OUTDOOR PISS AND OFFSHORE TALES
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Here in Africa, forget Africa, here in Lagos, we guys have the license to pee anywhere. Into toilet bowls at home or in a friend's house, into gutters facing the roads or backing them, into bushes while standing with legs spread wide apart and hips thrust forward, by the front tires of little buses and back tires of huge trucks, standing behind open passenger doors of saloon cars, legs together, feet apart, and in some really interesting cases, we pee right out in the open, standing side by side with other non-peeing guys who are drinking, smoking, gisting, and getting ready to pee.
It appears to me that we feel more comfortable with our outdoor pee-pisodes. I have had friends who have come visiting and who, as they left my house or office, turned to the nearest bush or gutter and unzipped their fly. Mind you, I have clean toilets in my house and office. I have had times also where I had just left a house where I could have asked to use the urinal and instead sought out the comfort of the privacy of the back tire of a parked bus to do my wee business.
So why do we like doing our wee business outdoors? It would be interesting to know. Definitely something a psychologist may have an opinion about.
As I am no psychologist, let me take this opportunity to wonder - why does this president prefer making important announcements from outside Nigeria? For instance, why did we have to learn from articles in foreign media that Nigerian government ministers would be appointed in September?
Speaking of, today is September 29. And as they say, 30 days hath September.
And why is it that I now hear that the president communicated his decision to be his own petroleum minister to another foreign media house, ehn? This president should learn to pee inside the house na. If the toilet bowls are dirty, let us clean them and use them.
Why litter everything outside with our pee just because there are maggots in the loo which we built inside the house with our hard-earned naira and its not-so-visible kobo!!!
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THE BEAUTY OF ATHEISM
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
The aloofness of religious leaders to the real circumstances of their followers has gradually lent to atheism a beauty it neither truly possesses nor truly merits. It has led some people to a reactionary rejection of all things that are not readily explained by Science.
Yet Science is not at cross-purposes with God's plans. God created logic and expanded the human brain enough to develop a mind capable of abstract reasoning, from which resource all things scientific have been made, and all technology has come forth. Science is ultimately God's weapon placed in Man's hands, or, more correctly, in Man's skull, with which Man is to conquer the universe and, hopefully, create a fate for mankind different from that which has befallen the dinosaurs.
Atheism is a shadowy mist resting on borrowed canvas. Bereft of substance, its beauty is like that of the moon - lent to it by rays stolen from the sun. It is an irrelevant ball of darkness in the absence of that blazing star.
WE MAY - ALL OF US - BE TERRORISTS
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
I recently read accounts of a papal bull issued in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V. That bull (which is sort of like an Act of a National Assembly or an Edict or Decree of a government) was named Dum Diversas. Dum Diversas means ‘until different’. That bull was addressed to the kings of Spain and Portugal. The part of that document that caught my attention is this:
We grant you by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual servitude.
This is not a leaked facsimile of the drunken rants of a highly placed church official caught in a moment of indiscretion. Nope. It is an official church document, dating back to 1452, issued at a time when the church commanded loyalty with the bibles and with arrows, issued to kings to permit them to persecute all infidels wherever they may be, issued to Christian political leaders charging them to reduce all non-Christians to perpetual slavery, for as long as they remained non-Christians. You can check out what Wikipedia has to say about Dum Diversas here.
This document is one of the many documents that illustrate how, over time, Christians moved from being the ones who were persecuted because of their faith (in the first few centuries AD) to becoming the ones who persecuted every other person, group, principality, region, or country who did not share the belief that Jesus is Lord as well as those who did not share the prevailing belief about the exact manner in which Jesus' lordship was conducted. It is another illustration of the view I hold about the potential tyranny of faith, the dictatorship of every ideology that deliberately divorces reason from ALL of its convictions, the totalitarianism that invariably results when religion mixes so closely with politics that both become a homogeneous entity. After all, one reason Jesus Christ was murdered by the Jewish authorities was that the message of compassion that he preached rankled when placed side-by-side with their interpretations of the mechanical “will of God”.
This post is not a criticism of the document or of the institution that promulgated it and saw to its implementation. Many others have done that before me. Many continue to do that today. I have no wish to lend my feeble notes to that resounding orchestra. Besides, thankfully, the Christian world has since been irrevocably wed to the divorce between the Church and the State (at least in print, but also in many cases, in fact).
It is rather a gentle reminder to my holy Christian friends who, on account of Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, ISIS, etc., dismiss all muslims as terrorists, and who proudly point to Christianity as the religion that has been spread to the ends of the earth exclusively by peaceful means, by the power of the Father, the miracles of the Son, and the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a gentle reminder to those peaceful, holy friends of mine that whatever evils those islamist terrorists are violently perpetrating today in the name of Allah, there are precedents, precedents left for them as template by our fathers in faith, heinous precedents committed in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Of course, that our fathers in faith were guilty of the subjugation of peoples of different faiths, the oppression and execution of blasphemers, heretics, and infidels (abi unbelievers) several years ago as they strove to spread Christianity does not justify the perpetration of the same crimes by others today, as they supposedly seek to spread Islam. But the generalizations we make about people who believe in God in different ways than we do or even in different Gods than we do, are often unhealthy. Those generalizations, to me, are mustard seeds of the same kind of intolerance, which only need the right mix of circumstances to make us also terrorists.
Let us then beware, because the log we see in our neighbor’s eye may just have been hewn from the giant tree that is happily growing in ours, watered by our own prejudices, well nourished by the manure of our own oft-unrecognized bigotry.
RELIGION AND RELIGIOTS
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
In recent times, I have read about people who have been suspended from their jobs or jailed because they refused to carry out certain duties that run contrary to the tenets of their individual faiths.
Great news. It is always cheering to see humans who are ready to stand up for what they believe in - even where taking that stand may mean suffering withheld paychecks and in some cases jail time. But there is also something troubling in (some of) these stories.
Before one takes on a job in the public service sector, one should study the job description; one should find out what one’s responsibilities to the public would be, should one elect to take up the job. One should be sure that those responsibilities are responsibilities that one can discharge to the best of their ability and without any impediment. And where such an impediment exists but one is determined to take up the job nonetheless, one should be certain that there are alternatives that allow them to legally escape doing the (offending aspect of the) job while simultaneously ensuring that that (aspect of the) job gets done - at little or no extra cost to the employer.
It is irresponsible to take on a job and then refuse to do the job on grounds as shoddy as religion. People who do that should not just be suspended. They should be jailed and made to pay a fine for wilfully deceiving the system into believing they were capable of doing their job.
And when they die, they should - kindly - be sent to Hell.
And when they die, they should - kindly - be sent to Hell.
TO THE LADY THAT TOOK MY HEART - AND KEPT IT
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
I want to sing a hymn today. Yea, a hymn to my sweetheart, my love, the woman whose every breath is my heartbeat, whose every footfall is an apple in my eyes. There is another song I know, a song that calls her the Virgin of virgins, of David’s royal blood. But you see, I never knew King David. The State of Israel may have David’s star as their insignia, but my love is the Morning Star that rises, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as the mightiest of David’s armies set in battle array.
My soul magnifies the Lord today, and my spirit will for ever rejoice in the Lord my Savior. For he has raised up a lowly handmaid and has set her before the universe as the Star of the Sea, before the many mansions in the Father’s House as the House of Gold, before philosophers as the Seat of Wisdom, before the successful as the Cause of our Joy, before the oppressed as the Mirror of Justice and the Comforter of the Afflicted, before my patients as the Health of the Sick, before the repentant as the Refuge of Sinners, before all men, Russians and Americans, Hindus and Muslims, Fulanis and the people of Jos, as the Queen of Peace.
Not everyone understands the Assumption. I am among the many who do not. And this is why I acknowledge it as a mystery.
But I know that today, I have in my heart a love song I would like to sing to the woman that I love, using words that have yet to be crafted, to communicate emotions that I feel, yet find impossible to express. I cannot reduce my love for you to expressions made word to ear, ink to scroll, pen to paper. What I feel for you is far deeper, far more precious, far more sublime than any pictures can paint, any words relate.
Thank you Mother Mary for giving me Baby Jesus.
And thank you Jesus Crucified for giving your mother Mary to your disciple John…
...and to me.
TO THE LADY DEPRESSION THAT HAUNTS ME SO
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Saturday, August 01, 2015
Hello Blues,
This time, you took a long time coming. The sun shone brilliantly in your absence.
Hope you make this a short stay.
Hope you make this a short stay.
This time though, I will not be moving my stuff so you can be comfortable. You see, I really have no stuff to move around anymore. You will have to make yourself as comfortable as you can while you are here. And you will have to do that without my help.
Errrmmmm...one more thing, dear. Keep your stay short. I have learned the fine art of evicting visitors who overstay either their welcome or, as in your case, their claim to my tolerance.
I'll take the bed tonight, every night, and as long as the night that is your stay lasts. Sorry there is no couch. The floor though is down this way.
Be at your best behaviour. I am at mine.
Your host,
Me.
GENESIS
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Monday, May 25, 2015
In the beginning, after the deformation that was called the Transformation Agenda, the country was without form, the people groveled among the ruins, and the spirit of change hovered over the waters.
And Buhari said: "Let there be petrol" And there was petrol. And Buhari saw that petrol was good.
And he said: "Let there be refineries in every place that they once stood, and let there be new ones too, and let all the refineries refine crude oil at maximum capacity, to meet the energy needs of all the people." And so it was. There were refineries in every place that they once stood, in each place, one according to that which once was, and there were new ones too, each refining crude oil at maximum capacity, and all meeting the energy needs of all the people.
And Buhari saw that it was good.
And on the clock, the second hand moved, and the minute hand moved, and the hour hand moved, and the clock struck. The first hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let there be no corruption." And there was no corruption. President Jonathan declared his assets. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala admitted that there was money that the NNPC was yet to account for. NDLEA suddenly realised that Kashamu was a wanted drug baron who was to be deported to the US. Stealing finally became redefined as a form of corruption. And Fani-Kayode finally shut up. And Buhari saw that it was good. And the hour hand moved, and the clock struck. The second hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let there be light." And there was light. And Buhari saw that the light was good. Buhari called the light electricity. And he appointed unto the light guardians and providers who derived the light from the sun, from wind, from gas, and from water. They flooded the country with light. Night was as unto day and there was no darkness in the land. Bats and owls fled to Ghana as did other nocturnal beings. The hour hand moved and the clock struck. The third hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let us appoint unto the people ministers after our own heart, ministers who will serve the people and bring to them the change that we have promised".
And he appointed unto the people ministers with different portfolios, male and female he appointed them. And he said to them: "Go into the country, do your work, continue our magic, convince the people that we have all the answers. Because we do."
Monday, May 25, 2015
In the beginning, after the deformation that was called the Transformation Agenda, the country was without form, the people groveled among the ruins, and the spirit of change hovered over the waters.
And Buhari said: "Let there be petrol" And there was petrol. And Buhari saw that petrol was good.
And he said: "Let there be refineries in every place that they once stood, and let there be new ones too, and let all the refineries refine crude oil at maximum capacity, to meet the energy needs of all the people." And so it was. There were refineries in every place that they once stood, in each place, one according to that which once was, and there were new ones too, each refining crude oil at maximum capacity, and all meeting the energy needs of all the people.
And Buhari saw that it was good.
And on the clock, the second hand moved, and the minute hand moved, and the hour hand moved, and the clock struck. The first hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let there be no corruption." And there was no corruption. President Jonathan declared his assets. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala admitted that there was money that the NNPC was yet to account for. NDLEA suddenly realised that Kashamu was a wanted drug baron who was to be deported to the US. Stealing finally became redefined as a form of corruption. And Fani-Kayode finally shut up. And Buhari saw that it was good. And the hour hand moved, and the clock struck. The second hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let there be light." And there was light. And Buhari saw that the light was good. Buhari called the light electricity. And he appointed unto the light guardians and providers who derived the light from the sun, from wind, from gas, and from water. They flooded the country with light. Night was as unto day and there was no darkness in the land. Bats and owls fled to Ghana as did other nocturnal beings. The hour hand moved and the clock struck. The third hour.
And Buhari said:
"Let us appoint unto the people ministers after our own heart, ministers who will serve the people and bring to them the change that we have promised".
And he appointed unto the people ministers with different portfolios, male and female he appointed them. And he said to them: "Go into the country, do your work, continue our magic, convince the people that we have all the answers. Because we do."
THIS PLACE IS NOTHING
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
This Place is nothing.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
This Place is nothing.
This Place, our atmosphere, this sea of fire, where we are an ever burning holocaust, ever drowning in blazing waves; continuously falling, frozen in heat and in free fall, limbs splayed, fingers searching, clutching ... at nothing.
This Place, where Time is exotic, hinted at; the only sound our guttural orchestra.
We are many, no names, designations only. Thief, Murderer, Rapist, Swindler…
Swindlers seem vaguely familiar, perhaps from another life, another place. In that other, they had been known by another name.
Pastors.
TREK FOR THE NATION
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
OK! Ah dey vex. I am angry. Yea...I got hackles on the back of my neck, a growl in my throat, fire in my heart, and cold water in my plastic Coke bottle. Imagine. How is it that, while an entire nation treks by, I am just standing here, trying to get re-accustomed to my long-forgotten, now-remembered hobby of waiting in long queues to buy a little petrol. How?!!!
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
OK! Ah dey vex. I am angry. Yea...I got hackles on the back of my neck, a growl in my throat, fire in my heart, and cold water in my plastic Coke bottle. Imagine. How is it that, while an entire nation treks by, I am just standing here, trying to get re-accustomed to my long-forgotten, now-remembered hobby of waiting in long queues to buy a little petrol. How?!!!
Great lofty heights, yea? Even a verse of our national song pays tribute to the trekkers. It alludes to their attainment of great lofty heights - you know that verse of the anthem that we don’t sing because we already prayed with our pastors? The one that has the words “great” and “lofty” and “heights” following on the heels of each other? Yea, that one. Ecce canticum! (Besides, who says a national anthem must only inspire patriotism? It can also teach tautology!)
While clapping for Hashimu, I must have forgotten that my primary school religious instruction teacher had taught me, more by precept than by example, that every story had a moral lesson, and that I had a moral duty to search for the moral lesson behind each story, whether the story itself was moral, immoral, amoral, or just plain oral. And where a story appeared to have no moral lesson, I was morally bound to create a moral lesson and attach it to the tale. It didn't have to be tales by moonlight. It could be by sunlight, limelight, or newslight (or, is it Newsline they call it?). And if there was no "light", well, in the first place, I could use a flashlight, and in the second place, one didn’t really need "light" to hear a story. One needed one's ears, or one needed a dose of koboko. I had two ears. And I sure as hell did not need any koboko. And so it was that I finally learned the moral lesson behind the trekathons.
The trekkers were trekking for the nation.
The trekkers were trekking for the nation.
Some thousands of years back, the people stood on sidewalks, waving olive branches, spreading their cloaks on the ground, welcoming the one who they called Master, as he rode into town on a donkey. Now, as the "austerity measures" send our masters back to our roads, we should get our never-say-die Volkswagen Transporter buses off the roads and instead trek to show patriotism. We must trek to show our respect for them, for it is by respecting them that we can prove our love for the fatherland. Yeske! All those sidewalks and pedestrian bridges were constructed to be used by trekkers, not for helicopter (sorry, drone) photo-ops during electioneering campaigns. Where there are no sidewalks, there are bush paths. And where there are no roads and no paths, we needs remember that it is not for nothing that the word "trail-blazers" was coined. However we go about it though, bottom line is ... let us take our motos off the roads so that the vehicles can ply, whose owners used to fly, for surely as we know, the rich also cry.
I am wasting valuable trek-time. And I am getting angry over nothing. So let me quench that fire in my heart with the cold water in my plastic Coke bottle - water that I transferred to the used bottle from the pure water sachet in which it originally came. Since I am yet to trek to anywhere that will put me in the news, let me trek to someplace near me that at least is on the news - the nearest petrol station. That way, I can try to ensure that this evening, with the help of my Ah-pass-my-neighbour generator, I can watch the news. There, if I do not watch a rehash of one interracial wedding between a very black comrade governor and a white not-model (lesson to South Africa, yea?), I might just see the face of the next person who has elected to, like the others, trek for Buhari, trek for Jonathan, trek for the nation.
And umm..., could someone beg someone to beg someone to allow commonsense trek into the psyche of the general Nigerian populace? One senator-elect who represents the commonsense constituency is shouting himself hoarse and you guys are just too busy trekking to listen. Treksters!!!
MY NEIGHBOURS MY KILLERS
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
As I walk through my streets, as I greet those guys who regularly sit at that store close by, as I raise my right hand in a half-hearted salute to the "mallam" who sells everything from biros to cigarettes, as I look into the eyes of the estate gateman, I see in all these people my neighbors.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
As I walk through my streets, as I greet those guys who regularly sit at that store close by, as I raise my right hand in a half-hearted salute to the "mallam" who sells everything from biros to cigarettes, as I look into the eyes of the estate gateman, I see in all these people my neighbors.
But I see also in them all my potential killers. With just the right combination of circumstances, these same people will use wrenches to rain blows on my head, back, and legs; they will scream obscenities as they kick my bloodied head about like a football that has refused to go into the net, they will put a tire around my neck; someone will douse me in petrol. Then, very calmly, that same guy who I shared a cigarette with just last week will strike a match, and with his eyes boring into mine, his fiery with a hate I hadn't known existed, mine dimmed by pain, he will yank a strip of my now torn and bloodied clothes which are still hanging on me...and simply set me alight...
Yes. This evening, as I walked back home, I saw my neighbors, the usual people. But as I greeted one and smiled at the other, all I could think of was...what would this one do? Would he use a stone? Would he use a log? Would she be the one who suggested that I be burnt? Would he be the one who strikes the match? What would happen to my ashes?
For it is clear to me now that it takes just the right mix of awry circumstances for my smiling neighbors to become my gleeful killers.
***
I may pretend that I am only South Africa. But I know that I am not just South Africa. I know that my very own street in Lagos, Nigeria could very well be my cremation site. All it takes...
SOME RECONCILIATION
(A Set of Random Thoughts)
WARNING: My random thoughts are unwieldy, and so are the sentences that communicate them.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
The 2015 elections were won and lost. But it appears those elections achieved one more important positive effect (in addition to seeing the emergence of Buhari, Ambode, and Okorocha of course):
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
The 2015 elections were won and lost. But it appears those elections achieved one more important positive effect (in addition to seeing the emergence of Buhari, Ambode, and Okorocha of course):
That effect is that the South East and the South South are nowadays being mentioned in the same sentence without accompanying words like rancor...
Reconciliation seems to be in the air. Just another positive side effect of the CHANGE that 15m Nigerians believed in and voted for.
When CHANGE is positive, its ripple effects and even its side effects are full of 'positiveness'
#PoeticLicence
Outdoor Piss And Offshore Tales
The Beauty Of Atheism
We May - All Of Us - Be Terrorists
Religion and Religiots
To The Lady That Took My Heart - And Kept It
To The Lady Depression That Haunts Me So
Genesis
____________________________________
Explore Naijaman
PAGE CONTENTS
Outdoor Piss And Offshore Tales
The Beauty Of Atheism
We May - All Of Us - Be Terrorists
Religion and Religiots
To The Lady That Took My Heart - And Kept It
To The Lady Depression That Haunts Me So
Genesis
____________________________________
Explore Naijaman
