THE ONE

Have you met the one? 

What is she/he like? 

How do you know if you've met them? 

I know because I've met "the one" let's add an s to that. I've met several personalities, each one not perfect or better than the other but are 'the one' in different ways. See I'm the kind of person who lives by the moment. The smallest of things excite me. My interests are every where. I need consistency in my life which is something I can't give to myself so I need 'the one' to give me that. My person has to then be or possess a number of qualities. I'm a happy person, he has to keep that joy going. How I see it, my perfect man should be smart- know your stuff so I'm forever impressed. Be able to make conversation regarding anything. Be funny- no one likes a bland person. Be imaginative-dreams do come true. Hardworking. Not noisy. Calm. Humble. Someone who isn't afraid to express himself/ feelings. One that exerts his dominance in a subtle kind of way. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand arrogance in whatever form. But a man that knows how to get what he wants is attractive. But I also want a man who will chase me not that I'll run (I know what's good for me) but a man that will forever make me feel like he just met me. Someone who will love me without holding back because I would love him so much more. All this I want but companionship is what I seek for. The beauty of companionship is one not everybody can explain to you. It comes to you as differently as it will another. There is no one objective definition or character that makes someone perfect. If and when you find 'the one' you will realize that perfection does not exist. You will accept and love this person as they come. Flaws and all. If perfection existed, love will have just been a four letter word. To me it is more than that. 'I love you' means I see the beautiful and ugly in you. It is me committing my all to make what we have work. I will fight you and fight the forces that will deny me you. Why? Because it is just not a four letter word for me. It is my life and you are what keeps me going. If today I find out the cells in a part of my body were going against my nature and become cancerous, I will not just sit and watch myself die away. I will fight till the very end. I will fight for you because what is this life without someone to share it with. If you hurt me I will fight you and fight for what we have until you realize why we started this in the first place. My 'the one' will be my best friend and best friends don't just up and leave because my waist isn't small enough or my skin isn't light enough. Best friends stay around when the superficial wears away. My 'the one' will know my worth and I his. Silence will be comfortable because all we need to converse is a smile and our eyes. Sixty years in my 'one' will still see me as the 20 year old they fell in love with and the love will be forever strong. The butterflies will flutter and the pink in our cheeks will grow deeper. The sparks will fly as high as the CN tower. Every word, every touch, every look will be filled with love. I will not settle and so you. You don't settle for love because it is just too beautiful a thing. Love isn't a rare find I promise you. All you need is hope, faith, trust and patience. Be a good person and an even better person will find you and love you till eternity. Love is a beautiful. I pray you and I all find it. 

I❤️

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE HOLD?

My happy memories growing up are those of the scent of on coming rain, the wind, the swaying palm trees, the falling ripe and unripe mangoes, the haze as the clouds darken and a beautiful sunny afternoon becomes dark as the heavy down pour falls from the heavens.I remember my mum screaming our names to run back home from the neighbours' so we could close the clattering windows of our 3.5 bedroom duplex in Kaduna. We knew to always close the big French Windows in the hall way downstairs and leave the Windows facing east open because the rain wouldn't come in through there. At this time it was expected for NEPA to have shut off the electricity as soon as the clouds began to gather so there wasn't TV and at the time generators weren't even a sound we knew. We had the almighty rechargeable lamps daddy always bought from Alkali road. The maid will be in the kitchen cooking up something that always tasted better than it looked with my baby brother strapped to her back or in his high chair in the kitchen with her. The Aunty at home at the time will be ushering my two sisters and I into the bathroom one after the other to have our evening bath. The water had already been set to the right temperature and the various shouts and big eyed warnings of not to touch the hot water tap came at this time. I and Aliyyah were big girls now so we got to pick what color of pajamas and socks we were going to wear to bed that night. We would bathe, pray and wait for daddy to return from Abuja so we could have dinner and everybody will talk about how their week went. Mine will always be about how I and my friends (names withheld 😂) went to mama Ene to cook indomie before club started or how Malam Sani was screaming down the walkways of Zamani College junior side. The new book I got from the library and how I barely passed another maths test. Aliyyah will be on about how primary school is very hard 😒 and how life wasn't fair because she couldn't watch TV in school. Mummy will be in her room or the bigger sitting room bent over some law books and her thousands of case files writing judgements. The rain will have begun to subside now. The air thick with dust and smell of rotten leaves, manure and wet soil. This is when the two dogs next door will begin their daily marathon across the neighbours compound even scaling the short fence into our back yard. Sadiq is patiently waiting for the electricity to come back on and immediately shouts 'NEPAAAA' when it does. Zainab will be upstairs now begging the in house Aunty for a change of her pajamas (third time that night) because her crayons fell on the leg of her pants. I will be sitting down on my reading table upstairs doing homework beside the window facing the gate so I'm the first to see/hear daddy's black Mercedes and announce it to the whole house. The echoes will then start 'Daddy ya dawo'- 'Daddy is home' and four sets of feet will be running through the house in a frenzy to be the first to choose the Pringles flavor of the week. We all went for sour cream and onion. Mummy will come out of her hiding place and starting giving orders of food placed on the table, a new burner of turaren wuta- incense, should be put in daddy's living room, the one in her living room should be taken out because it's becoming smoky, 'take out the roast from the oven and cut it up'. The king will come in wearing either a long kaftan or short one with his babban riga/ agbada on his arm and his brief case in his hand depending on what meeting he had come out of last. He will be followed with his weekend bag and bags of yam, potatoes, goody bags from amigo and grand square by the security and whoever else is there at the time. He always comes in smiling and everyone will move to him for a hug and a kiss on the cheek with cries of 'daddy sannu da zuwa'. We will have dinner together on some nights, watch news and sleep off in his living room. One by one he will carry us to bed where we will all swear that we took ourselves in the morning as we rush to get dressed for Islamiyya. Our family driver (may he RIP) will always be late so he ends up driving like an F1 driver in the old white Mercedes Benz '94 model which is now blue btw. We will arrive two minutes before the gates close. Islamiyya ended at 12 and saloon was at 2:30 every fourth night for the girls. The boys will go off to Safaha for their hair cut. We always had something to do, somewhere to go during those weekends. If not we would trek down to Bambinos and get popcorn which we will mix into the ice cream and eat together while we bickered and fought. The evenings were spent on fences, making amala with sand and soup with mummy's well gardened flowers or on the guava and mango trees eating up the barely ripe fruits until we got constipated. These are my childhood memories but will my children know this, or even be alive to have this much peace and fun? Will they only know the sounds of gun shots and bombs? Bloody soils and streams? Dead bodies in the street or will they live lives full of fear and insecurity? 

BEST OF FRIENDSHIP

Someone asked me if I had friends. She said 'Who is your best friend? Don't you have friends? Who do you talk to? Who would be your bridesmaid?' And she ended it with 'you're such a loner' I just smiled and said 'well they are there' thinking to myself that at this point in my life, friends are at the bottom of my list of priorities! With what life has dealt me with over the past few years, I've realized life isn't all about posting different faces on Instagram and calling x and y my 'b****' it's not about making snap chat videos with x today and y the next! I have my friends. My die hard people! We might not talk everyday, they might not know what I bought yesterday, what argument bae and I had, who said what about who but they have my back and I have theirs. I can run to them crying and I know there's a shoulder waiting for me to lean on and an ear eager to listen. Just because we don't have group chats/ constant chats doesn't mean we don't keep up with each other's lives. It means we have priorities. Bagging them degrees ya know with 4.0s not just passes. Becoming successful is my priority. Not taking selfies and gossiping about whose nudes leaked. When I and my best friends get to the top, then we'll make noise in our Walter Steigers standing in the limelight of world stages or behind the scenes creating a movement, making a change to the world and leaving an imprint of our greatness as we impact so many lives- all that as a result of the tight circles that didn't gossip or backbite, that stood by each other through the best and worst, supported one another and respected personal space. At that point we might drop a selfie or two with the hashtag throwback and then you'll realize that true friendship isn't about the noise and meet ups. It's about everything else! To those friends that are forever true, remain unknown until the billions set in! The best and most beautiful of gems are hidden from the harsh elements of the world💎

BLACK GIRL

Oi beautiful black girl

Shine in your ebony skin 

Wear your crown like it was made of gold 

Swerve your hips to a rhyme unheard 

Let those waist beads clink and clank 

Oi beautiful black girl 

Embrace your beauty like a pearl in its shell 

Oi black girl 

You are beautiful inside and out 

Do not let society bring you down

Oi beautiful black girl 

You will crawl, walk, run then fly 

You will soar like a great eagle 

Your wings spread across the bright blue sky 

Oi beautiful black girl 

Strut the earth with your head held up high 

Let the ground be your catwalk

Oi beautiful black girl 

Laugh and cry like the sounds of the talking drum 

Run and dance without care for the world 

Be proud of who you are 

Where you are 

And what you are

Rise above the constraints of society 

Oi black girl 

You have everything by you 

You are strong and beautiful 

Let no one tell you otherwise 

Oi beautiful black girl 

You will be great 

Born a princess 

Die a Queen 

Oi beautiful black girl 

BROKEN SHIELDS

I need someone to talk to

Not you, someone less attached 

I don't know what I want to talk about 

But I know I'm not well 

Happy? Far from it 

I can't feel 

Just hate and anger 

Irritation and annoyance

I need you 

Not you 

Someone else 

I want joy 

Laughter and fun 

I need privacy

Independence and a tit bit of confidence

I have forgotten how to love

Share in the art of patience 

Nothing nothing nothing

Feels like my insides have been bleached 

I need you 

SANCTIONED IGNORANCE

 What irks you? For me it's the very little things.The loud lady talking to her mum on the phone in the train.The guy who slurps on his coffee at Starbucks.The couple who live upstairs and seem to have a life obligation of bickering at 3 am on a Sunday night.That one 'supposed' friend or family member that always finds a way to point out ones imperfections.There are so many things!The list goes on and on.But what throws my lid off the most is that one personality which happens to be half a billion people around the world that do not care. That one person that breathes without living. Passionless, ungrateful, proud, arrogant, confused and uncaring... It isn't too difficult to find a purpose to live. Just do it! LOL the irony. How many lawsuits have Nike gotten themselves in for not caring about the environment? Working conditions? Sweat shops? That's my point! We do not care who or what gets hurt all we want are glow in the dark yoga pants and the newest Roshes!

DISAPPOINTMENTS

    We happen to live in a world where love is confused for physical attraction. Where peace is gotten through wars. Where modesty is confused for not being cool. Where being religious Is translated into extremism; (I do not believe in such a word when it is linked to religion. One either believes and has faith in the existence of a superior being that is simply greater than the human understanding or strays from the path). Where being polite and nice passes for being cheap and attention seeking. I have missed the days where the neighbours were family; where chatting up someone was delightful. I have missed the days when a smile meant a whole lot.