“I’ll be in Lagos soon. I’ll stay only a few days. I can’t wait to see you”, Tricia, my old friend says. She lives in Abuja, and is just out [...]
Berry Feistypen
You Have To Live
225 views
Fiction, Mainstream
May 102011
Apr 192011
Just as I was about to climb aboard my father’s rickety Toyota for a ride to the airport, I looked back and watched my mother and my siblings. Hands akimbo, eyes shiny with tears. The entire neighbourhood was out on their frontages peering at me, hands folded over breasts; expressions a mix of admiration and envy.
Apr 152011
Sweaty bodies jostled for space and seemed to merge into one glistening behemoth with thousands of legs. Balogun is known all over Lagos as the market where legs do not touch the ground. On a row on Breadfruit Street, were the stalls of the corpulent widow; Alhaja, MamT; mother of eight children and who was just as big as Alhaja and Secretary with a build just like the others and whose husband had just lost his job. They never spoke to each other even though their stalls were lined side by side.
Apr 132011
SMALL PIKIN(2 of 2)
201 views
Fiction, Mainstream
Dec 072010
One day, Mrs Effiong returned home after a trip to the market to discover that the money she had set aside for the baby’s christening dress was short. Of one thousand naira. She had a hard time reconciling her accounts, and later, after exhaustive but unproductive brain wracking concluded that she must have used the money somehow, maybe in buying some things. It didn’t matter that there were no things!
Monica was up at night typing on her phone. Mrs Effiong found out because in the middle of the night when she got up to use the bathroom, and she had to pass by Monica’s room, she heard the familiar sound she usually heard from the phone of her neighbour upstairs. She restrained the urge to barge into the room, in a characteristic Mrs Effiong style and demand that Monica go to bed. That why was she wasting her light and a host of other questions. Dealing with an apparently non- stupid housegirl did that: dulled your instincts and Mrs Effiong’s instincts were almost becoming non- exis
SMALL PIKIN(1 of 2)
254 views
Fiction, Mainstream
Dec 052010
The ceiling fan was making a whirr whirr sound, swaying from side to side in a last desperate attempt to do the work for which it was made; to circulate air. The Power Holding Company had just emasculated it. Mrs Effiong groaned. Her three month old who was sleeping soundly, would soon cry out when he became hot and sweaty. If she had known that PHC was this unreliable in these parts , she would have prevented her husband from paying for this flat in Ijesha.
YOU NEED ME TO FEEL GOOD
130 views
Articles
Nov 292010
And God said, “It is not good for man to be alone”
This is the most quoted scripture in the Bible. It is quoted in reference to only, perhaps marriage.
But could there have been a deeper and more far reaching idea in the mind of God when he said that, that for the first time something was not good? Could he have meant that it is simply not good for Adam to dwell in that garden alone without someone of his kind, who would serve as a sounding board for his dreams, and it need’nt always be a wife? This is why I say, I think you need me to feel good.
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OF LEGACIES AND REMEMBRANCES
123 views
Articles, Fantasy, Supernatural
Nov 212010
You have just closed your eyes in sleep — a different kind of sleep, and then you hear someone calling your name and you find yourself slowly slipping to the other side. But you are still hearing your loved ones, raising their voices to a feverish pitch. They are saying something that sounds like an unbroken string of mono syllabic words ; you recognize it as the tongues of angels, the tongues of mystery. This mysterious language is broken up by fierce , passionate singing and deafening clapping: “He has promised he will never fail”, the song goes , but you are going and they still continue praying and singing, singing and praying, voices hoarse, tears streaming down.
But then you go. It is final. You have gone.
Dear N,
135 views
Articles, Narrative Non-Fiction
Nov 152010
Nov 112010
