Up My Alley [Blogversary Edition]

copyright – Kent Bonham

Banteke loves my hands on approach on his jobs. I left his yacht with a new mission; looking around for a ride option, I went for a bike down the lot.

My mission was to meet an Asian chef at the alley behind the Avenue’s drugstore.

The FX Stealth fighter bike stole in on him as he talked on his mobile.

“Give it up dude, ya phone?”

“I ain’t no nagger and you’d have to make me”

A jab on the scrotum, the mobile flew into my hands.

Mounting the bike I rode through the course of the alley, I love this job!

GTA Vice City

The prompt brings to mind a scene in the Grand Theft Auto [GTA 4], which I just described above.

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Today is the combination of my birthday as well as my blogversary [blog became two years old] and I wish to roll my gratitude to some really wonderful readers

Readinpleasure

For being that BIG sister to me and the highest commenter on this blog your kind devotion is flattering and appreciated thank you.

SusieLindu

Well, the freshly pressed led me to your blog. I am still amazed at the attention I get from you despite your many followers you still give up time to peek into my world. My gratitude is here recorded.

dmmacilroy

If Susie is the godmother of my blog, Doug is the godfather. He has a way of reading more meaning to a flashfiction and getting right into the soul of the writer. He has done this for me, even called me out on not a few occasions and gave his correction, suggestions et al with love. Thank you dear Doug!

Boomie Bol

My first Nigerian follower…Thank you for those days of encouragement and love. I’ve missed your frequent posting though, and I pray life smiles at you and the family.

Sandra Crook

Sandra is that one person that surprises you with reviews least on your mind and makes your works glow even in your own eyes. Dear ma, thanks for your generosity.

Rocehelle Wisoff-Fields

Our anchor who has taken charge of the bus since Madison, she also took up new relationships and maintained same as genuinely as she can.

Timi Yeseibo

My own sister! In a twist of irony you are only next to Celestone [readinpleasure] on my comments log in just a few months of acquaintance. Just when I thought my blog is not for the Nigerian audience, well you’re not strictly Nigerian in that sense. Your kind devotion is appreciated, thank you!

A word goes to Madison Wood the originator of Friday Fictioneers, whose birthday is 15th November and Russel, that I called the clown on our bus, 16th November…Long life and happy endings!

Still in the spirit of the celebration, some of my finest flash fictions here you should click on…They are my gift to you. You may drop comments on anywhere else as your present to me. I appreciate you all!

STUCK: the other side of Valour

SCORCHED

ABUSED- the story of a good Girl

Shh! Silence, please!

What Nigerians don’t Understand

There’s a conspiracy against silence in Nigeria. We seem to prefer a shout to a whisper in this country.

Nigerians are the noisiest group of people I know. As a new corps member in Delta State I had wondered, what’s the cause of malicious exchanges between relatives?  I realized Urhobo use higher decibel in communication not necessarily as quarrels.

Everywhere you go, someone is making noise. They aren’t making sounds, they’re making noise. People who make noise for their own amusement intrude on the privacy of silence to which the rest of us are entitled.

Silence is a natural state. Any noise is a deviation from the norm. A lion doesn’t roar for more than a few minutes out of 24 hours, and while I don’t know any lion personally, I’ll bet there are days lions choose not roar at all. How often do you hear thunder, the eruption of a volcano or the rumble of an earthquake? These natural sounds are special and they only break the earth’s silence on rare occasion.

I don’t understand why some people insist on filling the air with noise. They can’t stand to be in a car without having the radio on. They can’t stand being anywhere with nothing but the natural sounds of earth in their ears.

In noise making?

I guess our country is besiege with heavy conscience people; People who can’t stand the reprimanding of a sick conscience and would do anything to crowd out the thought or voices from within.

You can’t have a peaceful ride to work on public bus these days. Either the driver is tuned to some commercial craze stations as in the BRT or there are evangelical brethren bent on winning your soul to Christ regardless of choice.

You get to work and your colleague is playing some solemn music in the corner even though it’s against the company’s policy.

You start making your calls as a marketer and the telecom companies are dying to entertain you with some caller tunes. If I have to wait for someone on the phone, I don’t want the thought of what I wish to pitch crowded out of my head by some inane bit of music.

When you get home, the war against silence continuous; the neighbours’ generating sets, on way past into the night and some dude who blasts music from the next flat are there to content with.

This man is always at the gate to our estate…

It’s the gratuitous noise that irritates me most. When a driver hunks his horn indiscriminately; the frequent lack of discretion of ambulance users and sirens for politicians. There ought to be genuine medical emergencies, not some rogue at wheels.

As similar as I want to believe the English and Yoruba grammar share some idioms. It is only in the Yoruba – a race known for their excessive exaggeration of things that this idiom exists: “Aye agbo, orun amo. [The earth will hear, the heaven will know]. You’ll agree with me that for the heaven to be privy to anything we do on earth a noise of thunderous proportion must have been generated and sent to the skies.

I realize now that when I was a kid, some of the boys I played with were constant screamers. They always made more noise by yelling louder than the rest of us. It’s a trait some people carry with them through life. They do everything louder than everyone else.

These people are the ones ripping us off in ludicrous ways with corruption. For anyone, who must host heaven and earth, in a party must have stolen big to make it possible.

The Demons of Dents and other Minor Scratches in Nigeria

Some Demons in Nigeria

The Greeks had a god for almost everything. Each one of their gods controlled one of the elements or some phase of life. Apollo was the god of poetry; Ares was the god of war; Posedion was god of the sea; Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

But unlike the Greeks, Nigerians have a demon for every misfortune. Household demons, those who follow you from your village to the city and ensure you never do well in life; Neighbourhood demons, those who take charge of your ill-luck in case your household demons are too busy in the villages; women demon, those who ensure all your savings go down the drain of some women’s loins etc

I don’t know whether the Greeks or the Nigerians had one or not, but there must be a god or a demon who controls dents and scratches that always shows up on new things. Where else would they come from? Who else but an all-powerful master of imperfections could possibly put all these little dents on all new cars in Lagos?

Last week I bought a new pair of shoes. Never mind how much they cost, I bought a new pair of shoes. On the second day I had them, I was climbing up on the stairs leading to my apartment, which is shared by my generator set, but somehow the generator decided for the first time in a year to demand for legroom only this time a part of it made a cut in the leather of my new shoe that looked as if it was done by a razor blade. I’ve put polish on the shoes several times since then, and the rip doesn’t show much, but I know it’s there and the shoes will never be new again. They lost their newness the second day.

I’ve not seen a new car that didn’t pick up some little scratch or dent in its first few weeks on Lagos roads. In fact, everyone seems to be reconciled to this around here. My uncle got KIA Sorento 2013 in July but by August we visited KIA centre for bodywork. It was so new there were no available parts at the warehouse. Looking around in traffic there seems to be a contracted denter in town who gives new cars a dent, scratch or bash no matter how careful one is.

It couldn’t have been more than three weeks after I got my new watch that the ding demon put a scratch in the crystal. Have you ever wondered how you manage to clash your watch with another’s on Broad Street? It’s not much, mind you; just enough to remind me that I no longer have a brand new watch.

Talking about clothes, the ding demons have so much aversion for mortals wearing white. As Nigerians are white loving people you can’t see these demons at their best anywhere else. Wear a white shirt on a given day and brave the odds of rain and mud-splash from vehicles. Or, if it were a party you went for, I can bet you would not return until you have spilled some palm-oil on your attire. My father had a ritual of dipping a finger in the soup and showing it to the cloth before having a taste of the meal. It works for him, but I hardly have time for such fetishes.

Another thing about these demons is their hatred for anything that makes us happy. I have owned several clothes but like a few really much. Those few somehow find a way of being caught in the bus seat, stained with engine oil or accidentally bleached. Recently, a bus conductor stained my new ash coloured trousers with his engine-oil-smeared-hands.

‘Oga no vex, the dry cleaners would make it as good as new.’ He said

But I knew, when the ding demon, dents and scratches gets through with something, it’s never as new again.