Musings-&-Memoir

Recovered from an old computer…. The joys of spring cleaning, I guess… Apologies for any one who finds the pidgin English excessively ‘conc’ Not too long ago I resumed at one of the much vilified companies in Nige… No complaints from me though, as long as them roger me my small thing at the end of the month and dem no kidnap me - No long thing.. I went to complete my in-processing a few weeks ago. Over serious naijaboy like me go organize better trouser and korrect shirt, come tuck-in with my glasses and fresh hair cut. Mehn.. Me sef trip na, as I look myself for mirror o.. Note to self – Next time take a photograph for posterity’s sake! ...

My short Saturday morning sleep (I’d stayed awake till 4.30 am) was shattered by the insistent buzz of my cellphone at a little over 9.00am, and with it came summons to meet up with a bloke I met at NYSC camp and his wife. After braving howling winds and nearly passing out on my feet with the sheer amount of shops we went through, we got to share my peri-peri chicken addiction, and chat. True to form our conversation segued into the murky waters that are Nigeria and its various issues. Thankfully, reminiscing over the highlights of our service year provided a spot of cheer. ...

My earliest memories of Christmas - and ultimately of growing up - are inextricably connected to the sounds of roosting chickens, the anticipation of a hearty Christmas afternoon meal and the Chapel’s annual Christmas carol night. We were by no means very well off. Those were the dark days bookended by SAP and its attendant devaluation of the Naira and the Abacha dictatorship in which people in the Academia essentially lived hand to mouth. What was an already thinly stretched wage was steadily eroded until my proud, well read father resorted to farming yams and cassava in the space behind his house to augment his wage. The main garnishing to the routine fare we got served as soups and stews was beef bought in abundance from the local butchery, and fish. ...

Between bites of peri-peri chicken and sips of Coke Zero, my friend Des asked me if I was happy. She - amongst all my long term friends - complains the least about my propensity to wall them off from the reality that is in my head, but from time to time she insists we meet to ‘catch up’. These meetings haven’t happened a lot recently - thanks to her juggling a return to full time employment with an energetic three year old, and travelling. Skipping merrily through town, as she is wont to these days, she asked if I was up for a bite and a drink, which I accepted. We ordered the usual - a platter to share, bottomless drinks and sides of rice and settled in to talk about the minutiae of life, and all the quotidian pleasures we have enjoyed in the year so far. Then - out of the blue - she asked if I was happy. I suspect I managed to side track her question by rolling out my usual spiel about life being what it was - normal and mundane without anything out of the ordinary. ...

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems.. …so said Salman Rushdie. The corollary is that memory is deceptive, and nostalgia can skew our recollection of things so much that it becomes an alternate reality far removed from the cold, hard facts as they occurred. Sometimes clarity hits you suddenly like a blow to the solar plexus, at other times the bleeding obvious slowly becomes apparent. All told, some day a bloke has to decide – what’s important, what’s not, and what to leave to fight another day….

In theory, fresh starts are great: you get a clean slate, a new life, the chance to reinvent yourself and lay the past to rest. In reality, the break is never clean – past actions have consequences, past events leave signatures that are etched like indelible tattoos on the mind, and on memory, and there will always be connections to people we can’t escape.

Rebirth says men are never 100% single, and offers further clarification in a comment: In my opinion, being single means free from any baggage, no causal dating or stringing along, emotionally available and willing to commit if its the right person…but i find most guys have more than 2 women they are talking to at a time And I have been thinking. If I met someone (new) today, would I be emotionally available to commit, if it was the right person? Most probably not. Every time a picture of EJ flashes or her name comes up in a conversation, I realize I still haven’t forgotten, still haven’t let go. Am I ’talking’ to any other woman? No. There are the long term friends elC, TheB and ER who ostensibly might be options - but we’ve been stuck so much in the friends zone, I doubt anything can progress from that. ...

Being born on the campus of a Federal University in the ’80s, I grew up in what was a cultural multi-verse. On my street alone, one was as likely to run into a Pakistani anthropologist as a Cameroonian linguist, or a Scottish librarian for that matter. Over the course of growing up, these seemingly distinct cultures all bled into each other, till there was almost a multi-cultural sweet spot at the centre of it all. ...

I have been wondering if people still ‘fall’ in love? Can a guy and a girl meet, develop sparks from the get go and experience a connection like none other? Me the cynic is convinced it is all about doing the sums, weighing the pros and the cons, and deciding what ‘makes sense’ - not some visceral, emotional reaction. I wish I knew though, I really want to be swept off my feet by someone, be blown away by an emotional connection…. Somehow I know that will never be me, I will remain Me, the cynical pragmatist…

Children are little adorable things; when they are not cry-y, squirmy little things and are not pooping and peeing all over the place, that is. This weekend, yet another ’lost’ friend stopped over in town with his wife and daughter in tow. The daughter in question has just turned five, and is in that phase of life where her unfettered inquisitiveness is allied to a a precociously quick brain. Whilst her parents and I are engrossed in deep conversation, reminiscing over the lost years since we last hung out, she manages to find my trove of retired gadgets and begins to play around with them. She settles on my Galaxy Tab and pokes around, trying to figure out a way to get it powered up. After several failed attempts she disappears from sight, reappearing at my side away from her father’s glare. ...