A Letter to Undo

Hi People, how did your Christmas go, hope fine? As I might have hinted on some bloggers' comment boxes, I am not actually a fan of Christmas because I feel it is always abused by some people, I still managed to have a relatively good time. I tried not to eat too much cos I hate having to deal with a bloated stomach.

As for the bombing, I have been trying so hard to hold my tongue from uttering words against Mr President for the past three months. Words are powerful and I don't want to prophesy negatively into his life. I didn't vote for him and I don't regret my decision. I don't even want to think to much cos it makes me feel powerless and I hate feeling powerless. This I know, 'One day, bush meat go catch the hunter.'

As for the entry game, Apart from one person, every single person that voted asked for A Letter to Undo. I found this very surprising, as I thought everyone will ask for In My Pocket, which is the one I prefer in the three. Though, no one voted for it. Its all good sha. Please, find below the unedited verion of the entry. Constructive criticisms will be appreciated, thanks.

SORRY! THE LETTER HAD TO BE TAKEN DOWN AFTER 28 DAYS IN ORDER TO SERVE ITS INTENDED PUBLISHING PURPOSE.

THANKS FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

P.S: I am in the process of expanding my business, it has nothing to do with hair. I am currently opening it up for private placements. It is a business that is not affected by the power supply or fuel subsidy situation of Nigeria. Send a mail to hattylolla@yahoo.com if you think you might be interested in owning part of it.


Regards.

Awards and Hankiddictions... The Entry game continues

Good day people. How was your weekend, hope cool? Mine was really nice. Apart from a little itch when OH lost his car keys late at night in Eko Hotel and we had to go in mine and did not find it until the next morning when we went to church, also at Eko Hotel, things went fine.

My company’s end of the year party was on Saturday, it was an old school affair. As some of you already know, I work for one of the world’s Big 4. You are allowed to speculate which one of them it is cos the day I mention it, that will be the day my blogging activities will end, as long as I am their staff. It is a matter of company policy cos the firm give’s opinion all over the world and I have to be seen as not giving opinions on social network. If by now, you still don’t have a clue, well, all I can say is wait till I am no more their staff.

Niways, guess who won the award of the most unusual and different staff on Saturday. Well, you guessed right... me. This is my second award at work this year. I talked about the first one in this post. Before you assume that i am one performer like that, let me quickly mention that none of these awards are work related. The one of July was the community service award of the year, while that of Saturday was because I am actually always different in everything, the way I make my hair, wear my heel, etc. They called this category the Lady gaga award, so you can imagine. Though I don’t like Lady gaga at all, I don’t even know any of her songs, I like the description of the category. In fact when nomination categories were sent out, I laughed silently, knowing that I was a number one culprit and no one could actually get this award but me. Most human beings are just too normal.



The Community service award. A sane pic of me at the background



Me in my elements

Me rocking the party, old school style

Leaving awards aside, I want to thank God from curing me from an addiction of 11 years. It might not sound serious but I can tell you that it wasn’t funny anymore. It is about handkerchiefs. Since year 2000, I couldn’t do without holding handkerchiefs. In fact, if I did not hold a handkerchief in, my palms will start shaking and sweating, eventually spreading to my face. It later got serious and handkerchiefs were no more enough. I graduated from hanky to face towel. I later realized in 2009 that people thought I did it for spiritual reasons but I had no knowledge of this until someone decided to ask me. Imagine my surprise... I guess it’s because they realized I couldn’t do without it.

OH complained about it when our relationship started getting serious so I decided to step it down to handkerchiefs again. The main issue was that I had to hold on to something, either a handkerchief, phone, etc. If I lost the hanky along the way, I looked for a tissue paper or saviette. One day, I looked at some of my pictures, every single one had an image of face towel or handkerchief in my palms. At this point, I knew the situation was beyond control. I desired to stop but could not.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me announce to you today that my hankiddiction has been cured. One day, I just realized I wasn’t holding it anymore, yet I wasn’t shaking and sweating. It started by me not having to hold it for several hours without even noticing and later I just stopped completely. This is what prayer can do, break 11 years of minor addictions. Thank God

As I said, the entry games continue. What do you want to read next?

1. A letter to undo- It is a letter about a girl who regrets the decisions she made writing a letter to her past, trying to tell her past what not to do. She is basically wishing the letter could automatically change her past

2. In my pocket- This involves short skits of drama eclipsed with a poem. It is about chief shokolokobangoshe and how he has all the sectors of Nigeria in his pocket, how he abuses power and uses it for his selfish needs. He is very boastful about this fact

3. Professor Greed- This is a poem about a man whose whole being has been consumed by greed since he was a child. He is basically asking greed to leave him alone but he is trapped.

So, which one do you want to read? Remember, the one with the highest vote gets published. Also, it will only be on my blog for a minimum of one month and a maximum of two months, before it finds it permanent place in the book.

P.S: No one got the answer to the question in my last post. I get to hold on to my gift and also I will keep the answer to myself.

Its December 15!

Hey people, it is December 15, exactly the beginning of the third week in Decemeber. It is time for me to come back to my baby, like I promised. I mistakenly said I'll be back by the third week, instead of the fourth week but since I already said it, I will stand by my word. My word is the only thing I can give people like you so you can have it, lol.

So to kick off, I did some things on my blog a month ago. Who can tell me what this is? There will be a gift for the first correct answer oo. Yea, I know it is difficult, but considering the fact that it is going to be a copy of my first book ever, I think it is worth a try. Though, the 'gift' won't be ready until next year.

When I took a break from blogger, I kicked off my editing business. Forget the typos you see on my blog post sometimes, that is if you see any. But as some of you know, I have been the editor and publisher of some neighbourhood newsletters in Lagos for the past two years. So yeah, I have experience but that is another business. I sabi English, no be small. I am one of the people that actually listened to their English teachers back in primary school, so preposition, conjunction, defininite and indefinite articles, etc still dance alanta in my brain. I guess it is just my passion.

I commenced the manuscript editing business sometime in September and I would love you to give me a chance if you have an unpublished book you desire to publish. I am currently working on a fellow blogger's book, which I am almost done with and by the Grace of God, will be working on another blogger's book, come January. If you have more questions, just click the 'Edit your Books!' tab or just click here.

People, I have really missed blogger but I know wasup with all of you sha. As long as you blogged about it, then I can tell you that I read it. 9Ja Great has suddenly become a counsellor and a caring man, *smh*. Myne and Dunni are taking a ride down the Babs lane, Gospel Girl is nowhere to be found, Naijamum has fallen off the flat surface, Hazel suffered some shenanigans from her house help and nanny, Cherry Chatter is not finding it funny at all when it comes to the relationship thing, she's dishing it out very hot, Blessing is finding contentment, TamunoIbifiri is trying to lose weight, Unveiling Gold has finally passed her exams, HoneyDame and Ginger just keeps asking of me, etc. If I didn't mention you and you blogged, just know this, I know what you did last night. Some people have left, new people have come. I have to start searching for new blogs to follow.

Concerning the entries for my book, we will continue the one out of three entries game in my next post. Thanks so much for everything guys, I love you people, I really do. So here is a picture I am dedicating to myself, that is assuming I was missed. In the mean time, don't forget to allow me edit your books. I need to buy food to feed myself, abeg.



Picture from maronsi.com



I'll be back

Hiya, my blog family. Yes, do you actually realize that we are a family? Well, I will explain why I said that in another post. But this post is for another matter.

I know some people don't notify the blog family before they do this but as for me, blogging has become a very important and major part of my life and I will love to keep it that way for as long as possible.

So many things have been happening to me lately and many more will still happen between now and December. After weighing the current circumstances of my life, I have decided to stop my blogging activities for the next two months. Believe me when I say that if I don't do this, so many things will suffer. This is because I am very much addicted to blogger.

I won’t be updating and I won’t be commenting on your blogs. I will be using Google reader to read all your posts whenever I am in Lagos traffic, so if you thought you were gonna gossip about me cos I am not here, you better think again. I am going for a while but I still have a camera on you all *evil laughter*.

To everyone that gave me the versatile blogger award Priscy, a9Ja Great, Dammy Jewel and others. I really thank you so much. I actually thought I would have been able to do a post on that but unfortunately, that is not the case. Please, don’t stop nominating me o. Remember, I am watching

As for my book entries, the one that i am supposed to be putting one in every entries on blogger, I will continue that when I get back

I will be updating the natural hair blog because all the posts are ready and will be scheduled, some naturalistas have come to rely on that blog and it is good to be consistent

I will really miss you guys and your plenty comments on my blog. Someone once asked me how I get so many comments. She has far more followers and gets like 10 and I have lesser and sometimes get 40 - 50 but I really didn’t know the reason why that is the case. So I am taking time to thank you guys so much. I am very grateful.

Picture edited by @ilola

I’ll be back by 3rd week in December, if I don’t come back by then, don’t allow me rest on twitter. I seriously doubt that this will be the case. *tears and tight emotional hugs* commot dia 9ja great, no hug me tight jo, don’t you know you are a naughty? Lol. Na you talk am o, no be meee o.

*grins, cries, waves goodbye, turns back and runs off*.

One lovely blog award

 I have gotten three different awards/tags in the past four days. I just have to find a way to doing all of them in the order which I was tagged. The first is One lovely blog award, I was awarded this by The relentless builder. I want to thank you so much for the recognition

Here goes the rules


Link back to the person who gave you the award
Complete the form below
Tell seven random things about yourself
Nominate 15 bloggers


Name your favorite color

I don't have favourites. No favourite anything. Sorry

Name your favorite song

No favourite

Name your favorite dessert

No favourite

What pisses you off?

Shallow people and shallow discussions

When you are upset you

I hardly get angry but if that ever happens, I like to sleep. I feel better when I wake up

Your favorite pet

None, I don't do pets

 Black or white?

Black o, white gets dirty easily. The dust in Lagos is not fun at all

Your biggest fear

Fear of death. I know I shouldn't have this phobia cos I am a Christian. I guess I still have more work to do on myself

Everyday attitude

Achieve all I can achieve for the day. Maximise it to the fullest

Your best feature

My hips.

What is perfection?

Perfection is having a flawless relationship with God

Guilty pleasure

Thinking about the day I will get married and have the legally spiritual right to have sex. What will it be like? etc.. Please, don't yap me ooo

7 Random things about myself:

• I am 5'5 in height 
• I am a British size 6, American size 2
• I work three jobs. 
• I can listen to sermons from morning till night, I never get tired of hearing people preach
• I spend more money on my hair care than food or anything else. And I don't even use extensions. smh
• I enjoy watching cartoons. I don’t think I will ever outgrow them. 
• I have a strong personality, which can work against me at tmes

Tags

Please, let me twist it a bit. I tag the first 15 commenters, excluding me. Thanks a lot for reading


P.S: I don't like watching cartoons. It was a copy and paste error from the person that tagged me. Sorry, Relentless Builder. 
I kept wondering where cartoon comments came from till I checked the post again.

Mummy likes mine best

Hello people, thanks for all the comments in my last post. They were really helpful, and I have learnt more, what will I do without you guys? I am definitely going to rewrite a whole lot on the story. My phone has been repaired, but sadly I lost all my documents. I wanted to repair it in Nokia at first, they said N10,600 but the sad part is that they couldn’t guarantee that the documents won’t be lost so I just took it to computer village where I repaired it for N3000. At least, I did pay as much even though the N3000 pained me small too. I just lied to you all, I did not lose any document, it is all intact. I am dancing up and down now

So onto today’s post, I realised that some people were finding it hard to believe how the mother acted in the last post. Well people, that stuff is real and some girls went through such after being abused by their fathers. Niways, by the time I am done with this post, you will realise that that mother was an angel compared to some other mothers

About nine years ago, I was listening to a program on Metro 97.6 FM, where some counsellor of an NGO was being interviewed. At some point the woman told us of a call she got that same morning. People, this is true, better believe it. I did not hear this story from someone that told someone that told someone, I heard it directly from the NGO counsellor that was handling the case. When she was telling us, the case was still with the police force

Basically, the guy had four children. The first born was about four-five years, a set of twins of about three and a last child of about two. Can’t remember the gender arrangement, I can only remember that the first born is a guy. The parents are both working class people and they had a wonderful marriage. So the man walks in one day and finds the children seriously arguing. They were saying ‘mummy likes my own best’, ‘no its mine mummy likes best, she told me’, ‘no its mine’, etc. The guy wanted to find out what the cause of argument was and then called the children.

They were reluctant to answer at first because the mummy told them not to tell daddy or so, but you know kids, it did not even take much effort from the man before everything came out. Basically, the woman was telling her children to perform oral sex on her. Yes, you read right, she always asked them to take turns in licking her vagina every night. She then went on to even say one pleases her the most and I guess she had told them this statement at different times and it led to the argument. So it was a thing of pride for them.

In case, you forgot their age, you can read the fourth paragraph again. They couldn’t have known they were doing anything wrong then, so she basically used their innocence to please herself and abuse them. Pure evil! I really pitied the man when I heard this. The counsellor said the man was as confused as anything at the time she was giving the interview. What do you expect the man to do? He never suspected because, mehn! This is their mother we are talking about. A normal looking human being like our colleagues we meet at school and work. Apparently, they don’t label people’s foreheads with the word ‘Child Abuser’ when we are looking for a partner

How else can we protect our kids? You keep them from lesson teachers, nannies, uncles, cousins, etc. So will we now start keeping them from our spouses? Or is it that before we leave our houses every morning, we will not tell our partner ‘honey, I am leaving for the office, please make sure you don’t sexually abuse junior, because you know these things happen?’

Well people, here it is, happening here live. Those kids are almost teenagers now, only God knows what happened to them and became of their family.

Leaving you for now, you can blow off your steam in the comment session. I am all ears

So, I am still working on the entries for my book. I need 60 entries but right now I have only 33, some of which are poems and comedy from this blog. Anyway, I will be posting some for you to read as we have been on this journey together. So this is how intend to go about it. After every three entries I complete, I will put the title and what they are about. Then you will all choose the one you want to read and I will put up the one with the highest vote. I won’t be responsible if you choose the wackest of the three o.

So onto the current three

1. Blessing Gbeborun- A pidgin English poem about a neighbourhood gbeborun. I don’t think it is so on point. I wrote it and it is my opinion, so people that will be voting to read this, don’t say I did not warn you
2. Akanni street- A poem about numerous churches in Nigeria, disturbing neighbourhood peace and not really impacting the nation
3. The same cane- A poem about a husband snatcher that got dealt with the same blow after chasing the woman out

So choose the one you want.

P.S: I featured J’Odie, the famous Nigerian soul musician in my AfricaNaturalistas, Natural Hair blog. She talked about why and how she decided to go natural and will write more posts later. You can read the post here

Peace out for now

Phone Crash + Short Story from my Book

Hello everyone, sorry I have not posted in two weeks and it was on purpose, I have started the write-ups for my upcoming book and I couldn’t afford to start putting them up yet. Right now, I am not happy at all because I did a short story and a poem on my Nokia E63, but the phone went off and has refused to come back on. Please, any help will be needed as some important but incomplete write-ups are on that phone. I tend to write in traffic on my way home, that is why I use my phone at times. But now, I have started rewriting. I don't know if it will be better or worse than the first. The upcoming book will have a series of comedy write-ups, poems and short stories. Anyway, her is an excerpt of what I wrote, it is one of the short stories. I wrote it in the first person singular/present continuous tense style. That is my preferred style for writing this particular story

Picture from Chantle White

Two weeks to your eleventh birthday, it is summer time. You are not allowed to play or travel because your results are not very good. Your brothers have gone to the boys scout summer camp. Mummy is in a conference in Brazil and the nanny stays with you before your private lesson teacher comes to teach you. You haven’t taken your bath and still in your nightwear. Daddy comes home from work by 11am. He says he is too tired to go to work, he tells the nanny to go home. You are happy, daddy has come home to play with you. He sits down and you jump on his lap, you pull his ears and nose and laugh at how big they are. He touches you small breasts, you think it is a mistake so you ignore. Then he starts groping you all over, you are in shock, this is daddy, your lovely daddy, not Uncle Peter or Cousin Kola. He removes your cloth and forces himself inside you. You are screaming as he is on you, he covers your mouth and slaps you. He gets up, he tells you never to mention a word to mummy because she will never believe you. You run into your room, you cry all day. Mummy is coming back from Brazil tomorrow. You don’t believe daddy so you decide that you will tell mummy, because you know she will do something about it. You don’t sleep all night, anxiety takes over your being.

Tomorrow comes! It is 1pm, and mummy arrives. She is happy to see you, she sees your eyes, she takes you to your room and asks what is wrong. She hardly gets the question out before the events of last night all comes spilling out of your lips. You are done talking, you see the emotions, the change in mummy’s face and before you know what is happening, a hard smack lands on your cheeks. Same cheeks daddy smacked last night, second time in a row. She says ‘How dare you? How dare you concoct such lies against my husband? I know! I know you have been trying to seduce my husband and take his affections from me. When your plan did not work, you now decided to tell lies against him. I am very sure my baby was switched at the hospital, because you can never be my daughter.’ She hits you harder all over your body and sends you to your room. Life between mummy and daddy remain the same as usual, they are all smiles but mummy now hates you and makes you do all the house chores and calls you small devil.

Cut

The end goes this way

You are 38, a bank manager, used and abused by all sorts of men in the past, domineering in the present. You haven’t seen your family in eighteen years, and you have no intentions of doing that. You are wealthy and lack nothing but you are searching… searching for love, the love you have never found, but everyone seems to have. You are looking in the wrong places, searching for love…

This is all I can share out of the story. The rest is inside the book, lol. Please, share your comments and criticisms. They are much needed

P.S: For those not following my natural hair blog, please, read the Most Popular Natural Hair Myth on it. I posted it some weeks back. I believe it will clear some misinformation about natural hair and how difficult it is to maintain. Thanks so much

African Naturalistas is here

Picture from The gloss

Good day ma peeps. As some of you know, I mentioned starting a natural hair blog to some bloggers some months back. The blog is to focus on core Africans as most natural hair blogs focus more on black Americans, and you and I know that what they call natural hair is different from what we call natural hair, as ours is harder to maintain

A lot of mental planning has gone into this blog, as people that know me well know that once I decide to do something, I put my all into it, as I am a very passionate person. I won’t like to start something I can’t keep up with or continue.

Anyway, my intention was to start the blog next year because I thought that is the time I will have time to dedicate to it, but for some reasons I can’t go into, I started now. I have written posts that can last me about four months so putting up posts won’t be an issue this year at all. At least, I have two posts up already

So for all African natural hair carriers, those that just cut off their relaxed hair and those thinking of transitioning to natural hair, those who have friends in these categories mentioned, I welcome you to African Naturalistas. Please visit the blog, follow and inform your other African friends who will find this blog helpful. It promises to very insightful and educative. See you all there. Thanks

P.S: I have read from some blog posts that there is currently a ‘Team natural’ vs. ‘Team relaxer’ war going on. I have never witnessed this, as natural hair isn’t really common in Nigeria. I personally think the war is not needed, as everyone has reasons why they carry their hair the way they do. I am in no way promoting this 'war' with this blog. I just want to help people with difficulties, since people always ask me how I 'do it'

P.S.S: I do not plan to abandon this blog for one moment, it gave me a platform for writing and I looovvveee it, so don't think for once that I am going anywhere.

I am going to maintain separate identities on both blogs, even the username will be different, but it’s still the same face, as I am not an anonymous blogger.