Of Mice and Men
You know how when you’re in your teens and twenties and guys are a bumbling mass of cluelessness around you and it is kind of cute? Well, not so much when we are peri-forty. Then it is just a colossal annoyance.
Someone slid into my DM earlier in the year, and although I do not like responding to DMs from strangers, I replied. Maybe because we were alumni of the same school and had mutual friends; or maybe because my friends had been admonishing me to “stop this nonsense behaviour of ignoring DMs” if I wanted to ‘see husband.’
He initially looked like he knew what he was doing because:
1. He was not Gen Z
2. He immediately asked for my number instead of “hi angle-ing” inside DM like people usually did.
It did not take me long, however, to realise that that was the full extent of his sense. First off, we live in the same town and he once asked me if I was okay with a long distance relationship 🙄
Oga, in the first place, from where to where?
Secondly, he made no effort whatsoever for us to meet- he was content with calling me at ridiculous hours to talk for eternity on WhatsApp. After a while, I let him know I was not about that life: the purpose of a meet would be to see if we could actually get along in real life, but since that was not happening, our conversations were becoming a chore for me. He ignored everything I said and tried to return to status quo. I blocked him!
He returned to my DM a few weeks later asking to be unblocked from Whatsapp, and I obliged because I was not ready for too much talk. Nothing has changed though, he drops by every 9-10 business days trying to start a conversation. I usually reply for the first few minutes and move on because we really have nothing to talk about and small talk is not my thing. As it stands, I have stopped responding altogether. He did not figure out that he was soliloquising until a few days ago, and he proceeded to send me this message:
Obviously I am doing something wrong.
No kidding!
The Trouble with This Country
Nigerian business owners will swear that their problem is Buhari; together with the dollar that keeps rising like puff-puff.
All of them are good and hard-working entrepreneurs whose only problem is the country in which they are unlucky to be running their businesses. If not, what is hammer that they cannot hammer.
Every single one of them. Including the one from whom I ordered a plate of rice and goat meat and a plate of beans and dodo a few days ago. The vendor had the ingenious idea to stuff everything in one plate and have it delivered to me.
Even the delivery guy kept saying he was shocked when the food was being packed. Of course I sent it back and refused to pay. But I’m sure the woman’s problem in this life is Buhari.
Or the one from whom I ordered a gift basket and requested for it to be delivered to Parkview Estate and her response was, “where is that one?” I could not get over the fact that she typed it, read it, thought it was alright and hit ‘send’. I re-read the conversation several times to see if I missed something.
Or the one who told me that my order would be ready in 10-14 working days; on day 12, I messaged her asking if she could give me an exact date so I could plan. Her response: I should refer to the previous information on the matter. I was tired! I told her she was being rude. Maybe my business was not worth her time; maybe she was used to getting orders in millions so she did not need to be bothered with me.
My experiences with businesses in Nigeria can fill an entire book. But at the end of the day, it’s the fault of our leaders. It always is.
IF I HAVE TO ANSWER ONE MORE QUESTION……
I can’t possibly be the only one who is bl**dy tired of the ‘talking-stage’. Quite frankly I have lost all patience for answering questions like “what’s your favourite colour” and “have you eaten.”
Dear toasters, try and be original small na. Get creative. Plan a picnic (or a house party) where we get to play fun games which reveal things about ourselves.
Put some freaking effort in this thing abeg. We’re not 21 and starry-eyed anymore. We’re over 35 and jaded….!
John. 1:12
For a month that started not so great, April ended on quite a high.
It began with me desperately pining for a break and Easter weekend being one of my top three ‘worst days of my life’. Then nearly two weeks ago I received the incredibly shocking news that a friend lost her son. I think things pretty much spiralled after that.
I have heard of unexpected deaths before, some closer than others. But what was particular about this one was that I knew my friend well. I knew how far she had come with the Lord and we had only just finished celebrating a particularly awesome blessing in her life. I felt so totally blindsided.
I kept wondering how God could have let that happen. So did it mean that this could happen to any of us and God would not even, at the very least, give us some kind of a heads up. Super scary ish.
I wondered about all the emotions she was probably feeling: disbelief, guilt, anger, bitterness, helplessness. I prayed for her. Prayed that her faith would not fail, but even as I prayed I kept wondering what I would do if I were in her shoes.
A few days later, I happened upon a movie on African Magic. I had not been paying particular attention to it initially, until something struck me. It was about a poor widow and her devoutly christian daughter. The widow had fallen ill and because there was no money to get proper treatment, she died.
What struck me was that after she died, her daughter began to lose her faith: she stopped praying, stopped attending church. According to her, how could she keep serving a God who had no problem with seeing her suffer (or words to that effect). And honestly when I heard those words I could totally relate. I remember thinking, “well God can you blame her? You sef, check am. This matter be as e get biko.”
Unfortunately, at the time all of this was happening, there was a ne’er-do-well in their village whose advances she had repeatedly turned down. In frustration, he had gone to seek help from a native doctor, but all the potions they had prepared kept failing; because according to the native doctor, “she had a power protecting her.”
Well, guess what happened when she decided to ‘free’ God. They began to notice that the power around her was getting weaker and weaker. Long story short the charm worked eventually.
I did not watch beyond then, but it got me thinking. I have not had any personal tragedies as bad, but there have been times I have felt betrayed by the Lord. Times when I thought we were cool then He goes and lets something bad happen. And my go-to method for airing my grievance is to keep malice with Him. 😆 #sillyme
And when I remember the Bible says to give thanks whether in bad or good times, I think, “easy for You to say when You are sitting comfortably in heaven removed from all the tragedy that is this life.”
What that movie got me to realise was that God says we should stay with Him, tragedy or no, because He knows the devil is just waiting for us to step away so he can strike. That instruction is actually for our own good! I’d honestly never considered that. That in all my malice-keeping, I was probably making myself more vulnerable to the devil than I was airing any grievance.
I still do NOT understand a lot of the things God does or why He allows certain things, but each day I discover a little better just how much He is looking out for me. For all His children.
Faith…..or Folly.
I remember when we started this faith journey, some 8 odd years ago. We were taught that faith was believing you would get what you asked for without shaking; and if you shook….. OYO for you.
So you know what we used to do? We would pray for something and attempt to will it into existence, refusing to entertain any alternatives. We thought stubbornness was faith. 😆
Conversely, if we were praying for something we did not feel 100% certain about, we believed that was a goof…..we had entertained fear so we would not get what we were asking.
One of the beautiful things that happen as one matures spiritually is that they begin to better understand the ways of God. One of the things I came to realise was that faith is not how you feel, but what you know. So even if I feel afraid or skeptical about something, I know that God loves me and will never forsake me. It is this knowledge that I have with me when I pray, not doggedly believing that it must happen as I have asked.
Interestingly, at the time of some of my biggest testimonies in recent years, my attitude was more or less, “God may or may not do as I asked, but las las I go sha dey alright.”
ALL THE THINGS WE ARE SICK OF IN 2019.
1. People’s husbands with zero self respect.
Persistently flirting despite all the non-encouragement, and sometimes thinly veiled insuts, they are getting. God deliver us from entering any type of covenant with shameless somebodies!
2. Social media stalkers whose job is to comment on your every status update and/or appoint themselves your very own personal time keeper. Your whatsapp chats be looking like I don’t know:
Them: good morning
You: good morning
4 hours later….
Them: good afternoon
You: hi
Still later….
Them: good evening, dear
You: same to you
Much, much later:
Them: goodnight.
You:
Will update list as more annoying things come to mind.
Deuces.
RED MEANS STOP; GREEN MEANS GO, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE!
A few millennia ago, I meant to start a series specifically targeted at educating our young men on woman matter. My altruism was however, misunderstood (pause to don martyr cape), and I was accused of coming down on the menfolk too hard and sounding like a joyless headmaster.
Sooo today I shall go very easy and concentrate on giving them the expo to decoding women’s sign language.
A few days ago, a friend and I were brainstorming {read, gossiping} and we came to the painful but necessary conclusion that men are colour blind. And I’m not just talking about the fact that indigo, violet and magenta are all purple to them.
{I cringe just thinking about this obvious heresy}.
We realised that most young’ins cannot tell the difference between red, amber and green. You can be morphing into the Incredible Hulk from all the green light you are shining and uncle will just be seeing amber. More than a few of us, I’m sure, have had an experience where we were practically throwing ourselves at a brother and 5 years and no show later, found ourselves having this conversation:
Uncle: shebi you know I used to like you that year.
You {incredulously}: you don’t say!
Uncle: I do indeed.
You: and you didn’t say anything because…..?
Uncle: Ah! You that was busy playing hard to get.
Chineke napukwa ekwensu ike tinye na dustbin!
Hard to get ke? Something that somebody nearly crossed the line from availability to prostitution all in the name of green light.
So it is to avoid such stories that touch, that I have graciously come up with a list of signs and what they stand for. You can thank me when you are giving the vote of thanks at your wedding.
#1. She Lols or Hahahas at ALL your jokes. My dear, I don’t care if you are a cross between Basketmouth, AY, Kevin Hart and Trevor Noah. NOBODY is that funny! This is a green light. Get up and move!
#2. She ‘misses’ three calls from you in a row and does not return any of them. Except she is dead or her phone was stolen, what she is likely saying is “miss me with that attention bruh.” This is a red light. Stop and make a U-turn.
#3. You miraculously run into each other more frequently than usual. It is very unlikely to be only coincidence; fate is getting some help and if it isn’t from you then it’s from her. Did you ever casually mention that you go to such and such a place every weekend, and two weekends later she ‘happened’ to be in the area? If this happens more than once, you might want to take your foot off the brakes.
#4. You are always the one who initiates your conversations and you do practically all the talking. If you find yourself always saying, “it appears you are not the talking type,” that is more often than not a signal to abort mission. I repeat, abort mission. Every woman is the ‘talking type’ believe me. It just depends on who she is talking to.
These are just a few of the many {inexhaustible} signs, but if you are getting mixed signals and unsure of how to proceed, do contact me privately. It would be an honour and a pleasure to help you out of your quagmire and set you well on your way to the altar. Because as one of the newly inaugurated members of the Busybody Aunty Club, I have nothing else I’m using my life to do.
Sooooo…..with these few points of mine I hope I have you convinced that red means hit the brakes and green means step on it!
Thank you.
SPEED KILLS; TIMING IS EVERYTHING.Â
It would appear that a lot of the young (and not so young ) men we have these days are….how do I put this delicately…….socially bereft. So whenever I encounter a young man who does something wildly inappropriate, I am tempted to pull him aside and tell him how counterproductive his actions really are, you know, ‘in case of next time.’ Since I am unable to do this in real time, however, I’ ve decided that whenever inspiration hits I will take it upon myself to update our clueless young ‘uns one blog post at a time.
Inspiration number one inspired the title of today’s post. 😀
Dear Sir,
I know you can’t help yourself. You ‘loved’ her the instant you clapped eyes on her. Her beauty/charm/figure has confused you all the way to your village market square and back. BUT!!! Please there’s a 10 to 1 chance that if you said this at your first meeting/chat you would be saying the wrong thing. You can never go wrong by pretending you just want to be friends at first (take a cue from Mr Wellington the sharp guy, that’s how you snag a hot chick).
Coming on strong is just a bad idea. It may work/have worked for some people, but they are very likely the exception not the rule. You want her comfortable around you not retching whenever you open your mouth -or hit the send button.
Trust me, there will be ample time and opportunity to display your lack of self control if and when she ‘agrees for you. ‘ In the meantime, try and not disgrace your lineage by acting like a thirsty somebody.
In the same vein, if the sister is playing it cool and showing that her people brought her up well, do not begin to whine about how she’s not reciprocating your thirstiness (again take a cue from social media’s latest couple). If you’ve been panting around like a dog in heat, that would be your cue to tone things down a notch as well.
Let me explain why this is good advice. Getting to know her first before showing yourself would help you know what she likes and doesn’t like and how to propel yourself into her heart and plant yourself there. Most girls, once they got comfortable with you, would happily give you all the expo sef, so all you’d really need do would be wait patiently.
Patience is key my brethren. Patience and more patience. Speed kills.
Sincerely,
Auntie Nina.
IT IS RATHER AMUSING….
The way Christians (especially from my part of the world) react to challenges. Two of such reactions are quite popular and hit pretty close to home.
I shall call the first, The Guilt Trip. This one is born of the misguided impression that challenges occur because one has ‘sinned’. Some of us actually have a record of every single challenges we ever faced and the particular sin for which that was a punishment. A typical reaction to any difficult situation would be to plead with God to forgive any sins committed unknowingly.
There are just so many verses in the Bible that show how little anyone who thinks in that way actually knows God, but that discussion could easily become an entire post by itself.
I will however, point to the very obvious fact that this mindset suggests that if one is in ‘right standing’ (these terms are in quotes for a reason) with God then their lives would be challenge-free.
I cannot think of anything that is furthest from the truth. And since uncle satan is still the unopposed champion of the title “father of lies”, I will go out on a limb here and say that is a lie from hell.
The second group are a personal favourite and I call them The Devil’s Advocates.
These ones are convinced that trials are spiritual attacks and the remedy is usually deliverance/spiritual cleansing and midnight warfare aka negotiating terms and conditions of hostage release with the devil.
(These ones are clearly unfamiliar with the concept of not negotiating with terrorists).
For the longest time, I struggled with believing this because it just made the devil appear too powerful. More powerful than God. I never understood how “if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed,” and yet you were still somehow Satan’s to harass whenever the mood hit him.
It was one of the many things I grew up hearing but struggling to understand – until, of course, I realised it was yet another lie of the devil.
The thing is, a good number Christians ‘mis-react’ to challenges because they never did learn to think like God.
Where people say challenge, God says opportunity. Now if one was presented with an opportunity they would not think it was because they had done something wrong or that it was the devil’s handwork.
The problem if one does not recognise an opportunity is that they cannot take advantage of it, and then something which was meant to lead to a breakthrough ends as yet another setback.
There’s a story in the Bible which I believe illustrates this beautifully.
Joseph’s story.
So, basically daddy’s pet, future looking good but had these rather grandiose ideas which pissed his brothers off big time (it was bad enough that their father did not bother to hide the fact that he loved Joseph best, but for the boy to wake up one morning and start saying silly things like when he grew up his elder brothers would be bowing to him. See trouble o)!
One day brothers decided they’d had enough of his nonsense and sold him off. Setback abi? Well, God did not think so.
Imagine our people giving Joseph advice when he became a slave.
How could you say things like that to your seniors biko? It is simply not done. See now God is punishing you for your insolence.
Well, he did not do badly in Potiphar’s house and he began to rise and things started looking up. Ah maybe God had forgiven him finally. There was yet hope.
Then the boy found himself in prison! Our spiritual warriors would have gone into battle mode.
Pray Joseph, pray! This is household wickedness. It must be from your mother’s family. Remember your grandfather them were kuku idol worshippers. See how your mother died naa. After years of barrenness, God finally pitied her and just after two sons, when she would have started enjoying her marriage, they killed her.
Now they have come for you. See your life now, when it looks like you want to start rising they just do something to bring you down.
Am I the only one who keeps wondering who ‘they’ are? The average Nigerian Christian has more enemies than the entire nation of America.
And has anyone else noticed how there’s always something to justify that belief. If the person is doing well then of course there must be enemies because, haters. If they are not doing well nko? Well then what other evidence do you need? Is that not the handwork of enemies?
If you come from my part of the world you of course know that nothing has any natural causes.
Your headache is not because you have not been sleeping well due to the heat, mosquitoes and generator noise. It must be an attack! Shebi last night you even had one funny dream like that….
Your knee issues have nothing to do with your (ample) weight. That job you didn’t get? Definitely spiritual forces from your village, not that there were more qualified candidates than you at the interview.
But I digress.
So poor Joseph would probably have been subjected to 40 days’ dry fasting, night vigil and deliverance prayers. He would have spent night after night demanding that the devil release his destiny.
And the devil would have been thinking to himself that if the kind destiny dey him hand you for still dey here? Abeg if somebody has seven billion destinies in his hands to destroy, will he be wasting time doing hide and seek with one person. Is it not point and kill and on to the next one?
I also find something interesting: when Joseph tried to hustle his way out, see how it didn’t work? Remember, when he asked the king’s cupbearer to put in a good word for him with the king? The guy left prison and totally forgot there was anybody called Joseph – until God decided it was time.
God is not in the business of sharing His glory.
Before tomorrow now somebody will say it was their sharpness and quick thinking that saved them from rotting in prison.
But at the end we see how every ‘setback’ only propelled him closer to his destiny.
The Bible tells us how to react whenever we encounter challenges (when, not if) and I think we would do well to pay heed- it’s author happens to know what He’s talking about.
James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Romans 5:2-5 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Ninnyzworld 