Taggers Inc.

I have been tagged a second time...by SN whom i dare not refuse..he is very special and all that... You can blush, you agbaya!


But before i start answering questions this early morning, i want to share something. and yes it is about God. If you don't like it, na you sabi! Its my blog! 

The Bible says ' This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.'

I see bloggers like SN, T-Notes, Miss Fab , me and countless others trying to figure out how to live for Christ in a world that whispers otherwise to us. It is getting harder but today i woke up and thought to myself... 'I know God, the God that made heaven and earth, the God that would give His all for me in a second without thinking about it. I know God.' A lot of stuff might not be perfect in my life but God is. Today, all i wanted to do was sing out loud and dance and praise the name of this awesome Perfection in my life. It isn't about us, its about him and sin only wins when we wake up and feel burdened enough by it that we do not see the God of creation winking at us from behind the sun or soothing away the heat of our lives with his showers

I am still smiling and it is 11am already. I hope this made some one too smile. May God smile on you too.

Now for more inane questions; I don't know why SN tagged me. The man knows me almost inside out. He just likes to show himself. Mschewwww... I already did the 11 things about me here so we shall not do this again. you will not know 22 things about me. Mysteriousness is the name of the sexy game. But i will tel you a twelfth thing...


12. I love football (The real football. That thing Americans play is called eggball, they just won't ever admit it.) I am the truest Barcelona fan you have ever come across- i cry when we lose, i am on a coke-high when we win. I threaten fans of clubs we are playing in the future. I am a thug when it comes to Barcelona. there is nothing womanly about me when it comes to Barcelona...sigh, and Messi, Messi is my baby, my angel, my love. I get a rush of blood to my head when he chips goalkeepers. That is all.

1. Who started this thing biko? Jobless people
2. What drives/motivates/pushes you in life - God, my mother, love
3. If you could pick one place on earth to be at the moment you answer this question, who/where will it be - The Caribbean and with the man God has chosen for me( now eyeing heaven)
4. What is your favourite blog, top blog online (Don’t lie, God is watching you) - it's a toss up between T-Notes and Seye
5. If God were to close his eyes for 10 hours and grant you a hall pass, what would you do with it? Have sex with Idris Elba and make sure i get pregnant. I want a baby with his eyes
6. What makes you happy? (If you tell me God, I will swear for you. I said what, not who) - Writing, Plantains, Pizza, hot fine looking men(what???), love
7. Do you have a daughter? If yes, how old? soon
8. Would you let your daughter marry my son? NO!!!
9. What is the one thing you wish for more than anything else. Heaven
10. At a scale of Hulk to worker ant, what do you do when you are angry? Hulk
11. What is your favourite animal? The Lion

I am tagging everyone who hasn't blogged in a while. Kindly clear the cobwebs in your blog space abeg. 

God loves you, more than you can imagine, more than anyone can tell you. He is a prayer away.

Song of the day: Iwo Nikan Logo Ye

New York and me

Sigh...so i would never do this on a good day when my senses are complete...but New York sun fried my remaining senses. Hopefully since i am back in a sane place, I will get them back. T-Notes caught me at a good time, i guess...so here goes


I am supposed to post 11 things about myself and then answer 11 questions asked by the tagger(which kind ajayi-work-no-pay be this?) 


11 things about moi:

1. I am moody- God help my husband and children
2. I love God like you can't imagine-everything i am (the good stuff oh) is all him and i still find it hard to believe he would die for me-crazy old me, silly old me, sinful old me-sigh 
3. I keep pennies, quarters, dimes etc and spend them when shopping for things i don't need. It is a way of assuaging my conscience that it isn't that much money to spend on myself. So you will find me in MACY'S keeping up the lines just because i am paying for stuff with coins. Ijebu oh!
4. I love to write and read- Go figure
5. I am addicted to plantains...
6. I have a huge crush on Seye Blogs - the way he writes is very arousing- my goodness. I hope his wife never reads this. that's all!
7. I schooled in the Northern Part of Nigeria and once watched the almajiris butcher students of a neighboring school. 
8. I want Ngozi Okonjo Iweala's job. I could do a better job than she is doing- i had an A+ in Macroeconomics so Yimu...
9. I do not take criticism about my writing well...especially from people that cannot write. There is  a particular blogger whom almost everyone else seems to respect (God knows why) but i think is full if s**t. When the said person criticises my work, it is everything i can do not to take them to a  new low. So far, so good...Still, don't push it! But please, great criticism is welcome as always-just be nice about it.
10. I can sing...oh boy, can i sing...once got a standing ovation after singing an Adele's song. Do you know how hard it is to sing an Adele's song? And i got a standing ovation! Not 'sitting' oh, 'standing'...What more proof do you need?
11. I don't get what people's fascination with sex is. I really don't. If i didn't want children, i would be a nun! P.s this doesn't change the fact that i am a sexy lady...Please find proof below- a bad hair day, no shoes on, sweaty after parading round Ithaca and I still look this good...eh hen! (and yes, that is green nail polish i have on my toenails-sexy, sexy, sexy)lol

 

Some guy was trying to steal my thunder-hence the evil eye!

T-Notes's questions


1. Earliest sex experience (confess and describe)? Dear T-Notes, You are such a  pervert
2. Kinkiest sex thrill (Yes, that fantasy)? mschewwww
3. Proudest body part? Eyes
4. Wildest sexcapade (actual real life)? The beach
5. What would you change about yourself..makes you insecure? Boobs
6. How many true friends do you have? Five, or maybe six - one of them is this amazing young man SN i found on blog world. I am forever grateful.
7. What are trying to achieve in your life right now? Convince a man to marry me and give me twins- ok seriously, Make plenty money so i can live in New York for the rest of my life!
8. What are you afraid of? Going to hell
9. Why (do) you believe in God? If there is no God, then there is no need...for any of it.
10. If a movie were made about your life, what would the theme song be? Train- Drops of Jupiter
11. Greatest life accomplishment till date. Getting an MBA - Well in the process


So i am tagging the following people just because I am required to SN, AJ, lovelife , Bee, NakedSha, chinny, Atoskin. Please feel free to give inane answers.


Did i tell you guys i get to have a puppy for three months? He is the loveliest thing ever. Sigh...I hope this oyinbo bug of loving pets too much has not bitten me oh!

Song of the day :John Mayer- Shadow Days

The girl with bronze in her ears

The first thing that attracted me to her were her earrings. Now, I know most people of this confused generation probably think that this is the worst thing I could have ever admitted; worse than admitting that I secretly ogle half- naked people sunbathing at Central Park, worse than the fact that I have taken up smoking despite what the Federal Ministry of Health says, worse than all the horrors that plague the world daily...

I can already see all the feminists in the world getting their skirts in a twist over the fact that I was attracted to a woman's jewelry rather than her brain or heart. They will ponder over what a sexist i must be to value a woman by her baubles. If I ever successfully finish this PHD and get to publish a book, they will tell women all over the world to boycott my book.

The world is a weird place these days- compounded by feminists, ageists, racists, activists and etcetra. But I digress from my story...

It was her earrings. They were made of bronze and when she laughed, they laughed with her, vibrating as her body shook with laughter. They hung from her ears like frozen waterfalls and for a moment all i wanted to do was take them in my mouth till the ice melted. She would tell me later that she found them at a flea market in Brooklyn.

Our first date involved walking from booth to booth at the said flea market the very next Saturday after we met. I could not take my eyes off her as she oohed and aahed over wares from around the world. There were calabashes that looked like my Grandmother's back home in Odogbolu. There was cloth from Thailand and handwoven mats from Peru. Everywhere we turned, the world greeted us. I caught a glipsme into her heart everytime she stopped to pet a dog or smile at a child. The earrings drew me but it was that heart, carefree and beautiful, that kept me.

I knew I was in love with her when my grandmother died and the tears failed to cease. The girl with the bronze earrings held me while I mourned. She put me to bed with lemon tea. The lemon tea tasted more like fish oil than tea but I was in love and she could do no wrong.

We moved in together into a one bedroom apartment in Harlem and made love every day. The next door neighbor's child was two and the walls in the builing were thin. He kept us up on many nights and so the girl with bronze in her ear would read me excerpts from her best loved books till i fell in love with them as well. Things fall apart, A Prayer for Owen Meany, An African Child, Trials of Brother Jero...

One day in winter, she stopped reading those books and got herself a cookbook instead. We had to learn to entertain, she said. I came home one day and Things fall Apart and An African Child were missing from our bedside table. She would tell me later she got 3 dollars for them from the thrift shop down the road. She replaced them with books on business etiquette and grooming. She got a job on Wall Street and gave away the earrings. There was no place for them in that concrete corporate jungle. We stopped going to the flea market and resorted to Saks and Bloomingdales for every other thing. We moved out of Harlem and the child that kept us awake at night cried even harder when he saw the movers packing up our things.

The girl with bronze in her ears got pregnant and our child died on the cold steel table of some surgery room. There was no place in her career for a child or the joy and sleepless nights it would bring.

I wept for two nights after that and dreamed of my grandmother. 

Last week, I met someone. And yes, it was the earrings again. This time though they were gold and purchased while the opressive heat of Kano smothered its inhabitants and its winds made their eyes water. She walks me through the sands of her city while we hold hands in the bar. I can almost see the Fulani women and their calabashes of milk and Fura. I can almost taste the dates she tells me will be part of her bride price. I kissed her on Tuesday and felt the warmth of the sun from faraway Kano.She can cook, this wearer of gold earrings. She told me just yesterday that she learned how to from her grandmother and my heart beat faster than it had in a long time. Her books are stained with the ink of the henna that crisscrosses her hands and feet. She will never stop reading, this one.

Her earrings are made of gold. Gold never fades; but the bronze earrings, those ones dimmed a long time ago.




Song of the day: Carlos Santana- Maria Maria

Rahab

So what do Rahab and Kiah have in common??? 


I asked God for a word today and He sent me to the passage about Jericho.


I rolled my eyes and said to God 'There are no walls here that need to fall. Please give me a real word!'


He ignored my impatience and told me to continue. I obeyed (thank goodness) and that's when i discovered Rahab, the harlot!


I have read this story a thousand times and even listened to preaching about it. There was nothing new here for me; afterall i am no harlot. Infact I am probably not that bad a sinner. But here was God giving me a word in Rahab's situation.


A harlot became a mother to the Savior. A harlot became a queen, a mother, someone to be cherished and held in high regard... This was back in the days when harlots were stoned and yet God changed all that in the twinkle of an eye.


God's ways blow me away time and time again. So again I ask you, what does Rahab have in common with me? I have no clue but I am holding fast to God's word. 

"The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent."

I am in NYC at the moment and loving every moment! So all you bloggers in NYC, if you see some crazy tourist taking pictures of everything incessantly, say 'hello Kiah!' I will be wearing my smile and black shorts.


Have a great week people.


Song of the day: Alicia Keys and Jay-Z- Empire State of Mind

Broken

It is so hard to trust God when you don't even trust yourself. A lot harder when you know for sure you are doing exactly the opposite of what He said you should do. 


Praise Him in the storm..but the storm is all me, my storm, my making, my mistakes, my sins. Is it okay to praise Him even in this self-manufactured storm? Is it okay to love Him with half of my heart just because that's all that is left - half. of. my. heart.?


Someone once told me that to be whole, I have to be broken...
Well, here we are...pieces and no glue in sight.


Song of the day: Casting Crowns - Does anybody hear her

What happened to us?

Conversations are the soul to every story. Enjoy...


"What happened to us?"


"You grew up and left me behind."


"Typical! I asked one question and you answer a different one. I asked what happened to 'us' and not what happened to 'me'!"


"Us?"


"Yes us!"


"Us grew up and left us behind then."


"This, this right here is why we have issues."


"We have issues??? This is the first i am hearing of it. And even if we did, seriously, you are blaming our issues on 'this'."


"Can you stop taking every word i say and playing on it?"


"It is called a pun."


"And when you do it, it is pun-itive."


"Look who is playing with words now and becoming more and more like me with every second. Oh and she smiles too. Admit it, I am irresistible."


"Be serious Made."


"When have i ever been? Isn't this why you fell in love with me? My 'unseriousness' to combat your 'serious nerdiness' which some people have in past times described as over zealousness, and in more recent times as weirdness..."


"Keep digging your own grave. Why can't we ever have a serious conversation? You just have to make wisecracks about it all, don't you?"


"I love you Dema. There is no pun I can play with those three words. No wisecracks I can finagle out of them. No unseriousness I can muster when I say them. There are times you want to beat the crap out of me and its okay if you do so long as you kiss my bruises when you are done. And there will be times I want to drop you off at the motherless babies home, sorry 'boyfriendless' babies home will be more apt here... Ouch, there is no need to be violent! As i was saying, even that is okay because you know I will back to adopt you in less than an hour. This is our life-made up of the good and bad, the beautiful and the ugly. I know one of the 'beat the crap out of Made' times happened for you tonight when I ignored the new hair-do but just because i didn't say anything about your hairstyle does not mean 'something happened to us'. 'Us' is just fine; i on the other hand am a little traumatized by the new hairstyle." 


"I knew it! What is wrong with my hair?'


"I didn't say there was anything wrong with your hair or the lack of it. I just said i am traumatized-I am used to my woman having some hair, you know. This baldness takes some getting used to."


"Itsn't baldness. I just cut it all. Everyone says my cheekbones are highlighted beautifully now."


"You have cheekbones? Breaking news... Ouch, you are so violent!"


"Hmmmm... By the way how did you know it was the hair i really wanted to talk about?"


"Because you are my woman and i know you better than i know my bloody self. Besides you are pretty easy to read especially with the way you have been caressing your head all evening and giving me dirty looks when i didn't say anything about it. "


"Awwww...this, this right here is why i love you."


"I see you are blaming it all on 'this' again. And an 'Awww???' Seriously??? Is that it? Is that all i get for my eloquently serious speech?"


"Don't roll your eyes! You look like Steve Harvey when you do."


"Heaven forbid! Now can a man get some loving before you find some other reason to ask me 'what happened to us?' "


Women are weird creatures..I am one so i am allowed to say so. we never say what we mean. I look forward to the day a man will get me the way Made gets Dema. (notice what i did with the names? :)


Song of the day: John Legend- Everybody Knows

He smells like rain

I try not to post more than 4 times a month...But this month has been good. I can't say anything in particular happened but you know when you are in this state where you are 'almost' content? So that's where i have been. I still want so damned much from life (the twins, money, a trip to the pyramids, to love God more, to meet The One...) but i really can't complain. I have been blessed and if i say otherwise then i don't deserve more.

Anyway so i wrote the stuff below... I like to think that someday I will feel this way about someone (Please God). Till then, this for you all that know how it feels to feel this way. Goodbye April, it's been a blast.

He smells like rain and Cairo after dark

He smiles and the Zebras in the Zambezi lose their stripes

He reaches out his hand

and the walls of my heart;

those brick walls with foundations deeper than wells dug in the Sahara

yes, those walls,

crumble to nothingness...

An old man once told me:

'You find what you seek'

I sought heaven, I found an angel

Song of the day: Britt Nicole- The sun is rising

Yam and Fish Pepper Soup

He speaks about her in present tense; like the present still holds her presence and there is a future somewhere with her in it. I want to yell at him. I want to shake it out of him. I want to scream at him until his ears are bleeding and the tears he is yet to shed finally begin to fall.

But I listen instead. I listen to his love for her that will be forever present in the timbre of his voice. I listen and sometimes I lay my head against his chest. Other times, I hold his hand and let him talk about a dead woman as if she were still in the room with us.

‘Nnam. What will you have for dinner?’ I ask him to break his unworldly stare

‘Ada, stop fussing. I am a grown man and will let you know if I am hungry.” He says smiling at me.

I smile back.

'You have your mother’s eyes. She always says how she can’t wait to carry your children on her back. You must be sure to bring a man home soon.’ He says winking at me.

I squeeze his hand a little tighter and join him in his blank stare. Maybe if I sit still long enough, I wil see beyond the cold mud grave that sits in front of our home. Maybe if I follow my father’s stare, together we will summon life back into the woman that was our soul, our heart, our present.

She comes to me later that night. I open my eyes and there she stands, as beautiful as the last time I saw her. It was at the bus park as I boarded the bus that would take me into the future. A future we had dreamed of together. A future beyond the borders of the village and into the realms of learning. A future she had left me to face alone. 

‘I miss you Nne’m’ I whisper.

She points in direction of my father’s room and shakes her head. I wake up and run to the room; my footsteps muted by the mud floor. He stands in the middle of the room, a rope in his hand and a goodbye in his eyes. He stands broken and lost. He stands in the past.

‘Nnam’ I scream and run to him.

‘You want to leave me too, eh Nnam? You want to leave me? For whom? For what? If you go, then I go too. If you want to kill yourself, kill me first!’ I yell at my father.

The rope falls from his hand and he clutches me instead. We stay like that till dawn breaks, my head on his chest and his tears receding with every stream of light that filters into the room.

‘Ada.’ He calls to me.

‘Nnam’ I answer.

‘Yam and fish pepper soup sounds good.’

The present begins.

Song of the day: Asa- So Beautiful

The Writer and Tomorrow...

The good news is 'We' won...


The bad news is if anyone else asks me 'what next?' Y'all will see my face on tonight's news for having beat someone to a pulp! 


I entered the competition without thinking...as i do most things in life.  
I will carry on with life without thinking too much as well...
Maybe I will publish a book someday.
Maybe I won't. 
Maybe I will become a renowned writer
Maybe I won't
That was never the point. That will never be the point. 


The point was to tell stories; in a book, on this blog, with my lips, on paper towels...


Live in the now people; tomorrow is out of our hands, our fingers and my pen!
In the now, I am The Writer and deeply humbled. 


'Take therefore no thought for tomorrow... Sufficient unto today is the evil thereof.'


Song of the day: Maxwell - For Lovers only

Shoulders

I stood at the precipice
I made it to the end of the world
I sighed and breathed deeply
I marveled
I laughed and let the birds soar on my smile
I danced on the edge
Death starred me in the face 
And i danced in its face


I had made it to the end of the world
There was nothing left to achieve
I was ready to fall into the waiting arms of death
Thousands of miles below awaited me


'Baby!' A voice called
'Who are you?' I asked
'Your king' He said
I can't wait to see you' I smiled
It isn't time' He answered
'But i am at the precipice
There is nothing behind me 
Nothing ahead of me
There is nowhere left to go but down' I told Him
It isn't time.' He said again
'But i am at the end of the world.' I argued
'I made the world without an end.' My king whispered
'So where is this place that i stand?' 
'My shoulders.'

There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, 

Who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, 

And in his excellency on the sky.

No matter how bad it gets, don't you dare fall, don't you dare let go, don't you dare give up; He is closer than you think. 


#Suicide is not an option

Song of the day: Jason Mraz-93 Million Miles