Writing Hours

Computer games  I write this as I watch Pixels. It probably means games will be requested this Christmas.  I can’t disobey a teenager on what movie to see on a Wednesday evening.  A while ago when I was still learning to drive, my driving instructor was grousing about marrying a wife from a different nationality whose family thought she was too good for him. “Ouch, that’s gotta be hard work especially if she thinks that too.” I responded and it seemed that for the first time, he was happy to be out of that tunnel and divorced and for the first time, a happy instructor who made me drive on the highway.  Yo people, what’s the deal with making me drive at 30 and telling me to drive slow! Drive slow! Slow down! Then taking me somewhere where I cannot drive under 60km/hr. Are you trying to traumatise me? Well you succeeded! So the next time I did a lesson with a different instructor, I complained about computer games. Frankly, I didn’t see the point....

The unpaid barber. When I was little, I had this thing that settled onto my bodacious Afro and decided that it was going to move in and create three crop circles. I remember having it for up to a year because the lotions provided by conventional medicine seemed not to work back then. It was excruciatingly itchy and created more than one patch of white scalp where hair was supposed to be. It was an inconvenience for outings, festivals and places you wished to look pretty at. Some people called it ringworm but the literal translation of the local name for it was The unpaid barber. The unworthy barber. It deserved that name. It’s handiwork was awful. One evening as I was sitting down, a woman comes to visit. She takes one look at my unpaid barber   or ringworm head and yells at my grandmother,  “How could you leave her hair like this?”she said, yelling at a grown grandmother as if she was a kid. And that’s one cool thing about Africa, everyone has a mum and a dad or...

Connectives. No, it’s not quite the food, you’re not nearly right. See, I let go of my pride then I’m half this size! But you’ll laugh at my pain, my cries and my fright, So frankly, I’d rather keep it bottled up inside. Am I right? Can   we not agree on that? Bye... 

SPACE Whenever you feel caged or trapped, Unable to break free from that shack, Concentrate on cloudy skies and deep blue seas, Quaint vegetation, Tall Forest trees, Co-ordinates in deep space, Stars that twinkle from a far place. Those never-ending surfaces free And honestly make you see How small you really be You have all the space you need And I know that you'll agree!

Tales from the homestead 🏡 - Pets. Sometimes parents hide bad news from their children  thinking they might not be ready for it, sometimes with reckless abandon,  forgetting that children grow up. I can only say, If they give you a chance to tell the truth and apologise a couple of years later, take it. “Really, the pet fish didn’t hold hands and fly out the window together while we were asleep?” But that’s what you told us!” “I know they had really big fins but goldfish can fly?” I had to come clean because they gave me a couple of years before they asked. They were older and only one of them came back to verify which meant that they were probably a little ready for the truth. Also the guinea pig just died too and It had no wings and I had to explain. Who could have known that at four years old, they were considered ancient! I think I was traumatised too because I don’t remember saying that when Angelo the goldfish passed the morning after we got him a new fri...

Tales from the muse 👁 - life.  Life is also figuring out what is yours and what is not,   what is good for you and what is not.

"When I was young, my coach said something that has stuck with me for five years ; It's hard to beat the person who never gives up." -Dylan Baker Almost professional swimmer.

"Along the journey, I never walked alone. I have been assisted and supported by many people, who shaped my life through the experiences I shared with them..." Wangari Maathai. UNBOWED one woman's story.

   Language skills  Õ dighi agbanwe agbanwe x3 O tu   Įdi ka Įdi na mbu. 🎶 F ind a friend or neighbour who can sing this and ask them to teach you what it means. Hint: it’s a praise song.   Years ago when I was in primary four and learning this language, the teacher asked for a volunteer to read the passage for the lesson from the Igbo reader book. Students sat down quietly and wouldn’t do it so I volunteered. I was fairly new to the community and everyone knew that   but I still stood up and read. I knew what Ha ji nku efe efe meant. I just struggled with the intonation because in all languages, sometimes the one word can mean other things, depending on the inflection. As I sat down after reading, I could see   my fellow student's faces. They were not impressed. The teacher on the other hand overruled them all by jumping off her seat in glee and told me I read it very well for someone who wanted to try, that it was excellent. I s...

Tales from the homestead. 🏡   The bumblebee costume. When the babies were at nursery school, they went through a costume phase in which they insisted they wanted to dress up in a costume for school. It was where dressing up would be the first order of the day. We will race to the dressing up corner   at school and dress like fairies or bumblebees for the rest of the day and I thought nothing of it till they probably studied bees and insects at school or researched them then their next stage was sugar water. They walked around the house with bottles of water that they sipped on intermittently then my electric iron’s plate turned brown and started smelling like burnt syrup. It took me a while to find out that someone had added sugar to my electric iron refill water bottle. It was so hilarious, I forgot to frown but it is taking me a while to replace the iron. Young people seem to have a phase in their lives in which they wreck the house as they try to make sense of ...

Sweet company. Her second phase was to be a lawyer, A Specialist in sweet acquisition and Merger The Wrogley-Mars facilitator Dr. Pepper-Snapple grouper Cadbury-Craft-Ferrero-Hershey A pick'n'mix conglomerate maker The whole planet dancing to her sweet premolars Stuck to sugar-shaker rhythm-breakers Choccygobblefudgerican sweets In seventy different shades of beet Proven to melt dental cavities A sure fire jaw breaker treat Before her real dream rises to meet Snapple apple drops encased in nectar sauce Chewy bottles and soda droplets - Pause With sprinkler shavings and soft candy biscuit Replacing MDee's Happy meals and The colonel's Kid's meal treats Then her treat life would begin. Sweet, sweet sweet.

hAPPY nO bRA dAY

It gives me joy to see teenagers obsessing over a book I obsessed about in Secondary school and continue to obsess about today. They are trying to figure out the central themes in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Now, who among you knew that Tiny Tim wasn't  exactly ill, He was undernourished and so couldn't walk properly because the body's main function is to stay alive. Which means it will shut down the extra curricular activities that it deems temporarily unimportant while rerouting resources to the life and death processes.  So, besides forgiveness, change and compassion,  I have three words for you this morning. GO AND EAT.

Tales from the muse 👁 The dog died.  I once worked in a bookstore where I just couldn’t learn to operate the cash register so I watched human behaviour and used a calculator, notebook and drawer instead.   One day, we had no customers at all so when a smiling woman walks in and says cheer up woman, it’s not that bad. I rejoice but no it turned out she’s not a customer, she’s collecting money for charity but you haven’t sold anything all morning.  Days later, winter evening fiveish. Three people walk into the shop in succession and they walk to three different corners of the shop and all pick out the three saddest books in the shop. As I spot the titles and check them out, I start feeling sad then wonder if it’s an omen.  It was, The bookshop closed a few weeks later in the recession.The moral of the story is that sad stories sell sometimes and someone’s gotta write them sometimes. 😩

Our British Cousin. A Poem Being Awful at Sports But spending most my life On Badminton Courts Gawping at saplings that smirk at defeat Their heads through concrete Hard to believe feats tender and green Defying knowledge, sense and petri dish What made them so tough, How? On Earth can a little stem As weak as a leaf crack something as tough And bad as concrete Curiosity had me jumbled My insomnia continued, A schoolgirl in green Needed to know so- I dug up the stem Then gasped at what held The roots wrinkly and brown Tough, rough and deep Enough to run firmly All under concrete.

The Versatility, Beauty, Practicality and...

"Take a message to the person in charge there from Dan, tell them that its the things people do when no one is watching that matter because someone is watching." "Thank you." The stone statue replied, all of a sudden, shy and embarrassed at the same time. "What's your mantra,  darling?" "Women should not be ignorant of course. Ephesians 4;18."

Tales from the classroom 👁 5/6 - 1/4 Back when I was in my primary three class and wrestling with fractions. The teacher would whip the crap out of you for getting anything wrong in Maths or English. We had a girl who had come back from a francophone African country so she was bad at English but good at Math so she would promise she’ll help me out in Math if I helped her out in English first. I think you already know how this story went.   During English, I wouldn’t shield my answers from her and she will pass English and escape whipping while I got punished for low grades in Math because she would pretend it was very hard and she needed to concentrate and tell me “wait! Wait!” So I will wait till she passed her book. For a whole term, till God had mercy on me and I fell sick for a whole three weeks the following term in which my friends would see me in the village and tell me she gets punished every day for failing English.  I soon grew a pair and so did everyone els...