NAIJA BLOG

 I wanted to be your friend at twelve because we had been friends at  five but life has changed,  i was  poor  while you had the best I wanted to be your friend at fifteen because we were friends at five but you laughed at me I thought you laughed with me till you drove your tyre over my leg I gasped as i hurt  but you smiled and drove away i knew i could never be your friend I saw you when we were older you with your charmed life working in the big yellow firm mother luck had smiled at me and gave me something worthwhile you looked at me and saw me I still wasn't much the years had passed and we had both left the arid plains of Borno and planted ourselves into the prosperity of Abuja I didn't need to be your friend anymore..I shrugged you away after our little meet but the tyre on my feet stuck in my mind,  you still haunted me I met you again after some years, you were fat , short and sad..you had seen me as I waited  impatiently at the aisle,...

 Who will write about the dusty plains of Maiduguri where sand stretched for miles and miles; the house parties and the maijalisas,  who sang alangoros to the wealthy as they passed. Will the world know about the streets, still etched in the depth of my mind thirty years after,  the albino waiter "Yellow" of Arewa Hotel, who I saw when I went back seventeen years later, the same place, the same face, frozen by time,  Will they know of Bolori Market, West End, Federal Low-cost Damaturu, who will tell the world Tabitha lived,  cocoa-skinned, long hair , long and fine like the Shuwa -Arabs, the prettiest girl I  had ever seen, who will tell the world of how she died, sucking men into her tangled web after her...and we had the tales of the deadly gift she gave them and they lay shriveled up. Who will tell the world of GGSS Damaturu, of coming to Abuja on a Borno Express bus,  seated to the fair-skinned giant who knew all the words to Don Williams that made...

 The house felt heavy and sad.. Like a damp cloak of sadness had enveloped it No smiles on the faces of the children or women, something sad, some despair  hung languidly in the air.. my eight-year-old feet could not run away fast enough from this bleak house of pink-lipped Jonathan, the Ghanian, his beautiful teary-eyed mother and her defiant sister ...as we walked away we wondered and a playmate said,  the father had married Jonathan's wife's sister...

 You walk in shuffles, in your white shirts and suspenders hair black and straight, full in a straggly afro features small and fragile, hands effeminate.. In this jungle State, you are a walking magnet for the predators who come in different forms; the dubious, the crafty, the downright evil; I fear for you.. But your mind is astute, like a serpent,  the depth of your intellect is astounding, quoter of Purfrock, Greek mythologies and Yeats, What is your story,  why leave the security in the twilight years, to survive in a place where even the strong falter Behind the fragility and intellect, lie years too hard for you to face the neglected children, estranged from you, the cheap women who use you, the annoying pseudo-intellectuals who annoy you, the family you left behind in security who never visit you. You cling to the longings of the past, that have ruined you.. Sir...its so hard to see, a lost life, wandering on the heated tarmac.. defeated, yet finding little pleasur...

 She seats and watches with troubled eyes looks the same, those haunted eyes.. its been twelve years now since I saw her and she has not changed black, fat and defeated peering, her eyes full of anguish and angst... where you bullied and rejected? were you ever happy once and did your heart flutter at the sight of your love did you have dreams as a child to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, why are you a fixture at the NAF base, year in year out? The answers will tumble out, if I stop and ask, but I wont, wrapped up in the drama of life, challenges, fear, anxiety and worries, there is no room .. So you watch me with those troubled eyes every time I pass... Defeated

Where I played chess titans and mah-jong; where I dreamt and hoped And life was a petal that was blossomed and fresh, promising me so much, The good old days flit by as I listen to Lofi-girl and think of when books were my only distraction. Where are they now, all faces of my youth, the kind, the sneering, the racist, the good, all disappeared in a haze of painful memories. Those days were kind because of my hope, So I dreamed and read and wrote and hoped, In the streets of Kado, in the confines of Plot 14 Bamako Street, in Gwarimpa, I had to hope

 The trouble that wants to overwhelm me lies beneath my tired chest and stifles me.. my eyes grow tired from the tears so I sigh.. troubles parade like beauties in a pageant... each waiting their turn to stifle and drown me.. I sit forsaken  alone and hopeless seeking distraction from my problems in pages of irrelevant A voice tells me these days are temporary. I sigh and fight for another day to stay alive