No Sleep! – What’s your Fuuji? -

I’m craving a party. Not a nightclub kind of party, a party-at-your-friend’s-house kind of party. Reason? To be honest, nothing really. I’ve been feeling really lucky and blessed lately, motivated too. And trust me you won’t believe where this burst of energy came from: MTV Base Africa (crazy odd right?). Watching young talented Africans (who have so little at their disposal) in their music videos and then seeing them operate on par with the Americans and Europeans (who have the framework to support their art) is really invigorating for me. As I type this at 1:47 A.M, I’m playing Professor and Speedy’s smash South African hit ‘Lento’ (just changed the track to my naija ‘Confirm Sure Boi’ Orezi’s ‘Jamilaiya’ featuring DJ Jam Jam) and all I see is talent, growth, opportunity. I see the future.

So I guess that’s why I want to party. Just to celebrate life and happiness (now playing 9ice and M.I. ‘Safaware’). And the fact that I’m part of the generation of Africans that would impact this world, make history and leave our prints on not just the shores of our Motherland but on every face of this earth. I’m keeping this post short because Justine (my dearest friend) showed my blogs to her writer friend who liked them (bless you sir!) and who also said my sentences are a tad bit long. There, another long sentence. I’ll work on it Mr… (er, Justine didn’t tell me your name sorry).

I’m going to try catch some sleep now though I doubt if I’ll get any sha (now playing TkZee’s ‘Dlala Mapantsula’, hope I spelled it right?). I’ve been sleeping like I was pregnant all day. Rains and cold weather. Tomorrow (or rather later this morning) I’ll try record my own #OliverTwist dance video and upload to YouTube. Don Jazzy I’m a Man United fan like you so I should get some preference o bros. Ehen, because I go like claim that $2500. Make I sleep sef, wetin! But be proud ladies and gentlemen, our ancestors wait to delight in us. Our past waits to be illuminated by our yet-to-come achievements. Hugh Masekela says “You gotta hustle your shit till they tell you if you come back here we’re gonna shoot you.”

Shine on, dance on, sing/rap on, Rock on!!!

 

If Tomorrow Comes… (Young, Talented and Disillusioned)

Oh, oh, so now you’re awake? You’ve suddenly come alive abi? You be Lazarus abi you be Frankenstein? (By the way, is it ‘grateful’ or ‘greatful’ ? Just asking…)

One broadcast message is all it took to liven up my BBM contacts list that had been boring and stale for days. Its an insane paradox that when I wake up the first thing I do (unfortunately even before praying some times) is I pick my phone and check my pings, e-mails, mentions, DM’s and missed calls. I’m in a room with friends and even family at times but I’m bent towards a screen clicking away on the keyboard. I’ve almost been run down by the most rickety piece of scrap of a bus, playing music and tweeting while walking on the wrong side of the road. But for crying out loud what is so important on twitter, FB, Gtalk, BBM etc that my battery is at 30% by 11am? What could I possibly be doing, be so engrossed in that I sit in one spot for hours, developing chronic neck pains and even when I do finally go out I’m always refreshing and checking my screen for that blinking red light that says ‘pick me’, ‘message’, ‘reply now or you die’? Even within conversations I give a third of my attention to the actual human and two thirds to the characters on my screen. Where did we go wrong? Where do we get off?

‘With great power comes great responsibility.’

Its pathetic sometimes, although I work from my BB, writing reviews, blogging and the occasional column, submit CV’s, get the latest news at it occurs and generally keep up to speed in this Age of Information, its too easy to get muddled up in the junk on most social networking sites. When I was in school I was hardly ever with my phone in class, someone else was either FaceBooking or something more trivial on my phone such that I had literally beg or fight for my BB back at the end of the day. Sadly most people tweet in class, on the bus, in CHURCH and even at important meetings.

Is this really all there is to our lives? We so called ‘technologically advanced’ youth? Can anything good come out of NazarNET? Unlimited internet access on-the-go is becoming more of a curse than a blessing and we don’t seem to realize its happening right before our eyes. And its not just the net, its the gadgets, the clothes, the accessories, the unaffordably expensive and needless outings, shopping, ‘borrow-posing’, the champagne lifestyle on a coca-cola salary that disillusion us young people into Advanced Fee Fraud (they even gave it a nice name… Unlike the ‘G’ or ‘Yahoo’ we call it, worse yet is calling it ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ like you’re living in 2003 or something), Whoring for BB’s and trips to dubai, Rituals, Armed Robbery and more despicable and unthinkable crimes. We don’t want to work anymore – genuine hustle just takes too long for us – but we want to live more lavish than the celebrities we see on TV. We’re exposed to too much too soon in such a short time frame and with little or no income that the flashing lights of the commercials (the headlights on the EOD’s, the strobe lights in the club, the rainbow coloured apparel in shop windows) trigger pseudo-epileptic seizures and we lose ourselves in an endless whirlpool of spending money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like or even know.

There is so much we throw away because we don’t know its useful and admittedly its difficult to trudge through the garbage and find worthwhile opportunities without getting lost in the maze but it only takes focus and discipline: two virtues very easy to cultivate contrary to what we think. For the unemoployed, look for jobs online, submit your CV’s or apply for internships the next time you’re on the net. If your an entrepreneur, market your products next time you’re tweeting instead of wasting such valuable time. If you’re gifted in writing, music or any other art, sell your self online because that is the easiest and cheapest medium you could ever hope for. The internet is also a platform for growing businesses especially and not just a playground for ‘overgrown babies’ who carried over their ‘play time’ from ‘ota akara’ (pre-school, kindergarten or play class if you prefer). Don’t waste away or get sucked into the digital vortex without any tangible gains.

And if you so wish to find something worthwhile to do online but don’t know how to go about it, just let me know, I’m here to help (but for a fee though, the best things in life are not always free).

 

When the student is ready…

An ancient saying, “When the student is ready, the master appears”, best describes a day in my life. Most of us want to become famous, richer, thinner and “beautifuller” too – but we don’t seem to know how. We see people who seem to have gotten it right (that perfect blend of wealth, beauty, influence and all the ‘good’ things) but what we don’t know is – HOW??? How did they do it? How do they keep doing it? and how can we make it work for us? (Most of these people are celebrities; top business men, musicians, actors and sport moguls etc)

Contrary to most of our beliefs it really is not magic. Its that eternal paradox – the uncommon ‘common sense’.

Most of our definitions of success don’t guarantee happiness, and success is not measured materially. True success and happiness is all a ‘state of mind’. Your level of success shouldn’t be measured in how much you have, neither should it be determined by your competition with celebrities who don’t even know that they’re your opponents or that you exist. Sad as it sounds, it’s true.

Simple things like good food, honest friendship, loving children (the most perfect creations on earth), cute pets (if that’s your kind of thing), poetry, art, uplifting and inspiring music, craft and handiwork among a million other things are the colours that should paint a beautiful life. There is so much beauty in nature and in your everyday life that you miss while searching for artificial beauty and cold, unfeeling pleasures.

Your friends on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, even most of your real world ‘friends’ can’t make you happier if you fail to open your eyes and your heart to the natural world around you.

This is coming from my experience with Haiku (Japanese poetry).

*Haiku are short, graphic, evocative Japanese poems. Below is an example of a Haiku:

meteor shower…
a gentle wave
wets our sandals.

By Michael Dylan Welch*

The images created in my mind when I read this just evoke a sense of awe and wonder and beauty. Standing on a beach, staring up at a meteor shower in the evening sky, as the water gently laps your feet. The image is both refreshing and calming. I’m transported to a place I’ve never been before, just by reading the lines in the poem. That is beauty. And stuff like this are the little things that can turn a sour day around. Not your iPhone or your designer clothes and all the junk you don’t need, but you still spend a fortune trying to get (a fortune which don’t really have either).
There is only so much any one person can say that can make you see what’s important and valuable in life. It really is up to you to determine what makes life good and for you to hold on to that thing. Do not give in to the cravings of the world because in the end all the wrong things in your life would only depress you further when you can’t get the affection and attention you desire from them. Or when what you have just can’t be enough and you end up in a downward spiral trying to be ‘it’ – whatever ‘it’ is, we’ll never know.

 

Back to Benghazi

With all its ups and downs, reading over a 100 texts for tests and exams, having only 50 naira in your ‘lekpa’ wallet with no money in the bank, no food stuff and provisions, no airtime to call home and concoct yet another bogus fee-for-registration story, barely enough physical and will power to get through the rest of the semester, no light AND water, you’re companion became the new Jeffrey Archer or Dan Brown or better, the latest 24 or Supernatural and Spartacus (even on a paper thin budget we somehow found the resources for those, yes! Because without that you’d almost go crazy), and then there’s the fuel issue (80 naira per litre was no joke) especially when the Premiership or Champions League was on, the stress of trekking like an Ethiopian olympic athlete because biking was pointlessly expensive, my four years in the University of Benin were the turning point in a life I thought I had planned down to the street I was going to live on when I built a house after graduation and a job and a car and a….

For those of us reading English and Literature at the time, we almost became a ‘bus stop parliament’, gathering after lectures in front of the orchard (or Love Garden) to bemoan the state of affairs in the department while the less interested ones chose the ‘Gossip Bench’ at Faculty car park to see and be seen; the latest BB’s, Nokias and all what not were flashed, the tightest jeans, the highest heels, the longest Brazilian weavons, the bleachest skin (if there is a word like ‘bleachest’ I don’t know but it feels appropriate in describing girls that looked like Michael Jackson’s first cousins), the shiniest and most colourful Sky Tops and Supras, the longest and blackest Mo-Hawks or ‘Gallas’, the skinniest jeans and brightest markers with the ever present school bag, Ray Bans nerd goggles looking like Kanye West, MI or WizKid. From Oracle’s American Literature to Dr. Mrs Ig’s Syntax which Dr. Tei helped repair a bit, our able 17th century lecturer who showed us through the scholastic quiddities of the metaphysical conceits the animalistic metaphorical imagery of Modern African poetry and so on, we had a tough time with studies but we sailed through – at least most of us. Fortunately no deaths were recorded, a few births and marriages came at the last minute though, and then on to graduation and then now NYSC (which is nothing like bread and beans at all).

In all this, we had our quarrels, some malice, a couple of disappointments, friendships, infatuation, secret admiration, love (some unrequited) and brotherhood. A new family was born, the building blocks, the cornerstones of the foundations of our lives were laid, a network of unbreakable bonds formed through the heat of our travails as a class and as friends.

2009/2010 set of the Department of English and Literature in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Benin would be a subtle but decisive force in the great things to come in Nigeria. Years from now when we look back we’ll see the heat and the grind that forged us into the men and women that we would eventually become and we’d say ‘it was worth it in the end’. So until time and chance bring us all toghether again may God’s providence keep you in health of mind and body and of course pocket.

In all sincereity and honesty, I cherish and miss you guys. You rocked my world.

Peace.