All posts tagged: nigeria

The Heroes of Lagos

Published by Osemhen

In a sense, it was my fault. I must have hit the snooze button on my alarm like ten times before I finally convinced myself that I did not have malaria and so did not have a valid excuse not to get the hell up and go to work. Enter Power Ranger mode. Showered, dressed in less than ten minutes. Decided to switch hand-bags. Dumped the contents of the black one into the brown one. Snatched my laptop, pocketed my phone and then out the door. Luckily, I got a bus almost as soon as I got to the bus-stop. Sigh. Seemed like I would be on time after all. Five minutes into the journey, the conductor asks for the customary 100 naira fare. I open my bag and without looking in, begin feeling around for my wallet. No show. Irritated, I look in. Sunglasses, check. Make-up, check. Notebook, check. Earphones, check. Pen, check. Handkerchief, check. WHERE THE HELL IS MY WALLET? My heart had started a weird rhythm in my chest by now. Thud. …

The Question

Published by Osemhen

(I wrote this at the writing workshop I attended recently. It was inspired by the most intelligent company ever, their intellectual discourse *straight face* and a bus ride :D) They sickened you. You couldn’t explain your visceral recoil at the sight of the IBB posters; your mood soured, your emotions plummeted and you lost your train of thought to a brief desire to kill. It didn’t help that the campaign posters were everywhere. The aftertaste lingered curiously. Why are you angry? – I don’t know. You were not particularly politics-inclined. You had not been old enough to appreciate the evil the Genius had perpetrated. You weren’t zealously patriotic; the country could bloody burn and you would fiddle! Why did you care so much you lost your peace? And why was the fact that it made you lose your peace so upsetting? The Question haunted you as you circled the city on a bus. It fixed itself in your mind as you ate the sugarcane you filched from a farm. It cooed as you conversed with …

Left-Handed in Nigeria

Published by Osemhen

I am left-handed. And proudly, too. People stare (admiringly, I think … I hope) when I wield my left hand. Most are surprised my hand-writing’s neat (it is!). Others expect me to write from top to bottom… A few comment, “You must be smart.” That’s the part I like best. And just to make sure it wasn’t some myth-turned-stereotype, I actually looked it up. It was a great deal of medical-ese I had to wade through but the long and short of it is that most lefties are gifted in Math and art and have terrific organizational skills. We learn easily, are generally unconventional – and okay, it must be said – mostly precocious. But do we get treated accordingly? No! Society doesn’t like lefties. It has been proved over centuries and across cultures. In French, to be left handed is to be gauche, from where we get the English word of the same spelling that means awkward or clumsy… In Italian, it is to be sinistro, from where we get the English word sinister… …