The Last thing she said.

When i was younger, i had these friends that lived next door. The first daughter was my "best" friend at the time and she had a younger sister, their Uncle lived with them and was my brother's best friend. I was 10 when their Uncle died in the most tragic of circumstances. Back then the street i lived on was being terrorized by thieves so the boys decided to start a Vigilante group, it was fun how they would whistle to themselves and chase thieves while we would peek from the windows and talk about it the next day. One day their Uncle (Kay) heard a noise in their compound and decided to check it out, he found a man trying to break into his brother's car. The thief had a machete but Kay attacked him and overpowered him, the noise woke his brother who got out his gun and in the dark night saw a man with a machete about to strike another, he shot. And that's how Kay died. It was a really sad period, we were all devastated but i remember my friend's younger sister was more so than anyone else. You see the day he died Kay had bought stuff from Mr. Biggs and refused to give her another meatpie, in her anger she said something most of us had said once or twice. She said "eat it alone and die alone"

And he'd died that night and it broke her that that was the last thing she had said to her uncle whom she really loved. That was around 14 years ago.

Another friend of mine lost her Dad yesterday, he had been sick a while and had just returned from surgery abroad when he died. Her Dad was a really nice man, he genuinely seemed interested in what was going on with everyone of us kids that had grown up on our street. Anytime i went over to theirs he would say "Is that Neo?" It was sort of a customary greeting, one i had grown accustomed to and maybe took for granted. Like i would always go there and he would say "is that Neo?"

His death got me thinking about my own father. My father is pushing 80 and has one stroke and prostate cancer behind him. He now has a live in nurse to help take care of him and doesnt talk much these days. It's hard to see him like that cos my Dad was a strong, proud, tall man. He had the sort of personality that filled a room when he walked in. He's a chief and so when i was young i remember troops of people from the village coming to the house to ask him to settle one dispute or the other. He used to call me his GF(girlfriend) Then he got sick and everyday i felt like a part of him was slipping away and i started to slip away too. I didnt want to see him like that, weak and tired. I wanted to preserve the memories of my hero and that was how i wanted to remember him. I started to prepare myself for the day he would die, i told myself that i would be able to handle it cos sometimes it seemed he was gone and all that was left was the shell of the man he had been.

But today it just hit me, that i cant remember the last time i saw him or what he said, all i have is a vague recollection of that day. I cant remember the last thing i said to him. We're not a family that's big on I-love-yous but i want to tell my Dad that i love him and that he was a good father. He taught me one of the biggest words i knew at 5, he used to say i looked "psychedelic" each time i just had my hair done. He used to take me everywhere with him.

Right now all i want is to see my father, even if it means sitting in silence or holding his hand and making him feel as safe as he made me feel. So each morning i pray for him with a renewed fervor that God keeps him alive so that i can see him again, talk to him again.

What do we mean when we say "I want you to be happy?"

Really, what do we mean? I'm asking because i need to evaluate myself and what i meant when i said those words too. I meant it but probably on just one level, be happy as a person because the one of the reasons my ex and i split up was because he was just very unhappy (his best friend died and all of a sudden it seemed like part of him died too) not be happy as part of a couple that doesn't include me So in the post-breakup talk i said "i just want you to be happy" Now i wonder what did he think i meant?

We think of the 1st Corinthians love when we think of love.

Love is patient, love is kind, it doesnt envy, it doesn't boast, it isn't proud, it's not rude, it's not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, it doesn't delight in evil but rejoices with truth, it always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres and it never fails.

But we forget that sometimes love is selfish and self seeking, we want love to make us happy, sometimes at any costs. I'm not saying the 1st Corinthians love is not achievable, i'm saying i haven't gotten there yet. God is the only one i love with that kind of love and for everyone else i'm a work in progress.

My point is when i broke up with my ex and told him that i wanted him to be happy, i meant "be happy by yourself" not with some other girl that makes you smile the way i did. When i realized this a few days ago i gave myself a hot mental slap, I was a bad bad person, it was selfish, how could i claim to love him as much as i did and not want him to move on, i was trying to move on, didn't he deserve the same? Then i thought about it and realized that i didn't want him to move on because i loved him, not because i wanted him to sit in a corner for the rest of his life and rue the day he lost me. I'm not a bad person, i may be a selfish person but if i am love made me this way.

How did i get to this point? When we were together he told me once that I WAS IT! That if for some reason we didn't end up together he was done with love (might i add here that his ex cheated and then dumped him for his friend) Being the love cynic that i am (dont blame me, i grew up with a dozen brothers so i have the inside info) i never believed him and i was like "yeah right" But when i spoke to him a couple of days ago and asked if he was seeing anyone now, he didn't give me the standard i'm-still-in-love-with-you i expected he just said the whole process or build up to being with someone else was just too stressful for now. Silly as it sounds, i felt betrayed, like he couldn't even be bothered to lie to me anymore, like he had given up on "us" I would have liked him to tell me that he wasn't dating because it would have been hard to find someone that was better for him than i was, i'm not saying i would have believed him but it'd have been nice to hear. I'm not saying that we'd ever get back together, i would have at least felt better if he still "lied" to me.

I just think that if you've really loved someone in that strong way that the magnitude only truly hits you when they're gone you cant say "Go ahead and be happy" and mean it a hundred percent. You think "i should be the only one that can make you happy" "you should be incomplete without me" You think that way because maybe, just maybe he/she is the only one that can make you happy or complete. Maybe or maybe you're just a screwed up selfish grinch of a person.

So i need to know if i'm just some badly wired emotional dysfunctional human being, that's why i'm asking if you've said or those words what did you mean?

I am not my Hair!

Okay i'm back and better! Sorry for that my last depressing post, as far as Nigeria is concerned we can do the best we can as individuals and hope that its enough, cos what else can we do???

Anyways to the matter at hand, aha my hair. Where do i start? I have a love-hate relationship with my hair, though its mostly hate-hate right now.

My ex decided to go all dreadlocks on me one time and i hated it, he looked so unruly! I complained about it so much and then one day we were in the car and i was nagging him about it, he didnt say anything he just skipped a couple of songs on the radio till India Arie's "I am not my hair" came on. We had a good laugh about it but today i was just thinking about it and i miss my old hair, the one i had when i was in primary school till that evil secondary school made me chop it off. I miss that hair cos i WAS that hair, heck i AM that hair.

It was long, black, silky and very strong. How do i mean? If i were to describe myself and blow my own trumpet simultaneously i would say that i am long, simple in a way that's complicated, deeper than i let people see, not just the bubbly, Dame-smile-a-lot that i let everyone see. I wont cry in public but that doesnt mean i dont feel things. Sometimes i feel "bigger" than the stuff that's going on around me, like little spats.

I am black and proudly so, in all this talk about Mutallab, missing presidents, religious crisis i am sorry to say i will not be wrapping my green passport in old newspaper, but on the other hand I am not going around moaning how disadvantaged i am being black, wearing my skin like a badge to force "political correctness" Maybe the white woman on the train didn't want to sit next to you cos u smell like you never heard of soap. Don't get me wrong i do not intend to belittle the racist debate, it does happen but it's high time some people stop hiding behind it and get a life.

I am strong, probably cos i had to grow up early and fast, i have been through things in this life that makes me realize that at the end of the day you are all you got, just you and God. No family, no friends. There's a limit to the loyalty i can get from people around me and the sooner i realized that the better for me. How many people out there could you say would 100% die for you? As in die die, not "i will cross the ocean for you and excavate the moon from the sea bed kinda promises" If it came down to it, to taking a bullet who would do it for you? And who would you let?

I am silky, smooth, suave. I can woo LASTMA sef...lol. I have a sweet tongue, more like a double edged tongue, sweet on one side, sharp on the other. Trying to blunt one side though. I know what you want to hear and maybe, just maybe i might tell you. Probably comes with growing up with a gazillion brothers.

So which is why i hate the current state of my hair, its weak, brittle, hasn't made up its mind if it wants to be black or brown. So i have decided to chop it off, not going all Amber Rose on you, have already gone down that path once, this time i'm going for something more chic and yet defiant. Just waiting for the Big Freeze to pack its bags and head back to Siberia and then its scissors here i come.

Take a look at my hair journey....

Yep, it's my hair not a hedgehog!


Attempting to tame the bush


Erm...not very successful



When all else fails...cornrows (aka Ghana weaving)!


Or my fave...braids or as i like to call em Get-up-and-go!


Finally, my future look! (future being anytime from now to say 6 months).


So thats it! I'll be taking this pic to the salon and when i get the semi-big chop i'll put up a pic and see how well they did.

Sheesh this uploading pics is helluva work! Off to dinner, dodo and peppered stew!

Why are Humans so wicked???

I came here to type a really nice, maybe funny post about how i have been putting off updating my blog and how i had to force myself to do it before i lost all my wonderful followers (thank all of you who take the time to read my (mostly) rants and comment, as for my last post i'm taking popular advice and giving love another chance)

Anyways i was just on facebook and someone put up a video about the Jos crisis, i read the warning and i still watched it, so i have none other but myself to blame. I just had dinner and i swear i can feel all the food in my chest refusing to go down. It was just horrible! It wasnt even that graphic, cos the camera was shaky and the people were not in focus, but i watched soldiers drag men off a truck and fired shots at them, multiple times. I cant seem to get the image out of my head and i wonder how i'll sleep this night. It gets me wondering how do they sleep at night? Dont those images haunt them? The countless faces of the people they've killed? Knowing that you put an end to a life. I just dont get it.

Even if you dont believe in God or an after-life, dont you believe in humanity? Even if those people they shot were the fundamentalists that had killed so many others, is that the answer? Do you fight fire with fire?

I'm honestly so depressed right now and i dont mean to put it out on you but i just needed an outlet to get this out.