#TimeToFrakpas!

Where do I start..?

Over the last few months, I have had a few out-of- body experiences where I step out of myself and my world and look into what the world has become; and it seems that with each passing day, the world becomes dumber as a whole, unknowingly living with one big wedgie riding high up our backsides!

You don’t believe me? We live in a world whose inhabitants have morphed from respecting intellectuals and achievers to according respect to half-clad nitwits all in the name of fashion and modernism, where the definition of beauty no longer contains words like grace, simplicity and perhaps virtue, but is now measured by how long one’s hair extensions and eye lashes are, and of course how much plastic they have injected into their bums, boobs and brains.

...a world where the definition of bravery has shifted from phrases like courage under fire, saving lives at the risk of one’s life, jumping into burning buildings to save people, cats or even material belongings, to “a confused and deeply troubled transgender who is a sorry excuse for a woman in a white bikini, and for which he earns awards and a reality show on a national network!.

We have degenerated from celebrating talent like Biggie Smalls, Tupac, Marvin Gaye, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey etc., to celebrating the talent-less talent of a family of ill-bred Armenians who have come to stand for everything wrong in the world we live in today: bad parenting, sexism, making money off no talent or skills whatsoever, kids growing up faster than adults and having no sense of decency, respect or self-worth/achievement; we need to stop keeping up with retards and start celebrating achievement of people doing great things and causing positive change in this generation!

Close your eyes with me for a second and imagine a conversation between a bunch of Martians looking down at the earth and its people… what do you think that conversation would sound like, besides how we seem to get stupider with each passing day? Sometimes, I think that we have yet to discover intelligent life on other planets because we have forgotten what it means to be intelligent; how can we then recognize intelligence when we see it?

While I am not fond of rallying along the lines of end-time predictions, there is no gainsaying that at our current run rate and trajectory, the human race is at risk of being so dumbed-out that we would probably inadvertently trigger some catastrophic event that will cause the end of mankind as we know it.

Thankfully it is not all bad news; with our dumbness comes an increased responsibility for governments to protect us from harm while we pursue our random acts of individual stupidity and sometimes, institutionalized stupidity. So suddenly, it is fashionable and legal to be gay (err, remember the smiting and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? it was because they got fruity and loved it above all else - lesbianism on the other hand... most men can identify with :). While some have chided the US president for pushing this agenda on his recent visits within Africa, and the matter-of –fact responses he received from African leaders on what our immediate priorities are, the truth is that the supreme court upheld decisions and as the number one citizen, it is imperative that he ensures the safe conduct and passage of all Americans who choose to be happy, fruity and gay around the world. Institutional stupidity that promotes the shooting of unarmed civilians to death, by police, for wielding toothpicks, handkerchiefs or for just being black in the wrong place, state, and time.

Let’s not digress from the matter at hand. I feel that if we are to survive as a race, humans need to get back to being human and getting our priorities straight, we need the step back adjust our hips, look to all sides (to make sure none of the Martians are watching), and have a good o'l frakpas to reset our senses!

It is time to get back to all that is good and sensible, decent and sweet, humane and sustainable. While I am all for black equality (even supremacy on account of what we have given to the world in knowledge, skill and strength),  and an advocate for #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter, I cannot but wonder if the police are simply not a reflection of the society they come from/live in? It is unlikely that a smart society will produce a dumb police force... 

What happened to the strength of character of the black person who was proud and confident and respected? MLK and his generation? Today it is all about the #thuglife, #twerking, and duck-face-selfies, black on black violence and sagging pants, I’m black and I don’t even respect you, how do you expect to command respect from white, green, blue or pink cops when even at your best behavior and in your best get-up, you look like an irresponsible stoned thug?! #TimeToFrakpas!

The time to save our generation is now, less texting, more reading, less unproductive hours on social media, more inventions that add value to lives, less public display of cleavage and nudity, more self-respect, self-worth, less rudeness and disrespect from teens and kids on account of more corrective slapping, whipping and the like. Don’t get it twisted, I am not saying we are all stupid, I am saying that we are all at risk of being buck-smack-dumb if things do not change. #TimeToFrakpas!

Definition of terms (just in case)

• Frakpas: this comes from the sound that’s made when you pull an elastic material out of your butt cheeks (wedgie) and release it to the sides. It is pronounced fra-kpass (like jack-ass)!
• Wedgie: "an act of pulling up the material of someone's underpants tightly between their buttocks as a practical joke" usually cutting off the supply of blood to the brain leading to dumbness in the long run.
• Martian: aliens from the planet Mars

Photo credits: Google.com

Wikipedia - definition of wedgie

Et tu Themba?

Every now and again we are reminded of how random acts of ignorance and unchallenged stupidity can cause simpletons to act out an alternative reality. As I put fingers to keyboard (not pen to paper) I am ashamed for the average “club-wielding” South African and at how the misguided utterances of King Goodwill Zwelithini simply reawakened a near-retarded sense of entitlement among a select majority. I am even more ashamed of those who have a chance to speak up and end this madness, but who feel that is it is not in the interest of their political future to intervene. 

Quick history lesson; at the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa, within the native black communities a few schools of thought emerged. School 1 or the first group who saw the opportunity to change their lot and chart a new course for themselves and their families. This group focused on getting the right qualifications to ensure they advanced, quickly on the socio-economic ladder.  Today, they make up the middle and emerging middle class; they are restless and hungry for success; and we all know a few of them! 

Then there is School 2 or the second group who have an entitlement mentality; they are the uneducated/semi-educated critical mass who still live under the illusion that the South African government and the ANC owe it to them to basically breastfeed them out of poverty and penury. They have little or no skills or do not see the need to acquire any. Interestingly, to them, it is their right to drive fancy cars, dress rich, and have the prettiest girls and the most modern cell phones, hence they resort to armed robbery, rape and other atrocities in a bid to show to society that they are disgruntled and deserve better. These are the Almajiri of modern South Africa. 

Then there is the third group: School 3; a hybrid of one and two, this consists of individuals who seek to improve their lot, but who also feel a sense of entitlement based on years of repression. They are the lucky class who have benefited largely from BEE initiatives (Black Economic Empowerment).  They are in positions of influence (some well deserved while others simply blacked their way to the top – no offense meant). 

It is with this backdrop that one should review and consider the 2008 attacks and ongoing xenophobic attacks being perpetuated by the Second Group on mostly harmless hardworking individuals who just happen to be working and contributing their own quota to the development of an obviously ailing South Africa. 

From the interviews videos circulating on social media, we can summarise the grouse of simpletons as follows:

They are poor and impoverished and lack the basic means for subsistence

• They are poor because they have no job
• They have no jobs because of foreigners
• The foreigners are hardworking and more competitive and seem to be taking up all the opportunities that should be the exclusive preserve of school 2 South Africans
• Fueled by the perhaps misguided and misinterpreted utterances of King Goodwill Zwelithini, if they killed all the foreigners, they will suddenly have an abundance of jobs and opportunities

When you think through their logic it is clear to me why they are where they are! There is a saying that those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat its mistakes.

The 1972 Ugandan Experiment: 

In August of 1972, Idi Amin ordered the Asian/immigrant minority out of Uganda; at the time, “the Ugandan government claimed that the Indians were hoarding wealth and goods to the detriment of indigenous Ugandans and "sabotaging" the Ugandan economy.  Indians were labeled as "dukawallas" (an occupational term that degenerated into an anti-Indian slur during Amin's time), and stereotyped as "greedy, conniving", without any racial identity or loyalty but "always cheating, conspiring and plotting" to subvert Uganda. Amin used this propaganda to justify a campaign of "de-Indianization", eventually resulting in the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minority. This expulsion of an ethnic minority was not the first in Uganda's history, the country's Kenyan minority having been expelled in 1969”. (Wikipedia)

Clearly, besides triggering a wave of xenophobic/barbaric attacks, the expulsion achieved nothing; instead, the businesses left behind were mismanaged by Amin/his cronies and their friends; within a few months, it was clear to all that the problem was with the Ugandans and not the seemingly smarter Asian minority.

The simpletons in the second school of thought, in their murderous rage, believe that the expulsion of the foreigners (limited to the Black foreigners, who have now become their sworn enemies) will start an automatic chain reaction that will up-skill, up-place, and up-shift them from their current socio-economic subset, without any effort on their part.

More disturbing, King Goodwill Zwelithini has missed several opportunities to calm his subjects, denounce the violence, and explain in rational terms the potential of their misguided actions;  I kinda wish there was a Jega for every misguided Orubebe on the planet.

As I write, I cannot but wonder, where will these simpletons draw the line? Let us imagine that through some stroke of evil genius, all the foreigners are expelled, and a few months on, they still remain unskilled, jobless, and hopeless, who will they turn to next? The Chinese who are taking over the construction sector? When all the Chinese and other Asian migrant-worker groups have been expelled, what next?

Ah yes, they must turn their attention to all non-black south Africans along the social pecking order; since for all intents and purposes, they are all foreigners! With all the Whites, Indians, Chinese, and all non-South African blacks gone, guess what….  The simpletons will someday wake up to realize that nothing has changed; same shanties, the same issues, and no capacity and capability to generate income and improve their lot, time for their masterstroke!

Attack all the Colourds (oh yes! Colourds foreigners too in the larger scheme of things), and then attack and murder the black educated middle class, and hope to usurp their jobs, roles, titles, and material possessions.

With the government of South Africa remaining passive and lacking the political will to take decisive action, the simpletons will now rule over south Africa, run the businesses to the ground, cripple the economy and eventually turn on each other, catapulting towns and cities back into the blackest days of apartheid-level suffering.

At this point, after a successful uprising, after everyone and anyone else has either been expelled, killed or imprisoned for taking the jobs and opportunities, perhaps we will witness the first ever nation state of street urchins, thugs, rapists armed robbers and pillages; still poor, still without jobs, with a shattered/crippled economy and with absolutely no hope for the future, who will the simpletons turn to/on next?

End the violence now!

Credits: www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk

                Wikipedia

                www.malawi24.com

                www.jozincolour.wordpress.com

#BlackSunday...and heaven wept..

I awoke grateful for the gift of a new day, the sunlight, the air, the sounds, even the fear of traffic… in my joy and gladness, I felt sadness, despair, and pain for once again, we are left speechless by the tragedy that could have been avoided, and which ideally should never have happened.

As I set out for work, everything around me ensured that the sadness was refreshed every inch of the way, the newspaper headlines, the drive-time programming on the radio, and the sullen faces; how could I forget? It was a black Sunday indeed on June 3, 2012, and days before, heaven wept in anticipation...

On Friday and Saturday previous, it rained, no it poured, the heavens opened up and the tears fell and swelled as rain, little did we know that it was a sign of the sadness to come.

It rained and wouldn’t let up, and the winds were strong and steady, the heavens knew what we didn’t know… it shed its own tears before, that we may shed ours after.

We awoke to whispers of an explosion during a church service in Bauchi, and how lives were lost and a lot more injured, this was just after news of a ghastly motor accident that robbed many of their lives along the Lagos Ibadan expressway… we were still trying to come to grips with these when fate smiled, knowing that the heavens had already shed tears of anguish, knowing what was to come.

From its majestic place of pride in the Abuja to Lagos skies, death came calling and refused to be placed on hold!

For the little angels still too young to have made lasting friendships or cultivated enemies, the families who have had to embark on that journey of no return, to the others who have been named as father, brother, sister, mother, aunty, uncle, wife, husband, daughter or son, as we mourn your sad loss and abrupt passing, we pray the Lord your souls to keep.

Today we all mourn the passing of these souls, as we shall mourn tomorrow, months, weeks, and years to come; as reality sets in; of friends never to be seen and warm embraces never to be felt again, we shall forever mourn, as memories of loving smiles, mild kisses and the warmth of friendship now violently ripped from our reality, we shall mourn and pray the ferry-man takes them home to rest in peace.

How many more shall we mourn while no one takes responsibility for the pain and the anguish, for the lack of security and safety, for the sorrow that is fast becoming a way of life for Nigerians? How many more shall pass through the shadows before we shall feel safe again as a community, a people, and a nation? When shall our lives be valued as they should be?

We sat; wined and dined and went about our daily routines, oblivious to what was ahead… the skies saw it coming, the sadness, the pain, the sorrow, the violent stillness, and the endless quiet that was to blaze a trail of despair, the heavens sensed it and in pain, cracked with thunder,  steadily, fiercely…

… and heaven wept.

#BlackSunday – R.I.P brave souls as you swell the ranks of saints and angels in Heaven...

Much Ado About Little Blue Thumbs

                

April 4, 2011

Technically, I am very apolitical, unfortunately, the recent happenings that Jegarized our existence as people living in the Zanga in the last seven or so days have created sufficient cause for me to voice my opinions and concerns. Where or what is the Zanga? It is a nation state located in the heart of Africa, sometimes regarded as the most populous nation in Africa. Zanga is located 20 nautical miles off the coast of Zamunda (of the Hollywood flick Coming to America fame).

I should start by commending Prof. on his forthrightness and ability to say it as it is! It takes balls of steel to stand before a nation and confidently reel out what at best could be described as woeful project planning and even more worrisome excuses, as the basis for the delayed elections which were initially scheduled for April 2, 2011, across our beloved motherland.

It is not news that in some polling stations, better described as centres under the green petesse (canopy or umbrella, pronounced kpetesse), voting had already reached near completion, hence the potential issue of the validity of our blue thumbs; as I am guessing that it is quite easy to get your thumbs blued without being accredited, then again, we are all honourable people in the Zanga and would do no such thing.

In terms of process, you get to the polling station, present your voters' registration slip, and you are accredited – simply put, you show your slip, it is matched against a counter copy on the eligible voters' list; if the information tallies, you are asked to present your thumb to be marked with ink. All accredited voters, thus, have at least one little blue thumb.

My frustration however does not lie in the potential blueness of my thumb or the fact that movement is restricted from the night before, (so much for freedoms as enshrined in the constitution), or even the fact that potential voters have no choice but to wait under the scorching sun to cast their vote or be disenfranchised…

My grouse is with the seeming comfort with which we seem to regress while the rest of the world make giant leaps with their employ of technology in the context of voting.

Let us compare notes:

In the sane world, there is no restriction of movement, there are no curfews, there are no grim-faced AK-47-wielding mobile policemen, voting is conducted in well constructed fully air-conditioned buildings or polling centers, you have the flexibility to vote wherever you choose to vote, you even get the option to vote through your embassy representative if you are living outside the country of your birth, there is minimal human interference which reduces the risk of errors, people vote with a sense of pride and with no fear of intimidation, while the political class is mature and more often than not, driven by a genuine desire to make a difference and serve the people.

In the Zanga and most of Africa, it is a slightly different situation; nine out of ten times, the political process itself is flawed and marred with allegations of fraud, incompetence and a forecast of wrong doing, only matched by the incompetence and immaturity of the political class. In the Zanga, the people are the servants who exist to satisfy every whim of the political class or as they have now come to be known the ruling class (so I reckon the rest of us are just lowly serfs or plebs). We have polling stations that are a little more than ramshackle dumps, or at best, an umbrella erected smack in the middle of an intersection for emphasis.

We have grim-faced gun-wielding drunk and near-illiterate mobile policemen whose only joy is to cause you pain or discomfort, or both, we have the political thugs and area boys who are of the same intellectual stock as most of the wolves clamoring for political office. Worse still, we are treated like sheep to be controlled and used as the ruling political class deems fit, or how else does one explain a 5.00pm curfew order issued to the unsuspecting populace at 5.30pm?

Where else, in the twenty-first century can you be told that you can only vote at the centre you registered? What then is the purpose of a voter registration exercise to populate a central database that cannot be accessed from across the country, considering the fact that all our data and biometrics were captured, short of capturing data on our sexual preferences and the list of meals that give us gas.

As we take bold steps towards taking control of our political destiny, we can only but be reminded of the tsunami of change that is sweeping across the Arabian peninsular into Northern Africa with the growing list of political casualties from Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen to Saudi Arabia; where the voice of the people was heard louder than the sound of gunfire, the oppression of soldiers’ whips and the threats and ultimatums of dictators.

As we all proceed to cast our votes over the next few weeks, to select the cabal that would rule the Zanga for the next few years, we can only hope and pray that someday, somehow, somewhere in the Zanga, someone or a group of people would step forward to speak the mind of the people and fight their battle for political and intellectual freedom and dignity.

So, until that day comes, all we can do for now is suck it in, go down to the polling shacks and present our thumbs, so that we all may proudly display our little blue thumbs in hope of a better brighter tomorrow.

-end-

image culled from google images.

Please Don’t Call Me, Send a Text *angry smiley*!

Anyone who is anyone in my life must have heard these words spoken to them before, or had cause to read the words in a short and sharp text message I sent to them instead of picking up my phone to answer a call. Here is why you really cannot blame me for my actions.

For me, this is a very simple and straightforward statement that communicates how I feel about the seemingly acceptable foolish behaviour of most people who have access to mobile phones or who have had mobile phones thrust upon them.

With the advent of the mobile phone, we seem to have simply adapted our bad phone manners to align with the new culture and trend of mobile telephony which allows us all to roam the streets with our bad manners and unleash the same on unsuspecting/helpless sane folk. Believe it or not, there are commonsense-dictated rules on how to and not to use mobile phones…

Here are a few:

• The fact that you pick up your phone to call me does not make it mandatory for me to pick that call
•  Send Texts, as it helps you to articulate your thoughts rather than call to have a 5-minute directionless and valueless conversation with me
• Mobile phones have silent or quiet-mode options, use them
• When you call people, be guided by basic intelligence and be sure it is a good time for a conversation before you launch into a tirade that is important to you but is of absolutely no value to me.
•  Do not ask me why I did not return your call, except you are my significant other, or you pay my bills directly, or are family (hmm)… if not, you have a right to expect a callback, while I certainly reserve the right to not pick calls from you, or to not call you back.
• Your mobile phone is not deaf, stupid, or hard of hearing, chances are you are deaf, stupid or hard of hearing, so STOP shouting at your phone
• Mobile phones have spirits too (that’s why they get hot when you talk endlessly to/at them), take them out of your pant pockets before you fart… really!
• Always try to read peoples' moods or how busy or idle they are from their tone of voice when you call them and start a conversation; chances are that if they sound distracted and officious or busy, they are probably busy and your call is distracting them
• Since you took it upon yourself to call me, for heaven’s sake, have the common sense to speak and don’t leave me shouting hello! Hello! Hello!
•  Don’t call my line and then ask me if this is me, or if you are speaking with me... are you expecting to be speaking to your dead great-grandmother’s gay rabbit when you call my line?!
• When you call me, start the conversation by saying your name and where you are calling from. The conversation is more effective as it gives me enough information to terminate the call at that point; it also lets me know I am speaking with an informed, considerate person.
• In your smart opinion, do you think it is okay to type and drive or chat and drive when you cannot cook and drive or knit and drive?
• Mobile phones were not invented for you to have long-drawn meetings over them. They are an enabler to help you get people into the meeting for a sit-chat! So, don’t call me and on the drop of a hat expect me to leave all I have to do (which includes faffing-around and forming busy, believe it or not, that requires great skill and concentration) and expect me to just get into mobile-meeting-mode simply because you called to interrupt me?
• When you are done talking and want to end a phone conversation, how about you say goodbye or something that suggests that you are through talking?! It is quite annoying when you just terminate the call and I am left guessing as to whether or not you are still talking to me or if you have stepped out for a pee.
• If you call me, seriously, I am not saying you cannot quickly talk to someone else, but please, inform me before you suddenly start a parallel conversation with someone else (that I can clearly hear). If you really must do that, suggest a call-back or with my permission, put me on hold until you can give me the required attention, after all, no be you call me?!

So, simple rule, simple policy.. if you cannot conform, please don’t call me, send a text!

-end-

Ever wondered....?

1. How do destitute women always seem to be able to reproduce and care for their children but claim not to have money for food and upkeep?

2. Who makes destitute women pregnant in the first place?

3. How they never seem to present any forms or symptoms of illness?

4. How they always seem to have twins.... some with as many as three sets of twins training behind them while many a well-off woman is looking desperately for children of her own?

5. How mentally ill (aka Mad) men and women rarely ever have Mad offspring?

6. How do the mentally ill communicate love and affection enough to result in offspring?

7. How hung all madmen seem to be (we have all had to shrink at the sight of them trotting happily in their birthday suits?

8. What the world would smell like if we embraced our farts as an expression of our healthy metabolism and let them rip care-freely?

9. What it would be like to have Chris Rock as the president of the United States of America?

10. Why do the most annoying people secretly think everyone else is the most annoying person in the world?


#AmJustSaying

-end -

Love, Through Baba Ijebu's Eyes

True Expressions of Love…

It had been a stressful week with projects coming to an end and a lot of work deliverables, yet not much time to achieve them; all made worse by a frustrating three hours spent in Lagos rush hour traffic on my way home yesterday... at the end of which I became a near-maniac.

Such was the stress level that I decided to leave my car at home and take a taxi to and from work for a week, to enable me to get my energy levels back up and regain my umph.

Let me introduce him to you. Baba Ijebu is the happy-go-lucky taxi driver that became an integral part of my daily rat race for my taxi-hopping week. Relaxed, unassuming, and full of tales and surprising wisdom, Baba Ijebu brings to bear his life experiences and at every point in time, relates them to what is happening, and his projections of what is to come.

Wednesday: As I sit and try to relax my charged nerves and process today's edition of Sharing Life Issues with Chaz B,  I notice that Baba Ijebu seemed to be talking back to the radio... I should have left it at that, but my curiosity got the better of me and I engaged him in a conversation about love and life; he soon went into a long-drawn discourse to make his point. (Background) the topic of discussion on the radio program was Monster In-laws and we had just listened to the story of a woman who claimed that she lost her elder sister to the antics of an evil mother-in-law…

Suddenly he turns to me as we make our way down Western Avenue, Listen, he says. Some mothers in Law are wicked, but there are also a lot of wicked wives out there o! hmm, I am still with my wife of 39 years o, he says, even after all that she did to my mother, and her obvious meanness. He tells me of how after his wife delivered their first child, his wife’s mother (as tradition dictates) quasi-moved into his matrimonial house to nurse her. He noticed how in her tired state, she woke every morning to make breakfast for her own mother and ensure that breakfast was served at 7.30am daily. 

A month later, his mother came over to spend time with the new mother (his wife), at this time, his work schedule had changed so he left for work, daily, at 6.30am; assuming all was well, coupled with the fact that in his words, he had a good woman in his mother, he never heard any complaints. On this fateful day, he rushed home at noon to pick up a parcel he had forgotten as he hurried off to work earlier that morning, and lo and behold, he sees his mother in the kitchen cooking. After exchanging pleasantries with his mum, he inquires as to when lunch would be served, to which she replies that she was making breakfast....(pause)

A few uncomfortable glances and some not-so-pleasant exchanges later, he leans that every day after he leaves for work, his wife goes to sleep and does nothing until 30 minutes before he returns home from work in the evening, as such she (his mother) had since learned to endure hunger until noon, daily so that she only gets to cook and eat one meal a day while his wife sorts herself out by sending for food for herself only. His point, not all mothers are evil, and some evil mothers are made evil by the actions and or inaction of their daughters-in-law (when no one else is watching).

He continues the story by going back a few more years (rewinding to the early years of his marriage)  and tells me how his family had insisted he marries more than one wife, but it was his mother (who was now being maltreated by his wife), who made him promise that he would not under any circumstance take a second wife. It was also his mother who stood by him when all hope seemed lost during his courtship (his wife’s mother was against the union on the basis of him not coming from a wealthy background), and when he all but gave up his quest to marry his present wife.

I am silent as the weight of his statement begins to settle upon my heart… eventually, I ask how he has coped to this point. With a crooked smile on his face, he tells me how until a few years ago, his wife beat and slapped him every time they had an argument, and how his wife always boasted to her friends that she clipped her mother-in-law's wings, as well as his wings in the house (not knowing that his mother had decided to stay away from his home so as not to be the cause of any friction within their marriage). As we approach my drop-off point, he leaves me with these parting words.

‘When people talk about marriage and bliss, they do not necessarily go hand in hand. For him, marriage was a decision he took as the next phase of his life and he entered into it with no expectations or without any hope of finding paradise in it” 

for him, the key to keeping his home intact is knowing when to shut up and take the beating like a man, knowing when to be assertive and when to be timid. Most of all he tells me, success in marriage is dependent on Love. Not the Mills and Boons love oh!... the type that endures all things.

My week spent in the company of Baba Ijebu has gotten me to a point where I have had to rethink my position on a couple of issues, including the meaning and expressions of love.

As he drives off after dropping me at my destination, I am fixated on an image in my head of him kneeling and begging for mercy as his wife whom he loves unquestionably, beats him to within an inch of his life, as his grown kids and the neighbours watch in amazement.

Indeed, love makes people do stupid things.

-end-

Mami-Eko unmasked..

If you live, work or commute in/to Lagos, you must have encountered her in one form or another, yes, the invincible Mami Eko, causer of inexplicable traffic jams.

Recently, I embarked on a spiritual journey; that is what I do when I seek answers to questions that seem to tug at my heart and for which there is no clear or logical explanation or answer within reach. As I began to chant softly get into the zone and a higher level of consciousness, I meditated upon the magical words ijebu garri and iced water,  this magic combination handed down to us by our ancestors, and which has proven time and again to possess the power to transport mere mortals to a higher spiritual plane on a hot, humid day.

As a softly chant and meditate, I am propelled into a trance and removed from myself. I begin to see the world around me, differently,  to see beyond clothes and mere flesh into the souls and inner consciousness of the people around me.

As I levitate through time and space, I find myself looking at Lagos from near-space, a bird’s eye view, or more like an alien’s eye view of Lagos, congestion, rats racing and all.

Before me I see spread out across the landscape, an endless row of cars, from Iyana Ipaja to Ikorodu road, from Third Mainland bridge to Okota Isolo, the reality was the same, traffic, bumper to bumper traffic!

As i steer through my spiritual eyes, I see her.. yes o, I see her, jumping from one congested mass of cars to the other, I see her…  with her crooked teeth, earthen-ware pot on her head and her torn wrapper draped over her mid section. I see her, no teeth in her mouth, a crooked smile on her face, and her wrinkled skin like the bark of a 100 year old iroko tree. I see her, she whom I have named Mami Eko.

As she jumps and prances, she does a magical dance which inexplicably drives and commuters alike to slow things down and gradually grind to a halt. I am amazed, they cannot see her, I say to myself, so how do they know to slow down and just for no apparent reason, drive as slow as their means of transportation can take them?

Really, you should have been there… that old woman can dance sha o, I am almost certain I saw her do the moon walk, then a back flip, then the slide, before she went into a bout of running-man still dressed in her wrapper and grinning from ear to ear like he who shall use good-luck and not common sense to solve all our problems.

I summon the courage to speak to her. In my best Fela imitation, I say to her. Behold, why do you do what you do the way you do it to affect our lives in traffic so? She stops abruptly, and for an instant, traffic seems to ease up as the cars begin to move slowly… in a very calm voice, she tells me that she just loves to dance and does not know why I am making such a fuss.

I ask her, why then do you have a pot on your head and what is in it..? To that, she looks at me like a mother looks at a child who knows not the difference between a medicinal herb and a patch of grass and says matter-of-factly “it is patience in the pot o!” I have put all your patience in this pot, and as long as I dance (which I love to do) the patience would be disturbed and you shall all become restless and impatient for no reason. It is so much fun watching all of you attempt to create 20 lanes on a road that is built for 5 lanes…

*scratching my chin* as I slowly withdraw from her as she slowly and gradually begins to dance herself into a frenzy as the congestion becomes tighter and tighter on the road. She dances on and on, as I hover forward I get to the ‘head’ of the traffic line, and not surprisingly, there is absolutely nothing in the middle ahead, in fact from that point on, traffic is amazingly free flowing.

Spent from my spiritual travel, I return to my human form and realize that I am sweating… slowly; I become conscious of where I am and what I am doing. The car-horns are blaring/ hooting as other motorists are shouting unprintable obscenities at me..

Ah, now I know where I am, in traffic on third mainland bridge where I had remained on the same spot for 45 minutes, without even the slightest movement. For some reason, there are no longer any cars in front of me, although the cars backed up behind me are now about 100 deep…

I put the car in drive and I accelerate. Ever conscious of Mami Eko and her antics, I wonder if she has made a quick dash to Ikorodu Road to do some dancing. Or perhaps, she has decided to go and pee in the spirit world. Whatever it is, I am glad to be able to continue on my journey home…

Ever wondered why you sit in traffic for endless hours and you get to the head and there is absolutely no cause for the hold up? Now you know…

End.