Of Opinions and Expectations

People will always have opinions and expectations of you. They always have, and they always will.

People’s opinion of you will sometimes be justified, but more often than not they will be uninformed, based on their perception of you or based on their emotional state.

Sadly, I have lived too much of my life worrying about what other people’s opinions and expectations of me were or would be. Sometime this year I did an about face and decided like Captain Hector Barbossa to do “what needed done” [sic] irrespective of what anyone thought, said or felt.

Remember that Ebenezer Obey song about the man, his son and their donkey? “Ketekete” I believe it was called. That’s how easy it is to become a slave to the opinions and expectations of others. When father and son rode the donkey, they were mean and overworking the poor animal. When the son rode while the father walked, he had no regard for the elderly. The father rode and he was mistreating his young son. When finally they both decided to walk, they were laughed at as being foolish. How could they have a donkey and not ride it?

I haven’t been to the gym, gone running or done any form of exercise for well over two months. Also I’ve been growing my hair for about three months now (Yeah, I finally came around to growing an afro. Inspired by Sola Jegede, I might add. Lol).

About four out of every ten people who have seen my new look with the afro (technically still a mini ‘fro) have told me they love the look, two out of ten have said they don’t like the new look and the rest have simply just acknowledged that I look different. In this case, you could argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that people’s idea of what is aesthetically pleasing may differ.

But now comes the really interesting part.

In the past month, I’ve run into people who have told me I’ve lost weight, or that I look trimmer. I’ve heard comments like, “Wow James, I can see you are really working on yourself!” This from a colleague I see every working day of the week and to a guy who hasn’t exercised in 2 months, eats as late as 11pm and still eats lots of pastry. Best case scenario, I’d say I’ve kept a steady weight for the last month or thereabouts. And then there are other people who say I’ve grown bigger [For the records my fellow Nigerians, reference to a person’s weight is not an acceptable form of greeting in any culture or society anywhere in the world]. 

So how do you explain this other than the fickleness of people’s opinions? Now imagine trying to meet everyone’s expectations or live by other people’s opinions. Like I said before, I have been there and I could write a treatise on the internal conflict, self-doubt, emotional and mental strain that comes with it. And trust me when I tell you it’s not a fun place to be.

An Evil Under the Sun?

There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men (Ecclesiastes 6:1)

This is not a post about scriptures. I started another blog for that and hopefully, I’ll start posting there soon.

And don’t get excited about me seeing “evil”. Every time the preacher used the phrase “an evil under the sun” he was referring to an anomaly; to something which normally shouldn’t be but is.

Considering that we are in the 21st Century where transgender individuals and LGBT rights are the new normal, you may not see what I have to say as “an evil under the sun”. But please hear me out, will you? Thank you.

Let me say a few things first, so there is no confusion about my point of view.

I am not a male chauvinist. Far from it. I admire women who have stepped beyond the limiting boundaries and expectations that society has placed on them. I know quite a number of these self-confident, independent, hardworking women and I am very proud to be associated with them.

It is in my interactions with them that I have seen “an evil under the sun”. For one reason or the other, these women have had to be strong and stand on their own for so long, it’s all they know how to do.

Heartbreak, loss of a parent or parents, inability to make ends meet at some earlier stage of their life. The list goes on. They have been through so much and come out stronger. This is not the “evil”.

This is the “evil”: That they have forgotten how to let themselves be taken care of; forgotten how to let themselves be cared for; forgotten how to let themselves be loved.

Call me old school or old fashioned but I believe that a man ought to take care of a woman, whether she be his darling or a damsel in distress. I can visualize some of you “brothas” laughing already, but we all know the things we’ve done for our darlings or done to get a damsel out of distress. Things we’ve kept hidden because we are ashamed of being laughed at. Things we normally wouldn’t do because they aren’t “manly”. Sadly, it would seem we (“brothas”) are more often than not, the reason these ladies have become as they are.

And so it saddens me when I meet a young woman who is suspicious of every act of chivalry. She believes she can stand on her own two feet and “run things” by herself and so she doesn’t need a man to do a single thing for her. She may even in some cases become “aggressively independent”.

I do not mean this in the classic boy-meets-girl scenario alone (I can see how you may read that meaning into the preceding paragraph).

Ladies, let’s get one thing straight. There are a few honest to God decent men out there whose number one priority is not to get into your pants.

If you ever meet one of them, know this: Those little acts of kindness and his eagerness to make you happy are sincere acts born out of a primal instinct which drives him to protect and care for the female members of the species.

And I know you always know when you meet these guys.

Women always know. I know that much at least. Lol.

Do I think this post will rile a few of you? Yes.

So I’ll refer you to the title of the blog. Thoughts and Inspirations.

These are my thoughts.

THE LEGEND OF MAMA JOY

Mama Joy was something of a legend to everyone who attended Federal Government College Ugwolawo (FGCU).

MJ, she was called.

She was a legend for various reasons. There were those to whom she was something of a myth; an urban legend…scratch that. She was more of a rural legend because Ugwolawo was a village nestled at the foot of a hill deep in the heart of Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi state. But I digress.

To some others she was part of the big adventure that made up the six years they spent in FGCU.

I was somewhere in between these two.

I could never really quite make up my mind about whether she was a good or bad part of the overall experience of being a student in FGCU. Looking back now, after all these years, I think Mama Joy was like those bacteria in the human digestive system which were inherently good and beneficial but could also kill you if the slightest thing went wrong.

Who was Mama Joy you ask? And what made her such a legend?

She ran a Buka on the outskirts of town famous for its Akpu. I honestly cannot remember if she even sold any other meals. She probably did, but her Akpu had something of the stuff legends are made of.

I went to MJ for the first time in my first term in Ugwolawo. I have Idoko Amana a.k.a Venom to thank for that.

It was an exhilaratingly terrifying experience (I’m not sure that expression makes any sense. Lol). You see, the thing was this. We were boarders and to get to MJ, we had to break bounds. This was never a problem for anyone with just the right dose of bravery because as my Geography teacher put it, “There are well over a hundred illegal entry and exit points in and out of this school, and those are just the ones we know about”. However, to break bounds as a first year junior student was taboo. So even though I was excited to be going to MJ, I was terrified of what could happen to me if some random senior student decided Idoko didn’t have enough cred to grant me protection. Being caught by a teacher and possibly expelled was second on my list of worries. We really were in our own little Sicily back then.

I had been eating MJ for quite a while. Whenever I went to Idoko’s hostel to see him, I was almost sure to meet him unwrapping some Akpu. On this particular day he wasn't. So I had asked him if he would be going to MJ that day. I was in my hostel wear (a green and white chequered shirt) and was shocked when he asked me to take off my shirt. At first I thought I had overstepped some boundary I didn’t know about and I was going to get brushed (slang word for a serious beating). Maybe I had been disrespectful in asking him if he would be going to MJ and he was going to teach me respect. Kinda like when Don Maroni takes Penguin upstate to “see a guy about a thing” in the Gotham TV show. If you are a fan of Batman in any form and you haven’t seen Gotham…I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, there I was with my mind racing, trying to figure out what I had done wrong when he laughs and tosses a black tee shirt lying on his bunk bed at me.
”Put that on”, he says, “We are going to MJ”.

I never went to MJ again till my last year in school, after my set had rioted, set a few buildings ablaze and could do pretty much anything they wanted. But over the next couple of years, I would always find someone who was willing to help me buy take out from MJ.

A lot of students were expelled for breaking bounds to patronize Mama Joy and even more were suspended or got punished in one form or the other. But no matter how many gutters were dug or acres of grass cut as punishment, hundreds of students still dreamt of the day they would become seniors so they could finally thread the hallowed paths that led to MJ.

The second senior boarding house master during my time in FGCU seemed to have sworn an oath to completely abolish the MJ culture. I heard stories of him laying ambush along bush paths or hiding in trees to catch people on their way to MJ. He even went as far as fixing some of the breaches in the fence. One time I heard the guys who came across one of such repairs just climbed a nearby tree and swung down a branch on the other side.

Somewhere in the midst of all this adventure was something more malignant.

I don’t know if it was because the food at MJ was so good some people just had to have it at any cost or it was the thrill that came from breaking rules of any kind. I could call it an addiction but it wouldn’t sound quite right, but that was the only thing that could explain students stealing to buy food at MJ.

Money, clothes, soap, books, buckets; Mama Joy accepted virtually anything in exchange for Akpu. She asked no questions. She just took whatever you brought, attached a monetary value to it and let you have food for the value. There were stories of students running into people wearing their clothes when they went into town. I could have bet half my termly allowance back then that more than half of those clothes had been swapped for Akpu at Mama Joy’s Buka.

I don’t know if MJ still exists.

I don’t know if the school has finally been able to put a stop to students breaking bounds.

But of one thing I am sure. The legend of Mama Joy still lives.

It lives even if just in stories told over the years to new students by others who had heard it or by siblings who had been students of FGCU.

And oh, there was another Buka much closer to the school gates called MA (Mama Achenyo), but I’m sure me forgetting all about it until after what was supposed to be my final full stop tells all there is to tell.

If it wasn't MJ, it just couldn't compare.


                                                                                                                                          JAIK.

Live (A Poem)

Stand up, stand out, stand tall, speak out,
Step up, reach out, take a chance, and if in doubt, kiss the girl,
Who can tell what the next minute holds?

Live free, live brave, have faith, persevere, persist, for every great venture was at the first impossible!

Show love, show care, help out, contribute, give yourself, give your time, give your money, and live this creed, "All is mine and none is mine, for all I have O Lord is thine"


James Ikuku
22/05/2015
4:03pm (GMT+1)

Banks, Cops and Robbers (5)

Hello.

If you haven't been following the story before now you can catch up here   http://bit.ly/1pLG9A9

BANKS, COPS AND ROBBERS (5)

*** BADA BING! BADA BOOM? ***

Johnny watched buildings and cars speed by from the back seat of the Peugeot.

It was another successful hit. But deep within Johnny, something didn’t feel right. This was the same feeling he had been having for months.

He began to question the point of the life he was living a few months ago. It was frustrating because he couldn’t talk to any of the members of the gang about his misgivings. He couldn’t have Marcus question his loyalty. That was as good as pronouncing his death sentence himself. He had his doubts but he did not want to die just yet.

And then he couldn’t talk to just anyone about it.

He had more blood on his hands than he cared to think about. He had killed so many people that he had lost count. He had even killed children. Children! How did I come this far?

Killing the boy who got his sister pregnant all those years ago had been a mistake, but every life he had taken after that had taken him further down the dark path he now walked.

He had been running errands for Marcus for four months before he found out who Marcus really was. By then, he knew he was already in too deep to get out. And the money was good too.

He had moved out of his single room into a two bedroom apartment in Aguda, Surulere and had saved a million Naira. Finding out he was hanging out with and running errands for a criminal mastermind was scary but he knew he never wanted to go back to being a bus conductor. So he had kept on gun-running and serving as a go-between for the gang.

His first time out on a hit had been an assassination. Their target was a high profile business man whose business partners wanted dead. It had something to do with him not wanting to sell his shares in one of his companies. As a rule, Marcus never asked for details except when he felt he and his people could be put at risk by not knowing all there was to know about a job.

Johnny had just gotten back from another run when Marcus took him aside.

He remembered very vividly the first words Marcus had said to him.

“I finally trust you enough for you to be one of us”

It had been a shock. He never imagined his involvement with the gang would go beyond him moving guns for them. He remembered the fear he had felt. He knew he was stepping into something he could never again walk out of. He also knew that saying no to Marcus would have cost him his life. He already knew too much.

So he smiled and thanked Marcus and told him how happy he was to finally be one of them.

He was the lookout and getaway driver for that night. They parked their van across the road from the target’s house and waited till he drove in at about 10pm. The van was plain with the mirrors tinted over and the streets were virtually empty so no one had noticed them. Marcus, Jenny and Dare were in the back of the van and if anyone had bothered to look closely enough, they would have seen only Johnny sitting in the car.

Five minutes after the target drove in, Marcus tapped the partition between the front compartment and the rear of the van thrice. That was the signal to tell Johnny they were going in. He watched them walk up to the gate and knock, saw the guard fall as Marcus shot him in the head with his suppressed Ruger MK III and then set his watch timer for seven minutes. That was how long Marcus had estimated the job would take.

Johnny was so nervous he almost didn’t notice the man who had jumped over the fence of the house. Whoever it was had sprained an ankle coming over the fence and was limping as fast as he could away from the house in Johnny’s direction.

When the man passed under a street light, Johnny saw his face and realized it was their target. He didn’t have time to wonder how he had gotten away from the guys because the gate of the closest house was a few yards from where the van was parked and Johnny knew that once the man got there their operation was up in smoke. He took a deep breath pulled his gun out of the glove compartment and stepped out of the car.

When he saw Johnny step out of the car, the man began to wave and shout at Johnny to help him. He was saying something about calling the police when Johnny pointed his gun at his head and pulled the trigger.

He still had the gun up when Marcus ran up to him. Jenny and Dare headed straight for the van and got in. All he could remember of the next hour was Marcus taking the gun from his hand, dragging him to the van and making him get in the back with Jenny and Dare. Back at Marcus’ house, they had to drag him out of the van and into the house.

The next day Jenny, told him he had been saying over and over again “I just shot someone. I just shot a man dead” .

Jamiu laughed at him and called him a baby for weeks after but Marcus had sat with him when he was finally calm enough to understand anything that was being said to him.

“I remember the first time I took a man’s life”, he had said. “It felt like I had crossed a line human beings were never meant to cross. Even though I had done it in self-defense, I was in shock for days”. He put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and smiled.

“I understand perfectly well how you feel and I can assure you this feeling will pass”.

He was right. The feeling had passed but the nightmares had come in their place.

He knew the nightmares would come again that night. He had come to accept them as penance for all the wrong he had done but that didn’t make them any easier to live with.

***A MOTHER’S PAIN***

It had been twelve years.

Twelve long years. No mother had to suffer this much.

And it was all so unfair. Whatever he had done, he had done out of love for his sister; because he wanted to protect her.

After all these years, the pain was still as fresh as it was all those years ago when her Johnny had run away from home.

She was sitting under the shade of the almond tree in front of the house. There hadn’t been power for over a week and whenever she was at home in the afternoon she would get a recliner and sit under the tree to escape the heat in the house.

She heard footsteps and looked up. It was Karen.

She had grown into a beautiful confident young woman although deep down, she still carried the scars of all they had both been through over the years. 

Karen had lost the baby after 3 months and had been devastated. She refused to eat for days and had not spoken to anyone for almost a month. She missed another 3 months of school after that.

It was an uphill task to survive and there were days when they went without food. And then one day an envelope arrived in the mail. There was money in it and a letter from Johnny. He was doing fine and had started doing business in Lagos. He said he would send money every month and left an address where they could write him.

The money had kept on coming and the amount would increase every now and then. It had been enough to see Karen through school and when she graduated, Johnny insisted she get a Master’s degree. All the money in the world couldn’t take away the pain though.

The last time she wrote him, she asked if she could come and visit and he had said no in his reply. She wasn’t going to stop asking. Twelve years was too long and she really wanted to see her son again. It had been too long.

TO BE CONTINUED…