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Friday, August 5, 2011

DRESSED TO KILL!!!!

This post was inspired by the sermon I heard at a church service that I and hubby attended yesterday. I was relaxing ‘jejely’ at home..o after a tiring day at work when hubby came home, he said he wanted to have an early dinner and then he’d go for fellowship at some church in our area…He said that with a grin on his face cos I had earlier accused him of being a “church ashewo”….ok, I didn’t blurt it out literally like that but I had laid it nicely and politely to him the advantages and disadvantages of sticking to a particular religious fold.

In order to be a supportive wife and not nag, I told him I’d tag along…(shio! Afterall, what is good for the goose is equally good for gander). It started off well at the service, at the praise session, I was singing and at same time looking around to take note of my surroundings (Ps..don’t blame me, I was feeling like a green horn) while hubby was dancing seriously.

However, what I did thoroughly enjoy was the message. It was soooo direct! And guess what? It was what my pastor had preached the previous week…. “OUR GARMENTS!” as in PHYSICAL CLOTHES. That was not the first, nor second nor third time I had heard a Pastor complaining about clothes and provocative dancing in the church… I mean terrible dancing..o! not like happy dancing but something like backing the Man of God and shaking your cellulite-laden booty soooo hard till it almost drops, or something like doing “butterfly” and going low when you know you are wearing a mid thigh skirt.(remember the butterfly dance? We used to do it way back in primary and secondary school to TLC songs?)

What about clothes? Oh..truth be told, we women are always guilty..exposing the unmentionables! For me sha, I initially didn’t care, even if I see eighty-nine naked women marching down the street, I wouldn’t flinch cos wetin concern monkey with beauty competition??? But after the service, I talked to hubby and he really made me understand the agony Pastors are passing through..being distracted by near naked women (I know some might argue that if you are in the spirit, you eyes would be made blind to every antics of satan) but we are still humans and haven’t transited to the stage of being spirits, spirits are immortal and I don’t think they have the urge to play “mummy and daddy”..if y’all know what I mean.

Being that we are still humans and our bodies are temples to honour and glorify God, am now convinced that what one wears, actually matters. As much as one doesn’t have to step out looking like a disheveled homeless tramp or wearing next to nothing, the key to getting it right is striking a balance, keeping the occasion in mind and dressing to positively impress, not KILL!!!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

LAGOS NA WAH..O

Got back from Lagos on Friday evening after a five-day training courtesy of my work place, It is mandatory for every staff to attend local training once a year in any state in Nigeria (not even by your choice). I had earlier been scheduled to attend a leadership training in Port-Harcourt, that day I went home happy..and singing Duncan Mighty’s “Port-Harcourt boy son…if I do you wrong before….sorry..o” however few days after, my hopes of shining as a PH big babe was dashed to pieces, I received a memo sending me to SHANGISHA, LAGOS (Ok! Like whia in Neptune is shangisha???!!), even the name alone gave me premature contractions.

Finally, I carried my humble self down to Lagos and set up camp at my older sister’s place in Ajao Estate (Btw, did I mention that the only place I know in Lagos is the short distance between MMA2 and Ajao Estate? You can sell me Lagos and collect enough change to start up business).

Boiling down to the essence of this post, I think one has to be a tough cookie to survive in Lagos..o. the place no be moi-moi at all..o. Besides, I think if you can live in Lagos (as in the whole of Lagos), you can live anywhere…Fiji Islands with cannibal Aborigines, Arctic region, Vietnam rainforests… to mention a few. Here are a few situations I encountered to buttress my point:

SITUATION ONE:
Entered a cab from Ajao Estate to Shangisha, the driver was an old grandpy, he spoke Yoruba to me and I politely smiled and replied in English, expressing my inability to neither speak nor understand the language as much as I wish I did. Grandpy was so cute that I could almost pinch his cheeks (I was thankful that the cab driver was not one of these young agbero boys that would gladly take me to Badagry and dump me or better worse, one chance). I got in and tugged at the set-belt (first instinct whenever I enter a car), the belt had no clip for fixing it, i shrugged..whatever, not like I need it anyway! I placed the belt on my laps. No sooner had we gone for about three minutes, grandpy’s “tuke-tuke motor” veered down the road with the highest speed,….i mean, the speedometer was not working but am sure we were heading to 160km/h. I looked at grandpy and he seemed very relaxed, singing what seemed like a Yoruba folklore to himself.. I held on to the sides of my seat like I was holding on to my dear life. Ehenn….when we even got to a bit of traffic, grandpy was struggling for road with one other driver of another vehicle..He shouted over my head to the other driver “IS YOU A BASTARD!!”. It is only in Lagos that 90-year olds can still drive at hair-raising speed and hurl abuses in their own version of English.

SITUATION TWO:
Flagged down a taxi from Shangisha back to Ajao, the driver said it is N4000 for a trip that is ordinarily between N1000 to N1200, thank God for my friend Shade, I would have fallen mugu. She went like ..”Shoo! AH!!! (something that sounded like “Mogbe!) then...INCOMPREHENSIBLE YORUBA…” The driver quickly came down to N1200.

SITUATION THREE:
Coming out of the estate, I got to junction where there are mini stalls for fruits and some people selling roasted corn, a woman tried to buy some oranges but I think there was a disagreement as to price, the hawker retorted rudely at the woman and a war of words ensued between them, the kind of insults I heard shifting back and forth between the two could fill the inward register in my office, and to the full glare of everyone…the funny thing is that people would pass and not even bat an eyelid.
LAGOS IS JUST DIFFERENT! Oh…did I mention that I saw hawkers carrying bread around in the morning with butter and mayonnaise?..just take a pick!, The hawking on the express with the traffic (You can just buy everything you need for Sunday stew, no need to enter market again..na), the different uniformed people that swoop on your car once you march the break LATSMA,LASPA, LAMPES, LAWSA, LANSA to mention a few….infact, the air and everything about Lagos is different . Never seen city like Lagos, no wonder hubby has reservations about living there! Am not saying Lagos is a bad place, the end result is that wherever one chooses to reside should be a place that gives one peace of mind and where one looks forward to saying “I can’t wait to be home!!”. Don’t know when I’ll travel to Lagos again but I hope I’ld have more pleasant experiences and lots of fun!!