Not really Carl...

It's not as easy as it sounds Carl. Trust me...some three quarters of the female population in the world have a life-time record of trying to dissolve lad off their bodies. I may have been lucky to be among the few who eat and it apppears as curves on the hips and crests on the chest but i still feel the pain of the unlucky ones still in the quest for perfection... or is it near-perfection.

Just two days ago at 'bout 5.06am, i was all set to leave for work. With the recent 3rd Mainland Bridge closure saga...all mainland legs are on deck earlier than usual. As i was about opening the locks, he told me same thing i had started getting used to hearing every morning;

"You should have prayed when i told you to and you said later, now you're all set for work and wana rush it. He's begining to hate your menu y'know"?

I stood still, keys dangling and guilt smeared all over the red wall of my heart. After rushing outta the gate each morning, i keep promising Him not to do it next time without having a deserving tit-tat with Him and the next morning...i dont. I just serve Him my 2-minutes noodle instead of Spaghetti Bolognesse.

Looking at Dimitrian with the forlorn eyes of a sad puppy, i gave him the noodles(spoke in tongues for some seconds) and rushed out. "Some kid...", he said.

Walking down Kayode street, Lagos was already agog with its usual hassle, noise and confusion. Surely, even God set a daily deadline to listen and answer the prayers of Lagosians cos the background was a mixture of sounds- the wailing Imams from mosques, the early morning wails of the agbo jedi-jedi seller, the cursing danfo drivers at their fellow head-strong colleagues, the bellowing town-crier calls of the lagos danfo-conductor and deafening horn blasts- would give Him a hard time! Approaching Ikorodu express road- lucky to have successfully dodged a fast approaching aboki okada with no lights on- i could make out "wole Akpogbon CMS, hundred naira bus! Leventis, Akpogbon CMS..."! Sieving the background noise, i trailed the repeated words and got into the bus. Minutes into the bumpy ride between Onipan and Fadeyi bus-stops, the need to settle into my seat properly arose;

"Madam please adjust your bag on the chair".

No answer.

"Madam please i'm not seating properly, please move the bag...", i repeated.

When it became obvious madam wasn't going to move the bag, i leaned forward and began 'moving the bag'...

"Ti'm ba fun e n'ifoti, wa a mo boya m'0ogbe baagi l'ori seati"! she spat.

Confused and persistent, i kept tugging at the 'bag' before i realised it wasn't a 'bag'! The woman who couldn't even do a 45 degrees turn to face me began to release bottled up torrents from her yesterday. The only thing i made out in her out-pour was i was 'rubbing her butt'...ewww! Her butt and hips were so fat she didn't feel the slim lady beside her sitting on it till she attempted to turn. Her lad-ladden butt was pouring out of her seat.

Absent mindedly, i gasped, "Is that your bottom?Jeeezuss!"

The laughter from that scene lasted till Ajah Park bus-stop as i shot out of the bus for security purposes...

Now Carl, those weren't curves; those were mounds of thick lad running off her seat on to my knees.

The fat is enviable when it forms a well curved silhouette and well crested cleavge( as i use to my advantage at work) and not when you've got love handles lined down your sides, a tummy fighting with your belt line and stopping you from looking down at your feet and a bum with nauseating dimpled adipose tissues divided by a G- string underneath a lycra pair of pants...yuuuchk...

Since my second year in uni, i have lived a life of weight consciousness. While consentrating on losing some love handles, the arms take it up; while pedalling at the thighs the tummy begins to bulge!After some time i almost gave up, "Will i kill myself?! Whoever i end up with will like and love me for who i am!" Of course talk is cheap and self deceit is temporarily soothing but the truth remains and aint pretty in the mirror.

Today's chic is so conscious of her BMI her life sucks.While eating M&K's, she throes away the coloured ones sticking to the brown ones, she orders for tasteless soda water outside,in parties and celebrations she excludes the koko of the party(excess meat,drinks and cakes). Slowly, life has become frustrating for us cos as much as we skip the delicacies and repent on our snackings, we still dont fit into them clothes...'life aint fair sometimes' we say

...Terry, i swear i still hear his voice...

Terry.

The closest family friend we ever had. To us he was terrific, to strangers he was terror. An object of grudging admiration by neighbors Terry was a well-fed,muscle-toned, smooth-haired, hazel-eyed chap.This relationship started about 8 year ago.

"Yeeehhh!Nnena come and see"!

"What"?!Eyes almost taking the shape of the screen my twin sister kept bored a hole through the couch.

"Awwwgh...he's so cute. Chinyere!! Bring the remaining piece of chicken in the micro-wave!... Now"!

At the sound of 'chicken' my sis was already with the keys. And so the adult-knocked-senseless-by-a-cutie session continued while Terry backed away with each attempt to be carried by mindless acting adults.

Move Aboki...! Get off the road!!!

Its about time the authorities review the laws, regulations and what have you guiding road and transport users.They should consider banning a particular 'Aboki'-termed class of people cos their resent influx into the roads especially the okada business is a serious cause for concern.

Standing next to an Okada, i beckoned on its rider some distance away;

"You dey go"?

The aboki looked up and then down again, returning to his present distraction of sorting groundnuts from its shell- the dry, sand-roasted, teeth enamel-grazing type.Abokis have a liking to the crude things of life. Still standing;

"You no dey go..."?

Concluding that groundnuts cracking and peeling was more profitting(to his belly) than money making, i started walking away.

"Madam, where..."? the aboki hailed, dusting his palms and still not looking at me.

"Madam where i dey go"?

I turned around unable to ignore the idiosyncratic speech of the aboki. Clapping his palms in a bid to dust them off and finally shining them off on his trousers, he approached. At a loss on how to react, i gave in;

"Et'al Hall".

"Etoho"? he mumbled.

"E-t-a-l H-a-l-l-l-l".

"Efanol"?he mumbled again

"For Oando filling station,et'al hall...you no know am"?

Pointing in no direction in partcular,

"For this side kwo, na estate..."?

"Which estate...you know the place"?

"Oya make we go"! and he started his okada.

"You no know the place, where you know sey you wan go"?

'Ehh, no be for this corner"?

Before i could reply, he had turned to his colleague and after a mumbo-jumbo session, he got his colleague more confused than himself.

Irritated, i hissed and continued my walk,

'Madam! we no go again"?

With a stare that could send the freshly masticated groundnuts back up his throat i looked at him then turned away.

For goodness sake the aboki didn't have the semantic and phonetic abilities to understand english more or less interprete the destination. Similarly, i've boarded numerous okadas of 'ignoramus' abokis i virtually had to keep reading the road to him like he was a horse. Another scary thing about them is their dumb, reckless driving...they are total wrecks in fore-seeing raod/traffic situations especially when crazy danfo drivers are in existence! An aboki will allow you board his bike on the curb and then stupidly back into the lane of an approaching BRT! He'll see a puddle but since his feet/leg is already a mess of caked mud, grasses and all, he cares less 'bout anybody's feet/legs. An aboki will approach a hold-up and gladly queue behind a Lagos Lawma refuse trailer rather than the Ford Explorer by his right!...maybe he feels at home closer to the trailer.Their mumuness plenty full tomato basket.

Following the 'Eternal life' attitude every okada rider in Lagos has, the aboki's attitude is full-blown and dumb. Other riders are somewhat conscious of they/their babies getting scratched or accidents and use their bikes as street disk jockies- disturbing the environs with horrible local choices of Pasuma,Kwam 1,Obesere, P-Square,etc; abokis are indifferent to their bikes or body.My last experience with one put a lid on it. The aboki displayed big time...

Against sitting in a bus sardined between two people in a humid bus exchanging humid respiratory elements, i decided to bike to Oceanic Bank along Lekki-Epe express way.Attempts at gaining the attention of one of the seeveral aboki okada riders failed as usual. I gave in to stopping one from the express. Carried away with my phone while on the bike, i realised we had passed the bank and bursted out,

"Stop!Stop! Abeg stop jo...You no dey look? See the Oceanic dey your back. Argh argh! Abeg turn, i no fit waka"!

And then hell was let loose...

"Come down right now! Come down"! Who you think sey you dey talk to eh? Na wich mumu you put for here? Oya get am down i kill you here now"!

EH!!! In mili-seconds, i was off the bike but he went on and on...

"You think sey na your money go make me rich? Who you be? Even if you be Yar' Adua pikin...look...note my face...yes...look am well well. Never you call my okada again for your life. You think sey na because you call bank i go dey worship you because you get money? Talk any rubbish now make i kill you, nobody fit do anytin...."!

I kept mute knowing i had my own mushin + Abulegba + Oshodi madness which i neither wanted to display while wearing a suit on the express way nor contend with a dagger-happy aboki! After 35 minutes, i calmly walked away. At this point i swore to keep away from any coal-complexioned, dusty eye-lashed, discoloured-haired aboki okada rider. At desperate times when all decent and clean okada riders can't be found, i'll keep to my red-eyed, ogogoro-smelling,konga-blasting typical lagos okada rider...

Just this morning, i witnessed an okada accident at Ozumba Mbadiwe... the DEAD TWISTED CORPSE- the okada rider was an aboki.

Why wouldn't they just stick to their shoe-making and water-fetching professions eh...why?

...can i? I can!!

What have i done and what can i do?

Since my literay Lords haven't been quite favoured towards me, hence they've lost chances of being my 'rites' guardian. You gotta crawl before walking but at the time jumping best suited the occasion so i jumped, landed in mud and to tell the truth-the pix ahead kinda got me comfy in the mud.

Yes...the heart sinking disappointments of man. I started writing at a time comparable to when slaves were forbidden to read, when fellow fingerlins like me were better skilled at erecting sand-castles with bottle-tops and discarded plastic plates that had escaped the bin and started a host of compost and worms! When i got to primary school it was a saver. My enviable skill got me representing the forlone school in literary knock-outs which mostly ended well.

By the way i went to a public yoruba-speaking,every-friday-kpankere-submitting,sponge-and-omo-submitting, broom-submitting,hold-your-dress-close-to-your-bum-bloody-flogging hell of a public school!

Of course some really intolerable traits tagged along after graduaton but called it quits with my friendship after series of trashings from mum. Thats not the point.

Moving on to boarding-secondary school,it was a killer.

I wrote about a disabled senior-'Sister Loving'...loving my butt... and the page was let out of the book!The rest of my junior years saw me living like a roach; a life of sneaking in and out of the crevices of the school walls. Senior Loving chose to suspend the meaning of her name because of me till she graduated. Still, this isnt the point.

In university, it was my play tool. I used it in class, to win favours from my lecturers and of course-the guys. Seeing the credibility of my works, minus Senior Loving's own, i decided and started keepin tabs on them.

Now we are getting close to the point.

You know those moments after uni. when you're filled with so much combustible energy you forget you aren't flame(fantastic 4)? Well, i had my share of it and went on to give my first complete anthology to a dude who had his stakes in the literary soil. I believed it would gimme a head start of invasion.

In telegraphic lingua; 3weeks;no word> 7weeks;no word> 8 weeks;I ask; He in new office; book in old office> 10weeks; No visits or calls to office>12weeks;No book!

By the third month i confronted hGod help him if i see any part of it represim 'audibly' and it stil didnt produce my book five years and counting. God help him if i seepart of it represented as someone else's.

I have lost enough works to 'empty promising' people in high places that culda got me in contending position with Chimamanda- hope the spelling's right. After my last experience, i shutted down. Recently, the cries to restart have got to me with every creative work i stumble on until a particular phrase from the pit hit the roof;

..i told you guys she was a loser;no guts,no balls...

...you got that right...no ******* balls...three hits and she's down, let's ditch her...

This was while i was comfortable in the mud. Looking ahead i didnt think i could match up to time lost wadding in the mud. Laid before me were land-marks of literary successes. While in the mud i had witnessed passers-by fall, get up and toggle on ahead of me. It was then the true meaning of failure played itself. I had been a failure cos i fell and remained fallen.

The power to change that status rested in me and i decided to use it.

At this point i can boldly answer my question- i have fallen and i will rise!

This aint no clarion call, tis a decision.

My advice: dont wait till ur elements decide to abandon ship or drop anchor, as far as y'have it in you, keep sailing; though your clothes cake up in mud, keep walking.