Falling in love

I spotted her as soon as I entered the fast food restaurant next door to my office.
Our eyes caught and I noted she’s another tall, slim, fair skinned girl. Yellow girls are notorious for catching people’s attention, I thought dismissively, most of them turn out to be unattractive by the second look.

I bought lunch and as I swung around to leave, her gaze locked with mine again. I noted her nose, lips, those eyes bored into mine, they whispered promises.

I walked out and promptly forgot about her?

She was seated at the same table the following day. Her eyes lit up as I entered. I groaned inside and pretended I didn’t see her. That long neck, I had always sneered at people who waxed poetic about people’s necks, now all I wanted to do was run my hand from her neck to her cheek. Those lips, how would they feel if I kissed them?

What did I buy?

I walked out of the restaurant in a daze, my thoughts spun round and around, those lips, those eyes, she should quit it! I’m not going to walk up to her table, I won’t sit down. I won’t.

My heartbeat picked up as I approached the restaurant. I willed my feet not to skip towards those doors. I took a deep breath and looked up, she was there. She smiled at me.

I walked over to her table, stretched out my hand which was grasped in her warmth. Her smile grew wider.

Hi, my name is Ngozi, what’s yours? I said as I sat down beside her.

She smiled, we held hands as we walked out of the restaurant together.

A Loss of Memory

I write this with a lot of reluctance.

Not as a response to Richard Ali and his ilk who seem to thrive on controversies and mud-slinging. The hysteria and melodrama that accompanies everything they say is off-putting and extremely boring.

This is written for people who cared enough to ask for my own ‘side of the story’. I fear no man.

First off I’d like to state categorically that I did not ‘formally’ invite Richard Ali to Laipo, the writer’s platform that I started over a year ago in conjunction with NSIAC(Nigerian Society for Information on Arts and Culture) and Booksellers. As writers who have been to Ibadan will testify, you can only consider yourself formally invited when Mrs Pimoh, the Librarian at NSIAC calls you.

So I don’t know the phone call Richard Ali referred to in his first point.

There is nobody that goes by the name Shola who is a member of Laipo, and I can’t remember anybody from NSIAC who goes by that name either. So I am totally baffled by this call received by Richard Ali. The question is when this ‘Shola’ called him to tell him that his reading has been ‘called off’ because it was going to be ‘boycotted’ why did he not make enquiries immediately?

There is however, an aggrieved member of Laipo, an elderly gentleman who heard about the accusation of plagiarism levelled against Rotimi Babatunde by Maiwada, a man Richard Ali is associated with. This gentleman called me and said that he does not want Richard Ali featured at the event. I told Afi about this call, who was at that time staying in my house (as she usually does anytime she’s in Ibadan) not because I planned to ‘uninvite’ someone who has already been invited, but because she’s my friend.

I placed a call to Mr Mosuro and Mrs Scott-Emuakpor, and informed them about what happened, they agreed with my point that the event will hold, because even if Maiwada wrote a book worth featuring nothing will stop us from inviting him, since the club is about books.

I, immediately (this word is used deliberately) put a call through to Afi (who had by then returned to Lagos) to inform her that she shouldn’t worry about the reading, we were going ahead with it.

Two days to the reading I stumbled on a tweet exchange between Richard Ali and another tweep where he stated categorically that he was NOT coming to Ibadan. I called Afi and asked her what was going on and that was when she decided to tell me that Abubakar and Richard were not coming. I was annoyed and asked her why I wasn’t informed earlier so as to make other arrangements but I did not get any straight response, so I immediately called up other people who graciously agreed to attend in spite of the short notice.

I want to ask Richard Ali who he called when he ‘declined’ the invitation. In his typical fashion he claims to be ‘censored’ and in the same breath claims he ‘declined’ to attend the event. Which one is it Richard Ali? Were you ‘censored’ (and by whom)? Or did you ‘censor’ yourself?

The next point I want to call him up on is his reference to Mr Kolade Mosuro, who he claims is a ‘philanthropist’ and ‘bankrolls’ Laipo. He said Mr Mosuro ‘dissociated’ himself from the way he (Richard Ali) was being treated. I do not recall Mr Mosuro ever meeting Richard Ali talk less of holding forth a discussion on Laipo and the role he plays in it. I will also like to ask Ali, since he’s so fond of making references to ‘evidence’ to please state the time and place this conversation took place.

If Richard Ali’s blog hadn’t been so mind-numbingly repetitive and full of hyperboles I would have been outraged. He asked me why I didn’t respond to his ‘interview’, well because I find all these tiresome. I don’t engage in fruitless argument or discourse with people who can’t even get their facts straight.

As to his demand to have the name of this elderly gentleman made ‘public’ simply because he expressed his opinion, I find that disturbing, to say the least, because somebody here is obviously suffering from delusions of grandeur.

Three easy steps to riches beyond your wildest imaginations

I have to tell my story before I die. That much is clear to me as I lay on my bed contemplating how I got to this place, at this point in my life.

My name is Owolabi, I was born somewhere in Ibadan in the mid-70’s. My parents are retired civil servants. The one thing I have not been able to discover, is the reason why they decided to name me Owolabi, which in Yoruba means ‘we have given birth to wealth.’

I snigger when I think of my name and where I am right now.

I can hear their noise, ah! I’m in trouble. It is a quarter to 10. I should be able to finish telling my story before it’s 12 o clock, I am sure it’s my mind playing tricks on me.

My parents were not fetish, in fact they laugh at most people who believed in witches, wizards and other sundry spirits. They were not religious either, when the wave of Pentecostalism hit Nigeria, it somehow passed over their heads. We never went to church, but they believe there’s a Supreme Being who watched over everything that happened to human beings, they believe the Being has a wicked sense of humor.

Yesterday, in a bid to clear my conscience and prepare my parents for any eventuality, I had gone home and confessed all to my parents, who to my astonishment fell about laughing instead of feeling sorry for me.

“Forget that bladderdash!” Father had said, “Everything that happened was just coincidental, anyway I hope you’ve learnt your lessons ... if you survive till the day after tomorrow.” Father was practically rolling on the floor with laughter when he said the last sentence the book he had been reading fell on the floor. Mother tried to keep a straight face and appear sympathetic but she failed woefully. I am their only child and I’m about to die, and they are laughing. My parents are crazy. But then I run ahead of myself, let me tell you the story.

I graduated from the University of Nsukka over 14years ago where I read a course in
Engineering. After graduation and Service I went back for my masters. By the time I finally left the four walls of the university, most of the guys that I went to school with had already started doing something with their lives. I stayed at home for the first six years, walking from one company to another, attending tests and interviews. Translation: I couldn’t get a job.

I eventually got a job in a secondary school teaching Maths, Physics and Chemistry to the poor unsuspecting students. This job I did for three years, I was still at home, I still could not afford to feed myself because the pay was so poor I could barely transport myself to work. After a while I started helping the weak students, I don’t know why the school authorities thought my method of helping the poor kids by showing them the answers to tests and exams before they actually sit for them was wrong.
Their parents had money and I had the services, and we all know those students wouldn’t have passed if I hadn’t helped them. To cut a long story short I was fired by the school authorities when some bad-belle parents went to complain that I was aiding exam malpractices in the school.

That had to happen when I was finally able to meet my financial obligations and moved into my own apartment.

After losing that job, I tried everything, I played ‘Baba Lotto’, worked in a sweet making factory, tried to be a hustler (and discovered the life is not as easy as people make it out to be) and finally ended up working on a chicken farm for peanuts.
Then one stupid manager who doesn’t know the difference between a chicken and a pig started harassing me sexually. Why would I want to sleep with an overbleached piece of womanhood, who starved herself regularly in the name of dieting? Her bones stuck out all over the place and her face, which would have been pretty, wore a perpetually hungry look, the poor girl reminded me of those children people like posting on social medias as the representation of African Children (capitalization deliberate).
I told the poor girl the truth about her lack of backside, the smell of bleaching and the odour that oozes out of her ‘real Brazillian’ hair that her expensive perfumes couldn’t manage to cover and the girl hit the roof.

She had me fired.

So I set up a chicken farm with the money I had managed to save.

All the chickens died.

I stayed indoors and despaired.

That was when Suraju came into my life. He was one of the regulars at one drinking joint like that where I go to drown my bitterness in bottles of beer. I didn’t know he had been studying me until he walked up to me one night.

“Egbon I’ve been watching you for close to three years.” He said to me. There’s no doubt about the fact that Suraju was not a bad looking dude, but I don’t swing that way.

“Come on Egbon, I’m not propositioning you, what I mean is that you have been very kind to me but I think life has not been kind to you, especially in respect to your wonderful name.”

Well he can say that again, I’m an Owolabi without a penny to my name. I laughed at everything, at nothing.

He drew close to me, he smelt surprisingly clean for a man who had taken twice the amount of beers that I drank that night.

“If you want to know the three steps to easy wealth, call me on this number by 9am tomorrow, not earlier or later, it has to be nine on the dot.” He said as he slipped a card into my hand, he turned back and disappeared into the night.
My eyes were bleary and my head pounded like someone was playing steel drums in my head the following morning but I had the presence of mind to call Suraju at 9 on the dot.

Oh God, I can hear spirit noises outside my window, although as I peer through my curtains I can’t see anything, there’s a shape drawing near, maybe I should drop the curtain and hide under my bed. Oh it’s the night guard. They can’t be here yet, it’s just some minutes after eleven, I should stop panicking... watch out for Part II.