Fope's Blog

I was sitting in my bed this morning and I imagined that I was already in grad school, far away from home. I was opening my door to receive a bouquet delivery from my anonymous lover. It was the second week of non-stop daily flowers, and the initial giddiness was giving way to slight panic at the possibility that I might have a stalker. It's probably the Nigerian in me. One does not simply forget that the village enemies may still be "on top your matter" aka, interested in disturbing your life. So I text the friend that I always text when things get weird in my life. Bless your heart B for always listening to my tales! She texts me back instantly saying I need to live in the moment and enjoy my flowers, as I was probably being courted old school style. "Girl, the  chase is on! Enjoy it!", she said.  As amused as I wanted to be, the sender was still anonymous, and the over-thinker in me was repeatedly doing drills of all the 'potential baes' ...

Hey Guys! Happy New Year! I can't be late with that greeting because in my head it's only like January 5th. I have no idea what's going on with the calendar! How are we already at the end of week 3?  Dear calendar, please who's chasing you? Anyway, today's topic was Instagram inspired! That customized explore button/tab thing on Instagram is right behind Agege bread on the list of amazing inventions! Exploration, stalking and 'checking out' made easy! It basically monitors the people you follow, the things you like, and even your searches (I think) and then presents an almost endless list of people and pictures that might interest you. Basically, you can just keep scrolling while the rest of your life is happening. Sounds kind of creepy, right? Yeah, but not really, if you're using the Internet at all, all this monitoring is already happening. So on today's exploration, I came across this page that's, basically all lovey-dovey, and after...

I'm staring at you right now and all I see are eyes. Eyes that bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the girl who came up to me just last week. After work everyday, I have a spot of Mivhy Street where I write poems. I have a really hard to miss sign that says "Stop, pick a poem about everything and nothing and feel free to leave a tip". So she stopped and said hello, but didn't try to make eye contact with me like my regular customers did. She just started blankly. I said "hi" and smiled, expecting her to ask me about my work like others did. Just as I was about to ask if there was something I could do for her she said, "Can I just sit here next to you and cry? I need a moment to cry and not look like I'm crying. You're here writing poems so can you make it look like you're writing a poem about me or something. If you had a speaker playing slow and sad music in addition to this set-up, it could enhance your tip-ability. You can say no...

So the other day, I was searching for an image on google when I came across a picture of a blind man and his bride. He is well known and I've seen some of his works, so I immediately recognized him. The 'people watcher' in me, who makes up stories about people's lives and wonders how closely related to reality the stories are, immediately imagined what dating and being married would be like for him. This whole thing happened towards the end of last year and I started a blogpost about it but never got to finishing it. But yesterday on the bus, I saw another blind man I know. I didn't know this guy personally, but he used to live close to my old house. I was never able to stop myself from staring whenever I saw him. I guess it's because I expected him to do things with difficulty and maybe even ask for my help with crossing that uber busy road? Sometimes, I'd wait at a distance to see if he crossed successfully or if he would need help.  But all he ever did w...

Hey Guys! So I attempted to write a blog post in Pidgin English and I like it! I'll try to translate it to proper English later if anyone wants me to. :) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Na wah o! How e be say 4 o'clock never knack since morning!? No be say I wan make madam come back, but I just wan make Sunday reach. Why I want make Sunday reach fast fast? E get this bobo wey dey do protocol for church, e foooiiine ehnn!  Nah him I dey look last week wey pastor talk say "Look how focused that young lady is. She's just soaking in all of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!" I pray say na sermon go make me dey happy like that! This oga protocol wey I dey talk, e wan use style resemble my Obong wey leave me go Port. Him go do houseboy work for there like two years before them carry me too come Lagos find work. Him talk say, when he reach Port Harcourt  he go write me letter l...

Doomsday started out as my birthday. I had decided to throw a “small” party. At least it was meant to be small. Somehow, old friends caught wind of it and well you know how those kind of things end up.  Sometime around 9pm, it cooled off and I finally had me-time. My head ached like crazy, many thanks to standing for so long. I hadn’t been able to exercise any of my pregnant woman privileges since no one knew I was pregnant.    I could have been mad that hubby left the house in the middle of my party and was yet to get back, but today wasn’t just that day. When my ‘little’ party lost its attribute of littleness, I wasn’t too surprised that he walked out. I bet he mumbled his famous “stupidly noisy black people” line, as he walked out. I never understood how he married a black girl without doing his research.   But really, what was I supposed to do? Chase him and beg him to play nice and show his wife some support?   I was so done with crap li...

It was first the normal seconds of confusion that happen when you wake up in an unfamiliar place; how did I get here? Why does my body feel like a stranger's? What happened to my daughters. Oh no. Thinking about daughters brought all the memories back... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The problems started about six months into the marriage. We'd had a very eventful honeymoon and we carried it over when we got back from Dubai. We'd made no plans to hold off on kids, so Dink just couldn't get why I wasn't pregnant. He was never the crazy "I can't wait to be a daddy" kinda guy, heck! He’d once said that  kids were a barrier to living 'the good life.'  I was definitely furious at his statement and we fought for a bit. But that was before we got married, so when he started getting interested in kids after marriage, I thought maybe the husband thing had some ...