Life series

I think my compound has become  a veritable hotspot for a reality TV show. Yeah, everyone should be on one and like it or not we all have our own personal reality TV series played out every single day of our lives. I wish I knew yours because mine causes me so much laughter, even if for much of the time the laughter happens when I look back.

I've got this 'wonderful' neighbour. I'll just call her J. The essence of 'work in progress' it's hardly a day that goes by you don't either hear something about her or see something about her to get you in stitches.

On this fateful day, she tells me of how my puppy, Caesar is about to get all up in her two (or three) year old son's business.

Apparently, for some reason her son is outside his mum's ground flat without his panties on. Caesar takes a fancy to his dangling infant 'boyhood', has his hackles up and his bent on snapping on it.

I couldn't help but laugh. First, Caesar has taken to all the kids in the compound like butter to icing. All except one, that is... And you guessed right- J's son.

You can hardly blame Caesar I always make a point of saying. Caesar came into the compound ill and shaken from the twelve hour journey that brought him in from Jos. J's son had welcomed him with attempts at poking his eye out. Small, helpless new kid on the block Caesar was he had barely reacted and I had had to  rescue him.

I think Caesar never forgot, J kid's act. Concerned still, I asked his trainer why my usually puppy dog got the hackle rising kind of anger towards a kid, especially one particularly adorable mixed race. (Caesar was mixed breed afterall, they should have hit it off like gas to a lighter ;)) The trainer ventured J kid must have done something not so innocent as his mother was trying to let on to aggravate the dog on that fateful day.

And the light bulb went on. J kid's other attempted acts of exploration on my puppy when he thought I wasn't looking. His mother's usually grand stories about her climb through life (she would hide her son's meanness very well), and Caesar's general lovely relationship with another neighbour, Z's kids.

It all began to make sense. Needless to say I was glad with my response to J- Since she insisted on leaving her son's crap saturated Pampers outside despite knowing Caesar when let loose would at the moment have a go at anything, I simply turned to the House guard who was to watch Caesar in my absence, 'If my dog behaves like a dog who eats crap, then it's going to be your fault for letting him eat crap'.

Turning to J, I say "I think after rustling through the crap you leave (carelessly, was implied) out back, I guess he was simply looking for the privates that belonged to the butt that excreted them"

Of course, I was laughing most pleasantly when I said that. Needless to say she had nothing coherent to say after that even as she also laughed politely. The guard could barely hold himself and neither could Z when she heard of the incident.

I had passed my message across without needing to cross any claws, cut any claws or bare any claws. And enjoyed myself while at it.

Maybe I am the one who needs to be on Reality TV. I definitely entertain myself quite well. And entertaining others would be a definite by product. Lol!

Don't be a fool.

As I thought about a recent disappointment I wondered how I could have stooped so low,made such an error in judgment. To be candid, I had been reactive. And like my boss would always say being reactive never panned out well.

I swung like a violent pendulum between the good I was bent on seeing and the evil that lurked insidiously, playing peek-a-boo in short intense bursts I had imagined no one capable of. At least, not anyone around me. Or, anyone I knew. I soon vacillated between self righteous anger and docile guilt. Thanks to just about the 'right kind of fellowship'

Yet, I had felt that if I had not discovered somehow that I had made an error in judgment I would have considered my choice worth convincing, worth keeping. I had even tried that when I had presumed and not known; when I had been bent on seeing milk and honey where only death, deception and destruction lurked.

As it turned out, things were not the way they seemed, at least not the way I had wished they were- all true, and clean, pure and sincere, at least a 'good' heart or a right one- the peek-a- boo was the truth.

What hurt me most was the mentality of a destroyer. Honored and cherished as I have come to find myself, this person had no qualms destroying what others were in love with.

As I berated myself and cursed my costly lapse in judgment, I heard the word- I was not to blame myself for believing good of another human, of expecting that they meant well and finding it difficult to believe that they meant harm. I put my faith in people in expecting the best out of them. I should not feel bad for putting myself out there and caring. I had done nothing wrong in putting my faith in someone and believing more of them than they were by a long shot.

I only needed to be careful. To know that people are wicked. There actually are people who take pride in being unscrupulous. There ARE people who actually do NOT have a conscience, do not feel bound to do good. They do good only when they feel like it not because they feel like they owe it to their fellow man or to serve God with it. There is no limit to how low they can stoop.

I heard yesterday of how five boys went to meet an undergraduate female student at her parents house, raped her and as if that was not bad enough they killed her AND THEN RIPPED OUT HER INNARDS!!!!!!

Tell me, are those boys still human? Do they still have a soul? Or are they just demons in human bodies, their own souls long gone...

Well, now I know they exist.. Now I know they exist in the lives of common faces- husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancés, fiancées, colleagues, friends... Evil beyond measure.

The human mind is capable of infinite evil. It is also capable of infinite good. The truth though is that, evil abounds more than good. Why I close my eyes and expect the latter in any human at all beats me. How much more the fact that I look into the eyes of a stranger and expect the better.

I surprised myself last week. Yes, I recouped myself because I can't imagine life otherwise. For some, that 'surprise' is their way of life, their choice, they won't or perhaps cannot imagine their lives any other way...

Now I know, I cannot do wrong by loving, by caring, by believing, having faith in people, but I can do myself, other people, the whole world, my destiny a whole lot of wrong by being a fool.

I would be a fool to fancy an enemy a friend, a fool to run straight into a spear stretched out pointed at me, a fool to cast my pearls before swine.

Life Happened to Me

As my head registered the fact that the phone was not going to ring, my heart continued to flutter intermittently in hope. It just would not get it would it? The guy was not going to call.

I wondered what I might have done wrong and I realized that I did not have to look far. A guy who had heard accolades and sweet things from a former secondary school mate had had only high hopes about meeting me. When he met me and I opened my mouth what he heard from me was different from what he had expected.

As I flayed myself for opening my mouth too wide I also wondered why I had to justify myself to anyone. Anyone who didn’t think I was good enough for them was really not what I needed around me. Heaven knows, I have had my own fair share of life. Who was it that said that life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans? It sure happened to me. What I had planned versus some of what I got are so far apart they blow my mind. Yet, I cannot deny them. Less than I would have fancied and as much as they stink up the joint even for my own poor nose there is nothing I can do about it.

The story that had come up about my past in conversation with this expected caller had gone such that I daresay he couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. Yet it is not my place to chase after him. I would sooner hold my breath than do that.

The woes, throes and echoes of my past have rang so loud in my life that it is time I shelved them. Having to bring them up to a new acquaintance or even an old one for that matter is such a priviledge I don’t think I want to share it anymore. Most would just use it as an opportunity to raise you on a pole and take potshots.

As I thought about why I had related the not too pleasant details of an intimate relationship gone awry to a new friend and prospective date, I wondered why I was looking for his approval anyway- I didn’t know him. Did I think he would give me a pat on the back for my mistakes or did I think he would be ready to carry the baggage he had to be sure tagged along with me just by virtue of my having had the kind of past I have had.

Well, I look up and I see that God has written a number on me. I am not to be toyed with. I cannot fill my experiences, missteps and misjudgments in a single volume book how much less in a few conversations. Trying to do that not only appears to me to be an effort to seek approval or some kind of pity but it is at this point having me wonder why at all I tried to.

Why do I need to explain myself, seek approval?

Am I proud of where I have been? I don’t need to answer you on this! Have I been through hell, murk and dirt? Is that really your business? As a condition to date you I have to awaken my past? Roll over and move on. I need to step.

God is working on me. Even in all this- expectation, disappointment, rejection, I still see his Hand- making me stronger, better, gladder and ever ready to take a no but never tiring to take a shot at life, believe, hope, dare to expect. Yes, the other person has a right to say ‘no’. And I have a right to not be defined by where I have been, to move on.

Yes, Twenty years ago, I was spick and span (sans a molestation), a former class mate felt strongly enough about that to recommend me to his friend. Sadly enough though (?) life happened to me. Get used to that or fall off my radar.

Sincere Ramblings

I’m sitting here on my bed wondering about the myriad that have been lost to jungle justice. A fifty naira note stolen here, a phone over there, pepper…. And there it is- bloodshot eyes, a raving mob, lost minds, a tire and matches’- Jungle Justice! A life lost prematurely, judged by a gathering of ill informed, ill engaged, self-righteous, misfits no better than the ones they strain to judge.

I imagine the feeling of helplessness that comes over the victims. Strength cannot save, nor can they stand in the face of this unjust ‘just’, their lives never to return cut short by the arbitrary and random whims of an impersonal mob.  No one dares intervene. To intervene would be to be judged an accomplice, perhaps the mentor of the errant, likely by eyes reeking insanity. To intervene would be to be judged- by jungle justice.

On a level it happens everywhere. Not just on the streets- the arbitrary and deranged gang-up against an individual at work. It might clear up in a minute. But imagine if it hadn’t. You just tasted helplessness.

It might be among a group of friends- that unexplained situation that flashes past your face when you are suddenly the one looking in from the outside because they all just decided you were up for ‘mean-spirited or wicked pot shots’- for some reason. You might not end up dead on the streets but imagine a little tilt to the left and you just might be. 

What about the chance happenings, the unexplained choices that decide a person’s death just by them running into an irate mob while they were on an innocent errand. Does even one person blink? Does even one person speak up and ask, “What is going on?” Or does someone really wake up and is too scared to ask?

Then what is the fate of innocent people every day? What is the fate of lives lost on a mob’s whim? What is the fate of an innocent whose only sin for arraignment is ten naira stolen? Can’t we rise? Can’t we awaken? Can’t we love? Is the milk of human kindness dried up in our hearts? Is compassion lost forever? Has hunger ripped mercy out of the mercy-judgment equation? Or are Nigerians the world over simply to be sent on mandatory individual, personal and intense one-on-one deliverance?

Cannot that life taken make or see a million times that fifty naira if just given the chance? Cannot jungle justice be judged? Cannot jungle justice be stopped? Can people be given a chance to live? Can thieves cease to kill? Can those arraigned for death be given a decent exit? A dignifying one? A humane one? By the Courts?

What about the innocents tried in the courts and still found guilty? Roped in? Who pleads for these ones? Surely, the worst off is the innocent cut down before or after they have risen, having lived incomplete lives and their justice perverted. Who would save us from this? It could happen to anybody. It could happen to everybody.

Where is the will? Where is the mind? Where is the strength of humanity?