9jia Could Be Home

I live in exile in a strange country, surrounded by strange people speaking in strange tongues. I visit my home country the way Yankee tourists visit the Riviera, two weeks at a time, once a year. I only stay two weeks; because even my nostalgia is no match for the fear at the pit of my belle every time I am offered a glass of “pure water”, or the way my friends catapult from the back to the front of the car when I am forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid giant holes in the middle of the highway. My time at home is always short, I am always in a hurry to return to this my new found land where I have chosen to hide myself. My shame runs deep, like the pools of mosquito infested stagnant water at the village, I cry at night from the pain that I know is somewhere being inflicted on the unlucky and the targeted by heavily armed thugs that own the darkness and the streets after 8.00PM. Somehow despite a GDP of $147 billon, the scream of the dying grows stronger by the day, you see my country is host to the silent curse of the big disease with the little name and unknown cure. Medicine cabinets are stocked full of fake drugs dispensed by unlicensed pharmacists and powerful priests claim to cure all kinds of illnesses by lays hands on people’s head. I internalize my sorrow a lot , when I am at home I can’t call my friends, I barely have any minutes and even when I do the South African company that owes my cell line is charging me 40 times what normal people would pay for the same service anywhere else in the world. There are plenty of others like me, we hang around the nice parts of this make belief place, wear fancy clothes and pretend to be something we are not, Americans. Everywhere I look I see doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, artists, artisans, bankers, accountants all like me, lost souls trying to find a new meaning in Diaspora. The brave have abandoned their culture and left their heritage and history to be described by the lives of the unfortunate, the greedy, the unscrupulous, and the lost. I want to find outrage in my heart but my soul is empty, I have drained all my tears and my eyes are like hollow dark pools of black coal. The possibility that I will one day return to my homeland permanently is remote, you see I have broken bread here, my children will be born here, they will call this land home and refer to that distant place with the rich dark brown soil and the canopy of a thousand year old giant Udala trees as Africa.

The Space Inside my Head

Free form writing also known as stream-of-consciousness writing - can be used in order to clear the mind of half thoughts, actions, inactions, truths and half-truths. You go where your mind takes you and follow that thread as far along as it will take you, but branching off on the smallest of impulse. I started out by writing about resolutions and the New Year, wondering why people bother making “New Year Resolutions” when they know it will not be kept? Life altering changes are made not based on dates but events, in fact, it would be better to make New Year Restitutions (Resolution; defined: a firm decision to do something or hold firm to a belief, Restitutions defined: the return of something to the condition it was in before it was changed). Rather than a resolution to make new friends, how about making a restitution, by making up with a friend were the relationship has gone sour? Or rather than a resolution to give more to charity but instead make a restitution by returning anything you gained by wrongful means last year? It has a handle and an actual target and moreover it is bigger than just you.

Speaking of the New Year, this year all I am eating is fish, not that I particularly like fish but I have been convinced that fish contains Omega 3 oil (whatever that is) and that this oil unlike palm oil is good for me. Intellectually you can file this under the same heading as “vitamins improve your health”. For years they were supposed to be good for you, only recently the “know it alls” have changed their minds and decided that vitamin supplements do nothing for your health and are really just a waste of money since most people get all the Vitamins they need from their food anyway.

So with all the time in the world to make adjustments to your life, why would you choose the New Year? If you are in a plane flying across time zones it is possible to celebrate the incoming year 12 times in one day. Does the whole time zone thing make sense to you? Even cities on the same longitude are sometimes not even in the same time zone, the further west you go the less sense it makes. I know that LA should be at least 6 time zones away from NYC and not the current four, so how did they come by the four that we currently use and what happened to the other two? The thing I love most about LA are the freeways, I mean if not for the astronomical cost of living in that city, there is no better place to live on earth. The weather, the people, the topography and the malls are all to die for (except of course you live in Mahe, then in that case Na You Win). When I was in LA I experienced my first earthquake, believe me, if you have never been in one, there really is no way to describe the feeling that runs through you when the ground you are standing on begins to move, you immediately begin to understand how insignificant you are in context to everything else around you.

But I am are work now, second day back since the New Year, and I am not sure what to make of anything, I mean, are we in a recession or not? Everything feels the same, I am not really making anymore or less this year, than I did last year but for some reason I am extra tight with cash. Maybe it is all the doom and gloom being peddled on the TV or it is the fear that you don’t control your own faith as long as you are someone’s employee. I mean I would like to start my own show but I find myself a slave to the system, I truly am trapped in the matrix, Even if they pay me $500K a year, it is only because I am making $5M or more, a year for them. Ultimately it means that I have the skills to make $5M a year but I settle for the small cheese because I would rather be feed than bear the initial hunger it would take to free myself while searching for my own cheese.

I find that I am easily distracted, not ADD distracted but quickly convinced by extenuating factors to follow the next thought in the conga line of things running through my mind….. hmm, I wonder what will happen if I baked my Loafers?

Found In The Papers II

• The Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Robert Edjanavi, has expressed deep concern over the safety of Federal Government’s N363.9bn investments in some companies. Some of the investments, he said, might have been lost as a result of their privatisation or complete closure of the companies. The Auditor-General, therefore, advised the Accountant-General of the Federation to put a mechanism in place for the recovery of some of the funds. --------Dem don come again, wetin Lehman Bros get to do with 9jia money? Naija politicians are the true experts at never wasting a crisis. Any chance to die our pay is always welcome

• The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday said that the total credits (loans) of the 24 banks operating in Nigeria has increased from N1.19 trillion in 2003 to N7.8 trillion as at January, 2009 while the total capital base is well over N2.1 trillion ----- E be like sey undercapitalized and overleveraged na words wey Nigerians go begin familiarize themselves with." I see dead people"

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  “How I met Jesus in prison” Jennifer Madike ------ Hmm… wonder if he was just visiting

• Sea pirates along the Bonny Channel, Rivers State, are said to have raped five ladies after they attacked three passenger boats in the area. A source on Tuesday told our correspondent that the three boats were intercepted by the armed gangs along the channel, which has become notorious for piracy and armed robbery in recent times. He said the gang laid ambush for the boats along the winding creeks and struck as soon as they came within their range. The source added that the gangsters carefully selected some women and a man from the three boats after the attack and forcibly took them deeper into the creeks. He said that the other passengers were allowed to go with the boats while the fate of the seized women and the man was unknown. …… We do not know what happened to the people that were kidnapped but the five women were certainly raped. And that one guy that was selected…..for what? Maybe, Rape?
  
  
  

• Pope Benedict XVI, who is making his first papal visit to Africa, has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids. HIV/Aids was, he argued, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem". The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer". ----- I wish I understood what he was trying to say. That condoms do not prevent or at least reduce the risk of infection?
  
  
  

• The Federal Executive Council Today said it is targeting the creation of a million jobs for youths in 2009 - ------ Me, I am always up for a decent miracle. What exactly is “job for youths”?
  
  
  
  

• ABUJA—For the first time since the return of democratic rule in 1999 the Senate yesterday commenced moves to appoint a national ombudsman with the responsibility of investigating complaints against federal, state and Local Governments. …… All well and good but what if I have a complaint against the Ombudsman?
  
  
  
  
  

• AT a recent gathering of Touts and Bus Stop Academics parliamentarians at the Iyana Ejigbo Bus-stop, a dispute had arisen over whether Governor Babatunde Fashola actually monitors how the different projects of his government were being executed. The dispute was a fallout of the surprise expressed by one of the parliamentarians, Francis Akpeyi, that the traffic control light at Iyana Ejigbo which malfunctioned for some days, causing a lot of traffic confusion, had been rectified within a short time. ----- Meaning there would have been no dispute if the light was still malfunctioning. That my friend is the essence of comedy, nothing else needs to be added, that soup don ready.
  
  
  
  

• If you are one of those thinking that singer Soul E is mourning his fate or remorse about his predicament in the last few months, sorry to disappoint you because he is not. The singer re branded his stage name and identity after getting ‘married’ to Queen Ure Okezie in Umuahia last year, and went on to parade themselves about town as showbiz couple, man and wife, appearing on different television shows and several events as King and Queen. ------more like area father and mother.
  
  
  

• CAN someone tell the EFCC to stop fooling the public? When a new Chairman of the EFCC in the person of Mrs. Farida Waziri was appointed about a year ago, expectations were high. No one believed that it could be a smokescreen. ------ Nope, most of us thought it was a “Chinese room divider” not a screen of any kind.
  
  
  
  

• AN in-depth analysis of the official pronouncements and statements of top government functionaries in Nigeria on the current global financial crisis reveals one of two things: Either a clear lack of understanding of the depth and ramifications of the issue at hand or an outright trivialization of how to go about it, which, essentially, is a function of the former. – Sometimes you can be too smart, such as now.
  
  
  
  

• Customs officials at the Beijing airport in China announced that they detained a Nigerian man who had a suitcase filled with about 87 kg of marijuana. Chinese police say it is the biggest drug arrest this year. ------- How is that even possible? How big was the suitcase? 190 pounds, com’on now! I bet he even tried bring it on to the plane as hand carry.

• A circuit court in Goaso has sentenced a 37 year-old self-styled juju man, Alhaji Abonyere, to 15 years imprisonment in hard labour for sexually assaulting a housewife. The convict pleaded guilty. He said in January the victim, who was suffering from menstrual disorder, was accompanied by her husband to the convict for herbal treatment. The prosecutor said the convict demanded GHC 2.00 and a cock as consultation fee for the treatment and placed the housewife on treatment. On February 3 when she reported to the convict for treatment Abonyere invited her into his room and asked her to obey all his instructions or she would go mad. Abonyere then stripped the woman half naked and smeared the stomach with black powder. Abonyere again removed the underwear of the housewife and put a talisman around her waist after which he asked her to bend down and continue to stir a calabash containing the blood of a fowl with a finger till he asked her to stop. ------- I wonder what she thought was going to happen after her underwear came down? I mean except if the man had an underwear fetish, this song only had one chorus. Please, what is GHC 2.00, na gun? or New brand of Condom?