From the past

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‘Kai!’ the Fulani herdsman exclaimed at something he had been thinking about. He stuck his tongue between his teeth and ejected a straight stream of saliva. It landed some distance away.

He was standing on one leg, his thin wiry and weatherbeaten frame looking fragile against the backdrop of blue sky and green savanna grass. His cattle grazed nearby leaving dark green puddles behind them as they moved.

The flash startled him and he looked up, distracted from the water bottle he was about to put to his lips. Without moving his eyes scanned the area the flash had come from. They came to rest on the boy crouching in the bushes, a camera held to his face.

Slowly, deliberately, he corked his water bottle. The camera flashed again. The leg he had been keeping off the ground came down and the stick he had been leaning on left the ground.

With the deadly aim the herdsmen are known for — that aim with which they fling a 2-meter stick at a wayward bull 80 yards away and never miss — the angry man let fly his staff. It hit its intended mark but not the intended object.

My friend Uzoma had dodged just in time. He was the fastest runner in my set and he was putting his skills to good use. Over the ridges he flew, not daring to look back as was his habit when racing.

The man retrieved his staff and set off after him. Uzoma may have been fast, but he had apparently never dodged bull horns or run continuously for kilometers. He huffed and puffed but slowly and surely, the herdsman gained on him.

As he ran, he thought about one of the big boys who had been given a very good stick beating by a Fulani boy who couldn’t have been more than ten. If the man caught him, he would be done for. Out of breath, he reached the hostels. He ran through the flower hedge, stubbing his big toe as he ran up the steps.

His pursuer cleared the steps behind him…

‘Yusif! Yusif!’ he panted as he burst into the first room. ‘Abeg come and help me interpret.’

‘Uzoma, what’s the matter?’ Yusif looked up from the kwado he had been preparing.

There was no time to reply. The patter of rubber-soled shoes announced the entry of the herdsman. He looked just as calm as he had been in the bush but his demeanor belied his intent as he moved towards the two boys.

Yusif called out in Fufulde and the herdsman stopped, taken by surprise. They exchanged greetings and negotiated. Uzoma shivered every time the man gestured at him with his stick.

‘He does not like people taking his picture,’ Yusif explained. Uzoma tried to show as much contrition as he could and the man appeared appeased.

‘You’re very lucky,’ Yusif told him after the herdsman had gone.

‘I know,’ Uzoma said. ‘Now can I have some kwado?’

© Azuka 2005. Semi-fictional

The Law of the Dollar

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There shall always be a minimum of one dollar in coins in my possession at any given time

I know this sounds silly but I sat down yesterday during my weekly madness analysis. I hadn’t eaten all day and I did something I usually do: fish around in my shirt and jeans pockets, my coat, empty my drawers, and at the end of it all, came up with exactly one dollar in coins.

When I went to the vending machine however, I discovered one of the quarters belonged to that category of thin coins the owners of the vending machine put in although the machine doesn’t accept those same coins back. Wahala.

Ever since I came here, I run out of money in hand approximately every two weeks. Walking to the ATM is overkill for a lazy soul like me so I’ve formed the bad habit of rummaging through my things until I find the exact amount I need which never is below a dollar. For some reason, I always find what I want to find hence the law.

Back to the story.

Back I stomped to my room to do more searching. In my bag, between my books, behind my computer (where I found a dime), under the bed (five cents) and when I had almost given up, inside my rarely opened box (where I found another dime).

Quod erat demonstrandum.

A muffin never tasted better…

Women and Clothes

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For most women, the choice between sex and a new wardrobe is simple — they go for the clothes.

Women on average say they would be willing to give up sex for 15 months for a closet full of new apparel, with 2 percent ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds, according to a new survey of about 1,000 women in 10 U.S. cities.

Sixty-one percent of women polled said it would be worse to lose their favorite article of clothing than give up sex for a month.

“Some people say clothes make the man, but the right clothes can even replace him,” fashion designer, stylist and TV personality Carson Kressley from the reality TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” said in a statement accompanying the poll.

The study also suggested that clothes often wear better than relationships.

The average woman between 18 and 54 years of age has hung on to her favorite article of clothing for 12 and a half years, a year longer than she’s held on to her longest relationship.

Almost three-quarters of respondents, or 70 percent, also said they believed in love at first sight when it came to finding the perfect article of clothing, while only 54 percent of women were as confident in spotting the right man.

Nearly half of the women, or 48 percent, taking part in the survey by consumer products giant Unilever said their favorite article of clothing was more reliable than their man in giving them confidence and making them feel sexy.

Is it true? (Reuters)

The Psychic Tag

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Okay, I’ve been lagging behind but school work has been keeping me. Let’s see what this brings.

Question 1:
Imagine you are in a desert (are you there?);
Now imagine a ladder (are you seeing it?);
Now what is the position of the ladder? i.e Lying down, Resting on something, Standing alone…

Lying down

Question2:
Imagine a horse in that same desert (are you there?);
What is the colour of the horse?
What is the horse doing?

Brown horse, silhouetted against the sun, pawing the ground with it’s right hoof, admiring it’s shadow.

Question 3:
Come back to reality…
Give three reasons why you like water:

1.Therapeutic — I’d love to sit alone all day and write beside a waterfall.
2. I cook with it.
3. Quenches my thirst.

Question 4:
What is your favorite color?

Currently olive green

Give the three reasons why you like that color.

1. There’s an abundance of green in nature
2. It reminds me of when I used to pull out grass and chew on the tender ends
3. I’m using it on WritingInn

Question 5:
What is your favorite animal (Even if you don’t like, what would it be if you do?)

Cat

Give three reasons why you like/would like that animal.

1. They have this honest, searching gaze.
2. They’re so cute and adorable.
3. You don’t teach cats tricks. That’s me in a nutshell — try to teach me and I actively reject almost everything. I try to find my own path.

Question 6:
Imagine you wake up in a white room with no door, and no window. What will be your first reaction?

Go back to sleep.

What will be your reaction afterwards?

If I wake up and everything’s still white, I’d mentally go through the ways I’d describe it in case I have to write it down some day.

Question 7:
Without thinking, name two opposite sex names that are not your family member.

1. Z
2. Dr N

Question 8:
Without thinking, name someone from your family member.

Uche

Question 9:
Name anyone, same sex or otherwise, that is not a family member.

Samuel Opoku

Question 10:
List four of your favorite music titles

1. Arrival of the Queen of Sheba — George Frederic Handel
2. Mandoline Concerto in C — Antonio Vivaldi
3. Call my Name — Styl Plus
3. Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, 1st movement — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Question 11:
List four of your favorite locations/cities.

1. Port Harcourt, Nigeria — my home
2. Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria — my favorite aunt lives there
3. Tampa, FL — the first city I experienced in the US. Seaworld, Busch Gardens, Adventure Island, the works, courtesy of National Geographic.
4. Sydney, Australia — I’d love to go there. Never been.

Last One:
Arrange these animals according to your preference: Tiger, Sheep, Cow, Monkey, Eagle

Tiger
Eagle
Sheep
Cow & Monkey (tied) 😆

Let’s hope I don’t get too much revealed about me here…

Alright, UnNaked, over to you!

Gender Inequality: Violence

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When I wished I was a misogynist sometime ago, Everchange understandably took me to task. For the record, I’m not a misogynist — in fact some of my beliefs could be perceived as feminist. I only believe in gender equality, something very difficult to find in today’s world. I’ve seen a friend of mine slapped by a girl over a ‘worthy’ issue that wouldn’t have been deemed worthy if he had slapped her for the same reason.

I like to call myself an equalist (whatever that means). Some of my opinions are offensive to either sex — sometimes both. I intended at first to write about gender inequality as a whole but when I started out, I discovered I had more to write than would fit below the boring/length threshold of a blog post so I chopped up my article and am focusing on violence instead here. This is a collection of bits and pieces so you’ll have to bear with me if it doesn’t appear well thought out. That said, let’s begin with:

A slap.

It’s quite simple — ‘touch’ someone’s cheek with a lot of force. Something as simple as being the recipient or giver of a slap can serve as a delineating factor between a man and a woman, a boy and a girl.

“A man should never hit a woman,’ someone once told me. I don’t disagree with this statement and a lot of people don’t either. When I asked her about women hitting men she told me there were lots of situations when women are allowed to do so.

“I’ll slap the hell out of his lying/cheating ass” is a statement I hear and see in one form or the other and everyone cheers her on.

Why is there an outcry whenever a man slaps a woman and yet the society actively encourages women slapping men? Why do a lot of movies feature men taking slaps coolly but in the rare cases where the woman gets slapped she’s usually the weak one getting hit by the villain? Why does the society only term it ‘abuse’ when the man is doing the slapping but thinks of any man who reports being slapped as wimpy? I could go on and on and on but I think we should leave slapping alone and focus on:

The beating.

In November I read an article on the BBC website (Survey finds male abuse approval) and I must admit I was quite shocked. In this so-called age of enlightenment, when a lot of women agree that pushing, slapping, punching and kicking men is acceptable, something is definitely wrong somewhere. What’s even more sobering is another article (Drop-in for male victims of abuse) that puts statistics at 1 in 6 men likely to experience domestic violence. What’s worse, it would be considered unmanly to report them.

The Wikipedia article on spousal abuse says the figures for violence among both sexes are almost even although the severity is usually higher in most but not all cases involving male perpetrators (you may take this with a pinch of salt like most Wikipedia articles although this one is well-quoted).

Who is to blame for this? The society? I think this is just a phase. We saw it in the past with women being actively discouraged from reporting abuse and rape. It’s going to be harder to convince men to speak up because as the dominant sex of the human species, the society has still not come to terms with the fact that men can be, and are abused but choose to remain silent for fear of ridicule.

Perhaps we should glorify men slapping ‘evil’ women in the media to the same extent as we do the reverse. Better still, both sexes need to be dealt with fairly and in the same way for committing criminal acts of violence.

Before I come off as misogynist, I’d like to say I don’t condone violence towards anyone regardless of sex. What bothers me is that a lot of women use their being ‘fragile’ as leverage to do what wouldn’t otherwise be condoned if the roles were reversed. I chose not to discuss violence directed towards women by men as this has already been examined everywhere ad nauseam.

I’ve told you what I think. You may now crucify shoot me.

I Won 50 million ‘Furos’!

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I’ve been getting calls to update, oh dear! I’m working on something that might be a little controversial vis-a-vis my views of women and gender equality as I think it should be.

Just to assure some people I’m still alive, I’ll leave you with a quote from an e-mail I got two minutes ago informing me I had won some ‘furos’ in a lottery I never entered:

Dear Mr Zahymaka,

We are writing to inform you that you won the sum of 50 million furos in our internacional lottery…