Does anybody hear her?

'If judgment looms under every steeple...If lofty glances from lofty people...Can’t see past her scarlet letter...And we’ve never even met her.'

I found those words on a friends facebook profile and googled them thinking them to be an excerpt from some brilliant text on Law, or perhaps a quote by some famous poet. I was quite surprised to be directed to a video on GodTube titled 'Does anybody hear her?' by Casting Crowns.

The artistes meant it to depict the judgmental attitude christians have toward many people looking for refuge in the Church; how our attitudes alienate people from the very message of hope that they need to be saved. However, because they brilliantly succeeded in delivering the lyric generically, it has been adapted to a broad spectrum of related situations. The central theme however, is about people fighting pain, depression, and loneliness who yearn for a caring word and only find a condemning gaze. Amazing how we write people off without ever even getting to know them huh?

Seeing as I'm not always up-to-date with the music scene, it's possible that this is a popular song and you're already familiar with it. If this is not the case, I urge you to take a moment to listen to it. I think you'll find it worth your while. The message is true and many-sided. Beneath the video, I have pasted the lyrics.




“She is running
A hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction
She is trying
But the canyon’s ever widening
In the depths of her cold heart
So she sets out on another misadventure just to find
She’s another two years older
And she’s three more steps behind

Refrain:
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she’s going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that’s tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?

She is yearning
For shelter and affection
That she never found at home
She is searching
For a hero to ride in
To ride in and save the day
And in walks her prince charming
And he knows just what to say
Momentary lapse of reason
And she gives herself away

If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her

If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can’t see past her scarlet letter
And we’ve never even met her

Never even met her

He is running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction”

A Dream, a few Vodkas and three Haikus

I never was the best poet. I was puzzled by everyones poetry and everyone was puzzled by mine, and so I have diligently stuck with prose. Tonight however, my restraint being utterly overwhelmed by the spirit of the season, the memory of a dream, and a flirtatious bottle of Vodka in which I have overindulged, I have dared to scribble these three haikus - in the conviction that I cannot possibly be a worse poet tipsy - to describe what I felt when I dreamt a dream in January, pursued it till October, and subsequently watched it dashed to the rocks.

Try to be humane with your comments.

The birth of a dream

First notes of a tune.

.........Wreathed grandly in dips and tones,

.........is a heart in bloom.

The pursuit of a dream

A mind sore anxious.

Heartbeats a wild percussion.

To be or not to?


The death of a dream

Cheeks charted by springs

.....flowing in step with a dirge,

.........streaked by a dark grief.



PS - My awesome voice is up on geisha's blog.

PPS- I'm waiting for your reply to my emails Standtall!

Me and the Ninny Folk...the last tear I shed

I did everything but what I was supposed to do today. I don't know why. Perhaps something in the air...or my mood...or the incredibly annoying client I was dealing with. I don't know. I tried to write a proper update but there never could have been a blogger as afflicted with the block as I was today. I don't know if it was from the week-long flurry of interest in my pecker or some unwitting affront to my muse but whatever it was, Life took a veritable interest in my dreaminess today, setting up several inviting nests for my fluttering mind to perch on from time to time. Sure enough, it nestled briefly on another 'bubbly young lady' while we sat telling silly old war stories and grinning idiotically at each other. It's positively infuriating the way some girls do that to you. Robert Jordan put it quite aptly:

Anyway, just as I saw the young lady off, a friend called on me asking for a favour. It was terribly bothersome I must admit, but I hold myself a debtor to this friend of mine (unbeknownst to him) for many a time having done me an uncommonly noble service in time past. In one of such, we were arbitrarily arrested a few streets away from home one evening on account of being suspects in a fallacious robbery purported to have taken place a few minutes before we strolled by. I remember catching a glimpse, in the corner of my eye, of the grubby looking ninnyhammer closing in on my friend and I from the rear, and closely accompanied by a searching stench of cheap liquor.

Ist Uniformed Ninny: 'Heyssss! May we know you' came the signature bark right as his partner completed his sprint to our other side and cocked their single rusty weapon.

2^nd Uniformed Ninny: 'I'm Sergeant Oseni' he said, flashing his ID card several times faster than the supposed frame-rate of the average eye.

Me: 'I'm sorry, I didn't get a good view of the card bef...'

Click click 'You still dey talk!!!? Take them away! They fit de description. They will be identified at the station. My friend move! You bloody criminal'

I should pause here to note that at the period in question I was the epitome of dorkiness. It was many years before I got my dreadlocks done and ditched my glasses for contacts. I was several years younger (remember this when you're dropping your comment), kept an afro...no actually I had a scraggly mass of untended hair on my head (I went to the barbers once or at most twice a year...yeah I know, so put a sock in it!) and wore rather large round glasses with my trademark red lips and babyface...and they called me a criminal.

A third Uniformed Ninny presently joined the charade.

3^rd Uniformed Ninny: 'Are these the criminals? You're in trouble today. WHERE IS YOUR GUN??!!! WHERE DID YOU HIDE YOUR GUN??!!!'

Did he say GUN? Did I mention that at this point my mind was in a blur as I keenly inspected each twitch of their facial muscles for the slightest trace of a snigger, in the hope that I was being pranked? Did I mention that my breath was under tight control and discharged in quick terse gasps from hard-heaving lungs and that little dull aches were poking at my palms with increasing frequency from the tensile strain of fingers locking the thin air in an unyielding vice-grip? In short I was in a terrible panic. Was I to be whisked off to Kiri-kiri and locked up for twenty odd years without a trial? Or perhaps just shot somewhere on the way there? Breathe doug...breathe.

Well we were whisked off to the rundown station and shoved behind the counter where there was a single bench nailed to the ground at both ends. The closest cell was within view of where I sat and while I waited to be attended to, I played audience to a young Ibo man being stripped and shoved into the welcoming fists of its occupants.

Thud! Thud!! Whack!!! Twangggg!!!

'Eyy! Why you dey beat me na? Wetin I do you na' enquired the young man of his faceless assailants.

[silence and more methodical and curiously rhythmic thumping]

'Eyyy! W-w-why n-na? Eyy! Eyy! W-w-w...' I should have bequeathed him much credit had the young man been able to repeat his sentence in the reciept of such a frightful and resounding pummeling.

[silence as the rhythm faded smoothly, broken only by a few brutal spikes]

More silence. 'Omo hinna oshi' [Stupid omo nna – Stupid Ibo boy]

I was suddenly acutely sensible of my being from across the Niger - or at least somewhere in the middle of it.

Gulp! 'Officer, please I'm asthmatic' Frigging shameless lie. My mother has a chronic case of it, but that's as much history as I have with that horrible ailment.

4^th Uniformed Ninny: 'Off ya cloth my friend'

5^th Uniformed Ninny: 'Bo igo oju e' [Take off your glasses]

'E jo! E jo! Yeee...!' 'Thump! Thud!! Whack!!! Smack!!!' The Occupants were playing the gracious and grateful hosts of another guest.

'Officer, but...officer wait...hold on a second...' I was stuttering, and my clouded eyes were glistening with the earliest heralds of a downpour.

Wunmi: 'Ok Officer, put me in the same cell as my friend' I had almost forgotten he was there. Wunmi is one of the friends I have as a direct consequence of being my older brothers brother. They're goodfellas in the 'Goodfellas' sense of the word. Not Mafioso of course, but just tough guys – unlike my whimpy self of those days. His master plan was to step in ahead of me and at least throw a few punches, briefly exhibiting our guts before they were subsequently splattered about the filthy cell. He matched the Officer slang for slang, bark for bark, glare for glare, until they agreed to his terms.

I was yet mulling over what profit this was that was being presented to me - being pulverized in the company of a friend in preference to bearing it myself - when I heard a commanding voice call out to someone in my direction.

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'Hey! What offence did that young man commit?'

4^th Uniformed Ninny: 'He's one of the criminals waiting to be identified sir' Who the frig was I that they'd care to address me by name?

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'This one? With his glasses? Did he...'

Me: Perceiving the dimmest glimmer of hope 'Sir, I didn't do it. I live at xyz tgf. I was doing blah blah blah' I assaulted the Boss with my story.

Boss of the Uniformed Ninny Folk: 'Don't put him in the cell. Chain him to the bench behind the counter. But if he tries to escape, gun him down!'

And thus I spent that night. Chained to a creaky wooden bench in Ninnyville, wondering what my family was wondering was the reason doug was wandering about so late. I gravely observed as the slow-flowing sea of heads all round the surrounding streets ebbed to a trickle. I observed the chirping birds hopping and fluttering up in the tree above my window, my chains and their freedom poignant reminders of the things I routinely failed to show gratitude for. I listened to the Officer on night patrol remarking while stretching out for the night, after arresting another batch of boys:

'Ki lo ku ju ki a bere idariji lowo olorun' [what else is left but for us to ask for God's forgiveness]

'Friggin he-goat!' I whispered to Wunmi who sat silently beside me through it all, till we were bailed the following day. Our intimacy was significantly advanced by his deportment that night.

It was bothersome doing him the favour he asked of me this morning, but he's done a tonne of bothersome things for me in the progress of our strange relationship.

I still have no idea what I'm going to blog about today.

We had a lover’s quarrel...and I stormed out of bed

The first thing I reached for on Saturday morning was my phone. It had been switched off since the night before, right before I stocked my backpack with that evening's supply of fast (junk) food – my staple for God knows how long now. There were a number of people with whom I had some business or other and I knew they'd have cause to call sometime during the 'sulk-time' I had so meticulously arranged for myself, but I'd sooner have ripped my liver out before I'd have cared. I had gone through a deal of pain to darken my mood the previous night, and I wasn't about to let anyone ruin it. As I switched on my phone, I recalled the events of the previous day that had led to my waking up angry.

I had maintained a merry demeanour through the day having decisively licked a long-time rival at a board game. I was yet in these transports when the drama over the fellow who collapsed in front of our building deflected my mood down a more sober lane. Apparently the fellow in question had come to Lagos all the way from Ondo state to visit a relative, and had the sore misfortune of being 'One Chance'd ('Once chance' is what Lagosians call the buses used in the ritual-killing/robbery racket). Fate was in an atypically magnanimous mood though, because he somehow was set free after he'd been voodoo-ed in some way (I'm quoting him here) and he stumbled around in a daze for a bit before collapsing in front of our building. His appendages had assumed a rather grotesque arrangement when he'd fallen, giving his body the appearance, at first glance, of being lifeless and amplifying the buzz he'd garnered enough that someone thought it fit to notify us of there being an unconscious man lying outside our building. We glanced up, absorbed the news, and carried on fiddling busily with our computers as though the subject were of a wounded sparrow.

I, in truth, had thought the thing to be a joke of some sort until someone with a greater supply of common sense finally got up to verify it, came back and announced drily that a man had in fact collapsed in front of our building. We glanced up, absorbed the news, scrutinized him intently as he strode across the room and reassumed his position, and carried on fiddling busily with our computers as though the subject were of a wounded sparrow.

Have you ever wondered how calloused most hearts are in Nigeria? How it often takes a medieval-style barbarity to pierce far enough through our battle-hardened skins?

'Tsk! Come the frig on joo!' I snarled at my phone, having held the power button a tad longer than was usually necessary.

The minutes passed after we heard the news about The Man Who Fainted and our curiosities were finally roused sufficiently to prod us outside to personally witness this unfolding drama. Everyone else, it turned out had locked their gates and drawn the blinds, orchestrating enough of an alibi to feign ignorance when the no-good policemen came around to take away (or rather arbitrarily arrest) 'suspects'. Fortunately though, the young man had still been alive. I tried to piece together his story when he came to, but his dialect was rather unwieldy and seemed to rise and dip in a strangely sonorous cacophony. The substance of it was that he had narrowly escaped getting finely ground (or some other barbarous fate) and composed into a money-spinning talisman of some sort – no doubt some nameless fellows ticket to the good life. All through his narrative, the poor bastard's lower jaw had been quivering, his face contorted in a blend of anguish and self-pity, and he could barely manage more than a few sputtered syllables without breaking into violent sobs.

We got him something to eat, sorted him out as best we could and went back inside. I wasn't satisfied and felt we had a duty to accompany him to a police station where he could sleep through the night and begin his journey home the following day but all my colleagues said  '[they had] no power for police wahala'.

Have you ever thought that our hearts might have become calloused because it's often either foolish or a real hazard doing the right thing in Nigeria? Ever known someone who was arrested, detained and tortured as a suspect after reporting a crime or had a relative die on you because a doctor would not treat a person who was shot or stabbed without a police report? Ever known someone incapacitated in an accident who was simply pulled as much off the road as not to be obtrusive and then abandoned for a day or two before being finally taken to a public hospital where he was left lying on the floor until his blood caked into a glutinous red gel, binding his ripped buttocks to the floor and sealing his fate? How was his fate so sealed you ask? Well because our thitherto invisible patient's very literal bind did not suffer him to be conveniently moved off the floor when his moans were finally heard, and so he had the meat of his rear end severed with a machete and died less than two days after. A remarkable doctor that was that attended to Alhaji.

'You have 9 voice mail messages. Press 1 to read your messages....' The voice was as always expressionless, impersonal - more irritating than normal.

'...no power for police wahala' – I had mused on those words while I wrapped up my thanksgiving blog post, methodically ignoring a pesky bugger who unaccountably fancied himself to be quite witty. As I trundled glumly out of the building on my way home, I was annoyingly sensible of my colleagues merrily making ready for their Friday night grooving, with no trace of a remembrance of the quivering jaw of the lad from before. We might well have gone outside to observe a wounded sparrow. 'he'll find his way abeg, I no want trouble' right?

'Here's your change sir' Said the girl at the fast food place, tentatively interposing in my reflection. I have a habit of thinking out loud that most people find disconcerting – actually I more than think; I frown, growl, laugh, smile, gesticulate and whatever else it is my present musings include. Whatever emotions had bubbled through to my face from my simmering innards must not have been welcoming, if her countenance was anything to go by.

I finished my business and headed home.

'Blast!' By everything noble, I swore, the darned phone would stay off for as long as I bloody well pleased! So what, if it had nothing to do with my frigging mood? A strong current of bilious thoughts coursed steadily through my veins, increasingly embittering my heart, goading me to starve this cursed world of my voice, a minute for their every drop. 'The blasted phone will stay off dammit!' I snarled lying on my bed, my eyes ablaze, burning my last conscious thoughts into the ceiling.

Blast! And what the frig did it matter if I didn't have a well defined frigging reason as to why the frig I was angry? 'And who the frig were all these frigging voice mails from?'. I wondered as I pressed '1'.

It was mom panicking again. Blast! Why does she always get her knickers in a twist when I don't pick my calls? I have been on my own for a number of years now haven't I?

'Blast! Why did I even have to wake up that Saturday morning anyway?' I fumed as I stormed out of bed...

 

 'And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world' – Robert Frost