Its a cold night in Lagos City, my Mac says 7.58 and my 2000 naira second hand casio wristwatch says 7.56, I’m sure the latter is correct. I was wearing a hoodie but i took it off, as you can never wear a hoodie in South West Nigeria for too long, even when cold; after residing here for 23 years(give or take), my blood has become literally hot..
I just ate 6 little bananas and a bottle of groundnut, a quirky habit that I acquired from my Father unconsciously over time. The only thing he eats that I wouldnt is Ukwa, because I can’t even bear the thought of eating something that translates into “Breadfruit”. But what we both eat at the same pace, with the same force and with the same passion is Corn and Ube(pear) only(don’t bring coconuts to us, we will lock you up). We can literally buy out all the maize in the neighbourhood. I remember someone once saying “why don’t you guys just plant a fucking maize garden in your compound since you like to eat so much Corn?’
We ignored the lowlife.
I’m also browsing over Heather B Armstrong’s blog dooce.com and I’m loving it. She inspires me. The nature of her writing is eccentric, but super hilarious. She doesn’t write about anything in particular, she just writes, whatever is in her head she empties, without trepidation or a care in the world, like; boom, splash, away.. like that, anyhow.. She is an inspiration because this is how I let out; this is how I need to get stuff out even if i don’t know how to and i can’t get the right structure to do that, I learn from her.
I lived in Beijing for 3 years and in my first year I had a roommate Jerry(@_borluwa) who is Nigerian like me. I was just going through his instagram page today(cos its been a millennium) and guess what I see: Poetry, really great poetry, like top literary poetic talent, 18th century Edgar Allan Poe kinda shii. This nigga don turn’d shakespeare now?(In kevin hart’s accent, with the face too..).
His poetry is deep and engaging but almost abstract, like trying to hold a fish fresh outta water, like you have it now but oops! you don’t have it. And like he’s making sense in line 1 and then he’s talking trash in line 2 and he’s making sense again in Line 3. But what I’m getting at is, all this guy used to do was eat, watch movies, gym, smoke, club and sleep in that order, Wa’allahi i never knew he had such reserves in him. And i know because good poetry has a similarity to the kind of stuff this guy writes, that even the writers themselves don’t entirely know what the hell they talking about. I guess he went on a journey of self discovery and shed some old skin.
A year ago my sister gave me a book called Ghana must go by the Ghanian British author Taiye Selasi. It has an attractive paper back look and seemed thick enough to swallow, for a novel, so I attempted to take it on.
When I opened the first page I was stunned, “what kind of winchcraft book is this?”, I couldn’t understand it but it felt exciting to read still. Ghana must go is not like any other prose, it is unprecedented and genius and it simultaneously creates a comedic plot and portrays the personality of the person who birthed it. It is those kind of books that you shouldn’t try too hard to assimilate, cos if you do your brain might just crash, especially for people like me that have no literary upbringing. She is the kind of author that “writes first and thinks later”.
Heather, Taiye and Jerry are three humans on this very diverse spectrum of method that make writing a business for welcoming idiosyncrasies, a container for self expression. What is lurking in your mad mushy mind? I don’t know but you need to drain it, anyhow..
Many a folk fear to express through content because they feel they don’t possess the vocabulary and talent to express it in the language that the men from the little european islands glued us with. And according to Science, about 6 million years till present day, we didn’t have enough ultimate and proximate factors to spur an organised writing system in Sub saharan africa(or they didn’t tell us what actually happened to them), It is hereby impossible to write in yoruba, igbo, hausa, swahili, afrikaans or Bemba. And hieroglyphics takes time
Is it too late to invent my own post colonial writing system?? like the Cherokees..
“Write First, think later” was what Oluwaloni Olowokere told me and it was juicy advice. It now looms to me as a powerful technique to get your mind out in a short period of time like the 45 minutes it took me to write this lopsided article.