Ginger's Blog

Letter to a Young Wife, From An Old - Chuma Nwokolo

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:40:00 +0000

Thou art a young wife, so I shall open all my mouth. On that first day that his adultery comes to light, the whole world is right behind you, so let the force of your fury be known. Be natural, let it all hang out. The plates, the framed photographs of your wedding, his suits even, these are the legitimate, the expected casualties of his embarrassing sex.
Noise the scandal to whom you may, what more do you have to hide? You heard it on the bus, did you not, between Onipanu and Maryland? The yellow girl with the housegirl hairstyle boasting of how much she got off the paddy with the potbelly who drives the green Cressida at Cement Busstop? Tell your friends, the groundnut hawker, his own friends even. Let the world feel the pain of his betrayal of you. Pain shared = pain halved, and all that.
On the second day you are still feeling bad, as is to be expected. It is a four-year-old marriage, is it not? One daughter, two London holidays, and a house already growing in the village? Fine, rage some more. Take the excuse of every word he says to dump on him. He deserves it, does he not? A man wants to stray and it is that ugly housegirl-type that his hands can reach.
You could smell her from halfway down the bus, couldn’t you? And she fought like a wildcat too, practically stripped you naked during the fight at the Maryland bus park, didn’t she? Well let him have it then. Let your eyes flash and glint through all his apologies, break his I’msosorry champagne in front of him. Every fifteen minutes or so, hiss ominously. And if he so much as sets an apologetically seductive hand on you… well I don’t have to tell you what to do about that.
But this is the third day and you are not yet five years at this, are you? Fine, let me open all my mouth. You will notice from the party we threw last month that this is my fiftieth-year-anniversary – and my husband still holds my hand during our evening strolls.
On the third day, my young, inexperienced sister, the world is not Click here to continue reading

Do we agree with Grandma?

Mr.Chuma Nwokolo is a writer and advocate. His writings can be found here

Wills, Widow Inheritance and Remarriage - A Male POV

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:13:00 +0000

Here is one man’s - Hon Sola Adeyeye - efforts to protect and provide for his wife in the case of death. May wise and loving husbands/bachelors take note and do likewise.

"I pray to die in my 70s. I will like to die after age 76 but before my 78th birthday. If I do not, I won't kill myself o! I suspect my wife will live to her 90s. Her paternal and maternal family trees are blessed with longevity.

“So, I have decided to make my provisions for her when I am gone. If she chooses to marry again, it is her right to do so. If she dies before me, and I live long enough and meet another woman I like, I would remarry. Men do this typically. Why should that be a big deal for a woman to do the same? The agreement between us stipulated "until death do us part!".

I have always carried lots of life insurance to ensure that my family does not suffer upon my death. When my children were young, they were all allocated equal proportion of inheritance from my insurance. Now my children are adults and doing very well on their own. My children started work earning more than I earned at the end of a distinguished career. They can and should take care of themselves. My priority now is the care of my wife in her old age.

For years, my father put enormous pressure on me to build a house in my home-town. He got my friends and maternal relatives to constantly nag me about building a house. When he succeeded in getting Chief Bola Ige to join their chorus, I succumbed. Even so, I insisted that I would build the house on one condition! I insisted that all my father's children, six other relatives of my dad, six relatives of my mum, six relatives of my wife, and six friends of mine must be present at a ceremony of laying the foundation of the house. My dad agreed most enthusiastically.

I traveled home in August 1993 for the said ceremony. My relatives were decked in fine clothes that left me wondering what the fuss was about while I wore my Tai Solarin fisherman hat along with my customary t-shirt and shorts. Just as the opening prayer was to be offered, I raised my hand and interjected with a question.

I asked everyone present if they knew what we had all come to do. An aunt answered that we had come to lay the foundation for my house. I corrected her that, the house to be built was not my house but my wife's! Even at that, I argued that since I was not a brick layer or mason, it would have been very foolish and wasteful for me to come all the way from America to lay the foundation of any house.

A sibling opined that we had to come to pray. I countermanded that God did not need me to come to Ora that day just to pray. He would have answered my prayer no matter where I was on the planet. I then went on to tell them that I had summoned all of them so they could all be my witness as to the ownership of the house whose foundation was about to be laid!

“I stated that the house belonged to my wife whether I am alive or dead. I asserted that if my wife should die before me, the ownership would transfer to me. If I should die before she does, the full ownership UNCONDITIONALLY remains with her. I went further to say that if my wife chooses to marry another man after my death, she still retains full ownership of the house!”

I then turned to everyone present and asked if there was any objection to what I had said so that I might terminate the project there and then! Nobody objected. Everything was recorded on audio and video tape. The house was built. It belongs to my wife.

My current will has the house transferring to be my foundation upon the death of my wife and myself. The foundation is to maintain and use the house for freely housing NYSC corps posted to Ora-Igbomina.

“Each of us has to decide how to handle whatever is stipulated by the laws of his/her religion.”

We need to know that most of the laws we inherited in 1960 under the British common law still hold in Nigeria. Indeed, until revised or rescinded either by a legislature or military decree/edict, every such law still holds.

During my tenure in the House of Reps, Hon. Abike Dabiri and I sponsored a bill to protect the rights of widows but the bill died in committee because, the lawyers (among our colleagues) pointed out that the Nigerian statutes adequately protect the nuclear family, especially the widow. But no society lives by law alone!

Cultural norms and traditional conventions are as powerful as the letters of the legal code; sometimes, they are more powerful.

“It is up to every man to assess his own situation and to make every effort, long before he dies, to protect his wife.”

Unfortunately, Africans are very good at enduring bad marriages! Some men do not even want their wife to be their inheritor! If a marriage is so bad that a man does not want his wife to inherit whatever he has, he should be man enough to divorce the woman. Absent that, once the man dies, the widow is adequately protected by the law.

But such widows do not live in cultural vacuums. Often they are too scared by superstitious fears and taboos to assert their own rights under the law. By the time their fellow congregants from church add the oft-touted but misunderstood lingo about "principalities and powers", most women often succumb to the peace of the dispossessed rather than risk so-called spiritual attack!

Where the marriage is good, it is really very easy for any man to protect his wife and children. Every man should draw a will that goes into force on his wedding day! I do preach at weddings and I constantly hammer on couples having life insurance and wills. Those who were at my wedding reception were stunned by my public announcement of my will on my wedding day in 1977!

I took the best possible care of my father. From 1986 till his death in 2007, I ensured that my father was the highest paid man residing in my small hometown of Ora-Igbomina, Osun State. I simply paid him twice the salary of the High School Principal who was/is the highest paid public servant residing in the community. Thereafter, I never once bought him anything; he lived on the monthly stipend I paid him. No wife can prevent me from taking good care of my parents or siblings to the best of my ability. “Even so, my parents and siblings all know that my first responsibilities are to my own wife and children. I used every occasion to remind members of my extended family that upon my death, everything I have passes on to my wife and charities. My wife has numerous audio and video recordings of such private and public declarations. I have taught my children from age six, not to expect anything from me when I die. My relatives and children all know that if they want anything from me, they should ask for it while I am alive.”

Yes, I agree that my own case is perhaps one extreme of protecting one's wife. I have friends who died and their wife/children were dispossessed by the extended family. It won't happen to my wife!

From Ginger: Amen!!

2012's Man of the Year - Christian Grey

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:00:00 +0000

You don’t agree?

60million people bought the book. And I’m sure more can remember what his second initial stands for (C.T. Grey) but not Obama’s (hint: it stats with H).

I read, sneered and commented with derision on forums discussing the book. My learned self could not be tempted to read such unliterary ero-offensive offerings.

Well, I swallow my words. I came across an epub version of the trilogy and thought, why not confirm for yourself why this book was such a hit.

So I read it and I understand.

First off. I think most people have it wrong. It wasn’t the sex. I personally didn’t find it erotic …….. and I really tried to. Lol.

I think what EL James’ book captured perfectly was the fairytale unrealistic yearning in women to be ‘The special one whose love changes a man’.

I call it unrealistic cause 9 times out of 10, people will only change cause of their own conviction that it is advantageous to them. Christian Grey being a handsome, ‘very generous’ rich man was an added plus.

So what did I think of Fifty Shades of Grey? I loved it.

About criticism of EL James writing style: I think her writing style was satisfactory. The book wasn’t aiming for literary genius. It was a contemporary romance novel. I personally think that Ana’s voice was perfect for the subject matter. The author got it down to a pat – Ana’s innocence, humor, confusion, shone through. The reader could easily be Ana – in love and lust with a beautiful man, overawed by his wealth and power and by the strangeness of his sexual needs (BDSM isn't most people's cup of tea).

I loved the humor and laughed out loud plenty at, ‘the antics of Ana’s inner goddess, the witty email exchanges between her and Mr Grey that showed readers a side of him that made us hope like Ana that he could become Mr. Romance and Flowers, the witty references to popular media (You and Mrs. Jones, CEO with friends in the right places, Music - Britney Spears Toxic).

I think my most touching scene was the 1^st time he acts out the Dominant and wallops her buttocks. 18 fricking times! All because she rolled her eyes at him.

I could appreciate why she didn’t break down and cry while he was there. Why she forgot to say the safe word in her bid to please him. Why she broke down after he left. And that niggling feeling of debasement.

I roll my eyes a lot at DBF. And sometimes when he says "that’s rude", I stick my tongue out for good measure. I can’t imagine him turning around to smack me for that. I who was not flogged by my parents, or worse – expect me to be turned on. Mba nu!

I do appreciate that there are a number of people out there who get turned on by some sort of pain consensually. Shrug. EL Jones tried her best to make us appreciate or understand the rules they live by. Safe words are real and essential to prevent excesses and to that extent the submissive has control. And while some feminists argue that Ana was abused, I disagree. It was her free will at all times.

Book 1 was delicious but ended inconclusively so I hurried on to Book 2.

By Chapter 5, I was done and getting bored by 50 shades Darker. The constant sex which wasn’t exactly making me purr was now decidedly turning me Off. Haba! Biologically and physically unless both of them were on a meal of Viagra it was not possible to be at it all the time.

By Chapter 7, I was flipping pages and constantly rolling my eyes (Sorry Mr. Grey) and my 50 shades of patience was running out at the constant angst and bickering.

So I moved on to Book 3. Sigh.

Confession: I flipped through the last 90 pages of the 551 page book just to confirm that they lived blipingly happy ever after.

Mission accomplished.

I heard there are plans for a movie (my honest opinion – its gonna flop!!!) I thought of actors who could embody Grey’s blonde sultriness. Matt Bomer is my favourite.

Please, please if Kirsten Stewart is picked to play Anastasia I will. I will. I will…..flog somebody.

P.S.

When I told DBF I was reading 50 shades, he said, "Oh, I have something in common with Christian Grey".

Me (happily): “What”? ($100, 000 per day income on my mind)

DBF: “We have same waist size”.

*Roll eyes*

Thankfully I'm not getting spanked for that.

Farewell Newcastle, Hello Milton Keynes!

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:16:00 +0000

Hello Blogville,

How has the month of May been for ye?

I moved house 10days ago. More like a relocation. Newcastle to Milton Keynes. 290miles. 5hrs of road travel.

Ostensibly in a lateral move in my organisation but also to be nearer to DBF in London. (Yes, I am now one of those girls who cross the ocean for their man….errr make it Cross-counties :).

I must admit that I balked at the last minute about leaving Newcastle. My initial reaction on my first visit to MK 3wks ago was “I don’t like this place” *insert wailing face*.

MK was all about brand new looking estates and houses and roundabouts (what’s with the roundabouts? There is like one every 100m). I suddenly had a deep nostalgia for Newcastle’s over-bridges, century old buildings randomly mixed with a smattering of spanking apartment buildings. For the little individual corner shops, for Gregg’s.

Newcastle

MK Central also known as the 'Shopping district' had all the big brands chain stores….Waitrose, Next, Debenhams, Fenwick, John Lewis etc. Where were my Tesco and Primark?!! I remembered Newcastle’s city centre, the smaller independent shops, the fruit stalls on the street, Gregg shops. I was not happy.

MK also has lots of forestland which made the drive scenic but also lonely somewhat.

But on the second visit which was also my moving day…something changed.

Maybe it was knowing that the paperwork was done and there was no turning back now with HR.

Maybe it was seeing the joy on DBF’s face as He happily carried my luggage up the stairs, asking me if I was ok at 15mins intervals.

Maybe it was seeing my 8 - wardrobe bedroom in this lovely houseshare in a really pretty upscale looking neighbourhood.

Maybe it was our yummy congratulatory lunch at Jamie Oliver’s Italian Restaurant.

Maybe it was finding out that work was an 18minutes walk from home which equals 'fitness' and 'saving' on transport (Newcastle’s taxi service Bluelines had been major shareholders in my salary this last 5months).

Maybe it was discovering return tickets to London cost £19.70 or even as little as £14.50 (32-54mins) compared to £78-122 from Newcastle (180mins – 240mins).

Maybe it was seeing the multicultural face of Milton Keynes Workplace. After being the only black face at work or on a 3mile stretch of road, it was strange to come to work and see lots of skin colors/accents like mine.

Maybe it was me accepting that to get what I want, I have to be ready to make some sacrifices.

Maybe it was the peace I had with God which assured me that He was behind the scenes.

Change is good :)

I am not a Snoop Dogg Fan But......

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:27:00 +0000

I'm not a fan of Snoopy Doggy Dog sorry Snoop Lion. Wait, let me rephrase that....... I was his fan in the 90s when he first came out with 'Snoopy Doooggy Dog, tatatara' 'Gin and juice' Rap was new, his rap was smooth and I was a late teenager who had no other cares than boys and books.
But as his videos got more lewd, and his drug/weapon arrests became a monthly affair, I quickly dissociated myself from him and for a long time I told anyone who had ears to hear, that I was waiting for him to 'Come out on his HIV status'.

Last week, DBF showed me the video below and my walls came crumbling down. Call me a mushy nanny goat :)

Shante Taylor is Snoop's high school sweetheart. They got married in 97. Nearly divorced in 2004 and renewed their vows again in 2008. They are blessed with 3 kids.

About the near-divorce Snoop says:
"I was going to split up with my wife. My wife wasn't going to split up with me. You know, I was caught up. I was caught up with Hollywood, all the girls and the nightlife ...
I thought I was the man, and I was willing to give up what I had at home for that until I realized that what I had at home was irreplaceable. So I gave that up to go back home."
Source: Tim Nudd. "Snoop Dogg: My Home Life is 'Irreplaceable.'" People.com. 12/22/2007.

Sigh.
Snoop is not be my ideal, I dont think I can cope with his brand of madness, but Shante's loyalty makes me believe there is indeed somebody for everybody.

Pregnancy, An Excuse For Cheating?

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:15:00 +0000

My girlfriend said “Nigerian women spend so much of their time teaching women what to do and not to do but no one ever teaches the men anything.”

I agree.

Most men don’t know jack about pregnancy. About their role in pregnancy. After pregnancy. The physiology of pregnancy. The physical drain it is on women. And most women rather than educate their husband, they think there is an award in heaven for being the most long suffering pregnant woman.

That is why we have wives birth and their husbands don’t ever help them carry the baby. Bathe the baby. Change its diapers.

It is women’s work after all.

Most men don’t know their wife’s expected due date. They don’t make plans around it. Make sure they are around. Or have a back-up plan to see she gets to hospital safely.

They don’t understand/appreciate the massive body changes the woman is going through to accommodate another growing being. How much support she needs personally and with household chores etc.

The part I hate the most is the fatigue. Believe it or not the nausea can be managed with crackers, preggie pops and constant nibbling but I don’t think there is a cure for taking a nap while taking a shower. I mean, standing for 10 minutes tuckers me out. And Turtle tried to take a picture of me while I was discreetly trying to get on a WalMart scooter to do my shopping. I constantly feel like I just completed a marathon. My OB’s explanation was easy. Apparently the one’s blood volume doubles in the first trimester, so that means your heart is working twice as hard to circulate all that blood while remaining the same size.

That’s Lucidlilith blogging about her pregnancy. Imagine going through that and your husband still expects fresh okro soup everyday??

Many men are unprepared for the physical change a woman undergoes during pregnancy. The puffy face/eyes, spitting, nausea, vomiting, bulging tummy, paw-paw like breasts. You think you know cause you have seen other pregnant women – colleagues, sisters, your mother.

Wait till it is your size 10 wife now looking like a shapeless whale then you will feel different.

The key methinks is preparation.

Women, as you read up about pregnancy, share the knowledge you discover with your husband. Let him expect those changes with you. Share the baby kicking with him. And men, try to research by yourself too. It doesn’t hurt. You made the baby together. Be part of it. Don’t just be a Baby Dada.

On the other hand..Ladies. Sigh

My girlfriend told me about a lady from church who revealed during a baby shower for another lady that her husband only found out she was pregnant when she started refusing him sex.

Jaw drops

First, you are pregnant and you didn’t tell your partner in deed.

Second you were refusing him sex cause you were pregnant? Hold your horses people....there is a difference between refusing sex cause you are not up to it but in this case…she confessed she did not know it was okay to have sex when you are pregnant. Note this lady has had 3 kids.

Church women will not kill me!!

Back to men…

Your wife’s pregnancy/tired/lack of interest in sex is no excuse for cheating.

I think that is the worst betrayal for any African woman. A woman who has been largely trained to believe that her value lies in being a good wife and mother. Then you call her bluff at the time of her greatest validation. The time you the man should be worshipping at her feet (okay, that was tongue in cheek but you get what I mean)..

Excuses vary from “She‘s no longer interested in sex” (possible husband of above church woman)

To “I don’t find her sexy/attractive with her protruding stomach in the way” (I encountered that comment recently on Mena’s blog and I can’t explain how sad that made me)

To “her vagina is not as tight as before” (even erections soften with age’. So???)

To those BS excuses I say, you either don’t love your wife enough, are not educated enough or don’t care enough or you are just a plain philanderer. There will always be an excuse for you.

If tight vagina was so important to you then you should opt for no child at all.

Moreover loss in elasticity of the vagina is not a given. It differs with genetics, age, number of children. But even at that. The vagina has muscles. Like all muscles it responds to exercises like Kegel exercises and use of vaginal cones. You don’t turn your back on your wife for something she has no control over. This is just vagina o!! What if she has a serious disease?

Let’s reverse the circumstances..if you had erectile dysfunction which happens to 52% of men at some point between 40-70yrs, pray, can she go find a man to satisfy her need asides you?

Did I hear a no? Glad you think so.

Women talk to your brothers, your male cousins, your friends, your husbands. Pregnancy is not for the women’s club only. Save a future marriage. Amen.

The Movie Shame and Sex Addiction

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:28:00 +0000

Have you noticed like I have that the cop out for male Hollywood celebrities caught in extra-marital affairs e.g. Tiger Woods, Jesse James (Sandra Bullocks ex-hubby), David Duchovny, Michael Douglas, Katy Perry’s Russell Brand, Halle Berry’s Eric Benet is ‘I am a sex addict’ followed by a stint in a sex rehab clinic? Like really?!

I rationalized that Sex Addiction COULD exist but I just couldn’t understand its MO. Is it someone who liked sex too much/chased after women too much or what?

Well, the movie Shame answered the question.

Shame is rated 18 so be aware that you are going to be seeing naked human bodies. Naked bodies having sex, Full male frontal (Yay***!!! Fassbender’s ding dong was on FULL view within the first 2 minutes of the movie as he walked around his apartment scratching his balls. Ewww).

(***Female frontal nudity is treated as par for course in the Movie Industry while men’s naked bodies are treated as 'limited edition exhibitions'. I am yet to understand why.
Maybe when female viewers see it, they combust or become mad?!

I digress :D

Plot – Brandon (Fassbender) is a man in his 30s, he has a good job with a techie firm, lives in a cool Manhattan apartment and sometimes goes out for drinks with his sleazy boss. He should have been living la vida loca in NY but for his shameful secret. He abuses himself with sex. His life revolves around porn, masturbation and the women he sleeps with. He is always on the lookout for women who think of sex like he does – hedonistic with orgasm as goal…prostitutes are usually his best bet.

What he can’t handle are relationships. The give and take of relationships, its intimacy, the expectations, the commitment.

His sterile lifestyle is disrupted when his only sibling and sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes into town desperately in need of brotherly love and a place to stay. Fassbender has none to give barely tolerating her presence cause it cramped his style.

Their conversations hinted at some dark childhood secret but this wasn’t elaborated.

There was a poignant scene when Brandon in anger told her to leave his house. That she was a parasite etc etc. Her answer ‘I’m not going anywhere. You are my brother. You are supposed to look after me’ was poignant.

I think I’m going to try that on my elder siblings J.

When he leaves her one weekend to indulge in a rebellious rash of sexual orgies with random men and women he meets, there are disastrous repercussions but he also learns that maybe he could care for another.

Addiction is compulsive seeking and abuse of drug/alcohol/sex/food/cigarette despite the known harmful effects upon the person’s functioning in the context of family, health, school, work, and recreational activities. Think Whitney Houston. Think Denzel as the Pilot in Flight.

Shame certainly captured that. In sexual addiction, orgasm is the ultimate goal (like getting a high from cocaine). And just like with drug taking, where the addict may need to take incremental amounts of the drug to get his particular high, in sex addiction, our guy needed to have more risque sex to get pleasure.

But in a particular shot which focused on his face at this ‘supposed-to-be-orgasmic-moment’, what we also see is a portrait of regret, and shame.

In one scene when he went out on a dinner date with a co-worker who was interested in him, he was like a caged animal. The exchange of pleasantry and getting-to-know-all-about-you-conversation was so difficult for him.

She asked him the length of his longest relationship and He said ‘4 months’. She said ‘You didn’t even try’ and he replied ‘Actually, I tried so hard’.

And when they went back to his place at the end of a 3rd date (wink), her attempts to ‘make love’ - you know, all the looking into his eyes, tenderly touching the face - just killed our guy’s mojo. He couldn’t get it up. He wasn’t used to all that extra emotion nor was he used to treating sexual partners as people.

Just to prove that, after the disappointed date leaves, he calls his stand-by call girl and indulges in a prolonged sexual marathon.

I have watched ‘Choke’ an older movie/comedy which touched on the life of a sex addict too but compared to Shame, it humorised sex addiction.

Steve McQueen excellent direction and Fassbender’s acting made sex addiction real in the painful, pitiful way any addiction is.

The movie didn’t make the 2012 Oscar list despite critical acclaim. Its R-rating probably made that impossible.

Do I recommend the movie? To be honest I don’t know. It is certainly not a 'date movie'.

It was graphic yet not titillating. It wasn't a thriller yet I was riveted. I had chosen to watch it cause I was curious to know about sex addiction.

Did it answer/satisfy my curiosity? Unequivocally Yes.

p.s. Fassbender it seems, is the male Sharon Stone for the millennium. He was happily displaying his butt (no frontal though) in yet another movie ‘A Dangerous Method’.

Flight Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:49:00 +0000

Like wine, Denzel Washington just gets more handsome with age.

Sigh..

Drool...

I thought Flight was going to be an “Unstoppable” action movie with plot and subplots and flying humans. Boy! was I mistaken.

Flight was a drama about the complex make up of a character, about accountability and addiction. Denzel embodied his role as an addict trying to get his life back. I will tell you for free, Addiction is painful to watch.

Plot

A Pilot heroically landed an otherwise doomed plane managing to save 96 out of the 102 souls on board. In the following days as the media lauded his bravery, post flight investigations unearthed evidence that would challenge that.

First off, I never took much count of the use of ‘souls’ instead of ‘passenger’ in Flight Manifests. This movie finally made me understand. When a passenger is lost, it is not just a man or woman, but a body and ultimately a Soul.

Wow

So, I knew from trailers that the plane was going to crash, but DW’s commanding presence kept me glued to the screen.

As I listened to the urgent communication between the pilot and the towers when things went awry mid-flight, I couldn’t help but marvel and contrast at what could have happened in the last minutes with all the doomed real-life flights you hear about in the news.

I heard Denzel took flight lessons for this role and it showed. He knew his flight mechanics.

He was in control. I didn’t even need him saying it to believe. The way he got his team stepping out of their fear to assist. That is what a leader does. And a Pilot is the leader in a plane. Aye!!

On the other hand, maybe that was the effect of cocaine/drugs don’t you think? A false sense of clarity and bravado compared to his cocaine un-impaired co-pilot who was screaming. lol.

I loved the insight this movie gave me into alcoholism/addiction in general. The lies, self-denial, the temptations, the craving, the havoc it wrecks on personal and family life.

Though it was drama. It had its high moments. My second most thrilling moment, apart from the flight was the night before he was to appear in court. As he walked into the adjoining hotel room and spied the fridge, I broke out in sweat. At that point, the fridge represented the devil. The bad guy. Like in a horror movie scene, you knew that something bad was about to happen. The play of emotions on his face as he opened the fridge and looked at the rows of alcoholic refreshment was a cinematic moment: agitation, calm, amusement and ultimately pride, “I can handle it”, "I can walk away".

Pride cometh before a fall.

In the end, his most heroic act was being true to himself!!

There was something very important I took away from this movie. The prosecutors did not accuse him of alcoholism…rather for his ‘betrayal of public trust. That struck a chord.

Made me rethink some of my half formed opinions of what public trust is. Yes, Captain Whitaker had heroically saved lives, but being inebriated while on duty could have brought other consequences. Passengers flew that plane cause they trusted that the American Airline Associations? IITA? had appropriately licensed this pilot and plane to fly. Barring acts of God or other uncontrollable events, they were supposed to be safe. By drinking and flying he had violated their trust, endangered their lives potentially and made a mockery of his license. That was more important that any one heroic act.

I thought of licensed bus/taxi drivers who shack ogogoro and kparaga while ferrying souls on the road.

I thought of Public transport owners who know brake pads are worn, tyre threads worn but refuse to change them.

I thought of police who swear to honor and protect citizens.

I thought of banks who were licensed to protect my money but instead betray me by giving irresponsible loans.

I shuddered to think of how much our daily living relied on trusting others with our welfare and by extension, how important regulatory bodies really are.

Anyway I digress, I loved this movie and I am glad it garnered Denzel an Oscar nomination even if he didn’t win L. There will be other movies DW, don’t you worry!!

What did you think of the ending for those who have watched it? Too pat or just right?

I forget to mention, the first scene was classic. His lecherous ‘did I tap that ass?’ look as he watched flight attendant Katerina dress up, lol. Baaaad boy!!

Ever wondered about Sex addiction? Next post coming up

Hair, Skin Color and the Question of Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:01:00 +0000

So it seems best friend Chimmy stirred up the hornet’s nest in her interview for her new book Americanah. While natural hair fans rejoiced at having a renowned international author stand up for hair rights, weave/perm lovers on the other hand, took umbrage.

“….Hair is hair – yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable..”

But she was not lying??!!.

Chimmy usually sports natural hair/natural looking weaves so I wasn’t surprised to find she was a natural hair fan. And despite that I DO sing ‘I am not my hair’ to the more aggressive natural hair Nazis It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the ‘origin of this debate’ or why it is important.

Elnathan John (blogs here) wrote this update “Please if you have natural hair or don't use make up, it is fine. But there is no certificate or prize for it. Keep it to yourself. Don't judge the people who do. The fact that you go natural does not make you superior to the woman who likes her weaves or makeup. There is space for everyone. *sigh*

I nodded, sighed along with him and moved on to the comments. Pro-Hair choice fans were out in full force, but I also noted my gf’s comment:

“I totally understand where Ms Adichie is coming from. As a parent with a 7 year old daughter who kept asking me why her hair is not like "Lucy or Rachael" in her class and how she didn't like her hair, I felt the need to show her (my daughter) how to love herself for how she is. So I ditched the relaxer and the weaves and went natural.

I don't sit in judgement of anyone who wears Brazilian, Indian, Peruvian or any type of weave. But like Chimamanda I advocate for self love. Love yourself warts and all. It helps with self esteem and self worth”

In February, Okeoghene wrote this post asking “When is the right time to talk about race/skin with your child?”. This questions comes up for parents in the diaspora where your beautiful child finds herself the only black kid in a school of 200 white faces. We understand ethnicity. A 6yr old doesn’t. The onus is then on you to make sure he/she gets it right….’that you are beautiful the way you are’.

But if we think this affirmation is only needed in Oyiboland, Think again.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my skin. Read these posts here and here. It was till recently I realized that my hangup with my skin hasn’t surfaced much, here in the UK.

Why you might wonder?

Here I am African. Nigerian. My skin is expected to be black, period. In fact 'yallow skinned’ Nigerians probably confuse Oyibos more, than a 'black skinned”. You can see the wheels turn 'Is she/he one of us? them?

It is a different story in Nigeria.

Growing up I was called ‘blackie’ and 'atinga' (thin) by siblings. Once in awhile they would even ask my mom ‘where she got me from’ cause I was so dark and skinny. Yes they were jokes, but as a child I must have internalized it somewhere that my color and slimness wasn’t alright.

Then I became grown up. and it wasn’t just my family anymore. It was Delta soap adverts with their fair beauties (remember them?), it was the lepa shandi songs, the ‘Dudu’ teasings, the cosmetic sellers and well meaning ‘Aunties’ who tell you to try ‘this cream and that cream’ to help bring out your colour a.k.a tone the skin.

It was meeting your dark skinned primary school mate on the street in 2010 and almost passing her by cause her fair hue wasn’t what you used to know.

It was the constant bombardment of creams and soaps which promise to lighten/Fade your skin in 21days.

It was realizing that being hip and chic and beautiful in Nigeria meant you had to work on your skin. Not just having it spotless…but latte colored or cream NOT dark chocolate.

So yes, it’s been a long time coming, but I have finally accepted that I am black and beautiful.

I have accepted that I will always be a size 8 (at least in the foreseeable future) not the acceptable 'Oriaku'-size 12

I have accepted that my hair might never grow beyond 6 inches. Sadly, I can’t remember what I looked like with natural hair cause my elder sister helpfully started perming my ‘unmanageable hair’ when I was 13. I still retouch my hair but I know I am learning daily to love my hair and appreciate its kinks. Be it from proudly weaving my own hair without braids, to giving it a twist out in its semi-permed state. I don’t even fix sleek hair weaves as much as I used to anymore. To be honest seeing Caucasians with the real thing makes me feel like a fraud. I’ll rather proudly use what’s mine.

Interesting that it took living abroad to make me appreciate what makes me unique. My hair. My skin. My accent. My traditional name. My strong white teeth. My cuisine.

So in a roundabout way what am I saying? Yes, we are not defined by our hair/the clothes we wear/the color of our skin/our physical appearance, RATHER by character, values, abilities, dreams and ambitions.

BUT, we need to look deeper at some of those defining values. I think of myself a decade ago declaring “I can only marry a fair man cause I don’t want my kids to be as dark as I am’. Sounds pretty self-hating doesn't it? How about the role society has played in making me arrive at that conclusion, by valuing ‘fair’ over ‘dark’, and for hair, ‘artificial’ above ‘natural?'

Seeing more and more females embracing and flaunting their God-given hair, reminds me that my natural hair is not just something you hide under wigs or scarves till you can get an appointment at the saloon. Or something widows are subjected to wear during mourning.

It is a statement of style and pride.

That is what I think Chimamanda meant by choice, “I want natural black hair to be as equal an option as anything else”.

At the risk of attracting a rain of Brazillian wigs, 1inch eyelashes and hydroquinone cream jars and Chinese hair, this post is in appreciation of natural/short/dreadlocked hair, coffee/chocolate/browned skinned sisters.

Thank You for giving our children, models who look like them and for reminding us of our roots (no pun intended).

How are you my People? Winter has finally packed its bag. Bye and Thank you!!!!

This is Oyiboland - The Good, Bad, The Ridiculous

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:29:00 +0000

Source - fancyhouseroad.com

The English Potato

Wonder what the main constituent of your diet will be if you live in Britain? Potato it is. Also called spuds, batata, It can be eaten fried, mashed, baked, waffled, crisped, boiled or roasted. Let me help you quantify its consumption.. Annual potato consumption per Briton is 102kg compared to 3.2kg in Nigeria. What is Nigeria’s potato equivalent? Rice/Yam or Cassava?

Cost of Exotic Food

I bought this half tuber of yam for £1.85 (N444) on Monday. As if to rub my nose in it, later in the evening, I saw this picture. According to Ben Ezeamalu (picture source) , these 4 tubers sold for N400 somewhere in Niger State. I miss Naija!

The Annual Vacation

While it took prayer and fasting to get my 21 day annual leave approved at my workplace in Nigeria, here in the UK it is a fundamental human right. Holidays are approved, planned and paid for 6 months ahead of time. And it is not for the rich only. It is your taxi driver going to Disneyland in Paris with kids, the waitress at Burger King looking forward to a few weeks in Sunny Spain with friends, etc.

I saw a Bank advert in the Metro – "If only people spent as much time planning their mortgage, as they do planning their annual holiday" must be a quote from one exasperated bank officer.

Summer Time Activities

At work I regularly deal with personal data and I’ve noticed that birthdates in April are in the majority. Out of curiousity I did a back-trace to conception month – July. Wink wink. Made in Summer babies.

Poverty in Britain

There are 3.6 million children living in poverty in the UK today. That’s 27% of children, or more than one in four. But growing up in poverty in Britain ranges from being cold, going to school with soggy chips and cold fish fingers in their lunch boxes, not being able to join in activities with friends and/or not being able take their children on holiday for one week a year. Go figure!

Governmentalised Reproduction

There’s this indirect nudge and approval of 4-member families (2 parents and 2 kids). It is seen in tax rebates, holiday discounts, cinema tickets, etc. If you are planning on a third child, be warned, s/he is gonna cost you!!

Another area is school registration. In England and Wales, 1 September is the cut-off date for school entry therefore babies born in late August (25-31) tend to be the smallest/youngest in class (studies indicate some disadvantage) while September babies mean oldest in class and one more year of child care for parents.

Smh…. why don’t they just use the good old height method?
Parents kindly durex it in November. Thank you from an August Kid

*Governmentalisation: “wherein our behaviours are being regimented and controlled by institutions”.

Bad Parenting can put you in jail

I read in the papers recently that over 10,000 parents in Britain have been convicted over their child truancy in school. First there are warnings, then fine. Then prison. Interesting law. I likey!!

The Favourite child

The best child in most homes is the house pet. It gets the best seats, the warmest spots, the choicest morsels as a matter of course. Cats and dogs, parrots and guinea pigs are excused behaviour which if seen in the children of the household might end in assault. They are deemed, by their owners, to be incapable of almost any misdemeanour. So when dog bites man, it is always man's fault, even if he is just a passer-by. Everyone in the vicinity will sympathize with the owner's disclaimer, "Twinky wouldn't hurt a fly!".

Domestic Abuse vs Animal Abuse

I was asked the following questions in a quiz during training. What percentage of Brits would report their neighbor if they witnessed them kicking an animal? 25% 50% 75%

What percentage would report their neighbor if they witnessed them kicking their spouse/partner? 25% 50% 75%

A price for the first person with the right answer.

Young Men and Domestic Violence

British men are not much different from their Nigerian counterparts in their understanding of domestic violence. 1 in 5 young British male think that violence against women is acceptable.

Polite Britain

Excuse me, Thank you, Sorry and a smile (grimace) are part and parcel of every conversation. In a restaurant, you will say thank you when you get the menu, thank you when you place the order, thank you when get your dishes, thank you when the waiter takes away the plates and even thank you when you pay! You'll have to say "excuse me" if you want to pass someone and "I'm sorry" if you accidentally touch someone. British people even say sorry if you stand on their toes!

Rude Britain

On the con’s side the ubiquitous use of f**k off cannot be overlooked.

Maybe all that repressed polite behavior has led to a rebellious youthful Britain that uses that ‘f’ word like its becoming extinct.

The British Weather

The British Weather is a sure conversation starter anytime!!!! "Nice weather innit?" "I hear its snowing throughout next week".

You don't blame them though. Their weather functions like it was under the whims of Harry Potter and cronies. Rain, snow, sunshine, hailstones all in one day.

By the way, "Drought" means that it didn't rain for a whole week in July!!

The British Weather and Transport Inefficiency

It never fails to amaze me how 2 inches of snow grinds the country to a halt. Schools close and the whole rail network shuts down. Half a million cars are stranded on the M25 and everyone clears the shops out of bread and milk. I can’t forget the 4 inches of snow that closed Heathrow for 4days in Dec 2010 (remember this post) meanwhile Norway’s Intl airport was up and running in Hrs after 12 inches of snow.

Transport Costs:

A return ticket from Newcastle to Amsterdam (within Europe) is as cheap as £48. A return train ticket from Newcastle to London (same country) costs £121. Somebody help me understand?!!

Your Right to Choose Death

Firemen and paramedics (doctors too) cannot render aid or treatment unless a person asks for or consents to it. The police can intervene and remove a person against their will if they constitute a threat to others in the vicinity (like a man in traffic, or on a train track etc) but other than that, they must wait until help is asked for. Eg....the suicidal man who walked into the sea in public glare and subsequently drowned was watched on by a rescue team.

Am I wrong? :)

Lastly on Male Rape - Arousal is not Consent

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:24:00 +0000

Hi Blog family,

Thank you for your comments on the post “Can Men Claim Rape?”. I apologise for its length and legalese which made it unreadable - don’t judge me for trying to educate you and I.

So with less legal jargon, let me reiterate, Men cannot claim RAPE in Nigeria.

And why is this important? Cause it affects the weight placed on sentences and court judgments. According to Nigerian laws, Rape can incur life imprisonment but a Sexual Assault or Sodomy charge? Less. Much less.

A real life situation is the case of former Army Major Bello Magaji (a polygamist with 2 wives and 7 children, and according to him, 3 girl friends also) who until recently was serving a 5yr sentence for sodomy against 4 Teenage boys he had deliberately intoxicated before the act.

5yrs!!!

Here is a link to the court proceedings in 2008 and you can see the waffling around the terminologies “sex/penetration/carnal knowledge”. The conclusion was that he had committed Sodomy - an act that was an aberration to nature. But Sodomy neither takes into consideration, the non-consensual nature of his act, nor the mental distress of the victims.

If we had clear and adequate legal definitions there would have been no need for waffling and he would have gotten more than 5 yrs.

As if that short sentence was not bad enough, this lovely virtue of public morality was one of those who received pardon from my dearest President a week ago. The guy has goodluck..what can I say!

Lily Johnson made a comment about men *sexually assaulted* by women. Many people have doubts that sex can happen without a man’s consent.
Truth is, even if there was an erection/arousal, it doesn’t mean he was willing. The movie Disclosure (starring Demi Moore and Michael Douglas) adapted from same named book by Michael Crichton is a classic on that theme.

Former girlfriend and present bosslady makes strong advances on her Ex-but now married -boyfriend and subordinate. Former passions are ignited. Kisses are exchanged, intimate touches, grinds even as Guy says ‘No, Stop, I am married”. She tries to unbuckle belt, he begs no. She still goes ahead.

Yes, guy is turned on but he also keeps saying "NO". Loudly. In fact he says it 22 times. What part of no didn’t she understand? As it was proven in court, "Arousal is not consent!"

**There is no legal recognition of a non consensual sexual act by a woman on a man as rape. A male victim can only claim sexual assault.

Why? Cause the woman has no penis :) Read former post here.

Now if she rammed an object up his anus..forgive the language..then he can claim rape in America or assault by penetration in other countries.

Side note: I am so happy to know that the penis has such liability. Men, if you don’t like it, kindly cut of your penis and get a vagina. We can dash you ovaries for free. Thank you.

Jokes aside, I loved this awesome excerpt on yesmeansyes blog. Share with your male folks.

I am not my body, and I am not my penis, and my penis does not make my decisions for me. I do not consent to cheat on my wife because a woman I see in my professional life also makes my penis hard; I am not my penis. I make the decisions and I am responsible for them. A boy does not become complicit in his molestation because an older abuser (female/male) can make his penis erect or cause orgasm. A man who sets a limit with a partner is entitled to set that limit, even if we don’t agree with his reasons, and he does not lose that right if he has a penis that wants different things from what he wants; Because...he is not his penis!

Anyway, I just wanted to touch on male rape cause men do matter but I won’t harp on it like I do for womenfolk. Men rule in Nigeria so if it is of concern to you, push for the change. We women have plenty on our plates.

Do I sound sexist? Yeah, sue me.

And Nigerians called Shenanigans on the NSCDC Commandant

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:51:00 +0000

So the NSCDC Lagos Commandant no less chose to make himself a laughing stock in Nigeria’s social media last week.

While the 'oga at the top' hashtag, youtube song, even Tshirts are causing so much mirth, one wonders…has he learnt his lesson or other politicians? Do they even understand what he did? Do we the audience?

He was interviewed on national TV not for his fine face, but to bring light and credibility to his organisation’s activities.

He failed. First - He lied. There is only one website for the NSCDC but he indicated there were more.

Second - He gave false information.

He should come back to the public, apologise and give the correct website details.

Irritatingly, but also expected, the respect issue has swaggered into the mix, ’It’s too much’, ‘how about if he was your father’, ‘Touch not the Oga’s annointed’ *wink*, even opinion pieces like this and this etc.

*Wails* Why are we so forgiving and understanding at the wrongest of times?

This is what Prof had to say in answer to a comment on “how unfair it is to mock him”

Coming on national television to disgrace your employers is probably more unfair. What is wrong with simply saying, "I don't know. I really should know but I don't and I am embarrassed about it. You know my generation is not into this tech stuff...", then throw in a charming smile, and go home a supposedly ignorant but honourable man?

Exactly!

Dear Commandant Obafaiye Shem, kindly memorise the above script and give a press briefing. That’s all.

Then again, I am happy he embarrassed his employers. A good staff is a reflection of the person who hired him. You hire a lackey to do the job of a leader .. this is the result - an obsequious employee who cannot respond to the simplest of answers without consulting his “Oga at the top”. Imagine if there was a request before him which needed an urgent/decisive response?

Meanwhile, a quick Google search for the NSCDC website shows this https://www.nscdc.gov.ng/index.php

I was quite impressed to find it was a functional website. Easily navigable. Loads fast. There’s even a ‘Report Crime form’ button which works!!! So people, if you want to report crime, just do it.

It was interesting to note that the NSCDC’s MISSION is

* Developing structures and training strategies that would contribute to the national security by using modern technology.

And their VISION:

* To put to work efficiency, humility and integrity in service delivery with a fresh zeal; bring credibility into concept of security.

Hmmm, some people need retraining oo.

This I assume, is the Oga at the Top

How are you folks? :)

So many things going on with me. -The Job Still loving it. Mr. Just Right - He said those three words for the 1st time yesterday. Miami - My American bloggers, who lives in Miami?!!

Update: Just finding out the Commandant has been suspended here. Wow! Damn! Kudos Nigerians!! Twitterers/Facebookers/Bloggers/Tshirt wearers/Song Mixers.!

Finally. Finally. I am feeling your power!!

Can Men Claim Rape?

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:37:00 +0000

While other LAWMAKERS are thinking of how to make lives safer for their citizens through amendment of bills, rewording outdated legal dictums and encompassing new social ills, African governments including my dear Nigeria will rather prefer to label ‘innocents as criminal’ while the guilty walk free.

About 86years ago, Rape was legally defined as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will,”

This wording meant that

Only vaginal penetration was termed rape

Anal/Oral penetration were not considered as rape then – rather assault by penetration.

Only men can rape – because penises are the only device for rape

Only females can claim rape

Did this make prosecution easy? Not necessarily because to convict a man of rape first of all, the prosecution had to convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that the woman was not consenting. Whether he was guilty or not depended on whether or not he thought she was consenting – that is, what was going on in his head - not what was happening to her body. This was the "Morgan" rule which says that a man is not guilty of rape if he believed she was consenting NO MATTER HOW UNREASONABLE THAT BELIEF.

In 1^st May 2004, this definition was however changed to incorporate the changing sexual/social landscape therefore a defendant A is guilty of rape if he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of B by his penis without the individual’s consent and/or continues to do so after B has withdrawn consent.

The bit about ‘if A continues to penetrate after B has withdrawn consent’ made me crow with joy. What does that mean Guys you need to have your brake fluids up to scratch. Even if you don enter and she has an attack of conscience, or her eyes clear of your sweet words or alcohol and she says stop. Stop oo

But even this was still not satisfactory enough for American Sexual violence advocates so in January 2012, the Obama administration further amended the definition to rape.

The new definition, “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex of another person, without the consent of the victim,” clearly encompasses a much wider range of actions, and more inclusivity for who can be both a perpetrator and a victim.

“These long overdue updates to the definition of rape will help ensure justice for those whose lives have been devastated by sexual violence and reflect the Department of Justice’s commitment to standing with rape victims,” said Attorney General Holder in a statement.

While Lynn Rosenthal, the White House adviser on violence against women says, “It’s a change of our understanding of rape and how seriously we take it as a country.”

I can see that!

So, by my understanding, any part covered by pants/gstring/thong/kpata/dross/napkin/pampers/boxers are legally off limits unless by consent. Imagine! this means that even Uncles who play touchy touchy with little girls even though no penile penetration occurs can now be accused of rape.

This also means that situations in which there is no physical force but the victim is unable to give consent will also fall under the definition – for instance, anyone under the influence of drugs or alcohol or having disabilities that prevent them from understanding what is going on and giving consent.

This new definition also mean that men/boys who have been sodomised or forced to give oral sex against their will can claim Rape. Yes, the greatest number of rapes still happen to women, agreed but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a rising number of male victims of rape who have remained silence cause of societal/gendered stigma (how can a man claim rape? Men love sex etc) and cause the law treated them as victims of assault at the worst leading to the perpetrator getting off on a lighter sentence and less disgrace.

You see why I love America?

Granted the revision to the definition of rape is mainly for the purposes of deciding what kinds of incidents will be included in the “rape” category of the FBI’s compilation of national crime statistics. It does not change the underlying criminal codes governing the prosecution of sexual assaults.

But it is still a RIGHT STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Now let’s come back home to Nigeria

The laws against attempted rape and real rape as enshrined in Criminal Code Act: Section 357.
Any person who has unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman or girl, without her consent, or with her consent, if the consent is obtained by force or by means of threats or intimidation of any kind, or by fear of harm, or by means of false and fraudulent representation as to the nature of the act, or, in the case of a married woman, by personating her husband, is guilty of an offence which is called rape.
Section 358. Any person who commits the offence of rape is liable to imprisonment for life, with or without caning.
Section 359. Any person who attempts to commit the offence of rape is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for 14 years , with or without caning.
Section 360. Any person who unlawfully and indecently assaults a woman or girl is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for two years.

*That caning matter get as e be shaa.

If I want to think for only women. Then I would say these laws are okay. But we know it is not. Men are being raped. And they are not necessarily homosexuals. If we go back to lesson 101 about rape, it’s not about sex. It’s not about ‘conji’. It’s about power. It’s about debasing another human being. Men can be debased as much as women. And it is happening in our country. But what with anti-homosexual bills being passed, your guess is as good as mine if a male victim can report rape without first being jailed for 14yrs for being gay.

I lie?

Lastly, from this eye opening rape reportage in Nigeria (kudos to the journalists for a job well done), it seems three of the greatest challenges we have in rape reporting is

The judges requesting corroborating evidence (from eye witness account), to torn kpata, blood, semen. How can that be resolved? We know how primitive our forensics are.
This issue about protecting the identity of the victim. Can’t it be enforced by law, “that any media/social media/blogging outlet that reveals a victim’s name shall be sued..something along those lines”?
What is this about Judges enjoying great latitude to determine punishment for conviction leading to some rapists being sentenced to three months imprisonment? Rape pass rape abi? Even if so the lower limit should be higher than 3months haba!

I know this topic isn’t savoury but it is the reality of many of our sisters and brothers. I welcome comments. Opinions. Comparisons. Thanks.

p.s. Oh, and the answer to my post title, can men claim rape? Not if you live in Nigeria :(

Dame Patience is Resurrected!

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:38:00 +0000

To say I haven’t missed this woman is not an exaggeration. I didn’t wish her sickness but I was happy to have her out of the public arena for a while. Sigh

It seems that period is over. She is back. Bigger and badder!

It started with rumours/reports of midnight flight/s in an air ambulance to Germany, of uterine fibroids, exarcebated by Parkinson’s disease. Others said uterine cancer. Some tummy-tuck.

What did The Presidential Ogene Reuben Abati say 'Liar, Liar! Detractors. Haters stop lying.

What did the First Lady say :

“I don’t even know that hospital they are talking about…”. “I do not have any terminal illness or cosmetic surgery.”

Trying to understand why they are all gazing at this picture.

"My Husband loves me just the way I am" (I guess that's in answer to the tummy tuck rumours).

All literally true granted...her illness might not necessarily be a cosmetic one or terminal. My grouse then was...what was it? What is soo wrong in telling your citizens your ailment? Especially one which has been so controversial? Especially when it is costing the nation money flying you out in air ambulances etc.

What is this unmentionable disease that you cant bear for your millions of fans and well wishers to know about?

Now here we are 5 months after, throwing a lavish party on your 'Soonest Recover' (as our dear Shina Peters wished a colleague some decades back).

I read the SR article about three times to glean the name of this medical condition which according to our dearest First Lady Patience Jonathan involved her undergoing 9 successive Surgeries In One Month!

“I actually died,” Premium Times quoted her as testifying. “I passed out for more than a week. My intestine and tummy were opened.”
“It was God himself in His infinite mercy that said I will return to Nigeria. God woke me up after seven days.”

Alleluia!!She is risen!!

According to SR, this 'Resurrection party' cost Aso Rock coffers some N500M to host 5000 guests. (I'll take that with a pinch of salt and maggi) but then again, we know our Presidency doesnt joke with his food and drink. They must have eaten caviar and gold plated fufu balls.

(Now if only my dear 9ja Foodie had gotten the catering contract...I would have shut my mouth up small). Pray, I ask, was this party foreseen and included in that 1billion dollar food budget or is it an additional expense? You know, matters arising?

In addition, donations from friend and lovers of the presidency amounting to N500M will be presented to the 1^st Lady as 'Easter Gift'.

Words fail me.

Why doesnt it surprise me that the presidential gift organising committee is chaired by a Mr. John Kennedy Okpara (why do we always find my Igbo men in such 'funny' positions??)

Of the future, she said, “I will be doing things that will touch the lives of the less privileged. God gave me a second chance because I reached there. He knew I had not completed the assignments He gave me that was why I was sent back.”

Oh how my religiously zealous compatriots will lap this up. With a N500M gift awaiting me, I might ask God to send me back to earth too.

I am glad she is well and recovered. I'm glad we are celebrating not mourning.

I m just angry at the way the presidency keeps rubbing our faces in the sh#t of their unbridled lavishness. Always saying untruths and doing things in a way that leaves more questions than answers at least for enquiring normal citizens.

And when I read comments like this one below..I want to give up. Atilola. I’m holding on to that your hope, but the rope wears thin.

"There's nothing wrong in the first lady having a thanksgiving. She believes her being alive today was because God spared her life and think it's wise to thank Him. So whats the big deal? The resources we're talking about here came from her backyard. Naijas should be grateful for having the SE/SS region whose resources has been spoon feeding them for over 52years. They shouldn't take kindness for stupidity. What's 500m naira compared to a life spared after many surgeries. How much is N500m compared to the 16B USD the ota baboon stole or the 12B USD IBB embezzled while in office or is it the USD4.6B that was never accounted for when Mullah Buhari was the Boss at PTDF. Haba! Naijas should be happy for the 1st lady and join her in thanking God. When you talk of naija being a family, you also talk of the SS being the breadwinner. GEJ and the 1st lady are from the 'breadwinners' region of naija and should be treated as such. Hate them and hate their oil & gas too!"

Sahara Reporters Source

Daily Post Source

I still need answers...What is the Nigerian First Lady recovering from? Why all the secrecy?

Pls Don't Judge Me - The Number Series Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:31:00 +0000

0, 3, 10, 20…. Naa, I really don’t want to know.

So have you seen that Youtube series The Number? I came across it a while bk. Then they were still on episode 2. I never went back to it till last night when I came across the link again.

It’s about this newly engaged couple Melissa and Jason, who delved into their past in the light of honesty and sharing only for the guy to find out that his fiancée has had lots of partners in the past (the number was never mentioned but I am guessing it was lots more than his, and we know what guys are like right?) White flag white flag….no male bashing intended. Just acknowledging your societal-accepted right to be dogs while the female folk keep it virginal.

At the end of watching the rest of the series - it takes about 72mins to watch the 12 episodes - I came to some interesting thoughts/conclusions:

What number makes a girl a whore/slut really? Some girls end up with “lots of partners” in that elusive search for The One. Maybe they can be blamed for not having enough control over their pants or sense. Maybe love makes them more gullible than others. Maybe they were less discerning.

Do we judge them on same whore scale as the girl who may have had the same number of partners but was actually having sex for the fun of it? Or on the other hand, how do you compare 7 partners in the life of a 30yr old to 5, in the lifetime of a 20yr old. Is it less acceptable in the later cause she is younger? What is the measuring stick?

Apart from the whorish connotations of having many sex partners, I came across an interesting debate on thenakedconvos site about this same topic, and I noticed guys claiming that the number question is important cause the wear and tear is manifest physically in the vagina. Really? Does a girl who has had say... 20 partners and on average slept with each 7 times due to opportunity/distance whatever, have same vaginal mileage as the girl who has been in 2 consecutive steady relationships and has had sex very regularly in these relationships? I thought it was only childbirth that had any real effect on the vaginal widening.

I’m not a gyno so I don’t know much about these things…I hope I am not sounding ignorant. I would sure like to know. Facts not heresay..

Moving on…the part that made my jaw hang agape was the penultimate episode..the STD test. Not the show but the comments left by viewers.

Summary: Melissa and fiancé went for an STD test as part of their journey in commitment and while Melissa was in the clear, Ray tested positive to an STD.

Now many commenters were convinced Melissa had had the std – Chlamydia by the way, gotten herself treated, then took Ray along for testing to shame him????

I have never seen such whacked/warped thinking in my life. All because they were resolute in slut shaming Melissa. Afterall She is the one who has had lots of partners. She is the one who should have an std.

Naa, people. It doesn’t work that way. Smart is smart. Careless is careless. Naïve is naïve. From what Melissa said in a later video, they had been using condoms all the while, so going for the Test was to put them in the clear of STDs so that condomless action can begin (oh the bliss of commitment). Very smart Melissa. Very smart. I would have thought Testing at the beginning of the relationship even if they were going to use condoms was best…but at least they did it.

Lack of smarts is why the naive ones get pregnant at their first sexual encounter (they are the ones who think coitus interruptus aka withdrawal method works), the naives who think cause a guy has promised to be committed to them they should not insist he gets tested and worse they do it without condoms (THINK, If Mr Committed tells you he doesn’t like condoms, ‘how many other girls has he slept with without using condoms’? That guy is a danger unto himself and others period). The naïve ones are the virgin-before-marriage wives who their husbands end up infecting them with HIV cause they think marriage makes them AIDS proof. I’m not saying don’t trust your man. But I think periodic std check even within marriage might be important cough cough.

For the married folk, it might be too late to begin such a habit, but for dating couples, it might be worthwhile discussing it early on. Pls don’t be that man/woman.

What was their second reason for believing Melissa was guilty? That She did not react like a mad fish seller when the doctor told Ray he had Chlamydia. But then again..why should she? It takes a sinner to truly love and be forgiving. I would like to think she was calm and supportive cause she was thinking, “ There go I but for His grace”.

I would also like to think that she was knowledgeable enough to know Chlamydia was the most ubiquitous std, can remain asymptomatic for years and is thankfully very easily curable. Why then should she be mad?

As for Ray’s sister who was waging war on Melissa cause she thought her brother deserved somebody with a less chequered sexual past….pls don’t be that judgmental Sister. Enough said.

Summary, would you really like to know how many partners your boyfriend/fiancé/spouse has had? I remember judging a boyfriend who told me he had slept with more than 10 partners…that was a long time ago. I thought he was a slut and that friendship did not pass go nor did he collect $200 lol.

In the present times, I really don’t want to know. If I meet you and we come to love each other and we are committed to each other that’s all that matters. Let the past stay past. But again, if you have a real slutty past (back to the question…what number makes a guy/girl a slut lol - maybe your conscience should guide you?) especially if some of your partners are people we know (shudder) maybe its best you hint at it so some helpful gossip won’t let me in on the secret and I end up looking a fool. What do you think?

Of course the best course is to keep it locked down until marriage isn’t it. To avoid these STD/trust issues and what not right?

To the true-blue Virgins in the house say Yay..lol

To the Born-again virgins Unu so kwa.

To the girls who are loving and smart about it chop knuckles.

To the technical virgins (everything but the vagina) - hmmmm stds can be passed orally o. Go and get throat swabbed o.

I had fun writing this jare. LMAO.

Please don’t judge me. let your comments be beautiful ….

Vasectomy 1: Baby Mama 0

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I love reading personal stories on Craigslist. Some are just SMH-funny.

I got a vasectomy.

I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking. Regardless, she was a good lay, easy on the eyes, and reasonably good company. (this guy deserves a slap for this patronizing description. chai!)

I did NOT tell her about my vasectomy and I always used a condom with her to protect against STDs. She assumed, obviously, that the condom was only used for birth control. Silly girl. (Gotta agree with him here!)

We date for a few months. I never made any move towards commitment but she brought it up ocasionally. For me, this was a casual but pleasant relationship. For her - as I was to find out - it was part of life-changing series of events that she was planning very carefully. (Mrs Someborri anyone??)

Four months into dating, I get the "I'm pregnant" talk. She's going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married "for the baby". She's positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she's gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity.

At this point, I'm just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse "oops" on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can't think beyond their own uteri.

So I wait a couple of days to "think about all this." I meet her again. I say I don't want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batshit insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it.

Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I'm laughing hysterically.

It was time to drop the hammer. While she was stewing I was busy. First I get a notarized copy from the urologist who performed the vasectomy. Next I get a notarized copy of the TWO test results indicating a "negative test result for sperm" to show I'm sterile and shooting blanks. Finally, I get a letter from a shark attorney stating he has seen the other documents and is prepared to litigate against this woman if she continues to communicate with me in such an unpleasant manner. Also, the letter states that we will insist on DNA testing to show that the baby is not mine. I'm ready.

I meet with this woman at her place. I bring flowers and a small bit of jewelry to show I am willing to reconcile and assume my responsibilities as a new father. I also have stuck in my pocket the documents I have prepared.

She's all giddy again. Her plan is going perfectly - or so she thinks. We talk about our future. We have some pretty good sex.(This guy is mean sha!!) Then, as I am about to walk out the door, I ask her the $64,000 question. "Are you sure this baby is mine?"

Well, she goes batsh#t insane again. She ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she's really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she's a slut. I'm just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities... blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I'm not really mad. I'm kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won't shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked.

I reach into my pocket slowly. I extract the three pieces of paper and unfold them slowly and deliberately.

I tell her simply, "You're a liar".

Her look doesn't change.

I continue. "I am sterile"

Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women's logic. "You're full of shit. You're trapped and you know it."

I hold up the letter and the test results. "Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from my lawyer stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine."

This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. "Bull, those are fakes."

I was ready for that. "No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It's a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine."

I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly. Very slowly. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It's a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing.

I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing.

The Moral of My Story - Get a vasectomy but keep it a secret.

LOL. I don't agree Mister.
Who has got any more morals to add?

Gay Club Friday and Other Gay matters

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Last Thursday, for the umpteenth time I was about to find an excuse not to go out on Friday night with my colleagues. Then I thought..why not. Yolo. Lol

So Friday, I put on a sequined top under my jacket, jeans, heels were in my bag cause I didn’t wanta break my legs walking on ice in them thank you very much. Finished my shift at 11.30pm and waited for those who finished at midnight.

A little background, the party crew includes L and G who were dating, R, C, K, A, W and Sy, the group leader (who is flamboyantly gay and loves going to gay bars lol). I think that was the main attraction... I wanted to go to a gay bar.

So we went to Rusty’s, an entertainment and late night venue. It's located in Newcastle’s Time Square/Centre for Life. The bar attracts a mixed clientele of gay and straight and features live cabaret entertainment from its owner Rusty (sadly s/he didn’t perform on this particular Friday).

From the glass I could see bare torsoed muscular waiters moving around guests with bottles. *eyes agape* Unfazed, I followed my party in. Color me gay.

Inside was dark and gothic-like. Stairs to another sitting level were on either side of the bars. The stage for the cabaret was round the corner. I got a pinot (hated it) and went to find somewhere to seat. Met A who had arrived earlier. She is my best buddy from work (as bookish as I am). That just made my day. we sat, drank and gossiped as we watched the antics of drunk revellers lol.

I was itching to dance but the music was neither pop nor recent. Imagine music from Chicago, even I Dreamed a Dream (dance version), FAME, Cher's Believe and like. No PSquare here.

Well, when the desirable is unavailable, the available becomes desirable. I wanted to dance and dance I did. Moreover with a half a glass of orange juice and vodka I was very ‘happy’ J.

So, I got to find out one of the girls at work C, was lesbian. I only mention it cause it was there starring me in the face but I didn’t know..compared to Sy who I sussed was gay by the 3rd day of training: He was uber comfortable with the gals, puffy hair, fashionable, has an eye for color, has the wittiest comebacks and had this affected way of talking and using his hands. Yup stereotypical.

C is a very pretty girl. I think I had told her so before too (face palm). I couldn’t understand her love for low hanging baggy jeans, t-shirts and trainers. She treated the guys in a jocular manner. She also had this boyish way of walking/bouncing, rolling her shoulders, her head.

I kept hoping for the day she will get over this ‘tomboyish phase’ and start wearing dresses. Or when the love of a good guy will soften her up. You see my life? A put me right thankfully.

I was gisting about this to a friend and he said ‘Who made you Inspector Gadget?’ And he is right. Does Sy/C/R being gay add or detract from the kind of persons they are or the work they do? Nooo. The only knowledge advantage I can think of is to prevent making a faux pas in conversation.

Anywho, as we packed our bags and coats to leave about 3am (it was snowing heavily), there was Sy in the corner sucking tongues with this guy he had introduced to us earlier. We rolled eyes and exited to find a taxi. That matter no be small thing. Newcastle is busiest on Friday night/Saturday mornings. It was almost an hr before I got mine.

I saw Sy today and I was like "Hey Sy. I had a great night. hope we do it again" and he was like “Cool. Cause I can’t remember much of the night. I only remember waking up with a strange guy in my room Saturday morn”. *poker face*

Thoughts

I couldn’t but think of the situation in Nigeria and why we think that imposing on the liberties of a group of people because of their sexual behavior is humane or right. Or why we have taken it upon ourselves to become Judge and Jury, defenders of Heterosexual Sex.

According to recent data from NACA , over a third of new HIV infections in Nigeria occurred among MSM, sex workers and their clients. And Nigerian MSM are more than fifteen times more likely to acquire HIV, compared to other men in the general population. We know the negative impact that criminalization and prejudice poses for individuals who face all forms of blackmail, family rejection and police brutality (See Prism’s post here). All the talk of “Zero discrimination” or an “AIDS free generation” will be meaningless if efforts are not made to stop the zeal of legislators wishing to criminalize types sexual behaviors between consenting adult men or women through The Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill before the Nigerian Senate now. (culled from here).

I keep thinking, if you send them to jail the what happens? They sober up in prison? They become straight? Or is it society’s way of keeping them out of sight of holy people?

One of the bare torsoed waiters who came to ask if we wanted more drinks looked decidedly Nigerian. I remember looking at him and smiling and thinking..lucky escape for you!

I won’t lie my last convo with Sy sent shivers down my spine for him. In this day and age, having random sexual encounters is as dangerous as driving without brakes. I recently had my Cervical screening done after putting it off for two years. I also decided to throw in a sexual health check-HIV/STD it was free after all. Scariest 7 days of my life waiting for my result. Every kiss was magnified. Ghosts of boyfriends past, their ex-girlfriends and the ex-girlfriend’s boyfriends haunted me big time!! Anywho, I am clear. All sins forgiven. A born again Virgin.

Why am I sharing? Go check yourself. And don’t put off that cervical smear if you are 25 and over, especially for those in the UK who can get it done free. A stitch in time saves nine.

*NACA - National AIDS Control Agency

*MSM - Men who have Sex with Men

If You Were Born in January

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:51:00 +0000

*If you were born in January, Come out and dance

Aringa ringa rosie God bless you

My birthday was on the 11^th of January. Yup ages ago. I’m a quiet one about birthdays and would have happily let this one slide by..at least on this space except that I found out I shared same birth month with Michelle Obama, Blue Ivy(rolls eyes), Mary J Blige, Elvis, even our own Verastic and I’m like hey, I have something in common with these hard working achievers!!

I remember being very disappointed as a child to find that MJ was August born. I still am. But I forgive him..for not coming out premature or just sitting tight in that womb till January 1.

Anyway, so what did I do on my birthday? Nothin much. Slept in cause luckily I had the day off. Visited with facebook, received phone calls. Then I treated myself to ‘Les Miserables’ which was having its first outing In UK that day.

It’s my party I can cry if I want to

Cry if I want to

You’d cry too if you watched it too

(lyrics from movie: Problem Child)

Yup, I was sniffling and snuffling 20mins into the movie. Only shame stopped me from going into bawling mode ..ok I exaggerate.

Plot

An ex-Convict who finds his salvation by a singular act of kindness by a priest and a promise made to dying woman, strives to live a life meritous of heaven, only to be constantly haunted by the spectre of his former jailer and Sheriff. Are human beings inherently good/bad? Can good defeat Evil? You watch and tell me.

Wow

I had heard about the classic novel Les Miserables and sought to read the book, however I saw the TOME and shelved that idea fast, hoping to find a ‘Longman Simplified Version’ or catch a Broadway production.

In 2009 it was again brought to my notice by Susan Boyles’ rendition of ‘I dreamed a dream’ at her audition for Britain’s got Talent. Her performance brought tears to my eye. I remember the ‘rolled eyes’ and mocking laughter which was quickly replaced by awe when she opened her vocal cords.

I felt the song was apt. Here was a 40-something year old rural woman living the dream she had only dreamed of.

Then I saw Anna Hathaway (Fantine) sing the song in the movie. And I forgot it was the same song.

For her It was the lament of a girl whose dreams had been dashed. Anna’s voice didn’t have the breadth or depth of Susan Boyle but golly she ran through the gamut of human emotions - sigh, smile, joy, disappointment, anger and ultimately despair with a voice that rang with clarity and innocence lost. I would have been as touched if the plot was excised and hers became a solo performance.

Anna exited the movie within the first 40mins but her presence lingered till the end just cause of that song and her dream. In addition, losing her hair for her art no be small matter shaa. Anna is one beautiful lady! I sincerely hope she gets that Oscar.

Hugh Jackman (my man) gave a wonderful performance as Jean Valjern. His singing voice was again not broadway standard but it rang with sincerity and conviction at every point. You couldn’t help but root for him as he chose good at every turn and did get cut a dashing figure.

Ah! if only men were like that.

Russell Crowe as Javier just annoyed me. It’s bad enough that as villain I had no reason to like him, but his singing voice was crikey!! Or maybe it was the self importance with which he sang and puffed in character. Anywhos, this former Gladiator did not gladden my heart at the Les Miserables arena..lol.

The bit about the French Revolutionaries was also touching. Inspiring even. I thought I will read up about it before I wrote this post to confirm if it was truth or fiction, alas no time. But fiction or not, it made this part in our national anthem ‘the martyrs of our heroes past’ very real.

The performances of Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Banks, Aaron Tveit and even brave little Daniel Huttlestone were also very memorable. I will understand if this movie gets the best picture award cause really every character played their role to the hilt. None easily forgotten.

Not so wow

It was quite a Melodrama. Every bad thing that can happen happened. Javert the Sheriff showed up to put ‘sand sand in the gari’ of Saintly Jean Valjern at all the right places. Everybody that should/could die died. The funny people (Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen) stayed funny throughout. The movie enthroned you as god....you could easily judge those who were going to Heaven and those destined for Hell. No Limbo here. Lool

In case you don’t know, this movie was 100% musical though it sure had more action scenes than the likes of Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia and Moulin Rouge. It’s not every one’s cup of tea, and I can bet most of the male population who go to see it will be at their female partner's behest.

2hrs after, with sodden tissues and swollen eyes, I left the theater. Headed home to meet my girlfriend who had come with cake. Yeah another day, another year but ---

P.S. I only found out recently that Maeve Binchy one of my favourite Irish writers is late (1940 - 2012). RIP Maeve and thank you for the books.

P.P.S. The rebellion did happen. Called the June Rebellion (click here). According to Wiki “Although fictional work, Les Misérables has given the relatively little-discussed rebellion widespread renown. The novel is one of the few works of literature that discusses the June Rebellion and the events leading up to it’.

I’m sad, so those young men/mostly students really died! Occupation Nigeria etu?

*popular children's play song in Nigeria. When your birthmonth is called, you jump into the circle and give your best dance :)

Songs That Celebrate Enduring Love

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:17:00 +0000

I never marry, anniversary song dey hungry me, Blogfam isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? lol

So on Sunday, I was watching a music channel that was playing oldies and this song came up. I coulda sworn the guy was Billy Ocean though I wondered about the hair. Billy Ocean if I remember has short jerrycurled/nappy hair not long and wavy. I could remember the song from childhood but hearing it as an adult now the words also made me nostalgic. So I waited for the names of the singers. Ashford and Simpson. I know I had heard the names but just never knew who they were.

On Wiki-ing them here.... I found they were a popular singing/song-writing duo. Wrote songs for musicians like Marvin Gaye(no not sexual healing), Teddy Pendergrass, Amy Winehouse, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan etc. Songs like:

I’m Every Woman

Reach out and touch..somebody’s hand

Ain’t no mountain high enough

Nick Simpson and Valerie Ashford met in choir in 1960 (don’t they all meet in choir!), collaborated on songs and finally married in 1974. Stayed married until Nick’s death in 2011 from throat cancer. RIP.

I was so touched. Hope someone writes a book about their life together. That’s a worthier read than biographies of Cheryl Cole, Katie Price, Victoria Beckham, Snookie, *rolls eyes*

It seems I am not the only one who marveled at their marriage. Here’s a short interview of the couple I found on Youtube.

Anyway, their song got me thinking. About songs that celebrate enduring love and/or relationships.

My top 4 anniversary songs are…ok, make it 5 I can’t decide between those two Shania Twain songs:

Solid by Ashford and Simpson

Always Shania Twain

Still The One Shania twain

God Bless The Broken Road Rascal Flats

Everytime I close my eyes Babyface

Over to you...What song/s would be on your anniversary playlist?

Hope Springs

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:12:00 +0000

So I watched Hope Springs a couple of days ago. Hmmmm.

First off, this is one movie that is not going to garner Meryl Streep an Oscar nod or nomination. Amen..she needs to give other women space lol.

Plot

A middle aged couple’s marriage was stuck in a rut. Actually rut is good. They were like two familiar strangers living together (in separate bedrooms too, that's a No No from me.).

Each performed their roles like automatons. She fries his bacon and egg every morn. He comes down. Puts down his suitcase, picks the paper to read as he eats his food. Gives her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and off he goes to work.

Of course like in most relationships, it was not an equal one. Somebody was bound to be unhappy from this affectionless relationship…the wife.

Then she came across a book by a relationship expert which inspired her to book a week’s intensive course for her and her husband in a small town far from their home. He reluctantly takes the trip with her and under the gentle prompts of the therapist, they rediscover the old magic.

Wows and Duhs

For a cast that was made up of only three principal characters....it didn’t get boring.

Steve Carrel as the therapist was at his quietest. Perfect supporting role and he did it beautifully.

Streep played the sweet middle aged wife whose only need was to love her husband and be loved in return. Her cherubic face and puppy eyes kept following her husband searching for signs of love. It started annoying me at some point lol. I guess I’m used to Meryl wearing smart suits and acting edgier roles; a woman in control. In this movie, she was just a simple housewife who lived to please her husband.

I hated Billy Joel. Omg he was my worst nightmare of a husband. Complaining, nagging, cheap. But then you look at the love in the wife’s eyes when she looks at him and you forgive him thinking ’he probably isn’t always this bad’. It was of course lovely to see the transformation in that jowly lined face when things were happy again.

Hope Springs reminded me a lot of Mr and Mrs from Nollywood reviewed here. Both were about women who had husbands who were taking them for granted and neglecting their emotional needs to the point of cruelty. How in the world do you describe a marriage where hubby has not touched wife sexually for months talk of years? Sadly I have heard similar real life stories so don’t scoff…it happens!

The therapist underscored how sex and love were intertwined. People, if it ain't happening in the bedroom, there’s a problem. Wives, BJ is not for *ashawos. It seems the husbands really like it. even those who are too shy to say it. Pls rev up the bedroom.

A friend of mine married for 4 yrs now confessed that she can’t errr love her hubby that way though he keeps asking. I still dey look am. I keep buying bananas. I no talk anything. Lol

I gotta admit that watching Meryl attempt to give her hubby some love was like watching my mom. *covers face*

I was also reminded that men are truly creatures of habit which can work for good or bad.

Good - When he gets into the habit of being with you, he doesn’t want to lose you.

Bad – When you allow him fall into the habit of being taken care of, he might take it for granted.

Both women had to break the habits to make their men sit up and notice.

The difference between Nollywood version and Hollywood version was of course the fact that the couple in Hope Springs both owned up to the part that each had played and worked together to mend their marriage, while Mr and Mrs told us that only the wife needs to do the work.

Summary: Predictable romcom, better than average cause of good performances from cast. Might be called different cause it focused on ‘old love’. Watch, learn and actively paint anti-rust on your relationship.

*sex workers

Grateful

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:37:00 +0000

I am thankful for a new year and its promises for greatness. 365 clean slates to write my story..no, 361 more days. I started this year on a high. I can smell the new air. I am expectant. Can't you feel it? lol.
Unlike its predecessor 2012 which in retrospect was a training ground.

Take a walk with me through 2012

Hidden Talent
January had started with hope. I graduated..with a merit to boot. Added a year but was one broke babe.
Managed to apply for my post study visa thank God and thanks to two angels..you know yourselves.
Then began the long wait for the home office to answer..and within that time I was neither here nor there with job applications, with travel - I couldn't go home (Nigeria),I missed a conference in Atlanta in March because I had no travel document, a conference i had looked forward to as an opportunity to network and meet future PhD supervisors. I couldnt go to Nigeria.
To add insult to injury, I applied and supposedly got this job with Stop Polio (a WHO project). Only for me to find out, following a frenzied exchange of mail 4 days after that there was a mistake and my name had been mixed up with someone else. Ginger wept.
To keep body and soul together, I resurrected my hair making skills among my bevy of female friends. Talent is discovered in scarcity/Practise really makes perfect cause in a short while even i couldnt believe my handiwork!!

Family
What would i have done without the warm and cheery support of the world's best Mom and Dad, sisters and brothers. We call, chat, gossip, CARE. My mom is really old now..81. She keeps asking after my PhD..I might as well do the PhD and make it real huh? Thank you God for keeping them safe.

Durham Fam
I met Ij by serendipity and ended up living with her and her family after i left school. Hers are the kids i wrote about two posts earlier. It was the best of times! We have laughed, argued, cried, quarrelled and made up like sisters. She's a nwanne di na mba. Thank you.
There is a small but extended group of Nigerian families in Durham. Beautiful wonderful, families. They added color to my life with their oddities, gossip and parties. J,Z,O,E,Y Thank you.

Blog Fam
Of course you were an important part of my year. you made me laugh, dance, cry, vex. Thank you for being YOU. I have no intentions to bow out anytime soon. my work isnt done joo. But err,Myne pls share your recipe!! Thank you for following. For reading. for taking your time to comment. For agreeing with my opinions. For disagreeing with them.
p.s. I am yet to meet any blogger in real life. Hope to change that this year. London bloggers do something na.

Friendships
I remember when Tizzle blogged about the friendship crisis she was having. I gave her some advice based on my experience not knowing that I had future hurt.
It hasn't been my best year with girlfriends. I've prayed with, rejoiced, been expectant, been disappointed, hurt, angry with the antics of my friend. The secrets, the gossips; yet i cant deny that when I needed them most, those that mattered came through for me. Thank you.

A close friend of mine went through an agonising period in her life alone because she thought i would judge her. I don't know which hurt most...finding out that she had been bearing it alone or that she didnt tell me cause she thought i would judge her. Me??? All is well in paradise now thank God.

There are one or two friends i should prolly reach out to, but another part of me asks...why? Pride park well. lol

Men and Marriage
From a proposal in March which sorta led to nothing (like the Copenhagen climate change summit. How does that happen?), to the best friend who is looking for Ms Perfect (sadly not me!), to the fella who is actively working on 'Project Get Ginger Hitched', To the one who wants me to be a baby mama to his Kanye West, To the frogs who refused to become princes, To the ones who are in the wings buoying and supporting all the way. Thank you.
My 2013 pact with God is that I am going to have a baby. All I ask is that He sends the perfect accessories. Amen!

Faith
I had my worst crisis of faith this year. Its not that I lost my belief in God No. But I started doubting bits in the Bible. Yes the Creationism and Evolution dichotomy. I had gone from rejecting Evolution to believing that evolution was compatible with Creationism (story for another day).
Then I remember one day in church whn the priest teased us that he hopes no body here thinks that men and women have different number of ribs. Well, you coulda pushed me with a feather cause I did. Don't laugh.
As small as that was it just made me question how many things I had just accepted with faith without applying common sense.
Anyway, I have since made my choice to cling to the wisdom of God than that of scientists. So be it.

Career
I'm a bit confused about what trajectory my career should follow. Human or animal. Maybe a merger of the two? I'm still on the look out for research opportunities. PhD seems to be the best option for now but till I secure funding, I have to shelve it.

Jobwise
I had a breakthrough with the job search in March. It was far from my dream job, but I was thankful. Thankful that my account was green again. Thankful that I had a job to go to. Thank you Mark!
I have a scar to remind me of this period. I look at it and smile.
As the job was part-time, I took up a volunteering position with Oxfam. An opportunity to learn new skills, make friends, have great team Lunches. Thank you Bryony and Rob.
In between these activities, i was still intensively job searching. Both here and in Nigeria. My CV got a facelift at least twice a week. then the interviews started coming. Some even involved traveling - Newbury, Manchester, London. The rejection letters afterwards read the same. (Nigerian HRs are terrible. As bad as rejection letters are, it is still good to get them. At least you can put that application off your list and move on. Nigerian firms just leave you in limbo!).

Finally. Just when I was about to give up, a job came through after a couple of tests and assessments. No hassles, just a phone call to confirm my start date. I remember the HR saying bye and i was just starring at the phone thinking, "Really?! just like that" *rolls eyes*
It was till I got my written offer a few days after that I fell on my knees in thanksgiving to God, then told my family.
But it wasn't just about a new job in the health sector (yay!!), It was a new start. I had to relocate to Newcastle. Yes Geordie shore lol. That was a break I badly needed. It was Baba God's New Year present to me.

Its a month now and I can't believe the change in my life. I sleep easy. Wake up happy and hopeful. May it continue. Amen!
Lessons learnt
Nothing you never heard. Don't give up. Its okay to cry, but never stop believing. Just one event can catalyse life changes.

I pray for a beautiful 2013 for you my friends. Like my Blessed Mary said to Angel Gabriel, 'May it be done to YOU according to His Word'. That's all.

Happy New Year People!!

Mr and Mrs Somebody

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Hey People!!

How are you? Much love and thanks to y'all.

About the last post, I really hope it didn't come out like I was complaining or whining.

I wasn't. I love them kids to bits. Especially Monsieur 16. I was truly wondrous at how moms cope. How they balance love for child, husband, career and time for self. That's all.

So, 2012 has got only 14 more days to go. December has been great. Its first two weeks has redeemed the past 11 months of waiting. To God be the Glory! News coming up soon.

So as my GF pulled and primped and sewed up my hair yesterday, we watched a couple of Nollywood movies (bonding moments eh!).

Here comes the reviews

Mrs. Somebody

So I finally got around to watching this movie starring Uche Jumbo (Kaira), Yemi Blaq, Kenneth Okoli (Dapo), Bobby Obodo (Charles), Belinda Effah (Ada), and Barbara Sokey.

First off, can I say that I had my fill of eye candy(male and female) in this movie. Kudos Nollywood. I don't know if it was just the camera but all the ladies skin were aglow! Golly, I need their secrets. 2013 is my yeah of glowing skin Amen somebody!!

Plot:

Following a series of self inflicted bad relationships , a desperate, fire and brimstone breathing, probably mentally unstable Singleton, Kaira, gives up on love and marriage to focus on herself. As she finds her confedence and ends the vicious cycle of love and disappointment, she finally finds the love her heart yearns for.

√Wow

-Bobby Obodo

-Perfect Romantic Comedy. Kaira's prayer warrior ways might seem excessive atimes but when viewed under the lens of romcom it can be forgiven. Think 'Ugly Truth', 'Leap Year', Bounty Hunter'. Romcom's may have a message but they are not movies expected to be taken too seriously.

-Bobby Obodo!

-Like I mentioned before great eye candy cast. I couldn't take my eyes off Ada's body in her trademark shorts (No homo). Uche Jombo's hair made some great apperances. She/it looked perfectly delish in the second date with Charles. Only just realized how short that babe is!

-Bobby Obodo

He was the perfect last man standing. Twinkling eyes, great smile and playful charm, perfect foil to the 'strong faces' of Kenneth Okoli and Yemi Blaq. I can almost bet you that Bobby played himself….my kind. Golly, I'm in love! I need a hook up!

Not So Wow

A few continuity issues…nothing earth shattering.

-Did Kaira have a car? Kaira had a car in a one or two scenes and in the most important scene she suddenly didn't have a car.

-Kaira was supposed to be a working girl but I never knew what it was. Anybody know?

-No continuity with girlfriends especially the ones seen in the 1^st half of movie. Interestingly in the credit they were called Kaira's girlfriend 1, 2 and 3.

I liked the last one though - Tricia (Tamara). She reminded me of me some years back with her….'give him a chance'.

-The baby plot between Dapo and Ada got a raised eyebrow but nothing I couldn't gulp down with water.

- The ending could have come with a slide show of the wedding where she finally wears her gown, She pregnant, maybe another with a baby.... you know...scenes of happily ever after.

-A few wooden acting and fake accents….goes with the territory eh? lol.

-Bobby Obodo's goatee. There was this dig Kaira made about his goatee and tattoo at their first meeting that had me chortling. Good one!

*Bobby be warned....I am handy with a blade.

Altogether a cool movie from the stables of Nollywood. If you love chick flicks, you'll love this. I like!

Mr and Mrs

Now Mr and Mrs was a whole different kettle of fish.

Plot

Susan Abah (Nse Ikpim Ete) is the perfect wife. Her husband Ken (Joseph Benjamin)feeds on freshly cooked food three times a day. She meets his demands in bed even when she is not up for it. she waits on him hand and foot. She does not speak back. In fact she is the perfect slave-wife.

But rather than undying gratitude and appreciation, her husband emotionally abuses her.

An opportunity to end this farce of a marriage comes one day, when he threatens her with a divorce. She calls his bluff and agrees but does not sign the papers secretly because she had other plans. She wanted her man back. The man she fell in love with 16 yrs ago when they met in the University. She said she knew his heart like she knew hers. He still loved her and she him. Their marriage will not fail.

Her strategy to win him back? Bring the sexy back in her dressing, starve him of the cuisine he had grown accustomed to, have flirtatious phone conversations in his presence and buy a king size vibrator (great tips..tic)

Did her strategy work? Did she get her man back? Watch and find out.

√Wow

-The directing was excellent. Well done to the Director! I loved the second scene of the movie. When he came down to take breakfast. I guess that was where they showed the first inkling of the Susan who was bidding her time.

-I admire Nse. there's this something about her....an aura of the regal. She is a good actress, enunciates clearly and I can appreciate the effort she put in this movie. Ken was a great supporting act too…but can I note that I tire of Nigerian men acting 'husband roles'. There is a distinct difference in them when they act boyfriend and husband roles. They tend to imbue husband roles with this authoritative 'lord of the manor' air that positively grates on my nerves. So only boyfriends are allowed to be playful and charming? I tire o.

-Nse's friend (Thelma Okodua)'s marriage was a perfect add-on. I think her husband (Paul Apel) perfectly depicted his role of an exasperated but passive hubby (typical Naija man) who loves his wife but was okay with getting his needs from another. There was certainly a lesson in that plot. I'm not against a woman having a career but I agree that it gotta be balanced.

-I also liked how Kate -the help's issue was sorted. She was not unnecessarily blamed or made out to be the breaker of their home.

Not So Wow

The plot had a number of worrying holes.

-I didn't understand that sharp change from long-suffering, emotionally abused desperate nice wife to sexy saucy 'I want my husband' ninja wife. They treated a serious issue much too lightly…cavalierly in fact. It practically happened over night...like Nse couldn't wait to be rid of her dour 'abused woman' facade to become a chic again lol.

-The vibrator scenes were uber irrelevant. I'm guessing the directors put it in to titillate or annoy. The latter worked for me.

-My greatest problem with this movie was the messages. Eg. the exchange between Nse and her lawyer where Nse says that if a marriage fails, a woman has failed. Noo, the man and woman in it have failed. It takes two. It takes two.

-Also while I have said I love the side plot, It would have been cool if the script had addressed 'communication problems'. At no point did they show Thelma's husband discuss his wife's continued absence with her. Rather he whined a bit and took the easy road to resolving his issues…sleep with the help. It takes two. It takes two.

While I do not agree with some of the messages, I do think It's definitely a good conversation starter for women. Good script. Great directing. Cool soundtrack. Nollywood has come a long way with picture quality. Thumbs up!

P.S. I went hunting for Michael Bobby Obodo's info online. Interesting profile here. Aspiring politician, Boxer, Activist, Writer and Actor. Curiouser and curiouser. Seems he has a strong Ghana fan base. Naija what's up?

P.P.S. Can somebody tell him to get some professional pix out there. Haba! This picture of him demolishing a plate of food is unacceptable.

Or the one above with the one-eyed squint.

Said with all the love burning in my heart :)

I Dont Know How They Do It

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:11:00 +0000

6.20am

You hear a faint mumbling and intelligible talk then full on attention seeking crying, naaa naaa.

You hear an adult sigh and door opening.

Crying stops

Footsteps.

Coming towards your room

Your door squeaks as a short UWO (unidentified walking object) tries to pull down the handle

By then you are fully awake,

You listen to its grunts with glee thinking…Come on!!! give up!

It doesn’t.

Door opens.

You can feel it starring at the mound that’s you under the duvet

You hear the hesitant ‘Anthi’ 'Anthi' or 'Nonnnii'

You sigh inside and struggle to stop that love Oxytocin from flowing

Then he lifts your duvet and reaches for your hair

Ouch!

You quickly sit up..and beam 'Good morning my love' to Monsieur 16months

He responds with a giggle and a more confident ‘ANTHI!!!’

Duty done waking you, He continues on his mission,

Next stop: his siblings’ room

Squeak, grunt, door opens

Footsteps

Screams ‘Mommy/Anthi/Daddy, Monsieur 16 is pulling my hair’

Its official. It is morning.

Somebody gimme aspirin. Its gonna be a long day.

You lie back in bed, trying to talk with God, plan your day with ears cocked (to hear slaps or banned words)so you can arbitrate fairly when complaints come - which is every 10 mins.

Then you hear the toilet flush once, twice in succession.

Monsieur 16!!

Now you really have to get up.

Monsieur 16 thinks toilet flushing is the 9^th wonder of the world (8th wonder is the washing machine)

7.15 bath time is announced

7.20 you re cajoling Monsieur 6 to come and bathe

7.25 you give up and tell the biddable Madam4 to come and bathe instead

7.27 Madam 4 and Monsieur 6 are fighting over who will be first in the bathroom

7.29 Madam 4 wins with Aunty admonishing Monsieur 6, “you snooze, you loose”

7.30 you bathe Madame 4 to the accompaniment of Monsieur 6’s wailing

“I wanta be first”

7.40 Sulky Monsieur 6 bathes

7.48 its Rub Ude time

Repeat steps above

8. 05 Dress up time

Repeat steps above

Breakfast

“I want Cocopops”. “I want cheerios”

Dish Coco pops. Dish Cheerios

“Aunty, I want Coco pops. Don’t like Cheerios”

Nigerian Aunty announces – “Pity. You shall eat what is before you. And you are lucky. When I was a little girl I didn’t have choices. I eat what I’m given”

Blank stares as heaving mouths chew.

Pots clang

Monsieur 16 months thinks he is a chef (bless him).

Must write that letter to the pot makers. Glass cover is the bomb! Can withstand WW3

You take the pots away. Put them back in kitchen cupboard.

Poke a finger in his face saying Nooo Noo

Turn back to supervise breakfast eaters

Pots clang

Repeat steps till he tires of ‘game’

8.40

School time.

Klds march to car with dad

“Bye Aunty. I love you”

“Bye Kids I love you” (and under your breathe “but I hope you get adopted for the next 4 years by aliens”)

It’s now you and Le’ Monsieur 16

Bath time. 4mins

Dress up time 4mins

Breakfast. 6 spoons of Cerelac. 65mins. Accompanied by Aunty singing, dancing, clowning interspersed with ‘Monsieur16 S w al low your food.

Or Aunty physically keeping his mouth shut to prevent deliberate dribble.

Meal over.

Clean mouth

Clean table

Clean floor

Clean self

Acknowledge post-breakfast parcel in nappy.

Leave Happy Baby in front of TV singing

'Sam is the hero next door'

Time to do some work

Open up laptop

Pots clang. Run downstairs.

Carry him up the room

Wait for aged laptop to boot

You hear a faint ringing sound.

Heyo! Heyo!

Run after Monsieur to take your phone and end the call.

Type in naijamuminlondon.blogspo…

Toilet flushes

Run to toilet to find a wet monsieur. Change clothes

Imprison him on your bed

Try to read a post while holding an octopus.

A tiny finger steals towards the keyboard

You push it back saying Noo

Good gist. Click on comment

Type one or two sentences

Notice Blank Blackscreen

You hear a giggle next to you

Monsieur 16 pressed the power button

You struggle between hitting your head on the wall and knocking his on the wall

You imprison him in your arms

Sleep time

And to show example. You close your eyes…this is the way you sleep

15 mins later

You wake up from your short nap

Monsieur is still in your arms, playing with his fingers while

peering at you at intervals.

12.30

Its feed time again

one spoon, 2, 3, 5, 6 Monsieur closes sleepy eyes

Noo you little imp. This is eat time. You had your chance

Crying

Wailing

Aunty wins

Monsieur 16 and 'Anthi'

Its Meal time

1.30

Meal time over

No sleepy eyes

Put laptop on again

Face personal chores*

Play with baby in between he is a baby afterall

Put on Cartoonito

Sing ‘Sam is the hero next door’

Dora Dora Dora Dora Dora

Illogical crying. Wailing.

Sleep time

Aunty bathes

Prepares lunch - Noodles

School kids return

What’s for lunch Aunty asks Monsieur 6

Noodles

Yay. I like Noodles Madame 4

Yuck, I don’t like Noodles Monsieur 6

“Miss Granger said they are bad for you”

Me too.I don’t like noodles Madame 4

Evil eye at Monsieur6

You don’t have a choice

You shall eat Noodles

They eat Noodles

I love Noodles Monsiuer 6

Can I have more pls

Aunty 1: Mrs Granger 0

Make a note to tell teacher to stop poisoning children’s mind towards food. Hissss

Monsiuer16 awakes

Screams of Hello Monsieur 16. I missed you.

Sweet sibling reunion

Monsieur 16 walks to kitchen

Monsieur 16 smells noodles

Illogical crying and tugging of Aunty’s pants

Monsieur 16 wants noodles

Plonk him in his chair

Give him a forkful

Monsieur 16 clamps mouth tight

Reaches for fork

He wants to feed himself

You leave him with it

5 mins after

Noodle strings on mouth, in hair, on chair, on the floor

Monsieur 6 and Madame 4 are laughing hysterically

You take away noodles

Clean baby

Clean table

Clean wall

Clean floor

Promise cookies to who finishes first

Lunch over

Cookies (you think they’ll forget?!)

Put on Cartoonito

Return to laptop

“Aunty what are you doing?”

Ignore

Question is repeated 3 more times.

Change tactics…this time with arms around your neck

“Are you working on your laptop?”

Question is repeated 3 more times.

Ignore

“Is this your laptop?’

“No it is Peppa pig’s laptop Madame 4”

“No Aunty, it is YOUR laptop and you are working on it”

Under breathe (So why did you ask?)

20 mins of peace

Mobile phone rings

Its bestie from Nigeria

You settle down to have your first adult conversation of the day

Tug tug on trouser hem

Aunty, can Madame 4 have a snack?!!

(translate: I want a snack)

Make ‘go away motion’

Aunty! Aunty! Each Aunty increasing in crescendo

Can Madame 4 have a snack?!!

Stalk to Kitchen and grab a wooden spatula

Wave it threateningly

Go to Toilet.

Lean against door

“Aunty are you there?”

Open the door I want to talk to you

Repeat as many times as required till Aunty opens the door.

Snack time

Quiet time (now you know why we have obese kids)

Crumbs

Spilt juice

Clean up

Snack over

Fights begin

Arbitrate

Naughty corner

Its 6pm

Mom is back

Homework

Supper

Bedtime!

I dont wanna sleep yet. A little TV pls?

10mins

Bedtime!

Bedtime story pls?

Bedtime story is read

Bedtime!

Bedtime Snack pls?

Snack

Bedtime!

Silence

Scuffle is heard.

Mommy, he is calling me silly

Bedtime!

Mommy, she is calling me silly

BEDTIME!! Threaten with wooden spatula.

Silence

Peace

Sound of pots clanging

Monsiuer 16!!

……………………………………

When I said my life wasn't mine in this post. This is what I meant (Hugs Atilola n' Tizzle). These little aliens have taken over my life. How do you moms do it?

*Meanwhile I still have a full time job as a job applicant searching and applying and a part time one with odd hours - Tuesday is the new Sunday - I'm thankful though. Then there is my rss feed full of unread blogs, post drafts, Phd applications to write, friends beeping me on Whatsapp. Read Books, Watch movies..What's that?

Most times by the time their mom comes home after my day of child care, I am so frustrated. I am thinking, "why didn't you stop after one"?

And the poor woman must have had a full day at work too. Don't forget there is also a husband to attend to too (luckily she is blessed by a most house-friendly hubby). but He has needs too (cough cough).

That reminds me, who is a friend of Elnathan John on facebook? There was an interesting status about marital rape two days ago. Nwunye and a certain Iyabo were on fire lol. Chop knuckle lovely ladies!

Anyway, my dreams of wanting 4 kids has shrunk to 3. To 2. lol. How have you been Blogfam? Hugs and Kisses

*Nonni - Mommy

On Biafra and Achebe: Chimamanda Adichie Says it as it is

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 09:23:00 +0000

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: We remember differently – A tribute to Chinua Achebe at 82 (Culled from YNaija)

Pix from YNaija

I have met Chinua Achebe only three times. The first, at the National Arts Club in Manhattan, I joined the admiring circle around him. A gentle-faced man in a wheelchair.

“Good evening, sir. I’m Chimamanda Adichie,” I said, and he replied, mildly, “I thought you were running away from me.”

I mumbled, nervous, grateful for the crush of people around us. I had been running away from him. After my first novel was published, I received an email from his son. My dad has just read your novel and liked it very much. He wants you to call him at this number. I read it over and over, breathless with excitement. But I never called. A few years later, my editor sent Achebe a manuscript of my second novel. She did not tell me, because she wanted to shield me from the possibility of disappointment. One afternoon, she called. “Chimamanda, are you sitting down? I have wonderful news.” She read me the blurb Achebe had just sent her. We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war. Adichie came almost fully made. Afterwards, I held on to the phone and wept. I have memorized those words. In my mind, they glimmer still, the validation of a writer whose work had validated me.

I grew up writing imitative stories. Of characters eating food I had never seen and having conversations I had never heard. They might have been good or bad, those stories, but they were emotionally false, they were not mine. Then came a glorious awakening: Chinua Achebe’s fiction. Here were familiar characters who felt true; here was language that captured my two worlds; here was a writer writing not what he felt he should write but what he wanted to write. His work was free of anxiety, wore its own skin effortlessly. It emboldened me, not to find my voice, but to speak in the voice I already had. And so, when that e-mail came from his son, I knew, overly-thrilled as I was, that I would not call. His work had done more than enough. In an odd way, I was so awed, so grateful, that I did not want to meet him. I wanted some distance between my literary hero and me.

Chinua Achebe and I have never had a proper conversation. The second time I saw him, at a luncheon in his honor hosted by the British House of Lords, I sat across from him and avoided his eye. (“Chinua Achebe is the only person I have seen you shy with,” a friend said). The third, at a New York event celebrating fifty years of THINGS FALL APART, we crowded around him backstage, Edwidge Danticat and I, Ha Jin and Toni Morrison, Colum McCann and Chris Abani. We seemed, magically, bound together in a warm web, all of us affected by his work. Achebe looked pleased, but also vaguely puzzled by all the attention. He spoke softly, the volume of his entire being turned to ‘low.’ I wanted to tell him how much I admired his integrity, his speaking out about the disastrous leadership in my home state of Anambra, but I did not. Before I went on stage, he told me, “Jisie ike.” I wondered if he fully grasped, if indeed it was possible to, how much his work meant to so many.

History and civics, as school subjects, function not merely to teach facts but to transmit more subtle things, like pride and dignity. My Nigerian education taught me much, but left gaping holes. I had not been taught to imagine my pre-colonial past with any accuracy, or pride, or complexity. And so Achebe’s work, for me, transcended literature. It became personal. ARROW OF GOD, my favorite, was not just about the British government’s creation of warrant chiefs and the linked destinies of two men, it became the life my grandfather might have lived. THINGS FALL APART is the African novel most read – and arguably most loved – by Africans, a novel published when ‘African novel’ meant European accounts of ‘native’ life. Achebe was an unapologetic member of the generation of African writers who were ‘writing back,’ challenging the stock Western images of their homeland, but his work was not burdened by its intent. It is much-loved not because Achebe wrote back, but because he wrote back well. His work was wise, humorous, human. For many Africans, THINGS FALL APART remains a gesture of returned dignity, a literary and an emotional experience; Mandela called Achebe the writer in whose presence the prison walls came down.

Achebe’s most recent book, his long-awaited memoir of the Nigerian-Biafra war, is both sad and angry, a book by a writer looking back and mourning Nigeria’s failures. I wish THERE WAS A COUNTRY had been better edited and more rigorously detailed in its account of the war. But these flaws do not make it any less seminal: an account of the most important event in Nigeria’s history by Nigeria’s most important storyteller.

An excerpt from the book has ignited great controversy among Nigerians. In it, Achebe, indignant about the millions of people who starved to death in Biafra, holds Obafemi Awolowo, Nigerian finance minister during the war, responsible for the policy of blockading Biafra. He quote’s Awolowo’s own words on the blockade – ‘all is fair in war and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder’ and then argues that Awolowo’s support of the blockade was ‘driven by an overriding ambition for power for himself in particular and for the advancement of his Yoruba people in general.’

I have been startled and saddened by the responses to this excerpt. Many are blindingly ethnic, lacking in empathy and, most disturbing of all, lacking in knowledge. We can argue about how we interpret the facts of our shared history, but we cannot, surely, argue about the facts themselves. Awolowo, as de facto ‘number two man’ on the Nigerian side, was a central architect of the blockade on Biafra. During and after the war, Awolowo publicly defended the blockade. Without the blockade, the massive starvation in Biafra would not have occurred. These are the facts.

Some Nigerians, in responding to Achebe, have argued that the blockade was fair, as all is fair in war. The blockade was, in my opinion, inhumane and immoral. And it was unnecessary – Nigeria would have won anyway, it was the much-better-armed side in a war that Wole Soyinka called a shabby unequal conflict. The policy of starving a civilian population into surrender does not merely go against the Geneva conventions, but in this case, a war between siblings, people who were formerly fellow country men and women now suddenly on opposite sides, it seems more chilling. All is not fair in war. Especially not in a fratricidal war. But I do not believe the blockade was a calculated power grab by Awolowo for himself and his ethnic group; I think of it, instead, as one of the many dehumanizing acts that war, by its nature, brings about.

Awolowo was undoubtedly a great political leader. He was also – rare for Nigerian leaders – a great intellectual. No Nigerian leader has, arguably, articulated a political vision as people-centered as Awolowo’s. For Nigerians from the west, he was the architect of free primary education, of progressive ideas. But for Nigerians from the east, he was a different man. I grew up hearing, from adults, versions of Achebe’s words about Awolowo. He was the man who prevented an Igbo man from leading the Western House of Assembly in the famous ‘carpet crossing’ incident of 1952. He was the man who betrayed Igbo people when he failed on his alleged promise to follow Biafra’s lead and pull the Western region out of Nigeria. He was the man who, in the words of my uncle, “made Igbo people poor because he never liked us.”

At the end of the war, every Igbo person who had a bank account in Nigeria was given twenty pounds, no matter how much they had in their accounts before the war. I have always thought this a livid injustice. I know a man who worked in a multinational company in 1965. He was, like Achebe, one of the many Igbo who just could not believe that their lives were in danger in Lagos and so he fled in a hurry, at the last minute, leaving thousands of pounds in his account. After the war, his account had twenty pounds. To many Igbo, this policy was uncommonly punitive, and went against the idea of ‘no victor, no vanquished.’ Then came the indigenization decree, which moved industrial and corporate power from foreign to Nigerian hands. It made many Nigerians wealthy; much of the great wealth in Nigeria today has its roots in this decree. But the Igbo could not participate; they were broke.

I do not agree, as Achebe writes, that one of the main reasons for Nigeria’s present backwardness is the failure to fully reintegrate the Igbo. I think Nigeria would be just as backward even if the Igbo had been fully integrated – institutional and leadership failures run across all ethnic lines. But the larger point Achebe makes is true, which is that the Igbo presence in Nigerian positions of power has been much reduced since the war. Before the war, many of Nigeria’s positions of power were occupied by Igbo people, in the military, politics, academia, business. Perhaps because the Igbo were very receptive to Western education, often at the expense of their own traditions, and had both a striving individualism and a communal ethic. This led to what, in history books, is often called a ‘fear of Igbo domination’ in the rest of Nigeria. The Igbo themselves were insensitive to this resentment, the bombast and brashness that is part of Igbo culture only exacerbated it. And so leading Igbo families entered the war as Nigeria’s privileged elite but emerged from it penniless, stripped and bitter.

Today, ‘marginalization’ is a popular word in Igboland. Many Igbo feel marginalized in Nigeria, a feeling based partly on experience and partly on the psychology of a defeated people. (Another consequence of this psychology, perhaps, is the loss of the communal ethic of the Igbo, much resented sixty years ago. It is almost non-existent today, or as my cousin eloquently put it: Igbo people don’t even send each other.)

Some responses to Achebe have had a ‘blame the victim’ undertone, suggesting that Biafrians started the war and therefore deserved what they got. But Biafrians did not ‘start the war.’ Nobody with a basic knowledge of the facts can make that case.

Biafrian secession was inevitable, after the federal government’s failure to implement the agreements reached at Aburi, itself prompted by the massacre of Igbo in the North. The cause of the massacres was arguably the first coup of 1966. Many believed it to be an ‘Igbo’ coup, which was not an unreasonable belief, Nigeria was already mired in ethnic resentments, the premiers of the West and North were murdered while the Eastern premier was not, and the coup plotters were Igbo. Except for Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba, who has argued that it was not an ethnic coup. I don’t believe it was. It seems, from most accounts, to have been an idealistic and poorly-planned nationalist exercise aimed at ridding Nigeria of a corrupt government. It was, also, horrendously, inexcusably violent. I wish the coup had never happened. I wish the premiers and other casualties had been arrested and imprisoned, rather than murdered. But the truth that glares above all else is that the thousands of Igbo people murdered in their homes and in the streets had nothing to do with the coup.

Some have blamed the Biafrian starvation on Ojukwu, Biafra’s leader, because he rejected an offer from the Nigerian government to bring in food through a land corridor. It was an ungenerous offer, one easy to refuse. A land corridor could also mean advancement of Nigerian troops. Ojukwu preferred airlifts, they were tactically safer, more strategic, and he could bring in much-needed arms as well. Ojukwu should have accepted the land offer, shabby as it was. Innocent lives would have been saved. I wish he had not insisted on a ceasefire, a condition which the Nigerian side would never have agreed to. But it is disingenuous to claim that Ojukwu’s rejection of this offer caused the starvation. Many Biafrians had already starved to death. And, more crucially, the Nigerian government had shown little regard for Biafra’s civilian population; it had, for a while, banned international relief agencies from importing food. Nigerian planes bombed markets and targeted hospitals in Biafra, and had even shot down an International Red Cross plane.

Ordinary Biafrians were steeped in distrust of the Nigerian side. They felt safe eating food flown in from Sao Tome, but many believed that food brought from Nigeria would be poisoned, just as they believed that, if the war ended in defeat, there would be mass killings of Igbo people. The Biafrian propaganda machine further drummed this in. But, before the propaganda, something else had sown the seed of hateful fear: the 1966 mass murders of Igbo in the North. The scars left were deep and abiding. Had the federal government not been unwilling or incapable of protecting their lives and property, Igbo people would not have so massively supported secession and intellectuals, like Achebe, would not have joined in the war effort.

I have always admired Ojukwu, especially for his early idealism, the choices he made as a young man to escape the shadow of his father’s great wealth, to serve his country. In Biafra, he was a flawed leader, his paranoia and inability to trust those close to him clouded his judgments about the execution of the war, but he was also a man of principle who spoke up forcefully about the preservation of the lives of Igbo people when the federal government seemed indifferent. He was, for many Igbo, a Churchillian figure, a hero who inspired them, whose oratory moved them to action and made them feel valued, especially in the early months of the war.

Other responses to Achebe have dismissed the war as something that happened ‘long ago.’ But some of the people who played major roles are alive today. We must confront our history, if only to begin to understand how we came to be where we are today. The Americans are still hashing out details of their civil war that ended in 1865; the Spanish have only just started, seventy years after theirs ended. Of course, discussing a history as contested and contentious as the Nigeria-Biafra war will not always be pleasant. But it is necessary. An Igbo saying goes: If a child does not ask what killed his father, that same thing will kill him.

What many of the responses to Achebe make clear, above all else, is that we remember differently. For some, Biafra is history, a series of events in a book, fodder for argument and analysis. For others, it is a loved one killed in a market bombing, it is hunger as a near-constant companion, it is the death of certainty. The war was fought on Biafrian soil. There are buildings in my hometown with bullet holes; as a child, playing outside, I would sometimes come across bits of rusty ammunition left behind from the war. My generation was born after 1970, but we know of property lost, of relatives who never ‘returned’ from the North, of shadows that hung heavily over family stories. We inherited memory. And we have the privilege of distance that Achebe does not have.

Achebe is a war survivor. He was a member of the generation of Nigerians who were supposed to lead a new nation, inchoate but full of optimism. It shocked him, how quickly Nigeria fell apart. In THERE WAS A COUNTRY he sounds unbelieving, still, about the federal government’s indifference while Igbo people were being massacred in Northern Nigeria in 1966. But shock-worthy events did not only happen in the North. Achebe himself was forced to leave Lagos, a place he had called home for many years, because his life was no longer safe. His crime was being Igbo. A Yoruba acquaintance once told me a story of how he was nearly lynched in Lagos at the height of the tensions before the war; he was light-skinned, and a small mob in a market assumed him to be ‘Igbo Yellow’ and attacked him. The vice chancellor of the University of Lagos was forced to leave. So was the vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan. Because they were Igbo. For Achebe, all this was deeply personal, deeply painful. His house was bombed, his office was destroyed. He escaped death a few times. His best friend died in battle. To expect a dispassionate account from him is a remarkable failure of empathy. I wish more of the responses had acknowledged, a real acknowledgement and not merely a dismissive preface, the deep scars that experiences like Achebe’s must have left behind.

Ethnicity has become, in Nigeria, more political than cultural, less about philosophy and customs and values and more about which bank is a Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo bank, which political office is held by which ethnicity, which revered leader must be turned into a flawless saint. We cannot deny ethnicity. It matters. But our ethnic and national identities should not be spoken of as though they were mutually exclusive; I am as much Igbo as I am Nigerian. I have hope in the future of Nigeria, mostly because we have not yet made a real, conscious effort to begin creating a nation. (We could start, for example, by not merely teaching Mathematics and English in primary schools, but also teaching idealism and citizenship.)

For some non-Igbo, confronting facts of the war is uncomfortable, even inconvenient. But we must hear one another’s stories. It is even more imperative for a subject like Biafra which, because of our different experiences, we remember differently. Biafrian minorities were distrusted by the Igbo majority, and some were unfairly attacked, blamed for being saboteurs. Nigerian minorities, particularly in the midwest, suffered at the hands of both Biafrian and Nigerian soldiers. ‘Abandoned property’ cases remain unresolved today in Port Harcourt, a city whose Igbo names were changed after the war, creating “Rumu” from “Umu.” Nigerian soldiers carried out a horrendous massacre in Asaba, murdering the males in a town which is today still alive with painful memories. Some Igbo families are still waiting, half-hoping, that a lost son, a lost daughter, will come home. All of these stories can sit alongside one another. The Nigerian stage is big enough. Chinua Achebe has told his story. This week, he turns 82. Long may he live.

Ginger says A Loud Amen to That.

Re to Prism: Should A Man of God Own a Private Jet?

noreply@blogger.com (Ginger) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:11:00 +0000

I was jejely trying to do my blog rounds this morning (that was Sunday morning) before mass then thanks to Prism, I watched this video survey where random Nigerians where being asked about the appropriateness of a pastor owning a private jet’ and I just had to stop mid hop to write this as Prism didnt enable comments on the post. Don't blame you love.

My conclusion…’We Nigerians deserve the leadership we have’!!

Now let me tell you about a more or less popular figure. The Pope: Vicar of the Catholic Church, also the Head of government of a sovereign state…you know, Rome (not Canaan land, not Dominion City).

Prof referred me to the link (here) about the Pope’s 4 day state visit to Edinburgh 2 years ago. Yes, the news is old but I am sure the circumstances of the Pope hasn’t changed.

The Pope flew to Edinburgh in an Alitalia aircraft which was set aside from normal scheduled passenger operations because the Vatican does not own and operate a jet exclusively for the Pope’s foreign travel!!
Furthermore, the aircraft is flown by regular Alitalia pilots and cabin crew (not SS agents) and unlike Air Force One, the official aircraft of the President of the United States, the Pope’s plane is not kitted out with any special facilities such as an office or a bar. Instead, the Pontiff gets a row to himself at the front of the aircraft, with the most senior officials from the Vatican Secretariat of seated in the rows directly behind.
On his return trip from state visits, the Pope usually flies on the airline of the country he is visiting.
Remember this is a persona that will be received by heads of State and other important dignitaries.
This is a persona that tens/hundreds of thousands of Catholic faithful will happily leave their work to line up the streets and wave to/at. Not because they are expecting him to wrought miracles or breakthroughs....No! just because of who he is.

Now kindly answer the following questions from Prof. Thank you!

Which do you think is the most important reason why the pope, the head of state and head of government of a sovereign state, owns NO PRIVATE JET?

A. The Vatican can't afford one.

B. Europe is in a deep financial crisis - (you remember the economic meltdown that started in 2008 and which hit every country in the world except Nigeria? Yes, that one!)

C. Vatican city residents are too poor/stingy to sow the seed of 'exclusive extra-terrestrial mobility' :)

Note: per capita income in the Vatican is about $452,784; Nigeria's per capita income is $2,748).

D. Citizens of Italy and the Vatican know what is necessary and what is not.

E. None of the above.

Thank you Prof for the link and Poll Questions.

Over to you Blogfam....

Ginger's Blog

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What is this about Judges enjoying great latitude to determine punishment for conviction leading to some rapists being sentenced to three months imprisonment? Rape pass rape abi? Even if so the lower limit should be higher than 3months haba!

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Re to Prism: Should A Man of God Own a Private Jet?