My Lagos Experience: James Bond

 

Before I came to Lagos, I was terrified of the place. I silently vowed to myself again and again that I would never have cause to stay in this city. Even if I did come, it would be for a short visit that would be spent indoors.
You see, sometimes man plans but God well…executes.

I traveled to Abeokuta sometime last year for a program, my trip was a connecting one. I had to stop by in Lagos first before proceeding to Abeokuta. We ended up in Lagos by ten pm.
Nothing scared me as much as Lagos at night. Do you know the stories I’ve heard? The merciless pickpockets? The thieving touts?

So, you see I had cause to fear. Before I got down from the bus, I had prepared myself; I emptied my pockets and my handbag. Emptied the contents into me(don’t ask).
In my mind, I was like; okay, so if they snatch the handbag, the least they’d see is an empty wallet and a novel.
Unfortunately my wallet was too large to be kept somewhere on me, so I took out my ATM card and my money and well…protected them. C’mon, a gal’s gotta protect her stuff eh?
You see, the thing about being a writer is that your imagination can sometimes run ahead of you. Most times even.

My imagination began to torment me, I imagined being waylaid by a group of touts, I imagined them searching me, I imagined them taking my darling phone and soon I began to shiver with fear. An irrational fear, I know.

There were so many people around I was overwhelmed. Everywhere I looked, I saw people. I mean, what the heck?
Somehow though I survived that one day and thought that would be my last encounter with Lagos, for a while at least.
But like I said, man plans…
Work took me to Lagos a few weeks ago. And trust me, it was far from temporary.
The thing is, by the time I arrived, I’d had plenty time to prepare myself mentally, an experience that made me understand that everything starts with the mind. The human mind is the battlefield, if you win the battle in your mind, be rest assured it’s won everywhere else.
That’s what I did. I sat my inner man down and laid the cards on the table:
A) Stay in your comfort zone and be useless.
B) Take the risk and move, be useful.

I chose B. My inner man chose B and we began to prepare. Before, whenever anyone spoke about Lagos and it’s ills, I would shake my head in derision and turn away. However as soon as I realized I was going there soon, I changed. My reply would be optimistic and upbeat when people asked how I would survive.
My mind came around slowly but surely and by the time I landed in Lagos I was ready.
The fear wasn’t entirely eradicated, yes but a new emotion had overshadowed it. Determination.

Photo Credits:smartercitieschallenge.wordpress.com

 

Weeks later, I am in Lagos and I marvel at the changes that have occurred in me.
You see, I have semi-bow legs. Not the well rounded type but the type that looks like they couldn’t decide whether to curve or be straight and they ended up somewhere between. Yes, that kind.
I love them.
Now, in the weeks I’ve been in Lagos, I am afraid I shall be losing the bow in my legs soon. Why, you ask?
Because I walk. Jeez, I walk like I’m going to heaven, like the gates are being closed and I need to make it in before they shut.
I walk darn fast. I walk with a purpose even though I’m just going to buy water. I think I have forgotten how to stroll, how to enjoy leisurely walks like I did in Abuja.
Why?
Because in Lagos, everyone is in a hurry. You do not wear heels and walk like your legs are porcelain. You will break, I tell you.
Once, I was walking on the road and someone pushed (quite rudely) past me and my first instinct was to turn and demand an apology. Trust me, if it were in Abuja, you would get that apology. But here, by the time I looked back, the perpetrator was still rushing forward like nothing had happened. Like it was normal.
And then it dawned on me. It was normal to them.
I won’t lie to you, these days I push past pedestrians without qualms. Even when something winces in me, urging me to turn and deliver an apology, I remind myself that the victim will not be expecting that apology therefore he/she has moved on.
Yes, Lagos is changing me.
I would wear heels and jump into moving Danfos.
I am my own James Bond. Lagos has taught me to jump into moving buses and still manage not to fall over. It has taught me to scale those high road demarcations on the express(what are they called? Curbs?), even in my skirts.
The first time I did it, I smiled as I landed. A certain adrenaline coursed through me that made me laugh to myself as I proceeded to cross the road. When last had I done that? I truly really felt like James Bond or maybe Steven Seagal, or Jackie Chan.

Perhaps you should try it some day. Don’t use those silly pedestrian bridges, cross the highway. Feel the wind in your ears as you dash between oncoming cars. Skip over the curb and run again.
It would remind you of when you were six when nothing mattered except play.

To Kiss or Not to Kiss…

The kiss tasted like…nothing. Forget that crap the movies and novels tell you about kisses tasting like vanilla, strawberries or even zobo. This one tasted like none of them. And for the first time in her life, nothing actually tasted sweet.
She’d imagined this moment many times but by God, she hadn’t imagined it would be this good. She might not have locked lips with that many people but seriously she wasn’t one to lose her head over a single kiss so she was pretty sure this one was darling.
It wasn’t one of those sloppy kisses where there’s more saliva than even lips. It was…oh…it was pure heaven. In life, she hadn’t had many guilty pleasures moment but this was definitely going to be filed in her Guilty Pleasures Book of Records.
You know how you know you’re not supposed to do something but you want to so bad that you just do it? That’s guilty pleasure otherwise known as fleshly desires. Oh she was so fleshy right now because it seemed her brain had momentarily stopped working while her heart was pounding like crazy.
She’d often wondered why people kissed with eyes closed, wondered what it’d be like if she tried it with open eyes. Now she knew why, kissing needs concentration to enjoy its impact, with your eyes open you might be distracted and thereby lose the magic in the moment. What is beautiful about kissing? Maybe the intimacy it brings, you’re indirectly telling this ‘someone’ that “I trust you enough to let you invade my space and get in my mouth.”

**********
In a time before now, kissing was a very big deal. You couldn’t go about kissing anyone without making some sort of commitment to them, and by commitment I mean marriage. Yes, it was that sacred. So when, when did it become something so random that a dude you’ve known for like five minutes has the guts to request a kiss? Seriously, you actually expect me to lock my precious lips with you? Okay, I can give you ten reasons why I should not, here goes:
Number one erm…Ebola is real Yes. Why should I trust your lips in these times that we are in? If Patrick Sawyer could do it, ehen…who are you?
Number two; what if your mouth stinks? Yes, you might have brushed but have you eaten? Don’t you know that not eating and not talking can cause your mouth to smell? Or have you checked if you have a natural mouth odour that doesn’t go the heck away no matter how many times you brush?
Number three; what if you’re a terrible kisser and you do the whole saliva thingy and leave my face all wet and smelly? Eeew…
Okay, let me stop here. Seriously, don’t these thoughts ever cross anyone’s mind anymore? So, for guys who go about randomly requesting kisses from girls they barely know…seriously you should consider this.
And I’m wondering when kissing became an obsession with this generation. A six year old kid knows what it means to kiss a girl, seriously? When I was six I didn’t even know that there was a difference between boys and girls! (okay, so maybe that’s not entirely true). But you get the drift. I think at the rate our world is going, soon; sex education will start from when our babies are still in the womb because it’s a crazy world out there.
I have even forgotten what this rant was about sef, but basically eh…it’d be a lie for anyone to tell you that kissing ain’t a big deal. If it wasn’t, why don’t you kiss every dude or dudette you come in contact with? Why be selective?
It is a big deal! There’s more to it than just exchange of broth and locking of lips. Why do you think the sex workers take exception to kissing their clients on the mouth? You think it’s because of hygiene?
See, a kiss can open up a well of emotions in you that you never knew existed. When lips lock, something begins to happen in the brain, there’s a pheromonal and sensory transmission to the brain. Some people have confessed to ‘having butterflies in their stomachs’ right after kissing someone.
Some people have gone through so many lips in a lifetime that they can’t tell the difference any more. Note that kissing someone you actually care about has a different effect. Perhaps that’s where the real magic is. Not in the act but in the heart.

In conclusion pals, kissing is an art taken on not by the best of artists; but by the best of hearts.

Mimi A. 2014

Sunday Tonic- Acceptance (Just For Laughs)

I don’t know about you but there are times I wish I could take some ‘adults’, lay them across my knees and beat the living shit out of them. I know how that feels, not to be able to take out your frustration on the perpetrator. If you attack a grown man like that so-called Pastor Konga, people will call you a tout or a thug, they will start quoting things like ‘touch not my anointed blah blah blah’. They will not want to understand that the idiot provoked it the moment he started peddling false gospel like telling wives to cut down on sex with their husband. That is how some of these men of God will leave the main thing that God sent them to preach and come and be interfering in people’s matrimonial lives. Who asked that one for advice now? Anyway, it is why I like to look well at all these ‘men of God’ before attending their churches because you don’t know the spirit that one is carrying. Some of them will be bored and broke, they will rush and open a ‘gathering’ and call it church. If to say God dey wicked, thunder go just dey strike all of them one by one.
Now see my naïve bootilicious wife; now I know she’s never been the brightest bulb in the department…eh, yes I know, don’t crucify me because I said it out loud.
How you wan make my wife con sabi suntin pass me? But kai, maybe if she knows book just small, she will know that this Pastor Konga.com is using her head.
This woman, let me not remind her of how when we first married, sex used to sweet her like suya. Every time she will come and give me that look she knows I cannot resist, indirectly communicating that she wants some. Now she is forming sister Holy-Pass-God when even God did not say such a thing. Which one be Sabbath day again biko? And that hogwash about Sunday being too holy to have sex, where the Bible tok that kain thing?
Wait sef, is that Pastor Konga.com married sef? I am sure if he’s married, he is not obeying all these stupid rules he’s giving his members. People like them na im like to do pass and they will now be spoiling other people’s runs, pouring san-san in other people’s garri. Okay na. I will show him and my wife. She will be the one that will come and beg me to sleep with her. Yes!

Shey it has been three weeks since she made that her announcement? Since that time she started sleeping with jean trouser as if that one will stop us if we want to do anything. She has forgotten that time that we were courting that she wore all that turtleneck sweater and jeans trouser with leggings under to prevent ‘sin’, kai…but I be bad boy sha. By the time I was ready for her, the leggings and trouser disappeared like no man’s business. So she all of people should know that that one no be obstruction. If I want it, I get it. And it will not be called rape.
It is only on Thursdays she used to wear her nightie that she knows I like. So this woman now did mental timetable and picked Thursday as the day she wants to be having sex. What does she take me for, anyway? She thinks I’m a dog that cannot do without bone, then she will toss me a bone every once in a while and I’m expected to jump at it? I will just surprise her

So after her revelation I did not say anything again. I just laughed, believing when the time comes she will come around. I know one thing my wife hates, is the silent treatment so that’s what I’ve been giving to her.
I will come back from work, take a shower, eat dinner and climb into bed without a word or even attempting to touch her. She will try to make conversation by asking me question but I kill the conversation with my monosyllabic answers.
When she climbs into bed beside me after an hour of ‘shababraking’ in the sitting room, I will peek and notice her pulling on her jean trouser. Okay, she still never learn lesson. Shey the Bible say, wives submit to your husbands and your body no longer belongs to you alone? My own wife is withholding from me what is mine in the name of Pastor Konga.com. The mere thought of it makes me angry especially since we had previously agreed that we will start trying to have children this year. How will one have children with once-a-week-Thursday sex?
So, for the past three weeks I did not touch my wife and my body feel am. The sexual tension was beginning to pile up in my body and literally make my heart palpitate. Since we got married, this was the longest we’d gone without sex (of any kind). During my travels, we always made sure we kept our sex life alive through the different ways which of course we all know. But this one was telling on me, and I saw it was telling on her too. It was not the idea of not having sex that was telling on her, but the fact that I wasn’t even trying to get her to sleep with me despite the one day a week allowance. I’m sure she was beginning to wonder if I was getting it elsewhere or if suddenly I was no longer attracted to her.
I was getting cranky with everyone around me. I soon had to confess to my guy Mezie what was happening in my home.
Know this, Mezie is thirty-four and single with three baby Mamas. Yes, that is how fertile and loose my friend is. Mezie is probably bad news to any of the male folk or even female folk but somehow, he’d found a place in my heart and he had an uncanny way of reading women seeing as he’s had many entanglements with them.
So, when I told Mezie my plight, the first thing he did was laugh.
“Guy, your madam dey craze ooh!” he said in between bouts of laughter.
“Shut up and give me better advice abeg.”
He did not shut up of course. He laughed till he was satisfied and then he said;
“You sure say that Pastor no dey knack am?”
“Eh?”
“Yes nah. Wetin you expect? You think say the Pastor tell all the members of im church say make dem no do? If I hear say the men for that church listen to am. Mtcheew. Na winch?”
Yes, Mezie had a point. Was that rule for only my wife and me or did the rest of the church listen to such nonsense too?
I realised I had to pay Pastor Konga.com a visit.

Mimi A. 2014

*****Dear readers, I really wanted to end it here. I really did. I promise I didn’t plan for an extra part of this story but somehow that mischievous part of me took over and voila! I promise the Part three should be the last part of this story. Just pray for me that my fingers will not develop a life of their own. Pray, brothers, pray!
Now, you know how we do it. We cannot read and laugh over this and not comment. I want to hear your wonderful thoughts, I really do. So kindly, kindly drop a comment for Pastor Konga and our M.C if you please. Thanks in advance for being such darlings!******

Goth Girl: Isn’t There A Band-Aid for HeartBreak?

Confidential: The Goth Girl’s Diary: Is there no Band-aid for heartbreak?

 

 

 

You think you are recovering. You think things are looking up for you. You think you’re beginning to forget and you tell yourself that things are back to normal. You are back to normal.

Until you get that phone call; that unexpected SMS from the ex. Only, the Ex is just for show because they still very much own your heart. Your heart refuses to Ex-ile them even when your head and your lips do.

Your phone beeps and you see:
“I miss you.”
Your first instinct is to punch back a reply; like you used to before when his texts were what lightened your world.

And then you remember. You remember that things have changed; that you parted ways a few months ago. That you no longer have the liberty to spill how you feel.
It doesn’t stop the feelings from tumbling out; the memories you’ve been trying to bury by creating new ones, spill to the surface; raw as ever. Like it was only yesterday you said goodbye to the one you loved.
When will it stop hurting to think about him? When will you have the courage to look at his picture and not feel a pang of…something? Can these feelings die already!

But then again, how do you erase years of friendship, love, laughter, fights…memories? You wish they would disappear like they didn’t exist; and yet sometimes remembering those moments you shared is what keeps you sane.
You put up a smiling face for everyone so they don’t see how much it hurts inside, so they don’t think you’re weak. You make them see you’re happy without him. You don’t let them know that some nights you soak your pillows with tears of longing; that sometimes the short breaks you take in the toilet stall are actually timeouts to cry your heart out.
They say time heals all wounds but you’re beginning to think that some wounds never heal. No, you just get used them being there that at some point you become familiar with the pain it brings you.
You do not know if you want the wound of losing his love healed, or if you want to wrap the pain around you as a companion. Something to remind you that love is pain and that when you give all that you are to a particular someone, you never really get all of you back.
Your friends ask how you’re doing and you reply with the clichéd ‘fine’, your pain is yours to bear and not to share. You refuse to admit that when you remember him sometimes, you feel like an addict who’s going into withdrawal. How can you explain that there are times that the pain is so much that tears are a luxury?
Is there no Band-aid for heart break, you wonder? You know that heartbreaks have been overrated, every chick on the block claims to have been heartbroken because they like how it sounds when the words roll down their tongue but have they really? Have they felt like tearing out their hearts and squeezing to death every ounce of sentiment in it, just so that they can stop ‘feeling’ things? Have they?

 

 

 

Yours truly: Alone and heart wrenched; the ‘dark’ girl.

Trials of an Almost Wife

Dear readers, it’s been more than a while I blogged. Whew. Forgive me please, really. I got caught up in, well…life et al. Here’s a little something I wrote a while ago and decided to share on here. I hope you enjoy it and please don’t forget to let me know what you think. I’d love your feedback. Thank you.

******

 

I’m looking at a woman I don’t seem to recognise. She stares right back at me, looking so familiar and yet so strange.

She is almost out of shape; her hips are overlapping and seem to be falling out of her body. Her ample bosom spills out from beneath the gown she’s wearing. Her make-up is otherworldly and even the layers of foundation cannot hide the lapse in her facial skin. There was a time this woman was regarded as beautiful. A time when the men had scrambled upon each other just to get a piece of her.

A time when she’d not needed nearly half of the make-up she has on now, to look pretty. A time when she would have drawn a second and even third look from a man; now all she draws are whistles from drunken men ogling her large behind.

I am staring at the woman and cannot hide the look of disgust on my face. When did she become this person? When had she lost her appeal?

I know the answer yet I am afraid to say it. To accept the truth; that the woman is me.

I turn away from the mirror and sit with a heavy plop on the bed. Nicodemus has just told me that he has found another wife. The man had the nerve to tell me that his useless Pastor has prescribed a new wife for him!

And what about me? I asked.

He said we are living in sin; that it is against God’s will.

I began to laugh. After six children kwa? You must be mad.

Nicodemus looked at me like I was the mad one. I don’t blame him. He is still handsome with his fair dimpled face and I am the one looking like his mother after having six children for him.

Who is that your pastor? I asked. Who is the man that wants to tear a family apart? Is that the work God sent him to do?

Emily, family? But I did not pay dowry on your head nah.

Idiot. So it’s now you know? When you were disturbing my bed at night and eating the forbidden fruit, you did not know e kwaa?

I am born again now ooh. Emily, don’t make me commit sin.

Born again? Better born again and go and see my father.

When he saw the argument was going nowhere, he’d left; muttering something about women.

I am waiting for him now. After nine years of living with him, playing faithful wife, opening my leg him to deliver his children all in the name of ‘I will marry you’, he has now decided to change his mind? God forbid!

I will not go back to my father’s house with six children and no husband.

Shebi when I was young and beautiful he couldn’t keep his hands off me? It was always, Emily, let me touch your breast now or Emily, give me a kiss now.

I let him touch more than my breast, I let him drink from the fountain sef, and now he wants to abandon me because I am no longer slim shady. Okay now. We will see.

If only I had listened to my mother.

Emily, don’t let that boy give you belle ooh. She said over and over again but I was too beautiful to listen. Now, he touched me and got me pregnant and my story finished. My father dumped me in his house and since then it has been baby after baby after baby.

Nicodemus! You want to make a fool of me? Oya, bring that chinch into my house and you will see all hell will break loose.

 

 

 

Mimi A.