KILL OR BE KILLED OR DIE RUNNING

Dear readers, I write this post with a heavy heart.

I live in Nigeria, West Africa where there are no natural disasters, where there is an abundance of vegetation and animal life, where the weather is just right and sadly where most of the people are living in limbo.

In my state, Plateau, there have been numerous killings by people, the media and government call “unknown gunmen”. We very much KNOW who they are. Recently there were some killings .  The brutality (WARNING EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED), was just heartbreaking and it makes me furious that this killings happened to innocent individuals.

It is not the first time that these killings are occurring. Some times we hear 2 dead, a village got attacked and 10 people were killed, blah blah blah…until the recent killings which claimed the lives of one hundred people or more.

The normal response that occurs first by the government is:

“we condemn these heinous crimes…”

“We commiserate with the victims”

After a day of two of everybody making noise, life goes back to normal…until the next killing.

Today my mum and I were at work and after a stressful day came back home. We were almost ready to sleep, trying to reboot our tired and exhausted selves only for a phone call to come in by 9:15PM (21:15)-an hour and a few minutes ago – from our neighbor to tell us that there is news of a meeting going on by herdsmen to attack our neighborhood. That is not what even angers me. What angers me the most is that most of the people living here heard about it earlier and ran away from the neighborhood with their families and left very few behind. What does that speak of us?

I go back to the title now and ask again because there is a thin line between morality and moralstupidity: “Kill or be killed or die running”.

 

 

I just needed to get this off my chest. It is not time for me to die and I know it because there is a lot left for me to do. I am also super bummed that I can’t practice my guitar tonight. Gotta keep my ears clear but I WILL practice my chinese…less noisy 😉

Night Night All! And I’ll let you know I’m alive tomorrow! Which I very much will be.

A Scrambled Mind

Mum’s picture

I was in the market today and I just sat in the passenger seat looking at every single person walking on the road. I watched them and categorised them. They were mostly stereotypes. The pregnant housewife with a baby on her back, a child holding her hand and bags of groceries on the other. College girls cat walking dreaming of marriage to a rich and handsome man. Local hoodlums with cheap earpieces in their ears thinking of the drugs and alcohol and girls they’ll get later in the night; looking forward to the next robbery they’ll make.

While I was busy stereotyping, at the back of my mind I knew I was in a crowded area and hadn’t forgotten that the last bombing was not far from where I was. I thought to myself, what if the car beside me has a bomb in it? Or what if one of these people walking pulls out gun and starts firing sporadically or a hijacker enters the drivers seat and kidnaps me? Questions questions questions.

I have seen the worst in a crisis before, one time a teenager placed a really long dagger on my throat- at the time I was 12 – and asked me to pray, another time, I watched in horror as a mob pounced on a man and poured petrol on him and set him alight, I also watched  youths like me as  they ate another human being “an act done in war, they said”.

I would have thought that after witnessing all this I should be immune to fear but fear is still there. I have accepted the type of environment I am in and have adapted so much that I don’t fear death. The only thing I fear is how my death will be like.

I don’t want to die in the hands of another human being, I don’t want to die painfully… I just want a smooth passing. When I say these things to my friends they look at me like I am some sort of psycho but I will not live in self denial or close my eyes to the probabilities.

Let me not divert from the main message here though. Do I want to be a stereotype?( If death doesn’t come early) A girl who gets married eventually, secures some sort of menial job, have children, cook, clean, watch tv, eat and sleep, get grandchildren and then die?? No.

That is not what life is supposed to be like. I want to see the world, find love (not this generation’s version of love but our grandparents/great grandparents version, do something great. Not be too rich but just finding a balance.

I will not settle for normal. I will be the girl wearing a red shirt among other people wearing blue shirts. I will settle for different. Let them talk, let them say and think what they want. They aren’t me and will never be me.

Lost Offspring

In a very tiny column in today’s paper there is a notice from a parent asking his son to come for his mother’s burial. Immediately, I thought of abandonment.

This is a half fictional/realistic reconstruction from my imagination – out of many scenarios – of what might have caused this.

A bundle of joy he was for me and my wife. Tiny legs, flailing arms, loud cries, beautiful smiles, white big eyes and a very complicated digestive system; all memories none of us would ever forget. I remember the time he put his finger in the chilli sauce and proceeded to rub his eyes😱, my wife cried rain that day and my little boy… I guess all I can say is I couldn’t use the phrase “like a man”.

I watched him grow but then we had to train him so he wouldn’t have a sad life. We wanted to protect him because we loved him so much and we didn’t want any harm done to him. We were very watchful of his movements, we thought him right from wrong, we watched the people he hung around and we made sure we advised him constantly all the while giving him space to experience things and learn from his mistakes

Everything we did worked. He grew into a fine young man and we let him pursue his dreams. He had been gone for three years when we heard he was successful and married with kids. Where did we go wrong to deserve such treatment from our own child? Is it because we are illiterates or because we haven’t adapted very well to a rapidly growing world full of things that are not human but talk back to us? Huge birds that carry people in the sky?

We left him and thought that perhaps he would find his way back, maybe he was just too busy. My wife wanted to go to him and confront him because she was very hurt. I discouraged her but she went anyways. He came back to us and we met our grandchildren. But after that, we had to go pay visits. Anytime my wife went to see him, she would always come back crying. Our son treated her like a housemaid and it seemed the only time he called her was when he and his wife were travelling, so my wife could babysit.

She finally stopped going. I could see her agony and her sadness. Slowly she went into depression and got paralysed. It was not a burden on me because she was still the same beautiful, kind woman I married. My woman.

It was painful to see her go through that. I always wanted to die with her because the thought of being without her was unimaginable. She died but not before blessing our son. Up till her last days she kept praying for him. I could never understand her love; that type of love, because as far as I knew he was not my son anymore just something I produced.

I don’t think he’ll see my notice. I don’t know where he is now or how to find him but I want my wife to die in peace. If he isn’t present I can only hope the love I gave her would suffice.

This is from the perspective of good parents. I’m pretty sure some parents are cruel and that is what causes their children to forget them when they grow. But in most cases, it is the former that happens. 

The irony is, children who had bad parents want to see the good in their parents and children from good parents don’t have the time.

It is very easy to forget the ones who brought us up when we’re trying to create a life for ourselves  and to forget those who were there for us before we became successful.

Image from ripleeforensicpsych.umwblogs.org