Food & I

They say that the way to a man’s heart is a tale of two cardiologists. The hospital cardiologist travels via femoral artery in the groin or the radial artery at the wrist to arrive at the heart using tubes and radiological equipment.

The lady in the kitchen, also a cardiologist of sorts and perhaps an “other room practitioner” gets to the heart through her soup laden with polysaturated fatty acids. This fat travels via the stomach to block off the cardiac arteries leading to “death by brief illness” as they say in Nigeria. What a woman can do, a man can do also. There are male cardiologists in the kitchens of this world cooking up slow poison.

Food is beautiful and there are many beautiful things that can kill but let us move on from terra –depression to terra-happy.

I love food and by the grace of God it will not kill me either through the fast or slow poisons contained therein. Food is such an iconic necessity that lends itself so generously to literature. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, yams are portrayed as Alpha male tubers symbolising wealth and power. Who can forget Chapter Five with its tale of a wealthy man celebrating the Feast of the New Yam with what can best be described as a Trump Tower of foo-foo. The mould was so high that relatives who sat on opposite sides only saw each other when the “mountain” had been levelled, aided and abetted by vegetable soup.

Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist asked for more and was punished for his audacity. This story strikes a chord with all for the request for an extra helping is universal especially at the table of a skilful chef.

Unfortunately, some children in the world are not fortunate to have a tiny first course not to talk of having jara. Parts of Africa are in famine. It is sad that the neighbouring countries cannot help. Africa looks West for help when these things happen. One does wonder if these countries have stored supplies of grain to last them as least a year. If they don’t they should. Without electricity grain was stored for seven years in Egypt during a famine according to the Bible. This was ancient Africa. In today’s world one should expect hunger to have been eradicated by now.

The thought of a child going to bed hungry is heartbreaking especially when there are no wars to blame. Growing maize and rearing goats and chickens is a simple matter. Piping water from the sea or local rivers is also a simple matter.

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System is an ocean far underground spanning Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Chad. Discovered in Libya in 1953 while prospecting for oil this reserve of fresh water was exploited by Muammar Gaddafi via the Great Man Made River project in 1991. It sounds incredulous that the eastern Sahara desert has water underneath it.

This is just one example of how water can be piped across vast geographical areas to provide water for the irrigation of farms. Bad weather has been going on since time began and governments should plan for it. Countries that import food and have no stored grain or water supplies are disasters waiting to happy. And when the inevitable drought happens the children die first.

The two African leaders with lofty and ambitious ideas in recent times have been Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and they are both dead. Both had firm plans for agriculture. Ironically the leaders in Africa with no long term plans who just roll over and let the multinationals rape the land tend to live very long.

I still love my food. West Africa grows cocoa and imports chocolate bars yet I still love my African food. I have been blessed never to have lived in an area of food shortages throughout my life. I see people who run away from food because they want to lose weight yet in some corners of the world people go hungry.  When one person starves we all starve as human beings.

Ukodo is a meal I enjoy. It is one from Urhobo land and it conjures memories of childhood and family. It is strongly linked to my identity as an Urhobo man so much so I wrote a poem about it entitled ‘Ukodo Tonight’. Eating together around a table is good for family life and at the table kids get reminded that they are part of something important.

Good affordable food and water is a fundamental human right.

(Epp us share di Gala Sir).

Babawilly

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

22-11-2016

The Table Matters

Prevention is mightier than the cure and less expensive.  Many psychological ailments that plague in adulthood could have been immunised against in childhood by simply having a roundtable conference with food at the centre.

From the glutinous date who eats up all her starter and then eyes yours to the greedy local government chairman high on drugs and pilfered wealth, we see people whose problems could have been prevented by eating regular family dinners.

No one in folklore history needed family dinners and the training it dispenses like the tortoise that broke his shell in Chapter 11 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.  As the story goes, the birds were invited for a feast in the sky and seeing that helicopters had not been invented, the only way Mr Tortoise could gatecrash the party was to borrow a Personal Flying Card (PFC) from each bird.  He had a reputation for mischief but he talked them into giving him a one-bird-one-feather loan.

During the flight to the party, he assumed the alias of ‘All of You’ and as soon as their hosts presented food for ‘All of You’ the Tortoise stepped in to display his greed.  The angry birds withdrew their support from him, so by the end of the party he was full of food but could no longer hum his favourite R. Kelly tune.

The parrot offered to tell his wife to put out soft furniture in the garden for his proposed wing-less jump back to earth. The parrot however, told Mrs Tortoise to bring out metallic objects and alas Mr Tortoise jumped.  The impact took the ‘S’ out of his Shell (proof that when the people get angry with the leader they helped to fly high and withdraw their support, a crash down is inevitable).

If the Tortoise had spent time with his parents at the dinner table he would have learnt the following essential lessons:

Curb the Greed

Being reprimanded for an attempt to grab the chicken without consideration for the rest of the family, especially at an early age leaves indelible marks on the personality.

Realise that all at the table must have equal opportunities

The bread comes round and no one takes a lion share.  Equitable distribution of food according to need is learnt and practiced.

There is always a next meal

Spoiling breakfast endangers lunch.  If the food is too salty at lunch, you may not want to endanger your chances of dinner by talking out of turn or hurting the cook’s feelings.

Never bite the finger that feeds

The head of the table that pays the bills blesses the food and generally steers the ship. Things get done in order and every one’s space is respected. No one reaches across the next man’s face to grab the salt but rather asks politely if they could pass it. That is how personal space learnt to be respected and this translates into respect for international boundaries later in life.

There is life after the meal

Those who have stayed behind to talk and laugh after the meal has long finished know that communication with family members must still go on and is an enjoyable part of the post-dinner experience.  Being greedy and eating all the rice will breed resentment and disharmony.  That is why many people who are rich through greedy means are paranoid and always watch their backs for they know there is no good-will coming from any quarters.

The Table is for Service

You serve those you live and eat with (not defraud them). At home you learn to do that noble act of setting the table for others (even God prepared a table in Psalm 23).  Setting a table is forward planning. Each seat is allocated to someone and they grow up knowing that there is a special place reserved for them. Eating meals in harmony in childhood will produce civil servants rather than the civil merchants on the look-out for a bribe.

The tortoise was helped to the skies but he soon forgot his helpers.  The 1971 song by the then Fela Ransome-Kuti called Jeun K’o Ku (Chop and Quench), seems most appropriate to tell about the Tortoise’s expulsion from the party in the sky.

In the song Jeun K’o Ku, the singer laments being saddled with a greedy visitor who eats up the whole ‘economy’ and even makes passes at the lady of the house.  He calls the visitor, ‘Oni Gbese’ (a debtor) for, eating recklessly and living above one’s means leads to debt.  Greedy children without reins on their appetites grow up to be greedy leaders who ‘eat up’ economies they were given feathers to fly into. Fela cried for help to expel the visitor who is hell-bent on eating to the point of achieving a stomach rupture.

So, next time a cunny orator asks for something you have that would enable him get to a position of power, look him in the eyes and ascertain if he ate meals with his parents or was a hustler with a survival instinct and an eye for looting.  If he appears to be a crook, keep your feathers to yourself.

24/3/2015

Babawilly

Dr Wilson Orhiunu

Nigerian Bald Heads Inc

The hair thins out in men with the advancement of age. In what seems like a peace treaty had been signed by the eyes and the hair guaranteeing that the eyes are never obstructed by locks of hair, a slow receding of the hair line starts that sometimes ends up in the hair completely evacuating the head completely.

Some guys sink into deep depression at the first sight of a receding hair line but that is not the Naija way. When told by taller people that a small ‘Victoria Island’ is forming on the top of the head, the Naija man is most likely to respond with, ‘Ehen?’ When pressed further as to why Androgenic Alopecia does not bother him all you get is, ‘who hair epp?’

A popular Naija artiste once sang about fine boy wey no get money

Men seem to be judged by others including themselves by what they bring to the table; cash, experience and skills. Unfortunately ladies are judged on appearance but that is another story.  The male grooming business is not worth much as the guys have other things on their minds. Things like air-conditioned jeeps to shield the head from the blazing sun which is preferable to a full head of hair and forming fine boy with no pimples or crash helmet on the back of Okada.

The architects of Naija traditional fashion were prophetic in their designs.  Alas, big flowing agbadas garnished with delightful hats in one sartorial sweep conceals a balding hair and a big one protuberant abdomen. Who six pack epp?

Nosey women are distracted off the abdomen by the swinging walking sticks, fans or horse tails held in the right hand. It is hard to focus on a body part when the subject has something swinging back and forth. The same applies to the spraying of cash at a party. The next day when you ask invitees if that Baba spraying Dollars was bald or not, people don’t know.

The moral of the story is that if there is action and motion, no one cares for the presence or absence of hair.

I normally never think about hair but I recently started looking around ever since this topic came up at a gathering of old friends.  A week does not pass without me watching a certain preacher’s podcast and I never noticed their hair because I am usually focussing on what is being said. I actually had to check a picture of the preacher to see if he had hair or not. It does not matter if you have no hair!

Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock and the Basketballer Michael Jordan have no hair. I tend to focus on what they do.

Hair is not the most important thing above the neck. The brain is. I cannot recall any one with a brain injury or strokes (Cerebro-vascular accidents) complaining about going bald.

Who knows what the hair is for anyway? Maybe it gives men something to do; shaving and combing. There is an opportunity for self-expression like Pogba knows all too well and some Rastas have an attachment to their dreadlocks but by and large a man’s hair appears disposable. After the age of forty the follicles dry up.

The Holy Scriptures talk about hair in three men and it ends in tears. Samson was a man who had super herculean strength and lived with a little secret. His power came from his hair which as a Nazirite he never cut off. He told his secret to Delilah; spy who loved him. He lost his hair and eyes when the Philistines got him.

Absalom the Prince had swag.

 In all Israel there was not a man so highly praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom. From the top of his head to the sole of his foot there was no blemish in him. ²⁶ Whenever he cut the hair of his head—he used to cut his hair once a year because it became too heavy for him he would weigh it, and its weight was two hundred shekels by the royal standard (2.3 Kg).

His fame went to his head and he fought a war to steal the throne of his father David. He must have been too busy for a haircut before the battle for his hair got caught in the branches of an oak tree as he rode his mule. He was stabbed through the heart while suspended mid-air by the flowing locks he was famed for.

Finally the prophet Elisha did not take it well when the youth of Bethel greeted his arrival with shouts of ‘Baldy! Baldy!’

He cursed the jesters and two bears appeared from nowhere to maul the 42 youth into silence.

This proves that hair can be a touchy subject in some cultures. A Nigerian man however is more likely to curse if he was called ‘Poor man! Poor man! in the streets by kids rather than ‘Bald man! Bald man!’

Who hair epp?

It is status that worries the Nigerian male over forties. Address a Chief as Mister or a Reverend Doctor Professor as just Professor and he would ignore you as if his bald head has produced deafness as a side dish.

For some cultures where men take hair as part of their identity it can be a torment for them when the inevitable happens. A deep sense of loss is felt when they comb their hair and find more hair left on the comb than on the head.

The Nigerian is more pragmatic and also philosophical about these changes in life. The loss of youth is greeted with the arrival of wisdom and maturity. At a recent gathering of guys in their 50s I mentioned hair transplants and no one was interested. People just extend the shaving of their jaws to their scalp.

That ritual of going to the barbers with your personalised clippers however is hard for some men to let go of. They troop to the barbers shop weekly to cut phantom hairs and pay their fee. Its okay; they are helping the local economy.

People who worry about their baldness are usually the only ones who care. Steve Jobs had male pattern baldness but I never took any notice. He always spoke about Apple and when I looked at him I saw Apple. When self conscious people start to bridge bald areas with strands of hair it draws attention or worse still strange wigs that are a different colour from the eyes brows.

No matter what anyone does, hair will be here today and gone tomorrow.

Ghanian Jollof Rice

A great saga sometimes is instigated by a small spark; an errand.

When faced with a big self-afflicted calamitous episode, the Naija man must in the spirit of self-examination ask himself the question, “na who send me message?’”

Nothing propels you forward in life like an errand. Goliath lost his head on the back of this errand. Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah of roasted grain and these 10 loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp.” And the world talks about David and Goliath situations till today.

And so I got a text message at work, “Please can you collect Joel’s gift and some food from Mary’s place on the way back from work?”

The answer is always “yes” to these requests. I recall a friend who was asked to help pick up something on his way home after work from his wife’s parents’ Kaduna home. The only problem was that he lived and worked in Abuja. When he protested that Kaduna was not on the way home he was told “go and see what your mates are doing for their wives”.  I digress.

Show me your errands and I will tell you who you are. The errands maketh the man after all. The lonely have no one to send them anywhere. Those with company do errands all day. I digress again.

Anyway, I appear at Mary’s house and I am sent on my way with my son’s birthday present and a container of Ghanaian jollof rice. I did not ask who the rice was for as I assumed the women had discussed ownership rights of the said jollof.

As I drove home the aroma from the rice filled the car and did strange things to my brain.  Alone with a rice that smelt like it came from heaven, I started to get adulterated flashbacks to history lessons of yore. Did Chief Priest Okomfo Anokye conjure from the skies a golden bowl of Ghanaian jollof rice for the first Asantehene of the Asante Kingdom, His Royal Highness Osei Tutu? Or was it just the golden stool he brought down from the skies?

The more I drove, the more I thought of parking the car in front of one of these shops along the way home that sold plastic containers so I could divide the rice into two and leave my own in the car to be retrieved later in the night when all have slept.

The next idea that formed was to elope with the rice to France for two days. By the time my worried family reports me missing to the police and go through the stress of searching for me, they would have forgotten the rice when I turn up with a tale of having been abducted by kidnappers and almost sacrificed in a money ritual (too much Nollywood abi?).

You see, food is a powerful thing in the presence of hunger. Diverse temptations and creative lying abound in the mind of the possessor of an empty stomach.

Some might wonder why a Nigerian is being tortured by a foreign jollof when we have our own version. Time and chance my people, time and chance.

Apart from errands, a man is also made by the gifts bestowed upon him. On the said day my wife was gifted with Ghanaian jollof and that was my experience. Perhaps, if I was gifted with Nigerian jollof this article would have turned out different. And yes, I have eaten Nigerian jollof before, complete with dodo, moin-moin, gizzard and beef. However, the past meals mean nothing when you are famished and you are faced with a hot meal within reach.

How could I write of Cameroun jollof embellished with coconut oil or the Liberian or Sierra Leone versions? Togo and Republic of Benin have their own jollof as does the Senegalese Wolof jollof popularly called ‘one pot’ and said to be the first jollof ever made. No nationals from these West African countries called me to collect a ‘take-away’ so Ghana it is that gave me Independence from hunger.

Oh yes!  I recall the Nigerian jollof of my youth however; the CV of past meals can never give comfort when a man is famished. If you doubt this ask Esau when you die and see him so he can tell you how he sold his birthright and destiny for a plate of food.

By the time I was parking my car, good conscience and commonsense had prevailed and I decided to present the items to my wife without any taxation.

I asked tentatively, “who did Mary do this rice for?” And she answered, “It is for us na. Why do you ask?”

A hidden sigh of relief later I muttered, “Oh, I thought you made a special request. I might eat a bit”.

On the table, I did pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the meal which had to be cut short as my mouth flooded with saliva. It felt like the Volta River had sprung forth in my mouth while my lips acted as the Akosombo Dam.

Those acquainted with the Pavlov’s experiments will catch my drift.

The meal took place at night and my two-year-old son hustled hard for a good share of the Ghanaian jollof.  Despite it being dark outside, in the words of Osibisa, it was a “sunshine day” on our dinner table. Pure Black Star tinz.

Party Jollof Rice

A party without jollof rice, is that one too a party?

A feast is made for merry and for the vast majority of West Africans, there is only so far that nice music and drinks can go. At some point, guests want to be asked that question that is like Mozart to their ears: “white, fried or jollof?”

The answer is usually “jollof please.”

Some need moin moin to eat their jollof and would opt for fried or white rice in its absence.  Others need dodo (fried plantain) with their jollof rice and might get by with a banana if the dodo has run out.

A party that the dodo did not run out, is that one too a party?

One must mention that rare breed of Nigerian – the ones with rice allergies which can be distressing. After three spoons of jollof rice, they develop streaming eyes and noses which would make people around inquire if the pepper is too much.

A full-blown asthma attack may develop and suddenly paranoid family members start to accuse each other of poisoning. It is a sad thing to be told by your doctor the news. No more rice! The distraught patient asks how they would celebrate weddings, birthdays and parties for party sake if they cannot eat rice.

A Nigerian that cannot eat party jollof rice, is that one too a Nigerian?

The ability to consume rice is almost a legal requirement in Nigeria. The average Nigerian eats about 24.8kg of rice annually. As would be expected, some will love eating rice more than others. For some, it is an act of worship. They dream of rice all night and eat it all day.

Everyone is free to determine their nutritional destiny but one must always make provision for whatever appetites one decides to generate.

Take the Kenyans for instance who are the biggest tea drinkers in Africa and number four in the world. They are also the world’s third-largest producers of tea, so there is a balance.

The UK grows no tea but ranks at number 12 in the world tea drinkers’ league.  Through brands like Lipton and Tetley, UK businesses make a profit from the tea business and actually do better for themselves than the tea farmers.  No matter what you learn in school, once you live in the UK you slowly start to forget that cocoa, tea and coffee are not grown here because the really strong brands for these products are based in Europe.

The story is different in Nigeria where about seven million metric tonnes of rice is consumed annually with a local production of 2.7 million metric tonnes.  The shortfall is imported and costs the country about N1billion a day.

In just one month the proverbial 30 Billion leaves the “haccount”.

China and India love their rice and eat more of it than Nigerians but there are differences. Firstly, these countries know not the pleasures of party jollof rice and secondly, they grow what they eat and sell the rest to other countries, creating a lot of local jobs in the process.

Nigeria is very good with cassava. We make a lot of it and it is used to produce the staple food garri.

Yam production is not bad and could be increased. I wonder if Nigerians could go for a whole year without rice.

There are people who have been without electricity for one year and seem to be coping but take away their rice and they might become suicide bombers!  The cost of rice keeps going up and people just keep on buying it. Soon, things might fall apart because there is a limit to how much the average man can pay for a plate of rice.

Personally, I don’t trust rice too much. Is it not one of those plants that take up the arsenic in the surrounding soil? It is the government’s job to ensure that the arsenic content of rice does not exceed safe levels. Who wants poison in their party jollof rice?

And then there are all these rumours about fake foods everywhere on the internet.

Finally, rice is a carbohydrate and that means it is converted to sugar in the body. Most people over 40 years of age have no business eating more than six tablespoons of rice at a sitting yet many eat it by the pot-loads.

It might help to develop alternative recipes like party jollof eba or party jollof yam pottage. Other foodstuffs need to be glamorised and promoted till the local production of rice in Nigeria can meet and perhaps exceed the demand.

Hope springs eternal. I have a dream that one day in a thousand parties in Nigeria on a Saturday night, the plates of party jollof rice would all be alumni of our local farms. Standing side by side with moin moin and plantain locally sourced. I have a dream that the beef will be conflict-free on all Nigerian plates.

That rice will grow abundantly in the land as it does worldwide. Yes, rice is akin to a bronze medallist in the planting and cultivation Olympic finals.  Sugar cane and maize take gold and silver respectively.

What grows in China and India can grow in Nigeria. No shaking.

A country that cannot feed its population, is that one too a country?

P.S: Jollof rice was invented by aliens on Mars and sent down to Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria by 2pm on the second day of March 419 AD

It floated down in a bright giant space pot.  The Aliens then went on to supply Wakanda with Vibranium.

The rest is history, lies and deception.

References

1. An Overview of the Nigerian Rice Economy by Prof ’Tunji Akande

Economic Analysis of Rice Consumption Patterns in Nigeria

2. S. B. Fakayode 1*, O. A. Omotesho1, and A. E. Omoniwa1
3. Agr. Sci. Tech. (2010) Vol. 12: 135-144

Babawilly

20/03/2018

The Nigerian Broom

There is not a single house in Nigeria without an object that emanated from a palm tree. The ubiquitous mosquitoes might be absent and there might be no Nigerians, living or dead in the building but there is always something bearing that Palm Tree DNA lurking in the corner. Palm wine in the fridge or palm oil in the cupboard are variables but the one constant thing is the Nigerian Broom made from the palm fronds. This great iconic domestic appliance epitomises that cult of cleanliness that Nigerians subscribe to. I grew up under the shadow of the broom in Lagos. It was the epicentre of the day. One woke up in the morning and walked as if in a trance and started sweeping. The broom was a collection of palm frond petioles held together at one end by a band (the centre that held) that doubled up as a handle that was used to direct the lower lighter end in the battle against dirt. In the 1970s Lagos was a City with a cleanliness obsession so much so that while the Americans where busy acknowledging that the party was over by the appearance of the fat lady who sings, the Lagosian knew it was the lady or guy sweeping to the beat that told you it was time to go home. There was a rhythm to sweeping and many sang as they swept. Once in a while the song converted into a gasp when money was found.

Even people with no food swept the house clean. It was almost like the home was primarily meant for cleaning. The fetish priests adapted their charms accordingly. There was an anti-burglary system made out of a medium sized broom bedecked with a cowrie studded red cloth and having other accessories tied on its handle like tortoise and snail shells. This broom was normally placed above the door and legend has it that while this broom would not prevent a break in by robbers, as soon as they gained entrance into the house the ‘juju alarm’ kicked in making the robber grab the broom and start sweeping the home;  sometimes till morning light. This went on till the house owner said the magic word of release that immobilised the spell, (perhaps after a sound beating). This broom is called Igbale Esu (Devil’s room) or Aale Oogun.

By April 1975 when Bill Gates and Paul Allen where founding Microsoft with a vision of putting a computer on every desk in every home, Nigeria had reached an average of 4.5 brooms in every home. This high number per household was because on average four brooms were needed. Long hard brooms were used outside the house and a long soft one was used indoors. There was a medium length broom for the toilet and an ultra-short broom for food preparation; for the preparation of Ewedu vegetables in a pot.

There were other uses of brooms though. Kids used the hard brooms in the construction of paper kites and those who had new brooms awaiting their commission while sat in storage used them as make shift tooth picks.

The story is told of a man who asked his son to go and get him one broom stick from storage to aid dislodge beef stuck between his teeth. Mum was angry with dad and diverted the child to the toilet broom. The man thought the broom stick tasted funny and asked the son who then told what his mum had advised. We know how that story ended.
There was a sad broom story in my neighbourhood though. Two brothers fought and one struck the other over the face with the broom. It was an argument over who should do the sitting room sweeping. An eye was lost and depression followed. The guy died latter of causes I am unaware of. I suppose i blamed the Igbale for this disaster.

Sometimes when an insect needed killing but the murderer was too scared to stamp the life out of the poor creature a broom was used. Even tiny objects trapped in crevices could be teased out with two hard broom sticks held like chop sticks.

Everything was about cleanliness growing up. Two baths a day was compulsory, uniforms and shoes had to be super clean and the biggest adverts on the television were all soap adverts.

Lux soap and Joy soap television advertisements made stars out of Patti Boulaye and Benita Hamman respectively and the detergent powders battled it out for the hearts of Nigerians.

The 1980s saw a deterioration in the general cleanliness in the cities of Nigeria. The 50-60 million people in the country had grown to about ninety million and they continued to sweep and pack the waste out but the council men who came around weekly to collect the rubbish in the seventies stopped coming.  Forced environment sanitation days did little to help as there was no well thought out waste management plan for a rapidly growing population of broom owners. 

The broom however had one big advantage over the hoovers which started to increase in numbers in the 1980s. They were hand operated devices needing no electricity. They were cheap and bio degradable.

In the late 1980s just like a broom tied by a weak cord, things began to fall apart in the country and the Cities slowly acquired the ugliness that filth bequeaths. Once the centre cannot hold, the people left the countries in droves and many found themselves in UK where houses had carpets to help conserve heat in winter.

Like most recent immigrants, there is a pining for home and the Nigerian broom was best equipped to ease home sickness. People swear blind that a Naija Igbale reaches places on the floor that the Dyson cyclone bag less vacuum cleaner can only dream about.

However Naija brooms raise, dust and house dust mites. When the Igbale is in full flow, if you have asthma, hide ya face!

In Lagos I recall people slinging carpets over the walls and beating the life out of its fibres raising dust. At least when done outside the wind takes the dust away. In the UK sweeping carpets with the windows closed means the dust is inhaled.

I just don’t like brooms when Dysons or Hoovers exist. At least for carpet cleaning. But an immigrant must travel home weekly albeit psychologically. Play that old Naija beat, sing and sweep like one is in Lagos. I suppose it provides a psychological therapy that goes beyond how clean the carpet fibres are after the house cleaning.

Cooking Ewedu with brooms always gives me that fear that a splinter will escape into the soup and get lodged in the gullet of someone who will end up needing chest surgery.

For those in Nigeria with uncertain electric power supply, hold tight to the broom. This broom was invented by the ancestors of yore and designed for the huts and compounds of centuries gone by. In today’s world the broom should have been obsolete by now but it lives on as light no dey.

A distracted Life

When preparing for international travel, before I pack the passport and cash it is now customary for me to I pack my phone chargers. My phone must not run out of power. The airlines now have USB ports on the back of the seats in front so that means there must be an I phone charging cord for the I phone and I pod in the hand luggage. The complimentary plugs are neatly packed in both suitcases and hand luggage and if making a stopover in any of those two pin plug countries the necessary adaptors are packed.

The aim of all this fuss to ensure that one is distracted in the present from mainly trivial notifications and that future distractions are catered for by why of a well powered up phone. I can’t even remember the last time I listened to the safety announcement before take -off.

Diverting attention from meaningful activity is what distraction is all about and it has its pleasures.

Throw away, the work to be done

Let the music play on

Unfortunately everyone has work to be done whether it is known yet or not. It is a good thing that the essentials for sustaining life on the planet have been taken out of man’s hands. Breathing, the heart beating and the need to reproduce the next generation just happens automatically, no matter the state of distraction. All three can be achieved even in sleep or in drunken stupor.

For other things we need to manage our distractions and that is no easy task for the agents of distraction get better every year. The gossip gets more salacious and the cars and planes all look sleeker that they did twelve short months ago. A resolve of granite is required to even have a small consistent hobby that you do in the evenings.

I recall the dirty looks I have received when I had the audacity to mention I have never watched Scandal or Game of thrones. I also know all so well the urge to take him by the left leg and throw him down the stairs when I meet people who say they did not watch Pogba et al win the World Cup.

Someone once brought out a phone and it was not a very ‘smart’ one. Calls and texts only was what it said on the tin and it did just that. I wondered how the sad phone owner planned to get distracted. It is true; distracted people look on focused people with a great deal of pity.

They don’t know how to enjoy life

Being focussed is not very fashionable in today’s world to the extent that great achievers dumb down the effort they put in their endeavours. Perhaps they have books to sell to wishful dreamers and they dare not alienate the fans who think they can achieve great things by reading the book of a man who was too busy grinding to have time to read books.

As we get older we surely need to focus on our life’s work. If it is baking for instance it is better to inhabit a world of flour and get the attention distracted from one cake to another. The solution has to be to know one’s life work and make sure all the distractions one is exposed to come from people who inhabit the universe of our own aspirations.

Since the personal phone is now the centre of the universe, rather than fight off the concept, it might be a good idea to learn for this mobile phone addiction that aids mind wandering and the attention deficit that tags along with that.

Focus over the course of a life is the sole preserve of people who pursue what they perceive to be a worthy life goal. It does not matter how much time is spent daily on a goal attainment for over a long period the mind set becomes set in stone. Consistency is crucial to achieving big things.

Those with worthy goals treat their lives like a smart phone. They are in a state of permanently being ‘charged up’ about their goals and would do anything within their powers not to let their dreams run out of batteries.  

When preparing for international travel before the passport or cash is packed, they pack the elements that would fire their dreams. That audio tape or that inspirational book is packed into their hand luggage as the ‘dead time’ spent in the departure lounges of airports and during flights can be a good opportunity for positive content acquisition. Inflight entertainment that does not keep the dreams and aspirations charged are ignored, for watching people live out their ambitions can sometimes be like watching someone else charge their phone longingly while your own batteries go from weak to zero. The responsibility is ours to keep our dream alive, and to ‘break the rules’ if need be. If there is no power supply for your charging cords, carry your own pre-charged power bank!

I once saw a guy agonise about the cracked screen of his phone which he had just dropped. (He was being particularly rude to be at the time so his small accident was a welcomed distraction). He cradled his phone lovingly and you just knew he would have called an ambulance if there was a free smart phone emergency repair service on the NHS. Unfortunately his body did not receive much love from him. Little sleep to ‘recharge his batteries’, toxic downloads to clog up his memory and slow down all operations and he was marinating his mind in alcohol like those people who think their smart phones can withstand boiling water and actually test out their hypothesis.

Man smart but woman smarter

At least the ladies put the kids before the phone. The kids always get fed, watered, cleaned then put to bed before the manicured nails start to negotiate the touch screen.