10 lessons I’ve learned two months into 2016

Children of God!

How’s everyone doing? Good? I know, I’ve been absent, not unavoidably, but I promise I couldn’t help it. I need you to understand how hard I tried! God is faithful sha, the year’s shaping up really nicely, and I can’t but be thankful. Where do I start from? I have a brand new, gorgeous niece! Like, when I held her like an hour after she popped out (literally, lol), I felt like my heart would explode! Very thankful!

Take a minute to admire my gorgeous head, will you?

So, what I’ve been up to? Or do we just look at the things I said I’ve learned and then they incorporate bits of what I’ve been up to? Yep, I prefer the second option, let’s do that.

1. Sometimes you need to let people go. Like cut them off, and uprooting whatever stumps they attempt to leave behind because they’re cancerous and you don’t want any reappearances. And sometimes that can be difficult. And that’s ok, because we’re human, flesh and blood, etc. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do sometimes!
2. Prayer is a direct line to God. Like D-I-R-E-C-T. So in February my inner lights of my car stopped working, and I’m afraid of my mechanic cos every time he fixes something it’s never what it used to be. So it works, but I just know the general equilibrium of the car has been messed with. Anyway, so that night I prayed and said to God that He could fix my car and save me from using potential tithe or offering money to fix it (I know, I’m such a spoiled Jesus baby). Guess what? Next night I drove the car, guess whose inner lights came on? Whoop! Thank you God!
3. Mechanics, tailors, carpenters, electricians, all artisans are cut from the same cloth. Like I cannot deal! I was going to learn tailoring (and I know a friend who picked up the skill recently and is doing great) but am I going to learn all the others too? Sigh.
4. Babies are work, a lot of work! My niece has the loudest voice I’ve ever heard on a baby… my God! Like when she’s upset, she can raise the dead! To be honest I don’t remember if my nephew was this loud or if we’ve forgotten because he’s a bit older (3 going on 300, lol). Either way my little princess has lungs! Dang! She will join a choir biko, we won’t waste this talent.
5. Children say the darndest things, no really they do. So, my nephew is three, our little majesty. He’s awesome, and I’m excited at how much he’s growing up, and how he’s learned that Chioma’s iPad needs something called internet if he’s going to watch Dora the Explorer on it. Lol. So, where it would have been “Chioma can I use your iPad?” it’s become “Chioma do you have internet?” Lol. Cuteness overload when he wakes up in the morning and first thing he asks me is if I have internet. Uncle say good morning jor!
6. I miss my aunt, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop talking about her. So my mom’s been around for just under a month now, and we were all gisting yesterday when it occurred to us that we talk about my aunty maybe everyday! Sometimes more than once in a day. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. You bastard.
7. I haven’t read as much as I planned to do this year. I said I would do a minimum of three books a month, I’m almost rolling my eyes at how far away from that I am! Sigh. Who has a reading plan or something like that I can TRY to follow? I just feel a little inadequate when I’m not amassing titles and going through them.
8. I haven’t been out of Nigeria since January, and outside Africa since October. Have you looked at the exchange rates recently? Cough.
9. 30 isn’t as scary as I thought it would be. It’s the big 3-0 in a few months, and I have a whole lineup of activities I’m working on, across a number of continents (yes Boo), and involving a few crazy heights! Yeesss!! I c-a-n-n-o-t wait! Bucket list of life and destiny! Now looking up to God and showing him the total for the trip, and smiling, because God likes it when I smile. Lol…
10. I fasted in January with my church, HolyHill Church in Wuse 2. 21 days (20 for me because I missed one day). It was quite the experience, and I look forward to being able to do that and just focus on God without it being a congregational activity. There’s nothing like activating a direct line to God walai… I cannot explain!

There you have it, 10 things I’ve been opened up to from the beginning of this year till now.

11. And here’s a nice little number 11 because it’s my blog, and I can – I’m a fine girl! Whoosh!!! Ok, I didn’t just figure that out, lol, but this is more like your point to ponder, reflect on, and dance to! Lol!

PS: I almost had an accident yesterday night… I was headed to Shoprite to buy chicken (lol, bestie says I wasn’t even going anywhere ‘serious’) and suddenly this guy in a Toyota Camry just comes out of literally nowhere. I’m over 100km/hr and so I call the name above every other name and step on the brakes – the one oyibo people call ‘jam the brakes’ – and I’ve never heard screeching that loud. My God! I didn’t hit it (ram into it would have been a more accurate description). My hands were steady, I didn’t swerve or endanger anyone, and interestingly, even though the guy sped forward just a little bit (when he heard the screeching I guess), the space between us wasn’t that much when my car stopped. Phew!

Praise God with me!

#31Days31Writers – Jaiye is up! “Change came, but it is that kind of change that changes the change maker”

The last time Jaiye was in London, we were supposed to meet up to catch a movie, and I got to him late. The way he scolded me eh! Wow… but that’s just the kind of person he is. Big brother, super writer, someone I really look up to. After all the scolding, we had a great time watching Thor 2, and then munching on wedges and potato skins!

I don’t remember how we first met, but I remember catching up at lunches in Abuja, and Jaiye being gracious enough to do an interview for a class project during my Master’s Degree. I’m super excited he could write, I literally bullied him into doing this on a weekend he was very busy! What else are big brothers for?

My name is Jaiyeola Jeffrey Ifihan, I’m a Geoscientist and I’ve been set up.

Life for a writer with long-standing memory block becomes extremely daunting when alter-egos are suspended just for the real person to show up.

Outside my Nine to Five, I have/had pretended to have a life as a writer, Poet and I’ve been to the studio to record severally, most of which found their way to some lone archives in my computer while some made it to blogs. A video made it to TV but was ‘too revolutionary’ to last on air. Come to think of it, who does a video about Nigeria’s dark history when there is an unwritten gag order on it? (Four years after, it would be the turn of Half of a Yellow Sun to receive a post-dated unwritten memo on this gag order).

Okay, focus Jeff. Your alter-egos are not here to help you.

I lost faith in the Nigerian project sometime somewhere. Perhaps there are species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (yeah, keep the two) who go to bed full of Faith and wake up Atheists, I think mine was a slow process.

The emotional drain of the Occupy Nigeria protests of January 2012, the disdain the green passport attracts almost everywhere in the world, the realization out of the blue that Nigerian Youth have morphed into ‘uber-divisive’ beings. Somewhere in-between, my Faith got lost.

When it comes to the Nigerian, the 3D body scanners just won’t do. I once travelled in a track-down to avoid the pull-your-belt syndrome, but that was the very day that I got an extra security-smooch in Schiphol. It hurt when I observed people with a lighter tone of skin underwent lighter scrutiny.

It is a paranoid world.  Everywhere you go, you are constantly reminded. Dogs willing to sniff out the bush meat in your baggage, airport P.A Systems warning you not to crack jokes with airport security, buying TSA padlocks because the requirement for visiting Yankee is to surrender the privacy of your baggage. Yet, the Airport Terminals connecting Flights to Nigeria are super crowded. No love shown outside, we return, to a Nation that shows us no Love, just MMIA (Murtala Muhammed International Airport) heat.

Somehow, the past 6 months had me crossing more time-zones than I have in a life-time, and passing through more Airport Terminals. Each experience fuelled my despondence about Nigeria.

Imagine we had the Underground Rail in Nigeria. Imagine we had a Country that issues 14 day Visa just for tourists to visit and spend their hearts out. Imagine our Airports had Museums where you can catch a glimpse of our ‘Heroes Past’. Scratch that, who are our heroes?

Our heroes are regional household gods who become villains once their names cross their geopolitical zones.

Read the blogs, then try and read the comments that follow and watch your heart bleed.

The car bombs in Afghanistan used to sound strange until few years ago. In the last six months, I have tried to clutch at sanity by avoiding headlines…but then there are blogs and micro blogs (tears non-existent hair)!

I used to find therapy in writing, channelling the anger and passion for change through my blog and the vocal booth. All of a sudden, that passion vanished.

Change came, but it is that kind of change that changes the change maker.

Lest I forget, I am Nigerian.

 

Jaiye Jaiye!! (That’s what I have stored on my phones for him!)

Jaiye went hard!! Love it! I told you he was a super writer didn’t I?