LINES AND VERSES

Africa will never grow if her nations continue to act the scripts written and directed by the industrialized economies of the West and the East and keep swallowing their economic prescriptions. It is common knowledge that every writer designs the fate of his characters. What is Africa’s fate? From the colonialists of the past, to the world’s new economic power houses, the story is the same. More machineries are digging in, more hoses are sucking up the very soul of Africa, what is left of its value is washed down the sea. The role of Africa has always been limited to the extractive level; the farmhouse of the industrialists. Yet these nations rarely own or control these productive forces on their land after they are signed off. Even with colonialism gone, African nations still do not control their destinies. Many are African nations that beat their chests over decades old independence, yet their leaders jostle to become blue-eyed boys of the West and East. The years are the onl...

It is said that if you want to destroy a nation, attack its moral values. The moral values of our great nation has been under attack, and in the best part of the past fifty years its been on a drunken reel. A prominent Nigerian once narrated her delight at visiting a state-of-the-art public convenience somewhere in the west. She told her listeners that she liked it so much that she felt like “taking it home.” Now, that is the problem. If she had felt like coming home and building something like that in her capacity, she probably would have made a difference. But because uprooting such installation and bringing home was both a pipe-dream, and a wishful fanning of her vanity – the experience was pointless. That is one deficiency prevailing in the psyche of most Nigerians; we always want something made for us! China is producing – we become their biggest trading partner. Dubai is developing – we flood their economy with our oil money. Ghana’s got their education right – now that i...

EVERYONE HAS A PRICE TAG, though in the real world a lot of people can be bought quite cheaply. But mostly, what a person desires is to be treated as the human they are. For instance, recognition for their contribution to a course, no matter how minute – and they are bought! People rebel mostly because of wounded pride; basically because they are denied the opportunity to express what they thought was their right, or freedom, to put it more suitably. The worst creatures walking the earth today are men and woman so consumed by their pride that they deny every other person who crosses their path their opportunity. They make it seem like the world was created just for them, and the rest of mankind made to glorify them and grovel at their feet. They find every achievement they have no direct or indirect input into very undesirable or inferior. When they need you they would turn the world upside-down to bring you on-board, they never – for a moment - consider that you just might have a life...

On this path of mortality We tread softly Trample without caution But defend the rules or break them We are captives in our chosen freedoms J.Ifeme

There is nothing lies can not fix. A single lie could make you rich, bring you fame, and make the world jostle to pay your bills. A network of lies could trap you that love of your life - give you that what-a-wonderful-world feeling, as if the sun rises just to see you. A lie could inspire much more creative energy than than truth, because the truth is vulgar, when it is not stifling fun. At least, once in a day an average person is faced with a situation where the truth becomes the hardest work, especially when it will bring sadness or pain or incur condemnation or punitive action. Maybe the truth is just too real to handle. Prevarication is long and may run into the truth at an unexpected corner, so why not just put things to rest with a single sweet lie and the world is a better place for everyone? Sometimes we just have to play it smart - serve the truth in a wrap of lies. I guess this brings us to question of white lies and true lies: where we tell those seeming...

There comes a time when you have to let a love go so love can find you. As you break hearts, yours unknowingly learns to break. When the wicked define justice, a nation suffers. Fame is what you get when you've lost your privacy. When fate sweeps you off, you don't get to choose your landing. Which is better, to crawl amongst the rich or be a king in the mist of the poor? Hell is when you have to choose between poverty and disease. A man who robs his own is less than a man. A man with a dead conscience is like a bullet, he goes through his mother's heart without knowing it. Your god is as good as your belief. All marriage will work if only couples will quit believing marriage is simply made to work. Marriage is like traveling an unknown path with an unknown company, everything unfold at the same time. -J.Ifeme

Recently I made a fire with a stick of match – a tiny yellowish flame that was almost adorable but was meant to burn out a heap of old papers. Within a few minutes I had a crisis with the huge fire created by that tiny flame. The fire did do the job of burning my old, unwanted papers but went further into some dry woods by the corner. Indeed, like you might guess, I had a lot of trouble putting it out. While some will lie without compunction, others will only do so when the cost of facing the truth is foreseen to be too great to bear. But there are always those who will bask in what is widely called white lie. Basically, this consists of half truths and make-believes; creating of false impressions even without words, presenting ones dreams as though they were reality, brazen embellishments of the truths. However, no one was ever born that way and most chronic liars may admit they started quite modestly, like toying with the truth – to avoid little embarrassments, or simply trying to ...

For every situation in life, there is a reason – a purpose. Nothing really happens by chance. The question we must always ask is; why? Why has this come? Why did it go? Why didn’t that just stay? But the world continuously strives for balance; from the tiniest molecules to the gigantic particles – bitter or sweet extremes hardly stay in focus for longer than they achieve their use. Everything around obeys the order of nature; the wind, the sea, the earth, the universe. Season comes and season goes, if you desire summer to stretch all year long just because you love the treat, then you must be setting yourself up for a major wreck. For every friend that crosses your way an everlasting impression is made, while some will continue to stay in spite of changing circumstances, some will breeze out soon after they breezed. However, some will always be like your lovely summer season for the good times sake. Though it is easy for us to see betrayal where the time is up, hypocrisy where pur...

Why is it rare to find someone who sees no good in where they came from? Even in places where the most despicable acts occur, you would still find condemnation of even less severe occurrences elsewhere. Why do we often assume that our own side of things is superior? We treat others with slight even when in reality the situation might just be different. But, again, are people bad merely because they are from a place perceived, or even known to be bad? Over the years, I came across a lot of ‘don’ts’, many from family, friends and even colleagues. And with time I realized I carry a bag of ‘don’ts’ myself. Sometimes we may be very educated, and staunchly religious, but when it comes to making certain decisions, we quickly cast aside our sophistication, and unsheathe our: ‘No, you don’t have to mix with this’. ‘No you don’t have to take that seriously’.’ No you are better than them’. Our ego gets to do the talking. Every so often the reason is simply racist, tribal, ancestral or relig...

Dear daughter,   As I look down on this blank, unlined paper waiting to get inscribed with ink, I could imagine an angelic face on the brink of making a transition into a world of many wonders. I want you to know that you have been loved already. I could only imagine what it’s like over there on the other side, so I think you should consider it a fatherly advice and hold on to as much memory as you could while crossing over to this journey full of treachery and pain, hopelessness, and yet permeated with a lot of joy, and I hope you will come to add to its beauty. It is a world of many influences. A world of riches and poverty, highs and lows, wisdom and folly, fame and shame: a world of immense prejudice and little justice. But it is also a world where you can be anything you want to be, if you don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! You are a woman, yes? The world expects a lot from your kind yet! So you are also awaited. I want you to know you can do all that without lett...

Have you ever come to that point where all you could hope for was the end, only for a new road to unfold and your journey starts all over again? Have you ever waited for that help to come, for that miracle call that would spell an end? And it does come but the fellow on the other side needs your help instead? Have you ever fallen in love, have ever given it your all, not wanting much in return but just a little acknowledgement of your feeling; a little attention, but he/she was totally oblivious because they are in love with another? Has your heart ever broken and it meant nothing to the other? Have you ever woken up in the morn not knowing where to go, not knowing where your next meal would come from? Have you ever starved so much that you wished you could pick some money on the street? Have you ever been stranded? Have you ever found yourself in a strange land, strange faces, with no money and no other means to continue but to beg? Have you ever lost your pride, feel your every...

Flash of wonder moment Heart-race without umpire These stealthy gropes season Our parapraxes - This second-long gaze, bashful smiles; I love you I love you too And we recede to apprehension But it’s hard to live a dream If the soul is in chains 2009© J.Ifeme

Love is what happens when you, without preconditions, or in disregard of such, accept someone; care for them in spite of their weaknesses or shortcomings. They may not be where you are but your heart does not recognize that physical fact; you reach out to them across the distance and whatever dividing circumstance and your decisions do not only say what you want but what they’d have also wanted were they around. Chemistry is what happens when you come in close quarters with a figure of your fantasies. It is that feeling that makes your heart jump beats and sends your hormones on a fast race, while inflaming your libido. Most times it has far less care to give once the urge has been satisfied. Even if it does go beyond that, your relational existence becomes a habit that waits to be satisfied by pleasurable strokes that would fizzles away like magic once confronted with reality. This is when the foundation is built on racing chemicals. When it is chemistry, you can really choose who it ...

One’s deepest fear could be anything. As a child, I remember being too scared of staying in a room alone because I was made to believe masquerades would come out of the ant holes to devour my testicles because I was not yet initiated into manhood. Some day later, my fear was unmasked. And I remember passing the same myth down to my immediate younger ones, manipulating their inexperienced to letting go some of their candy, or whatever they wouldn’t give up easily. Today we laugh over it. Some peoples’ deepest fear could be their partner leaving them for good. They would do everything; show all the love and affection; do all the right things, and those they shouldn’t; lose their self esteem – but never standing up to their truest fear. Consequently, they live a very miserable life, and inconspicuously ruining it all for everyone around them. There are those whose deepest fear is death. The fact that someday they will be no more; they become tied or even subservient to anything that prom...

At one point or another in life you may have gone through a situation, and each time you visit that same environment, memories flood back. It could be pain, loss, anguish, or even nostalgia – it doesn’t matter. Or you have been hurt by someone, and every desire in you is to forgive and move on with life, but whenever you set your eyes on your offender, you have flash backs, however momentary. At some other times you have convinced yourself, with good reasons, that your decision was right, and believe you have overcome your bad feelings. However, the person does something similar to that which you are supposed to have dealt with and suddenly the new action becomes a reminder of the past offence. This is because remembering depends on association of ideas, and action requires environment. Imagine a walking on muddy plain, note that each footstep leaves an imprint, and whether one impression is made on another, it doesn’t erase the fact that there was one before. The mind is like tha...

The most difficult part of letting go is not the tears that are shed, not the pains the heart may be going through, but the coming to terms with the fact that someone you hold so dear does not, or has stopped feeling the same way about you, the knowing that things will never be as you once knew them. At this point you are prone to reflections of the good times that were once shared, open to regrets of sacrifices and the much you had given up for their sake and that of the union, and then you surrender to the surge of painful contemplations. There will always be blames whether on you or on them, but the most essential point is that they have preferred someone else to you, and have left. And in spite of your good intentions, your love, your strength, you find yourself only too powerless to stop them. Sometimes the urge to hold on, which normally stems from prevailing sense of insecurity, can be so overwhelming that you begin to devise desperate measures to have them back, make costly mov...

We are willing characters playing out acts we have neither been briefed nor fully understand; so eager are we to live life, so expectant, yet so disappointed. Life is one big book of endless comedies, endless discoveries, and end endless tragedies; all scripted in a random sequence. At the end of every scene in this endlessness, we are left with at question marks: Has one done the right act? Has one taken the right part? Is one being tempted? And there goes the conscience of a man, ruffled to surrender at the feet of twisted fate. Our joy, our faith, our hope, all beyond immediate control; all presenting even more questions, so we seek to comprehend the unanswered, seek for meaning to our very existence. But first, we must identify with who we are, what place is ours, and we must make difficult choices. So we have to look back at the past, steal into the future; history, horoscope, religion, rebellion – all in search of inner peace and belonging. Sometimes we settle for what we find, b...

Love is so important that we spend most of our adult lives searching for it. We date, we lie, we compromise, we… We preach, look, serenade, and fantasize. And sometimes we find love and don’t even recognize it. Some believe that love will come when you least expect it, while others think you should go out there and get it. Some say you should work it out; a lot still expect you to go ahead with it and grow to love with time. The obvious is that love remains the most inexplicable mystery of all human emotions. There are times when all the indicators are right, and you are like “yeah, this must be love!” That excitement can be like no other, but the moment you settle down to savor it, everything simply dissipates and you left in distraught. But could that not have been love? Apparently, love could sometime be a one sided craze, one person has all the right feeling but the other isn’t just stepping up, and no matter how much of it flows from on direction, it can never compensate for lack ...

Let’s see. She is running her tongue again and getting you all depressed. You feel your authority is being challenged and you have to make it clear who is the man; you don’t want your friends talking in disregard. You think she is acting loose and if you don’t do a thing about it she would never know how badly you feel, or, bizarre as it might seem, how deeply you love her. We have to put the drink aside for a while; you really wanted to beat her, which is why you got drunk in the first place. In a way or another we would have seen quite a few women being battered; may be enough to wonder why some would be so maltreated, yet they are still all over their tormentor like clinging ivy; may be enough to wonder why a man would so badly abuse and assault the same individual he claims to love; may be enough to know where to stand on the issue. A lot of these cases have the same fundamental causes: nagging, fluid temper, jealousy, alcoholism (and their likes), low self esteem, pride and so on....

One of the many mysteries of our behaviour as humans is the almost constant tendency to betray the trust of someone we have pledged our faithfulness and love. The question is: why would any married person still seek sexual satisfaction outside matrimony? Is it that we stop trusting, or begin to take trust less seriously than we initially did? Or is that we marry that one we love and later find them less loveable as time rubs on the feelings? Much has been said about chemistry; how it is important to marry someone with whom we make sexual connection, and how that would mould a strong bond in the union. There are also beliefs that getting married to someone we are physically attracted to would produce a long and strong partnership, as the couple would find it appealing to be in company, but the fact remains that even such seemingly strong interactions have also given birth to infidelity. Whether it done because a partner is no longer loved, to get even with an erring lover, or because on...