I FEEL NO PRESSURE AT ALL. EMM.. DON'T I?

Yay! My first post for the year. I should get to it already.
Back in school, I was friends with basically everyone I met especially my classmates and roommates. Years after leaving school, a lot of those friends of mine are married. A number of them with children already. Two weeks ago, Damilola put to bed; the most beautiful baby girl. Every time I set my eyes on King Fahad, Lola's son, my heart pumps with happiness. Victoria is raising two handsome boys with her husband. Funmi is getting married soon. Everyone around me is practically getting hooked. Does this fact get to me? I may not be able to answer this question simplicita. See, it's tricky. My friends are lucky. They met their spouses, fell in love while they were still young and had time to say no. They were lucky to find the perfect matches in time. The ones they couldn't turn away. Now they are living happily ever after.
Unfortunately for me, I haven't been so fortunate. Or maybe I was overshooting while others were trimming their requirements. Now I'm here at this point of my life where my Father won't let me escape a single phone call without the mention of the husband talk. Bless my sweet mother who constantly reminds me that they don't catch latecomers in marriage. I am always grateful for her.
Interestingly, I have friends who are constantly worried for me. The truth is that I don't feel any pressure to get married. It is the honest truth. It doesn't bother me that my friends are married and I am not. I have come to not view marriage as a goal to aspire to. It is not a life mission. I am happy as I am presently.
I will not deny that loneliness can hit you pretty hard sometimes. Infact, it is the only reason I'll want to get married. To have someone to converse with, share my problems with, raise a family with and fight with. It will be nice to have a worthy partner to do these lovely things with. That is the only thing that gets to me. The loneliness.
 

FROM BUNMI TO ME

YOUR LAUGHTER..

Your laughter is good for me
Better than the sun...
Shine it on me
Your laughter
Gooood like
The sound of rain
Drops on my window
In the middle of
Pain!
Summer pain
Your laughter:
Summer rain
You
Are my sun
Shine your laughter
'Pon my heart
Rain!

ABOUT THOMAS AND HIS HOLE OF SHIT

The African society, especially Nigeria is a very arable source for the study of extremist practices. What we do not comprehend fully always finds a way to enslave our minds and reasoning. In the times past, before Christianity and Islam, we were held captive by the fear of fearsome gods like Sango, Amadioha and the likes. So afraid of these deities were we that even their priests were more revered than the gods themselves. These priests in turn took advantage of our forefathers’ fear and became laws unto themselves. They demand for bogus sacrifices, seize people’s wives, buried slaves alive with dead kings, killing of twins, even going as far as establishing the Osu caste in the Eastern parts of Nigeria ( many easterners would still refrain from marrying anyone who is Osu today). 
Then the White man came with all his dazzling ideologies and advancements that were beyond the biggest innovations available to us as at that time. We were blown away. More than that, we began to blow ourselves away too. The greedy kings then started to trade away our able bodied population. At the end, millions of African slaves were sold off to spend terrible and inhumane time in sugarcane plantations America and Europe, with over two million of them dying en route and thrown overboard into the oceans.These aforementioned events happened hundreds of millions years ago. We inherited from the White man education, which was the most lethal weapon used to fight the Colonial masters to obtain our independence. It was tough and bloody in varying degrees in different parts of Africa. The death of Mandela a few months back once again brought to fore the suffering of South Africans under the Apartheid system which brutally murdered both young and old black South Africans in scores. So were the many sufferings we have aided by our own  

The present year is 2014. What we are battling now are our own inner demons. The struggle is now against our very selves. After oil was discovered in 1956 in Oloibiri, everything changed. The struggle changed from total emancipation from the whites. In the very oppressive natures of our fathers, we began to resurrect the slavery we had fought so hard to overcome. They sold Nigeria to foreign oil companies like Shell without even asking for a fair price in return. The Niger Delta was for many years home to mindless oil exploration by these oil companies who with the permission of our greedy leaders deplored the host communities so much so that vast farm lands, bodies of waters and the environments generally have been rendered useless. We are constantly in fear of hikes in fuel prices. Just yesterday, the big story on AIT was on the issue of Kerosene and how it costs as much N140 per litre, as against the N50 naira official price. In a country with a functional government, we cannot enforce something as simple as the price of kerosene. This is just an aside.

Moving on to the crux of this matter, it is certainly saddening how much we swim in curable ignorance in the most arrogant manner. It is only in Nigeria that everything calamitous is the work of demonic forces. Poverty, boko haram, ill health, diseases, bad roads, erratic power supply, accidents, industrial actions, homosexuality, asexuality, even heterosexuality ( in the case of a ‘promiscuous’ female), and just about every other thing that can go wrong is never the fault of any man. The Devil and his demons are always to blame. Sometimes, I think that the Devil does complain of man’s unjust accusations to God too.

Yesterday, a fellow learned colleague of mine, Thomas, who strongly believes that asexuality is a demonic attack rather than a logically explainable medical condition, opens his hellhole and says vociferously, might I add too, that as far as he is concerned, women are nothing but chattels, properties to be acquired and nothing more, (those were his exact words, by the way). Thomas is still in his 20's and unmarried. I guess his failure to smell how shitty his words sounded can be attributed to demonic forces too. Now Thomas and I don’t get along very well because from the very start, I smelled dung even in his response to my greeting the first day of my resumption at the office and even though we were called to bar at the same time, he tries hard everyday, though unsuccessfully, to let me realize he got the office before me. I doubt if we will ever get along anyway. He threw it my face once that he got his mandate to be a first class chauvinistic jackass from the bible. I gave up at that point. There is no redemption for him.

Thomas is not the only one I know who is in this special class. I know quite a hoard of this generation of science and technology that still give so much credence to fetish causation of accidents. A generation that is so religious yet has the record for some of the world’s most heinous crime rates. A country that needs so much foreign aid when government officials are busy siphoning off the tax payers’ money. A country where the man of God is exalted above his shortcomings. Nigeria is a hailing nation and no healing is anywhere in sight.

You might find all of this disjointed but then, it is about Thomas and his shitty hole of a mouth.

THE MANY PROBLEMS OF GOD’S FIRST WIFE

Death is the leveler of all men, great or irrelevant. We must all bow to the reality of our mortality at the end of the day. The wisest of people who discovered this early enough decided to throw back this inescapable fate in the face of death by immortalizing their names in the history of mankind. They broke new grounds, defied every law that said you couldn’t and there are many more who continue to tow this path even in our times. The most recent being our own Mandiba, who courageously fought for an ideal he believed in by sacrificing twenty seven years of his life in one of the worst prison camps in South Africa. At the end of the day, he was freed, by the people he fought valiantly for. He lived out the rest of his life taking full pride in the victory he had won alongside other heroes and heroines. So proud of his heritage he was that he refused to wear a suit to a dinner organized for him by the queen of England and was almost turned away. In fact, he got away also with addressing the queen by her first name ‘Elizabeth’. Such is the greatness of men who are not afraid to stand for what they believed. Even when they pay with their lives, their legacies will forever live on years after them.

This brings me to the issue of Nigeria’s relationship with God. The million worship places that decorate virtually every space and corner in our country would make you think this country is heaven’s headquarters. It is hilarious because we are the most woeful country on earth as far as progress is concerned.  Personally, I don’t have a problem with anyone who wants to thank God for anything. Nevertheless, it brings to fore the intentional weakness of Nigerians who in one breath they are standing for something and in another breath; they pull out of reason and give up on that very thing. When Nigerians were declared as the happiest people on earth some years back, a lot of people (as usual), decided to link it to our relationship with God, in other words, our very foolish and ill-informed reliance on religion as being the backbone of our inexplicable source of happiness. The popular biblical saying, ‘in every situation, give God praise’, has become our new mantra in this country, thus, heaps upon heaps of tragedy that could be averted, injustices that should be fought teeth and nails, irresponsible acts of the government and leaders in every sectors and corrupt practices are being chewed in acceptance as the norm in Nigeria.

What I don’t seem to get is how God can be benevolent, compassionate, kind, loving and still be attributed with every act of evil and tragedy that takes place in our personal and collective lives. It is so easy to hurriedly say ‘let’s leave it to God’ after being victims of oppression and disregard from people who owe us all the respect in the world. In Nigeria, scores of women and children are violated daily by people who are supposedly their loved ones and even spiritual guides and what do we get at the end? The culprit goes scot free and the victim is left without as much as a closure. Nigerians will rather let God be the judge than take justice in their hands and demand for it. The unfortunate but funny thing is that God seldom answers these supplications. I stand to be put right but how many times have we actually seen any kind of divine justice being meted out on evil men and women? Most of them suddenly become ‘men and women of God’ and we they beguile us with their tales of their sordid pasts and they become untouchables from that point because they have worn the garments of the anointed of God and once again, we are enslaved by them. The others live long and prosperous lives and are constantly feared and even celebrated. Last year alone, I lost count of the number of pastors, imams and relatives who sexually abused children and women who were entrusted to them for help.  

The picture of God that Nigerians have painted have convinced me more than ever that he must be different from the same one that Americans and other European countries are serving. Their god seem to be very open- minded, hates injustice, accepts homosexuals, inspires great economic ideas in their leaders and helps their citizens to be deeply patriotic. Our lawmakers are busy making laws that will imprison homosexuals in a country where the Penal Code allows a man to beat his wife in a bid to impact correction if she disobeys. How being an homosexual will impede on the fight against corrupt acts of government officials is still a mystery to me and how the same act will prevent our children from getting free education remains confusing.

Whether we accept it or not, this country is heading for doom, together with our ‘god of all circumstances’. While we are being deeply forgiving of evildoers, we can also clean up our own mess by ensuring that victims get human, not divine justice. Nobody really knows how the afterlife works. Not even all those unscrupulous jokers who have gone to heaven and returned with stories of a gold paved heavenly corridor, (the same gold God instructs women not to use is used to decorate heaven, funny, isn’t it?) and many other versions of heaven can tell how it works. While we still have our consciousness, let us insist that every evil riddling us in this country be stumped to the abyss of nonexistence.

This write up is dedicated to all the victims of injustices of every kind who were denied repose and to those who will be denied.

  

WHILE I LEVITATE

He beckons to me with the eyes of the serpent,
he hisses me on eagerly with his sweet lips,
he leads me assuringly by the hands,
I don't want to go, but I can't stop walking.

He offers me the sweetness of the fruit,
the fruit I must think not of,
he does the ritual dance of seduction around me,
while the fruit he holds to my eyes.

I swirl and twirl in estatic anticipation,
my tongue yearns for the savour of the fruit,
I reach out to take it,
he pulls back from me,
he beckons with his eyes to follow him
farther into the night.

I want to not go with him,
I know the poison of the fruit will kill me
but I yearn to go,
for he dances the dance of seduction.

"Just levitate and live...", he says to me,
"think not of what I am, or what I shall be to..." he sings to me,
"just live.."

And live I shall.

FOR THE ANGELS WITHOUT WINGS

Toluwani loved her Uncle. Uncle Shola made her feel special all the time. Each time he came to the house, he would lift her and throw her in the air. He would tickle her endlessly till tears ran down her cheeks from excessive laughter and her sides ached. She trusted her Uncle Shola totally. He could never hurt her.

So she kept thinking until that dark afternoon. Toluwani’s mother had to run extra errands that afternoon after she picked her from school so she thought her brother who was really fond of her daughter and always offered to babysit her could help her look after Toluwani. After she dropped her with Uncle Shola and left, he started with his tirade of friendly gestures again.

Then he started telling Toluwani that she was a special girl and the most beautiful girl in the world. Toluwani kept blushing at these sweet words from her most favourite and trusted Uncle Shola. Then he asked touched her bum and told her she had a beautiful body. He asked her if she would love to have boobs as big as her mom. She giggled shyly and nodded. Then he told her to take her clothes off so he could confirm if this would be. She innocently obeyed. Then he took off his own clothes too and then the nightmare started.

He made her touch him in places. He also stuck his fingers inside her. Then he told her to put his member in her mouth. He said she would be helping him feel happy, just the way he always made her happy too. She naively did as requested. Then he made her lie down and spread her legs and kept trying to get his member into her and even when she cried and told him it hurt her, he didn’t stop. He went on and it hurt. It hurt her pretty bad. She cried and begged but Uncle Shola didn’t listen. She could not believe that he could hurt her ever, but he did. She didn’t understand how but then it was happening and there was no one to help her. Not her mummy or daddy.

Toluwani was only five years old, but she never forgot.

This is the story of one of the several million children, male and female who get violated everyday by heartless but sadly trusted relatives. The truth is that when a truly wicked man sets to work, his victim can barely escape him. Many questions would pop into the mind when one hears such horrible stories. How could anyone ever think of hurting innocent children? Why didn’t the parents suspect a thing? Endless questions that never receive answers.

It is even more terrible in Nigeria where women and female children are treated as not better than properties and the men are expected to always ‘man up’ in the face of tough situations and must not be heard to complain. Most times, cases like this one never get reported or prosecuted at all. They are treated as family issues and the victims are never put into consideration at all. The family’s honour and name suddenly become way more important than finding a closure for victims It is important to state that from a personal survey I made from discussions I have had with male colleagues; at least two out of every ten was violated as a child. The consequence being they grew up becoming sexually hyperactive and insatiable. Some people will say this is a blessing, but then it has also been scientifically proven that excessive sexual drive could be a result of depression. How is this beneficial to anybody?

It is time we took this fight into our own hands and become our children’s vigilantes. Most importantly, closure must be found for the unfortunate victims by ensuring that the evil people who harmed them are handed just and equal punishment. I am I total agreement with the National Assembly to increase the sentence for rape to life imprisonment from fourteen years. More importantly, I insist that they can start by legislating entirely new laws to regulate violence against children. The we can truly say that we can begin the war which has already fallen upon us.

Follow Olayinka on twitter @rubyxion.