Fiction and Articles

It was one of those typical Sundays as a Nigerian living in Nigeria. If you are Christian, you will typically have gone to church and attended a church service for at least two hours. Depending on your age bracket and your family’s style, you either stop by at the market to buy food items and head home to clean and cook or you stop by at a local restaurant to have lunch. From statistics, the former was usually the case as a teenager. If you have become an adult fending for yourself, then you probably think Sunday lunch should either be made at home except you are invited over to a friend’s or relative for free food or have plans to eat out and never to be ordered. Let us assume you are a working adult, privileged enough to own your own space and have the food items in your fridge to make that Sunday rice that you can eat over and over again. The weather is hot but you are grateful for electricity, cold water in your fridge and the opportunity to “balance” with that rice, turkey and a v...

It was one of those Friday nights- around past 10pm, Vic had dragged me out to get “Turkish Shawarma” and meet his new friend Sal. I did not feel like going out initially but no sooner had we driven out and started to see the Aminu Kano streetlights of the famous Wuse 2 that I began appreciating being dragged out. It gave me Lagos vibes that was good enough for the night.     As we went round and round trying to find a place to park I was intrigued by the pick-me-up girls on the streets. How well dressed they were and how beautiful they looked. I wasn’t judging but started to think about what the stories of each one might be.     My imagination was cut short when we spotted a lady with a really really fat a$$. We will call her Lady E. She had those behinds that you cannot deny and she cat-walked the road as if she was on a runway.     A couple of minutes after with shawarma in hand, Vic, Sally and I went back to where we were parked just close by ...

P.s- Happy Birthday to our Author 

  I can’t be here for you today, Kamsi, no. I know he left you without words and your tummy hurts. Kamsi, today, I want to put on my finest jewelry and cook for my man. Did I also tell you I have to pick up the kids from school? My manager called. I just might get that promotion I had mentioned over and over again. Kamsi, look, you must get a hold of yourself. I have many more important things to do today Kamsi and none of your rants will take us anywhere or put money in our pockets. Today, Kamsi, only today- let me be the star of the story; talking about how I’ve made all this money and how the men can’t get enough of my body. Kamsi, today I do not want to hear your advice. How my waist can be slimmer, my breast fuller or my bums wider-no Kamsi. Kamsi, I say all these in my head even as I swipe my phone to the right as your call comes in the second time. I exhale as the words finally roll from my now open mouth. “Kamsi I’m so sorry. I saw your message. Tell me all ...

Have you ever wondered if our destinies have been set such that we have no control over anything, and the joke of the divine is for us to think that we are?   Those were my thoughts as I turned over the remaining pages of the book Victory City by Salman Rushdie. A book that took me nearly three months to finish, which in hindsight, I suppose had been destined to be finished at a certain location. The thought about destiny became more intriguing because I had been reading about a “Victory City” that never came real to me until I found myself on a hammam slab in downtown Marrakech. In that moment, it occurred to me that Marrakech symbolized victory city. In that city, I was visited by the divine, thrice, in the most unorthodox way. The first time was at the hammam I earlier mentioned, the second at a local shopping store and the third was on my final day at a Riad. The divine gave me Victory City, Hajib and Good Luck. At the end of it all, we are all living beings with organs...

I had coined this name for myself a couple of months back. Cheesy yet cool. I like to pride myself in being a Lagos girl. I will shout it to the rooftop and tell it on the mountains. The best place to be in the world is Lagos, Nigeria. Maybe, someday, I will write about that. But today’s article is different. It's about my experience indeed as a Lagos Girl in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. The F.C.T isn’t new to me. I had been here numerous times either for school, work, leisure, or vacation but a couple of weeks ago, a new reality dawned on me when for the first time in my existence I booked a one-way trip to Abuja. My flight tickets were always for round trips. Thankfully I had familiar faces to welcome me and friends’ kind enough to give me shelter and take me out to dinner. But after a couple of days, I started to ask myself questions and at a point I even shed a few tears. I am a Nigerian through and through and I count it a privilege to live in a community ...