Writing Hours

  When I was little, I thought that the adults went to funeral wakes so they could ambush the spirit of the deceased leaving their body and yell at them, “ Where do you think you’re going? Who are you leaving your responsibilities for? Get back in there! And if á burial happened afterwards, it meant they failed.  🥲  And you know African mothers know how to shout at you,  spirit and body to the point where you hear it in a previous life.  You’re just sitting there eating a cold lunch in front of your blue screen with emails to write and some woman starts yelling at you. You complain about it and they tell you, it’s your fault. You must’ve done something… And they failed a lot till one day, one guy walked into his own funeral and everyone ran away. Which made me wonder if they really did want what they claimed to be looking for.  😁

  When I was little, I thought that the adults went to wakes so they could ambush the spirit of the deceased leaving their body and yell at them, “ Where do you think you’re going? Who are you leaving your responsibilities for? Get back in there! And if á burial happened afterwards, it meant they failed.  🥲 And they failed a lot till one day, one guy walked into his own funeral and everyone ran away. Which made me wonder if they really did want what they claimed to be looking for.  😁

 I sincerely believe that The Heavenly Librarian has a stack of recommended books for each of us. One day as I sat in an aunt’s house, helping watch her children. Someone came to the window and handed me a book. The housemaid Is Not To Blame, it said. I read it then placed it back on the window sill and as long as I stayed, darting anxious eyes over there, the book stayed. I vowed to read it again if I returned and it was still there before going to check on the washing and the children. The other girl was doing her laundry, the children were playing. Their clothes were still clean. It wasn’t time to start lunch yet and the book was gone. I’ve been trying to get hold of another copy ever since.

Once upon a book on a lowly bookshelf belonging to a family in a council flat.  Tell me something puts her arms around Still Thinking of You and Larger Than Life,  Still Thinking of You; Fancy seeing you two here!  The Rainmaker & Kiss the girls; (in unison) Just because your name is Tell me something doesn’t mean you should.  The Bride Price; Akụnna is grudgingly allowed to continue her schooling but only because her ambitious uncle realises that an educated girl will fetch a higher bride price - The Bluest Eye ; And twenty years later, I was    still wondering about how one learns that. Who told her? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale.  The Bride Price; Escape might be the answer but how can she escape her fear of the fate that even today, is said to await every girl whose bride price is not paid?  The Bluest Eye; Hang on, wait, what are you talking about? I’m a book and I’m about race, clas...

  The children of God have discovered that in the past, secondary school managers have always encouraged student boarders to take siestas and eat beans. And that there has always been a restaurant near campus that supplied undergraduates with a plate of beans, plantains and stew for N10. Now that a restaurant moved close to my house and are selling a plate of beans, plantains and stew for £11, I believe the Lord is telling me it’s time for that postgraduate program. Happy Friday my people.  

  Beauty. We’re starting the book of Daniel in my family today. And we realised that in contrast to a lot of the other prophets to whom the word of God came at the beginning of their conversations like Ezekiel.    The king of Babylon; Nebuchadnezzer despite destroying nations and capturing peoples just liked hanging out with beautiful people. Daniel was one of these people, alongside his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. Daniel 1;6. So basically, his book begins with him hanging out with royalty, looking absolutely gorgeous alongside delicious, colourful fruit and vegetables.  And when    they eventually had to endure the furnace, they got to hang out with an Angel in the fire so we implore you to ask for beauty today, inside and outside beauty because.  💚

  South European idiom, West African country.   I traveled a few times with my dad and when I did, I try to pick up food and a stove in the markets along the way to make sure there’s food ready for when anyone needs it. I traveled alone recently and being on a budget, I purchased a few tins so I wouldn’t be in a rush to go to the market. And for the shelf life and the ease of throwing chopped tinned vegetables together with sardines and what have you.  So, everyone was so nice and excited to see me and if there were any suspicious, “Isn’t she that single one?” They hid them well because I didn’t overhear anyone. So I did that Mi casa thing you hear on American tv.  Someone did come to borrow a tin of sardines or two to cook for me with even though I made it known I was not hungry.  “What, do they have teeth? Would they bite you if you brought two or three?!” Someone growled at the child who had picked one up in between two fingers and waved again before they pro...

  Dear diary,  🫦 I cannot explain enough how much your life would change for the better when you open the website and search‘running shoes ‘ instead of choosing the prettiest Nike trainers available.  I cannot. 

  Dear diary,  It turns out l was allergic to something I put in my hair and all those late nights and early mornings were beginning to tell me that I should do an allergy test before I switch anything I use on myself. I also have to accept that my ‘fro is an ajebutter and take her out for hair spa weekends with home-made slatherings of hot oil and protein treatments. Never leaving her out of green- faced weekends in toe seperators, crown doused in reviving Shea butter and chebe oil. You have to live between your home and the hair condiment shop to make it up to her. You can no longer put her last afterall, she is purposefully called crown. See you later, diary, what an entry for an early Monday morning.  😁

 I was still feeling apprehensive but then I saw an apple almost the size of my head. I mean, it was big for an apple. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about its colour which was a dull, dark green.  But an apple it was and in my mind, Iit glistened in the light, welcoming me to the moon. I went to pick it but it smacked my hand away. “I could turn your insides to stone in a matter of minutes!” It mumbled away at an explanation. Surreal like a picture out of one of treasure troves of stories I read to my year three class just before hometime after they’d been good all day.  I will have to be pureed diluted and diluted some more before you can even smell it. Sorry but this isn’t Earth. You can’t have it all here besides it’s crippling cold outside. I felt that cold now as I glanced around the half light.