all, since you deserve only letters of love from me. But both of us know that the world is a struggle of contradictions, so perhaps it will give you some pleasure if I write to you about my indignation.

You already know that my primary assignment for National Service is at the Ministry of Finance. After working without pay for about three months, my boss, the Hippopotamus still says he s uncertain when our pay will come. You know the Federal Government gives us an allowance of N9, 700. Even with the plummeting rate of the dollar that still leaves me with a mere $2.5 a day. Just on the world poverty line. I know, my darling, how this figures will stir you!

My boss, the Hippopotamus requires that I be at work 8am-4pm Monday through Friday, There isn’t any work to be done here. The permanent staff themselves are redundant. I don’t even get to make photocopies or carry files anywhere. I sit from morning till evening, the other Corp Member I work with plays Solitaire all day. I don’t blame her. I don’t mind her too. When she tries to talk she sounds like a fool. Sometimes they turn on the T.V- there is one in the office- and we all Nollywood on the African Magic channel on M Net. (Eucharia Anunobi is still looking like a startled cat. With those her steep eyebrows she carves up to the centre of her forehead).

I have had to turn down the offer I had to teach Economics and English in a local school near-by. Loads of other Corpers use their spare time for private practice like this. But trust mine to be different. The Principal already agreed to pay me as much as N10, 000 a month! Can you imagine! For Four lessons a week, they haven’t got teachers and the senior students will be sitting for their O’level exams in June. Yesterday, when I told her I couldn’t make it, she became depressed.
I feel stranded. I have no money. No food. When last did I get on the internet? Last week when my allowance ran out I began trekking to work. It’s a mere 15 minute walk anyway, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. But then not when I never have breakfast, and have to post-pone lunch till evening since I will hate to sleep with an empty stomach.
No help is coming from home yet. They already did their best in providing the money for my rent for a full year-that was the only way the landlord would have it (one year flat). I won’t be as cruel as to ask for more help.

But I am not very hungry this morning my darling Scholastica , I am in fact re-reading the book we bought together four years ago, “The Engineer of Human Souls” I am sure you may have guessed that already, at least from the many exclamation marks. You brilliant beautiful thing!

Do you still read as much as you used to? I miss all our talk about Literature. Our talk on social and economic revolution for Nigeria, about justice. All of those are gone from me. I feel now that we were just young and pretentious, and therefore silly since all kids really are silly. Books are a pre-occupation of the filled, not the hungry. Believe me; three months of acute hunger can obliterate a century of fancy living and civility. Please reply speedily; perhaps you might restore that which is noble in me. I don’t try to write anymore. You know how important that was to me. Sometimes I even try but cant. I doubt I have anything of importance to say to the world. You must agree too that ‘the merely poetic destroys poetry…’
So I have folded my dreams and gone home to wash.
I am not born a writer. I am just a dreamer who looses his wallets five times in a year, and forgets his phone every place he sits down, and talks to himself often. An un-gifted eccentric.

Remember that man you introduced me to once? Who is an Editor for Pebbles Publications? I submitted some of my writings to him as you advised. It took him five months to send me his shabby reply! He thinks my Language is ‘decidedly inventive’- a bad thing. And that I had no proper grasp of structure. He would advice I undertook a writing course. He said on the whole, my writing and theme were too intense and unsuitable for his audience. “Sorry but I, however, wish you success in you endeavors, Pebbles Publications”. May he go to pebbles! (Correct me if there is no such expression as going to pebbles)
I have forgiven him, never mind me. But may God punish him for me! Mr. pebbles!

I planned to tell you that here in Yenegoa, the buses look like coffins. They are in such terrible state. Even the cabs, when one can afford them, stain your shirt and rip your trousers.
They are a bad dream.

Have you read anything by the new girl Adichie? I enjoyed her last book “Half of a yellow sun”. Do you agree that you are just as enigmatic as the Kainene character? (Don’t rumple your nose). Remember it was you who made me read her first book, which I thought was so so delicate. I however prefer the tightness of her short stories. They are tight like a certain something of yours my dear! (You can slap me when we meet).
I also borrowed Soyinka’s last Memoir “You must set forth at down” He is of the finest mind! He will make you think, and laugh and get angry…. But I already told you of my inability to read his novels (I tried ‘The Interpreters’ without success when I was 12). I know my lack of a quality University education robs me of the ability to critically analyze; still I maintain that he is a bad novelist. But give me the Jero plays any day or the Lion and the Jewel. Those are superb. And his poems too… remember that one we read in school about the Telephone Conversation. Remember that part where he talks about his buttocks being pure black from too-much sitting down! I laughed tears the first time I read that.

Did I tell you that my sister G____, the one you love so much, has gone and joined her self to Yoruba man? We must ratify their union by having a wedding ceremony in June. Please write to her.
For the preliminary Traditional rites, he arrived with one brother and a Truck load of friends. Who has heard of such a thing? No family whatever?
Before now I would have thought it an oxymoron to say a ‘Rootless Yoruba Man’, but there it is. And then again, my love, the boy has no money at all to compensate. He is poor. And with his Ordinary National Diploma in a dubious technical course, he will be the least educated of our family. What, I say, is going on? So we are to marry a Yoruba, but without the colour and ceremonies, without the grandeur and opulence, without pedigree or old money but I daresay we will still have the Cheek and bombast to contend with. We lose again.
G___ ,however, says they are in Love. That he is kind and God-fearing. That he is funny, can laugh and listen and all that jazz. I forgot to add that the young man has no handsomeness in him at all. He has a terrifying look of mismanaged ugliness. Let me leave him alone now. We will soon be in-laws and I shall not be able to say such things anymore of him

Of course once I get beyond this stage of unemployment you and I shall get married. We would have a bunch of little disaffected post-modern babies. For your sake, we would name one of them Amis. So that we can laugh to ourselves when we call his name.
I do hope, my sugar, that you don’t take forevermore to reply.

And don’t take it amiss that I write you nothing of what I would like most to write to you about. I would love to embrace you, to imbibe the liquid warmth of your sweet body- and I know you feel the same. Whenever I recall how we used to cuddle in my up-stair room, overhearing the mumblings of passing traffic, the centre of my being swells with the great power of love for you….. Write to me my dear. I have all sorts of plans. There are all sorts of plans in my head….
Forgive me for darkening your day with words without wisdom and see what a cheerless long letter...

I kiss you everywhere, everywhere
Your J

P.S
Burn this letter!

To whom do you beautifully belong?

This time it was not the sounds of gunfire. Just neighbourhood kids throwing bangers about. Even up until yesterday. The women outside are still talking. Another patch of sky darkens and darkens the ground where the man squatting on his haunches has been writing with his fingers on the dusty ground.

Inside, Jaja is by the window. He cut his afro this afternoon. This first week of the New Year would have made it a solid one year and six months. Across, a blue and white taxi speeds along the road, then breaks; there is a bump, a speed breaker. 30km per hour. Across the road, the two lovers sit on a bench beneath tower like trees. The harmattan wind cannot becalm the vapour their bonding sets free.

Jaja is standing by the window, in black singlet and an old falling-down jeans .“Has the embassy returned your passport?” His mother is walking past, with bed sheets neatly folded like rectangular trays. He does not respond. He hears nothing, although he remembers everything.

The women outside are still talking. The man is writing in the dust, with his finger. Another sheet of shadow descends, quietly and unannounced. Darkening space. A 2007 model Toyota Camry speeds past this time, and slows too. P square’s latest hit ‘do me’ is blaring from the rolled-down windows. The minor commotion startles the lovers so they fly off and perch on the fruit tree; that other one by the cross road.

He doesn’t care what the man squatting outside is writing. The women have been repeating themselves. His passport is back from the embassy. For practical purposes he will go on for this necessary M.sc. Masters in Finance and return for that plush job-- that compromised thing, in his case.
He will haunt a south-west English county for a year and a half or so. He doesn’t give it thought. Rather, he is considering sound; those of birds and the winds.

He worries about how the breeze worries the trees. He in fact decides that trees are majestic and sentient. Today, even the president Yara’dua is not worthy of thought. Ribadu- Nigeria’s anti-corruption czar- doesn’t figure. The madness of Ribadu’s temporal removal; that affront on our civil society and collective conscience for a moment doesn’t matter. New Year indeed.

Something makes him chuckle. He remembers yesterday. While they watched TV together, Anume slipped her hand in, where his falling-down jeans stood away from his waist. She meets a clean brush of pubic hair. “you wan’ weave am? Or make I borrow you thread?” He chuckles and tells her he’s shocked a razzed chick like her has such a fine tone for speech and subtle cynicism. He has no idea what he himself is saying. He must have read that off a literary review. They laugh. She got him.
And I mean into the room too. Family houses during holidays can be such risky business. But they are at it. Like wild animals- that wonderful thing for someone else to be.

Now the talking women aren’t talking anymore. Consistently, the darkness covers the crouching man with confusing colours. The two love birds flew across the road and over the overhead electric wires. They made straight for Jaja’s electric metre box, where there is a nest of their own.

Jaja does not return to that most -difficult chapter he had been attempting to write. Instead he writes a one-paged rambling of the most-confusing rubbish for his blogsville friends. Neither fact nor fiction. who said it was a crime to lack rhyme or reason.

kaiama Blues: Week1&2

Chop akara dey go /Mai mai no dey (2X)
This girl eh/ ehe!(2x)
I like e you/ ehe!
I need e you/ ehe!
I want to touch e / touch e touch e touché
I want to fing e/fingee fingee fingee
I want to fuck e /fuck e fuck e fuck e

5.30 am every day we went out jogging, compelled to chanting lewd songs. It was the best part of the day. I would have been too ashamed to sing those songs anywhere outside that camp. But the bloody soldiers were ordering us ‘sing!’ so, we went ecstatic, sang out loud and clapped hard like we were in a Holy Ghost Revival. Songs about a certain girl called ‘Ekaete’ were quite popular. She was either infected with Gonorrhea or syphilis. Sometimes the next guy had just gotten her pregnant. Either way we didn’t want to get in…. (funny enough the Man'o war attendant for my platoon was a lady, so she swaped the gender articles in the songs nicely to suit her taste, so you can imagine!)
Drills and Marching parades continued till 9.00am. 10am they served the miserable swill….

Here is my Platoon Commandant:


Gunner Sajee: He swears by Arsenal Football Club. He was terribly impatient with us. I honestly think he is better suited driving cattle. ‘You there! You cannot march well? God punish you! You are mad!’





We then lined up for food. Plastic bowls in hand.
But I had other arrangements at the Mammy market. They even served cold drinks here.








Kaiama Blues: Week Two
At this point I was sick of the jogging and drills and parades. The excitement had died down. I was contemplating accepting the offer my doctor friends were making: ‘a note that you have got cervical spondylosis and you can stay with us in the clinic. Or what sickness do you want? Body pain?

The one hundred- and- something other boys I shared room with made lightsout unbearable. Fierce arguments arose about The Biafra War, what ethnic groups in the country were oppressing the others, women enjoyed gbenshing more than men,they frequently cursed the soldiers for spying about,and cursed Kaiama itself for its marshy wet soil- the open air field refused to be used as a fuck flat. The boys were discontent.


Then all the platoons took turns in cooking for the camp. That Thursday, Jaja and the entire Great Platoon 9 members made it to the kitchen before sunrise…. Exempt from every drill and parade for the day… we cooked and cooked and cooked… Jaja working on the beans





Food is ready: Served hot with Akamu. Quite tasty! :)

Kaiama Blues:Week 3

This was the most interesting week in camp. We had the Variety night, Burn fire night, the various pageants-Miss NYSC, Miss Hot legs… the week kicked off with the excellent Endurance Trek, which, for me, was the most remarkable experience.

We were to go 50km, from Kiama through Kalama to Sampo and back through a different route. I ll let the pictures tell the stories, but I ll like to add that I have lived in the Niger delta all my life , and am aware of the deep poverty in the area, still I was shocked when we got to Sampo. Just 10km off East-West Rd, no electricity, no water, no access road. The village itself sat sunken. Wide-eyed and bewildered, as though it was trying to come to terms with a recent sudden disaster. I am not a politician, but I beg, are there senators that these villages fall into their constituency,ward ordistrict ? Are such members of the house or senators mentally deranged?

Looking down from the Kaiama bridge at some water-side houses.

Through the forest, over streams, into Sampo

But even Sampo has got its moments of unfettered happiness. It was like a triumphant entry, how the kids welcomed us. His name is Timietifakagha or something like that. Call him Timi for short. "snap me ! snap me! snap me!" he was screaming at me when he saw my cam, happy like a child. Even you couldnt have resisted the boy. Timi.

Making our way out of Sampo. We fooled ourselves initially- rolling up our tousers. The water was thigh-high. And these arn't even the months of rain.

Burn Fire Night

One girl like that.

P.s

This is coming as an apology. I haven’t got a laptop anymore. I ll try to overlook the details ... Anyway,that has affected my already pathetic pace at updating. I hope you will bear with me. Doing this from a cyber cafe has taken tremendous determination. I am sorry, however,for whatever inconvenience this may have caused you.Thank you. Management

From Kaiama With Love

Thanks for your comments on Isaiah. Will return to the topic later.

Am back from Kaiama. Slimmer and darker. The muscles are even better toned from the early-morning jogging, the constant marching parades and corporal drills.

Interesting 3 weeks. I ll start reeling out my stories small by small. It was a heady mix of excitement, bad food, foul water, inflated prices, Defeaning decibels of Timaya jams( tell me you dont know this most popular singer), the odour of sex, sexual predators (I swear), meeting new people, and the strangest people also claiming to be Nigerians (that you are Kanuri?) hmm. But for now I need to sleep. I’ve got 656 pictures on my cam, an hour length of video...what else?

Anyways, here are my first two pictures.

Was the first thing of interest I saw as the bus approached Kaiama. Curiously though, as I got to camp, the first things I noticed were 3 cows, tethered and grazing. Camp meat I was told. I wondered how they made it into town

Honestly, I still don’t know what that sign is about.

and then...

I ll introduce her to you later . Unofficial, self-appointed platoon leader. Loud, loquacious, no-nonsense girl. Many times she threatened to beat up several boys. But on her happy days she ordered you to come here! and give her a squeeze. Highly optimistic, she didn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t win the Miss NYSC contest. I christened her Miss Earth simply because she seemed solid and unmovable.

There are loads of other people and things I’ll show you. Stay with me... Just a few hours sleep. I shall be back.