By Ezenwa

There is no one around and so I mischievously open WhatsApp and click on the first unread message from an Amaka and read,’I wanna feel the soft curves of your body again’, and that is when Cheta walks in and asks, what are you doing with my mum’s phone?’.

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Maybe it had something to do with dad dying drunk in that ditch three years ago, or with mother dying of tuberculosis and grief a year later or Aunty Bisi making it abundantly clear that I had no place among her ajebo kids. Whatever it was, the streets opened their bowels to me and in there, I found a banquet of vices.

Alhaji thought me to steal and turn in the proceeds. Muideen helped me perfect the craft of pick pocketing and even  Eiye tried to recruit me. I declined, however. Dad had died at forty six, mother had joined him at thirty-seven. I was determined to outlive the sum of their years, if the fates allowed.

If fate permitted! For now, fate permitted me to live on the streets of this world. Prowling them everyday, but especially at night. Picking up one thing here and another thing there. Sleeping in slimy quarters and being at the mercy of slimy people. Paying guest to the Stygian darkness and playing host to the indefatigable swarm of mosquitoes, each struggling for a taste of my blood, each working feverishly to feed, each deadly with its mandibles, each persistent with its songs.

On one of my forays, I stumbled upon a stray book. I supposed it had strayed from an itinerant library or from a leaking school bag. I had half expected someone to shout at me as I picked it up. But no one seemed bothered that I was picking up an inexhaustible treasure trove.The only voice directed at me   was that of the words screaming at me from the cover of the book. It read `After the storm’   by  Bala Balogun. I fitted it into my shirt even as I continued my thieving   itinerary. Though, I now had more spring in my step. It seemed I was now walking with balls under my feet. I knew it was the book and the unbelievable excitement I knew I would derive from finally having something to read.

Later that night, as I followed Bashir, the protagonist of the book as he defied impossible odds to escape from improbable situations. I knew I had found a brother, a kindred spirit, a soul mate and a friend. As I followed him to the schools he attended in fits and starts, I remember the days before dad had lost his job, taken to drinking and acquired a savage temper. I had attended a nice school, and each night, dad was always beside himself with eagerness to read books to me and help out with my homework even when he was tired to his eyebrows. After alcohol took him away, mum had tried her best, but she had been unable to cope. When I finally had to stop school, I remember crying myself ill. But the tears had failed to sweep away my love for books.

When I finally slept, I dreamt of my newly found treasure. I dreamt that an ogre was trying to snatch it from me but my young, spindly legs simply had too much pace for him. I had escaped. When I awoke, `After the Storm’ was still lying by me and surely, Bashir was alive in its pages. As   I got up to continue my hustle through the hassles of the  day. Somehow, I knew the storm would soon be over and there would be sun after the storm. Maybe, then I would even return to school.

Somehow, I wish the world would learn that with books, the streets and their spawns could be schooled.

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Like the wavering of the tree branches by the ferocity of the wind, so was Jessica; lacking a defined destination and turned wherever she was blown. Like the tossing of the sea, side to side, so was her unsteadiness even at the home she called hers, and like the stalwart fly which consents to nothing except it be buried along with the carcass, so were her unheeding ears. But what Nneka regretted most was that she contributed greatly to Jessica’s defiance.

Nneka was an out-and-out Christian: she prayed down fire and brimstone, sang like the heavenly choir, attended all church activities, and held many positions which left her with little or no time for family. Her husband Kachi – Sunday worshipper – who she sometimes called ‘devil’s incarnate’ has been a barrier to her service to God (so she thought): he complained about her insouciance to family matters and would sometimes attempt to stop her from attending some redundant conferences; this often enthused quarrels. She was certainly good at it, and that, she did in the presence of their daughter who she never took to her church prayer meetings. She never minded using invectives on him and never failed to add how his soul has been incarcerated by the devil and would require a serious deliverance to set him free.

“God first!” She would often yell.

“You should’ve become a Nun!” Kachi would riposte.

“But you chose to raise a family, why not give it your time?”

That was all he required, not for himself, but for their daughter. Save for the little time he created out of his piled-up schedules, she was mostly at the mercy of nannies.

Severally had he opted for a divorce, but at such moments, she would plead and lament of the shame it would fetch her, yet she never listened to him. To her, he never said the mind of God, nobody did, she was always right and everybody’s wrong, even in church meetings, her opinion always stood.

Becoming an adult, Jessica never listened to her too. She austerely told her that she had no right to control her actions because she wasn’t there when she needed her. When things got worse, complaints as to Jessica’s waywardness started escalating densely, but Nneka would defend: this is a temptation posed by Lucifer to weigh down my faith in God, but he has failed….

The same evening she got the information, Kachi came home with a sack letter: Jessica had stolen almost half a million Naira from the money he brought home from work two days before. The same evening when everything had stood still, even the smoothest breeze couldn’t caress her skin, the same evening that had given her a lasting nightmare and drained nearly all the liquid her eyes reserved, the same evening she recognized her mistakes and understood that even God never accepted her selfish service to Him, a cursed evening that would always ring a mournful bell in her mind; the police called and demanded that she came and see if one of the lifeless, armless, feetless and breast-‘less’ bodies in their custody was Jessica’s….

Nneka couldn’t bear the loss of her daughter; her only child. The divorce she so much dreaded came at last, the shame came too. She should’ve carried her family along, she should’ve listened to Kachi and at least accorded him the respect he deserved; he was the head. She thought she was on the right track, without a fissure, and had neglected to realize her wrong and accept it to make amends, which is indeed the first principle of morality.

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By Uchechi Princewill

They tried; they hated, but my God is bigger than them. My publisher has gone through the manuscript. She smiles. I smile, too.

“Good story, Joe, but I can’t publish this.”

“B-But why?” I look around for signs of my village people.

“Your main character’s a Mary Sue.”

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If there was any life lesson I learnt from my almost 21 years in the Banking industry, then this is it:

WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN.

I feel compelled to make this post because of Trump’s recent sacking of the FBI Director, James Comey, who started testifying about his encounter with Donald Trump on June 8, with hints that Comey had kept written memos of their various encounters.

I have always acknowledged the power of the written word and in every incidence that I have been saved or delivered in my banking career, it was because I had taken the pains to take copious notes of every encounter and every conversation.

I will share two experiences in which I wrote down my encounters and conversations and was saved from bosses who would have fed me to the lions, or hung me out there to dry.

A few years ago, I was managing the account of Africa’s richest man. I never got to meet him one-on-one, but I always had an idea of what he wanted done at any point time and on the account through his aides and the Directors of the company.

One afternoon, I received a fax message from the office of the Head of the Commercial Banking Group. The fax message contained a request for the payment of $200,000.00 as offshore fees for the largest cement project in Africa. The payment of $200,000.00 was expected to trigger a transfer of $2million to the bank for the development of the cement project.

As I received the fax message, I started packaging the customer’s request. After a while, I met with my Supervisor and the first question he asked me was why would the customer be making a request of this nature at that moment. He wanted to know the basis for this new request when the customer was already heavily exposed to the bank. I continued working on it because I knew my boss was being sentimental about the request. You don’t tell Africa’s richest man that you won’t grant his request to pay fees of $200,000.00 to trigger an inward transfer of $2million for Africa’s largest cement project. Intermittently, I kept reminding my Supervisor about the request and at some point he told me pointblank that the bank isn’t solely in business to attend to the request of this company. Despite my boss’s misgivings, I concluded the request and kept it in my drawer.

After almost a month, the customer called the MD of the bank to enquire if the fees had been paid to the funding partners for the project. The MD was shocked that the customer had a request with the bank and that it hadn’t been processed in one month. The MD called the Head of the Commercial Banking Group from whose office I got the fax message containing the request and he denied ever receiving a request from the customer. The Head of the Commercial Banking Group called my boss and my immediate boss called me and I reminded him of the request that I have been working on in the last one month. He told me to bring all that I have done and he called the Head of the Commercial Banking Group. My boss was shocked that despite his lack of interest in the request, I kept on working on it. He called the Head of the Commercial Banking group that I had worked on the request. I was asked to bring the request to the Head Office.

Within 24 hours, the bank transferred $200,000.00 to facilitate the release of $2million from the funding partners abroad to the cement project.

Now the bank wanted to punish someone for this lapse. The MD asked the Head of the Commercial Banking Group to issue a query. And I was the one who the query was issued to.

I have never been enraged in my life. Since I kept copious notes of all the roles each man played in delaying the request of Africa’s richest man, I had the best defence thinkable in the chain of events. Since it was obvious that everyone was going down, I was called by the Head of the Banking Group and asked to take a transfer to anywhere I desire. I didn’t hesitate as I was already sick and tired of working with bosses who were only interested in protecting themselves and always willing to make you the fall guy at the slightest hint of a problem.

The second incident involved my transfer from the Mainland to a new team on the Island. Immediately I resumed, a loan of N40million had just been packaged and approved by a staff who had falsified her age when she joined the bank. She was asked to resign and the new loan account was transferred to me to manage.

I took the loan account and I started out by asking a fundamental question. I observed that a major process in the packaging of the request had been skipped – there was no credit check on the borrower. I asked the Team Leader why this major process was skipped and she told me that if she had included that major credit check the request would have been declined and that would have meant a poor outing for the Team at the end of the quarter.

I kept copious notes of all these encounters and conversations. There is no encounter and conversation that is insignificant in a work environment.

The loan went bad and the Team leader did everything to prove that the loan went bad because of lapses arising from poor management of the account on my part.

Once again, I revealed the date and time of all my conversations about this loan facility. I showed the bank the major reason why a major credit check was skipped – the company was granted a loan of N40million when the Team Leader knew of an outstanding bad loan of N1.2billion against the company in other banks.

To be able to navigate this world it’s not enough to rely on your brain alone. You must learn to write every encounter and conversation down. People carry about faulty mental maps and issues quickly devolve into, “you-said-I-said.”

Two final ideas.

First, learn to keep a journal to record all your experiences and encounter with people. When you work in a formal environment, you’d be risking your job if you don’t document encounters with staff and clients. Your story is only as strong as your journal and not your brain which can prove unreliable when you need it the most.

Second, rely less on your brain to keep you abreast of issues you deal with daily. It’s only when you understand your own notes that you can claim to have a grasp of the issues that may arise tomorrow. It’s a jungle out there and you can stave off being eaten only if you have your facts well documented.

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FATE OF THE FIBBER – By Isiwu Nancy

I learnt the art of lying as a teenager. I didn’t like the word “lying”. I’d rather term it “playing smart”. If I wanted more money for snacks during recess at school, I would invent fictional fees which covered the extra expenses. If I wanted to hang out with my friends I would use a false excuse. If I wanted to skip classes, I would feign ill-health. If I was caught in the act I would fabricate more stories to cover up my tracks.

Thus, I always manipulated my way into getting whatever I wanted. Being an only child, my parents were liberal with me. They obliged my every wimp and hardly reprimanded me. I disliked the help. She always gave me this stern look. She detested my incessant lies and how I easily got away with them. She thought I was spoilt but could do nothing about it as she was forbidden from rebuking me.
“She can shrink in her cocoon of morality for all I care,” I thought

I continued to bask in the euphoria of my crafty exploits until one day something went wrong.

It was on 27th May, 2011. I had earlier told my parents that I would be having extramural lessons after school hours. A lie they effortlessly believed. In actual fact, I wanted to hang around after school with Ekene, the boy I liked in class. So the chauffeur didn’t come to pick me up at the usual time. I had scaled through with yet another lie. I happily skipped down the path that lead to the school farm. I got to the mango tree beside my class’ farm lot. We often sat under its shade to rest after tilling the soil. My tiny biceps always hurt after each farm work but it was a convenient escape from the classroom boredom. Ekene often helped me with moulding the soil into ridges as I prattled away with my friends. A noise from the nearby bushes cut off my streams of thought. It was Ekene.

“Oh! Chioma you’ve not gone home?” he asked which made me smile rather sheepishly.

I reached out for one of the green leaves on a branch of the tree and began fondling with it. We talked for a while. Most of the words were his. I simply laughed at his bland jokes and watched the way his lips moved as he spoke.

“I have to go. My driver will soon be here,” I said drawing the conversation to an end.

“Okay let me walk you down” he replied

As we turned to walk back, he briskly pulled me to his bosom.

“You know I like you Chioma,” he said.

I wanted to reply but his lips were pressed into mine. The slimy saliva on his tongue spilled all over my mouth. I forcefully pushed him away

“Stop that,” I spat

“Common, no one will see us.”

I became alarmed. I made to use my heels but he roughly shoved me to the ground.

“No Ekene! Leave me alone!” I screamed but to no avail.

He pinned me to the ground with the weight of his body atop mine. I screamed for help but none came. He quickly pushed my skirt above my waist and thrust into me. Blood seeped between my thighs and tears dripped down my eyes. I didn’t understand what made Ekene turn beastly in split seconds. The stern look of the help flashed across my mind. I remembered all my tricks and lies. I was the architect of my fate. I had fallen into the pit I dug with my own hands. In the pain and shame of those seconds I swore never to lie again.

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INTRODUCTION
It is commonly said that a photograph is worth a thousand words.
If indeed one photograph is worth 1,000 words, then it would be appropriate to find that one photograph that would be worth so many words with our fans.

THEME
Can we get anyone to send photograph(s) – portraits, landscapes photos, street photos, observations photos (poor sign writing and other funny photos) or just about any photographs of interest that would attract the most comments from our teeming fans, friends and family members?
We are looking for that one photograph that would elicit a thousand words.

ELIGIBILITY
Photographers (Professionals, amateurs and photo enthusiasts) are invited to post their photographs, while giving the opportunity to our fans, friends and family members to like/comment/share such photographs.

SUBMISSION
1. Register once online @ www.storried.com.

2. Post your #SMC entry after completing your online registration with Storried using the SEND A STORY button on the topmost left corner of the Storried website.

Maximum number of photographs that can be submitted by any author each month is there (3).

PRIZE
One (1) week intensive training in 3D MAKER REVOLUTION at the prestigious INNOV8XIONS LAB, a brand of Cheth Limited. Training is worth N55,000.00.

DEADLINE
Friday June 3o, 2017 @ Midnight

RULES
1.) Only original photographs to which the author has complete intellectual property and copyright shall be considered.
2.) There must be a short story accompanying the submitted photograph which gives an insight into what the photograph is about, or the inspiration behind the photograph.
3.) Photographs must not have been submitted in any other competition before now.
4.) Submitted works can be shot with mobile phones and not necessarily professional cameras or any other professional device.
5.) No need to provide any technical details – type of lens used, aperture and shutter speed – for photographs submitted to #SMVSC.
6.) Storried Team shall only accommodate comments made on the Facebook page. No email should be sent to the Storried Team in respect of the #SMVSC.
7.) Authors are encouraged to invite friends and family to comment/share and like their photo entries. For objectivity, the Storried Team would not make any comment on any photograph.
8.) Authors are encouraged to not brand their photographs with their signage or trademarks, which might give the impression that the works belong solely to the owner of the signage or trademarks and that may conflict with the issue of ownership of the work.
9.) Authors are encouraged to desist from sending NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) photographs. If such work is submitted, the author risk being banned from entering for future #SMVSCs.
10.) The Storried Team shall ensure that the authors intellectual property rights and copyrights in submitted works are followed. In the event that third parties would require the use of submitted photographs, the Storried Team shall contact the author.
11.) To maintain objectivity and neutrality, no member of the Storried Team nor anyone directly or remotely connected with the Storried Team and it’s owners or workers is eligible for the #SMVSC.
12.) Authors are encouraged to provide their details like phone number and email address so that the Storried Team can contact winners of the #SMVSC with ease and frustrate the antics of frauds and impostors.
13.) Storried Team has the final say on the winning entry and reserves the right not to declare a winning entry if in any particular month all the entries submitted do not make the cut for what genuinely constitutes a visual storytelling photograph.
14.) The Storried Team shall not entertain any inquiries after results have been officially announced through the Storried website and social media accounts.
15.) All authors are encouraged to understand the contents of the rules guiding the competition before they submit their entries. Failure to comply with any of the competition rules can disqualify any author even though such photograph has garnered the most likes, shares, comments or views.
16.) By submitting an entry, an author agrees to be bound by the entirety of these rules.

The post STORRIED MONTHLY VISUAL STORYTELLING COMPETITION (#SMVSC) – JUNE 2017 appeared first on Storried - Tell Your Story, Change The World.

JUNE 2017 THEME: “WITHOUT THE DARK, WE’D NEVER SEE THE STARS.”

CLOSING DATE: Friday, June 30, 2017 @ Midnight

SUBMISSION @:
1. Register once online @ www.storried.com.

2. Post your #SMC entry after completing your online registration with Storried using the SUBMIT A STORY button on the topmost left corner of the Storried website.

BENEFITS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
1.) N20,000.00.
2.) Two Honourable Mentions in any particular month wins N10,000.00.
3.) Every entry now receives a personalized analysis from our amiable judges about what can be improved about the story submitted.
4.) Continued mentorship by way of introduction of Storried fans to other online training programs and invitations to creative writing seminars and workshops in Nigeria through the Storried Online School for Storytelling.
Visit the website for more details: www.storried.com
Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/storried
Follow us on Twitter: @storried247

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Years ago, I had an unusual experience when I visited a family who just had a baby. I went in the company of my sister. When we saw the baby, we noticed she was unusually dark. The mother would later confirm to us that she was going to apply skin-lightening creams on the baby to make her complexion lighter. She said she couldn’t stand her baby’s shade of black.

Parents have been striving to have babies that would draw the admiration of others. So babies’ skin have been toned or outrightly bleached and in some cases their bodies have been pierced. It’s not uncommon today to see boys having their ears pierced and wearing earrings a little after birth. We just want to make them physically attractive instead of loving them the way they are.

Last week, I read a post on Facebook about a woman who was seeking help concerning one of her daughters who she considers ugly.

The post went like this:

“I have a 9 year old daughter who likes to wear colourful dresses, make her hair and likes putting on my makeups. My daughter takes after hubby’s family; they are dark and the women’s features are strong. I always lie to my daughter that she is beautiful, but she is not. I do this because I love her so much but it’s getting hard to lie to her and to myself. I tell her and myself she is beautiful, but she’s just not beautiful, not like her younger sister who takes after me. It’s becoming difficult so I want to stop telling her that. I think it’s wrong to tell an ugly person that they are beautiful when they are not. Am I wrong.”

I will share a personal experience concerning my daughter and why loving a child the way she is is the answer to making an ugly baby beautiful.

According to our Doctor, my wife has a small pelvic and can only give birth through Caesarean Section. Our three children were delivered through this procedure. During the delivery of the third child, a girl, the same spot that had been cut in the two previous operations had become febrile and as the doctor applied his knife this third time it sliced through my wife’s stomach and landed straight on the cheek of my daughter.

After the surgery, I was invited to come and see my daughter and I was shocked to see blood gushing out of her cheek. I knew something was wrong and you know how things go here. The Doctor who did the surgery tried to dismiss what had just happened as a minor incident and was quick to explain that as my daughter grows up the scar will gradually disappear because the scar will blend with the skin. I had consulted with a Doctor who was also a Pastor and member of my church. He was not directly responsible for the surgery as he had invited his friend who he said is more experienced than he is in such procedures. So, in the immediate, I believed him and the Consultant who carried out the operation.

My wife was discharged, the scar grew and didn’t disappear as the Doctors had promised me. As a young child, my daughter wasn’t strikingly comely because of a multitude of factors – she had an unusually big head, her hair wasn’t growing as fast as was expected and then you add the scar on one side of her cheeks.

I was particularly troubled about a young girl who will grow to be a lady and with a big head, hair that won’t grow and a surgical scar on the cheek.

She started school and the scar became a reference point in school. She kept on asking how she had a scar on one side of her cheeks. I was quite confused as I felt I couldn’t explain in a language she could properly understand.

After kindergarten, her questions persisted in primary school. When she was 7 and I felt she could properly understand me, I called her after an incident in school and for which she had now started trying to peel out the scar. I told her how the scar came to be on her face and that she may have to live with it. I also told her that it was the surgical procedure that ushered her into this world that gave her the scar and that that same procedure had brought her eldest sister and brother into the world without any incident.

Quite surprising, she understood and promised to stop trying to take out the scar and that she was willing to live with it. I ensured that she got the best treatment for her hair and we had started noticing healthy sprouts of hair growth. I also kept emphasizing the importance of healthy eating and how it can improve her general well-being.

We all showed her love to improve her confidence level and I got her some good literature to read about children growing up. Today at 9, she is a far cry from the person she was at birth and her early years. She is beautiful and she knows it herself.

What worked were the conversations the family had with her and the nutrition and reading times we all shared.

We don’t act in love if we query why our children are ugly after birth. When children come into our lives and they don’t cut our idea of beauty we shouldn’t be disappointed. We owe them a duty of care to imbue confidence in them by encouraging them to see beauty beyond their faces. A child is a product of two parties and it’s not in every case a baby will come with all the features we expect to see in beautiful babies.

Designer babies have been promised by Scientists and it’s almost safe to say that parents would have the opportunity to choose how their babies should look in future. The ethics of this is not yet known, but there would be implications no doubt.

Until that time when we would be able to design our babies with the help of Scientists, it is proper that for now we help our ugly babies survive their arrival into the world and support their growth into the men and women that we expect them to be by encouraging their unique personalities through our show of love – it is only by loving them as they are created that we can make them beautiful.

The post ONLY LOVE CAN MAKE AN UGLY BABY BEAUTIFUL appeared first on Storried - Tell Your Story, Change The World.

I stood and walked round an employee who had been caught in funds embezzlement. It pained me to think that he was hindering the progress of my Building Company in his own little way and I wanted nothing more than to make an example of him, to sack him on the job and in a twinkle of an eye with no pay whatsoever. But I wouldn’t. No, I couldn’t. Because seven years ago, this man could have easily passed for me.

Before I went ahead to establish my own company, I used to work for Henry & Sons Ltd. The salary was acceptable but because I was insatiable, much too insatiable, I used to put some cash away from the money left in my care as I was the Accountant.

It started when I realized that all the money left in my care was unaccounted for and whatever amount I said the entire money was it would be accepted without question. And so, I removed a percent, then two, three and four right up to ten.

But somehow, I was found out.

The day it happened started like any other day; I rushed out from my house by five in the morning to beat the breathtaking Lagos traffic and got to the office one or two minutes after seven. I went downstairs to get some breakfast and on my way, I realized that the people I greeted were giving me standoffish behaviour. I couldn’t care less anyway and so I went ahead to get my breakfast.

I rushed through breakfast and I went back into my office to start the day’s work. As usual, the money was dropped off in my office by a clerk and I remember rubbing my hands in glee because the envelope in which the cash was in was exceptionally huge. And so I counted after which I removed ten percent for myself. I recorded the amount that remained after I had cut my ‘share’ out in the cash book. Then, I emailed the amount to the other accountant whose job I did not know.

Approximately an hour later, a call came in from the Managing Director. He asked for me to come over to his office at once. Without thinking or worrying, I hurried over.

He silently walked round me when I entered his office, looking at me as if it were the first time he was seeing me. I was unease, if for nothing else, at his silence.

“You’re embezzling?” He asked, finally breaking the silence. My eyes widened. “Calling it ‘Embezzlement is too fancy, no? You are stealing from Henry & Sons Ltd, not so?”

I opened my mouth and closed it then opened it again.

“Don’t lie to me. Say the truth; if you lie to me that would aggravate me the more.”

And so I said the truth.

“Good. Everyday is for the thief but one day is for the owner. And now, the owner has found out so you will have to leave us with immediate effect. Get out,” he said, pointing to the door.

I had opened the door and was about to step out when he added: “What goes around comes around.”

And so I left the company, shamed.

Now, I own my company and I have found an employee who has been stealing from me. As I said, I want to sack him but I can’t. I will only demote him, that’s all.

After I asked him to leave, my former employer’s word came back to me.

“What goes around comes around.”

I shuddered.

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