Nigeria

Growing up in my own neck of the woods was an experience. We nicknamed our Pops the Ogbodons - not sure where the term originated from any more but my back side was a living testimony to his varied abilities and multiplied skills in inflicting pain. Mum didn’t help matters as she was was as resolute in hammering our ’evil’ proclivities out of our systems. I got the opportunity to contrast that parenting style a few weekends back when I went visiting some distant family members in London. Clearly their less than 3 year old daughter has more leeway with him than I do with my own parents at my (huge) age. ...

For Me….In the midst of potentially destabilizing change… The hot seat …..is the hot seat…. The place where you are put on the spot, and come under the most intense scrutiny possible. Here, the basis of your Faith is rigorously examined and the coherence of your worldview is systematically evaluated. It is the zone where well meaning words become dry platitudes devoid of any soothing balm, where textbook solutions fall apart, where time tested strategies cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the sickness that a hope deferred brings. ...

Perhaps Nigeria has it ‘too good’. Sudan in the midst of sanctions is building a home grown airplane, Nigeria with 10 years of democracy has a burgeoning insurgency in the Niger-Delta.

Kpekere was one of them typical razz waffy boys.. Clean shaven aside of a goatee, not too tall, legs slightly bowed and with rippling muscles under the skin tight tee-shirts he wore, he had a menacing look around him. He was suave in his own way though, waffy slangs rolled off his tongue like melting lollipops, enthralling us , especially when he chose to regale us with tales of his supposed exploits bunkering crude oil in the creeks. His skin was a very light shade of brown – a testament to a randy Portuguese ancestor back in the day. With lots of cash to spare, being a tough tackling no-nonsense central defender in the Department’s Football side added to the aura of hardman that surrounded him, and he used it to good effect. ...

Had a particularly soothing phone call with the bestie today - Olu and I are in a similar place - uncertain about returning to our old jobs in Nigeria and all that…. As usual we rambled on about many things - book work, wives/ girl friends, our Nigerian folks and the like. Eventually, we got to talk about post-study plans and all what not.. He’s open for both options - the UK or Nigeria, as I am. There’s still some time till we decide one way or the other, so I shall just keep my fingers crossed, and take it from there!

Apparently an awe inspiring 90% of Nigerians are religious. Statistics like these make the likes of Richard Dawkins claim that religion is the root of all evil. Dinesh D’Souza, Ravi Zacharias the UCCF, and a whole lot of other resources exist specifically to discuss the pros and cons of the subtle nuances of the arguments around Drawinism vs Intelligent Design and Theism vs Atheism vs Agnosticism. It is instructive to also note that atheism has not done much better either - the Soviet era is a case in point. ...

I absolutely adore African food - I made it a point of duty to eat everything from amala, eba, party jollof rice, beans, moi-moi, yam porridge, nkwobi, and that peculiar Cally town culinary delight of Ekpangnkukwo as well as a sampling of soups - ogbono, egusi, afang, editan, afia efere (hmmmm), and even gala and several FanMilk icecreams flavours all in the space of 12 days. In fact, the ability to make piping hot akara is a key requirement of the future Mrs DB! ...

So after a maelstrom 12 days of travel and activity; 7 cities, 4 major events, and lots of travel time I’m finally back to hopefully face my books squarely. Thankfully, I met all but one of the 9 key objectives I set out to achieve. I had three full hours to kill at Heathrow both ways and for want of something more mentally challenging to do, I decided to try to categorize the African/ Naija people around.. I thought they fit broadly into ten categories.. Enjoy…. ...

well……. db is live in las gidi after much! thankfully the peeps @ mtn reactivated my contract, so i’m good to roll…albeit intermittently via a USB connection between my lappie and my phone! now i need to locate ‘mama put’ for some piping hot amala and ewedu soup… keep those questions for the 29th rolling in..looking very interesting already….. cheers peeps!

I was talking to a couple of elderly peeps back in 9ja a few weeks ago and the case of a son who seems to be intent on self-destruction came up. The father opined that the chaps name might be part of the problem - his name is Ojo (I understand its given to a child whose birth was particularly difficult) and his moniker was Ojo-Jogbon (which seems to carry a connotation of a trouble maker). I decided, just for the fun of it to see what research had been carried out on the subject, and was shocked to discover a whole body of knowledge exists on it - aptly called normative determinism. Ochuko blogged about his name and its meaning, as did justdoyin’s post where a Noel Gist was talking about rumours! ...