Ngozi's Blog

The first month of the year is over and I cannot emphasize how much it sucked. The only highlights were this blog and the time I attended an old friend’s wedding. Apart from that, I didn’t get to cross out a single thing from my January to-do list!!

It was the same way in 2012- the months practically flew by and before I knew it, there were Christmas decorations all over the place and the year was over! The idiot who said that Life is short knew exactly what he was talking about. One minute you’re on the playground in nursery school, showing a four year old boy your knickers, and the next minute, you’re 30 years old, standing in your boss’ office, showing him your knickers and wondering where all the years went… 😉

One of the things on my list was to become the MD of an oil company. Maybe I was being a tad over-ambitious but we’re supposed to aim high right? Anyway, I saw vacancies for Mobile Dishwashers, Mammary-gland Displayers, Mof Dai-vers etc… all in “a reputable oil company”. There was nothing for Managing Director and as the month was nearing its end, I was becoming more and more desperate.

I got so desperate that I eventually decided to apply for a job that I would ordinarily not look twice at. It was the kind of job in which I would ultimately compromise myself in one way or the other. The interview (which was yesterday) went well as far as interviews go, but I was very unhappy.

Let me explain what I mean…

I graduated from Igbinedion University, Okada. I transferred there after I dropped out of Med school in Nsukka. It’s a really REALLY long story, but I’ll just say that I was young, naive, immature and I had no idea that hymens didn’t regenerate like the liver… so I got distracted, and after struggling through Med school for a few years, I finally dropped out. I even made up my mind to never do school again.

Meanwhile, family and friends tried to convince me to go back. They said I wouldn’t get far in life or get a good job with a decent salary without a degree. I wasn’t worried because I had plans to develop my skills in the fine art of roasting plantains. I was going to turn the bole business into a multi-million Cedes empire. With the way my mum and my younger brother eat plantain, I figured that the profits from sales to them alone would be enough to send my first kid to Harvard.

However, it took almost two years and countless burnt plantains before I went back to school. And that’s how I ended up in Okada. I hated the school from day one, but it was the chance I needed to redeem myself. I worked extremely hard cos there was nothing else to do. Most of the kids there were young enough to be my grand-kids so we didn’t have much in common and thus couldn’t “play” together. We had extremely different ideas of what “fun” meant.

In the end, I grew to love my school. I met some amazing kids and I had the best class mates. Plus I got my degree. But Okada girls have the worst reputation EVER. Personally, I don’t think they do anything that girls from other schools don’t do. I think the only difference between them is that Okada girls make no apologies… their escapades are less hidden which makes it easier for other people to point fingers and judge.

So, fast-forward to modern-day job hunting and you’ll see why occasionally I run into problems. There are some offices I walk into for an appointment and as soon as I hand over my CV, the recruiter looks at it, he notices the name of my school and it’s all over. I might as well have printed my resume out on a sheet of rizzler.

Some of them just think it quietly in their minds that I might be a marijuana-addicted, codeine-drinking bisexual master of all things oral. Others ask point blank if I have a velvet dress that might implicate them in future. If you protest too much and get defensive, you’re a ho’… if you don’t say anything and just ignore the insinuations, you’re a frigid ho’.

I was offered the job today, but I knew I had to turn it down so I did 🙁

We’re in February now and I’m still not an MD. I’m grateful for the gift of life as always but I’m pissed… too pissed to fake any positive “Happy New Month” feelings. You can check back tomorrow for an inspiring/encouraging post.

Every morning, by 6:15am I go jogging for about forty minutes. It’s practically a ritual…

Years ago, it started off as an excuse to spy on my ex-boyfriend. Jogging past his house in the mornings, I was able to see what new ho’ he had spent the night with. Before you judge me, you have to bear in mind that this was in the age prior to Facebook and Twitter. We didn’t have it as good as the girls of nowadays. In today’s world, when your boyfriend tells you “Baby, I’ll call you back later. I’m in a crucial meeting right now”, all a girl has to do is check his twitter profile… if at that moment he’s sending out tweets like “Straight Jack Daniels and fly cuties all up in this motha!!” then she can raise hell.

Anyway, there was no twitter so I had to rely on the primitive method of “jogging” past his house.

After some time though, I noticed that the fake- jogging was actually helping me lose a bit of weight. So I started real-jogging. I changed my route so that I didn’t have to jog past his house or even near his street and before long, the exercise became like therapy for me. I even came close to my ideal weight.

Now, my jogging every day is no longer about weight loss. I have phases when I eat like a pregnant panda so I have to jog to keep the weight from piling on. I also do it to keep fit.

That’s not why we’re here today though…

I consider myself to be an above average runner. But it wasn’t something that happened overnight. I had years of practice (including times I had to run from the police 🙂 ). Anyway, I recently moved to a new town and I’m still kinda new to the area. You can’t imagine what it’s like when, once in a while, a fellow jogger comes out and sees me for the first time. He sees a girl woman female jogger and just assumes that because I am fat on the fleshy side, I am struggling to lose some weight.

He comes up beside me and enters “personal trainer” mode, asking stupid questions like how long I’ve been running and how often I come out. Then he proceeds to give me, a whole ME *slapping my chest for effect*advice on how best to run, along with some other unwanted weight-loss tips. This irritates the hell out of me. And there are all sorts of these wannabe “personal trainer” type; from the exercise buffs with rippling muscles and rock-hard abs to the ones who need another pair of sneakers for their pot-belly, so that it can jog along beside them. They all have advice to give…

But I don’t need your advice! If I want tips on running, I’ll go to Usain’s website or I’ll follow Blake on twitter. I’m not “nice” so we’re not going to strike up a conversation and “hit it off” from there. In fact, if you keep pestering me, I will be tempted to push you and your stomach onto on-coming traffic. Just leave me alone and let me run in peace… same thing goes to all the wanna-be swimming instructors out there. I’ve been swimming since my dad climaxed in ’82. I don’t need you to teach me now!

The only good thing about it is that they can very easily be dismissed. I either give them my evil early-onset-menopause stare till they wither and fall or I just ignore them till they get the message.

I know what some of you are thinking… and the answer is No, I don’t wonder why I’m still single.

I’m just a girl who wants to run in peace :-(. Is that too much to ask?

Hey people!!!

It’s been a while… five days to be precise. And a lot has happened in that time. I had planned on coming here to lie about how busy I’ve been this past week but there’s no point. The truth is that I tried to effect some necessary changes on my website and managed to make a complete mess of everything. I activated some things and deactivated some others and ended up with a Christian Gardening porn site. Finally, I let down my pride, called for help and got everything sorted out. However, for now, please ignore any pop-up ads that say things like “CLICK HERE TO BEND OVER AND TOUCH YOUR TOES!!!” 😉

Anyway, social media was all about GEJ on Wednesday. I heard about his interview during which he said we have more electricity than we know what to do with. In fact, I understand that Eby gave Amanpour the impression that there is so much power everywhere in the country that the average Nigerian is full of static electricity, and when we rub against one another, we give off sparks.

I couldn’t watch it because there was no power in my area… for two days straight!!

People also complained about the way he spoke. Personally, I’m grateful to Jah that it wasn’t the Dame herself who was interviewed. Imagine how many Nigerians would have had to change nationality after hearing her talk about “all the barrel of containers of crude that is stealed per day” or how “poorness is the root cause of the book haram terrorists that are terrifying the terrorized citizen of our nation”. Poor Amanpour would’ve been reminded of the days when she used to cover the war in Iraq, dodging shells and bullets.

I ended up watching bits of it the next day though and it wasn’t completely terrible…

In other news, it seems our boys aren’t faring too well at AFCON. I’m really not interested. I’m not interested but I know when a match is being played because along my street, young boys gather outside barbers shops and restaurants and bars to watch the match through an open window. So drivers have to honk repeatedly for the boys to clear the road before they can drive past. I always imagine having a car or a lorry and just running them over and using them as speed bumps… then I realise that thoughts like that are the main reason God hasn’t given me a car 🙁

The last time I watched one of those Nations Cup matches was many years ago (in 2000 A.D.) when we got to the finals and played Cameroon… I was much younger then and in those days I used to watch football for the love of the game. At that time, for me, it wasn’t about hot sweaty players with thick muscular thighs and rock-hard abs that we got see whenever they pulled their jersey over their head. #sigh!#

We lost that game on penalties and it literally scarred me for life. I wept like I was related to one of the players or like I was dating the coach. Even my parents were worried cos of how I took it… I don’t know if I can handle that kind of trauma again. Anyway, I’ve read all sorts of comments on the players and their coach and the truth is, no matter how badly we diss our team,  we all want Nigeria to do well, and we want desperately to win. But we’re afraid to hope so that we don’t get our hearts broken. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and still hope for the best ok?… We should NEVER be afraid to hope for the best (and I don’t mean in only football matches and HIV tests).

Cheers!

Dear You,

I remember on the second day… you told me, or should I say you warned me not to fall for you. When you said it, it took all my will power to not laugh in your face. In my mind, I was wondering, “Who the hell does this nicca think he is? Denzel?”

You see, I’ve heard guys say that to me a gazillion times before and in my opinion, if you’re not Hugh Hefner or a shirtless Tatum Channing, then you really don’t have the charm to pull off that kind of confidence. In fact, coming from the wrong guy, it’s quite irritating to hear.

Anyway, maybe I was bored, or lonely (thin line between the two). Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that it happened around the time I watched that stupid gay Twilight movie. You can’t watch that crap without thinking that maybe shit like that really does happen in real life… that people just sit and gaze into each other’s eyes in the middle of forests with romantic songs playing in the background.

Whatever it was, you became a habit. Then my habit became a horrible addiction. And this addiction reminded me constantly that it would eventually kill me. Then it proceeded to do to me what God did to Moses…

You held my hand and took me on a journey out of hell. On our way out, I kept asking what the outside world was like but because you couldn’t explain it using words, you showed me in little ways:

You showed me when you laughed at me and teased me mercilessly about being weird and about not knowing things I should’ve known. Then, as if you had all the patience in the world, you taught me what I needed to know.

You showed me by always encouraging me to do new things that I was afraid to do. It didn’t matter that a few of those things were illegal…

You called me beautiful in the morning and called me beautiful at night, but it meant more to me when you called me beautiful straight out of the shower with my hair in a mess and with no make-up on.

We never stopped laughing, at each other and with each other. You never took yourself too seriously. And I could tell you anything…

You would hold my hand and kiss my forehead at the most random moments. Pray tell, how was I supposed to not fall for you??!

I wasn’t surprised though when, at the gates of hell, you let go of my hand and left me standing there. I was warned, wasn’t I? I was hoping that maybe when we get to the outside world, I would somehow make you see that you needed to be right there with me. But I should’ve known you were afraid, even more afraid than I was.

Suddenly, I was Moses outside the Promised Land. I could see the world, just as you described it, but I couldn’t go in. I saw Bella and Edward, still doing their thing in a forest, with the romantic background music. I saw Jack and Rose, but this time they were in a canoe. I even saw Ellen and Portia. Nobody was there alone.

So I turned back. I’m going back to the familiarity and the safety that is in hell. I’m going back to the days when I, Hitler and Saddam used to just chill and exchange war stories. I somehow missed the days when me and TuPac used to play pranks on Ghaddafi just to see him get upset. Good times, no stress, no worries…

Looking back now, I realize that the only thing our story had in common with Twilight was that both of us have hairy chests… like Edward. There’s no background music, no eye-gazing, no animalistic sex.

I hope you’re happy; as punishment for daring to go out and so that I would never even consider it again, the devil makes me write “NICCA REALLY IS DENZEL” 300 times on the whiteboard every day.

So, I just wanted to say a big SCREW YOU!!! Nicca don’t ever come near my side of hell again…

Everybody knows a prophet.

I don’t mean prophet in the “divine” sense of the word. I’m talking about maybe a pastor, or a church usher, chorister, church cleaner, pastor’s-ass-kisser, sound technician etc. Basically, anyone who does work for the church.

Today’s focus is not your average, everyday church worker though. Today, we’re dealing with the ones who sweep the church floors as if their ancestor was the Mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah. They use their work in church to apologize to Jesus on behalf of their great-great-great-great-grandfather on their father’s side, the man who bought the hammer and nailed Him to the cross.

These prophets work and attend services like they are guilty of something, like they can possibly pay God back…

Now, if you happen to have one of these “prophets” around you- at home, at work, in your class or in your AA group- then you should be very familiar with the saying, “A prophet has no honour in his own home”. Actually, it’s not just a saying, it’s a bible verse, something Jesus himself said. I think it was in Songs of Solomon 7:7-9… not too sure of the exact bible verse.

Anyway, it’s a pretty simple verse, easy to understand, but I’ll try and explain it nevertheless:

It means that in church, a prophet/worker is always recognized for his/her work and has his/her ass kissed regularly by fellow church members. But when said prophet/worker is at home, away from the church, no one actually gives a rat’s ass about what he/she can do with 5 loaves of bread and a can of tuna. At home, no one is impressed by the halo above the prophet’s head.

In case you were wondering (like I used to wonder), I’ve decided to tell you why it is so…

We’re not impressed because:

1. We hear you when you constantly bitch and whine about “all the stuff” you have to do in church, how lazy and uncommitted your assistant is, and how hard it is for you and only you to single-handedly spread the gospel across Africa and parts of Pluto…
2. We eavesdrop on your conversations with your lazy and uncommitted assistant about how lazy and uncommitted other people in church are. What would the pastor say if he heard you guys talking about his wife’s tight skirt and VPL and the fact that she pronounces ‘bless’ as ‘blex’?
3. We become suspicious when the lead soprano has to come every other day for personal voice training lessons… in your room… with the doors shut… bolted from the inside… and we can hear no singing whatsoever amidst all that banging, except at the end when she lets out a scream. I have to give her some credit though… the girl’s pitch is impressive.
4. Other minor things that make you human and not God-like, like how you fart indiscriminately, the way you drool in your sleep, and snore like a rhino with bronchitis, or how you reign curses at any driver who cuts you off.

That, my friend, is why there is no honour.

Jesus was actually talking about Himself in that bible verse, because his own people were not impressed. I’m one of those people who swear that if I had lived in the days of Jesus, I would definitely have honoured Him. I might have been doubtful at first, especially if we grew up together and went to the same Secondary School. It would’ve been difficult to see him as anything other than “Aunty Mary’s son”… but then I know that my mind would’ve been made up the minute that water turned to wine!! That alone would’ve made me apply for a position as the 13^th disciple.

So, unless you can turn water to Rosé or moonwalk on water, I (along with many other people) remain unimpressed!!

 

ps- Please abeg o… the real bible verse is John 4:44.