Brother

People tell me I am funny and interesting. Flatterers. They clearly have not met my brother.

He relates well with all kinds of people: old and young, rich and poor.

We understand one another. It enables us to discuss issues in great depth.

We do not always agree though.

I could try to write about him here. I have mentioned him elsewhere.

But you should just meet him yourself to find out.

Matchmaker Fail

That drama between my brother and Joy, which began at a congress, ended before it began. Nothing happened. Something tells me I had more enthusiasm for them to court than both of them combined. Well I have had to stop fanning flames which produce more acrid black smoke than fire, for the lil bro raises all types of objections to Joy, which make no sense whatsoever.

The most disheartening part of this entire shambles is that these two wouldn't need to overcome logistical obstacles like long distance phone tariffs to stay in touch. They could see each other daily if they (only) so wished. Another important plus for them, they both have Adventist background and upbringing which if they stuck to would ground them both.

Perhaps I was even secretly wishing she would soften him up, you know, change him in just a few particulars. If it sounds like I had an agenda, I did. In hindsight however, the fortunate lass probably dodged a bullet - no; the bullet dodged her, though she threw herself right in its path. But if everything had gone to plan and love had tamed the brother, then I could really take pride in my efforts to unite them bearing fruits. So, while hope yet lasted, I asked bro: what's the problem? For Joy on her part was unapologetically enthusiastic as far as I could see.

The sneering answer: "That girl likes me too much."

If he was underage I would knock (knock) into his head the idea that better to stick with the girls who like you more than you like them. The other way round, you go crazy on their account, and they never stick around anyway once they realize what's really up with your constant staring into her eyes like you contemplate drowning in there.

But what do the young'uns know, eh? They chase after the indifferent ones, the spoilt queens, the entitled trophies, for the thrill of the hunt, suffering heart palpitations to no end. Or does the ego reject that which is won without effort, is that it?

Bro has been talking about hooking me up with some "bookish, quiet, religious" girl he knows (she's just like myself, he says), but after seeing his handling of Joy, I do not trust his judgment, therefore I warned him off involving me in those his matchmaking ventures in harsh terms strictly.

Strange but Overheard

My brother bought a he-goat at an auction during last year's camp meeting, most likely for the fun of it, to win a bidding war. His winning bid eventually turned out to be good value for money, far beneath goat market price. The goat lived in Grandma's compound for a year, grazing and being a frisky randy generally undiscriminating he-goat, like the rest of its kind. But its life was brutally cut short one night when unknown people slaughtered it and stole its meat. So clean was the job that only its bones were found, but "a zasbec was abbri-ended."*

The case is still current, despite the owner of the goat (my not-so-little lil bro (he's actually taller than me by now)) seeming more amused than annoyed by the whole scandal, even though that theft effectively ended his short humble stint in the league of livestock owners.

Anyway, fast forward to our chance meeting with two local stalwarts of the drinking den, who were either eyewitness to the drama following the slaughter, or had gleaned enough from the grapevine and embellished it with an active enough imagination to paint a vivid picture.

Upon setting sight on my brother and I, these two offered their unique idea of commiseration in a lengthy rambling dialogue.

"It's not the first time such a thing has happened. The thief should not have been caught."

"Catching the thief was the most foolish thing those people did."
"That one, they beat him a little, but it would have been good if he died."
"If it was another village that thief's carcass would be collected on the highway by police."
"He was lucky! I'm telling you, if you had been the one who got caught slaughtering other people's livestock, not even far, in just the next village…"
"You are talking about slaughtering livestock! You don't want to know what they did to me in Kano when I was on my way to the market and I saw a ram entangled in the bushes and I just had pity on it."
"Bad idea."
"I was beaten so badly that I forgot about going to the market and went back home. The lucky thing is I had my own cow with me so they reasoned I couldn't steal their sheep while I had a whole cow. That's what saved me. Anyway they still beat me properly."
"Nobody will believe you were helping their ram even if it was near death."
"Nowadays when I see domestic animals entangled in the pastures I never try to release them! Instead I remember the beating with which I was beaten."
"Elsewhere they kill thieves."
"The other day one man woke up in the morning and killed his wife. Now what manner of killing is that? That kind of killing is not good."
"That one woke up craving to kill, just bad luck that he found his wife nearby..."

As they went on and on, meandering between deathly subjects, I wondered how they distinguished good killings from bad ones.
___

* - "zasbec was abbri-ended" is police talk for "suspect was apprehended."

Tales from Congress

I posted elsewhere about a Youth Congress in December 2013.  Here are some experiences from that.

The afternoon programs dragged on too slowly for most of the youthful participants present. Added to the stifling heat, and a heavy lunch lately settled in the stomach, the presenter's monotonous drone would have proved an effective inducement towards sleep, the last nail in the coffin of consciousness. Fortunately we were discussing "courtship and marriage," an eternal topical fixture for youth gatherings in our church at least, for which the expulsion of under eighteens helped to supply enough conspiratory air to keep the youthful group awake.

Next on stage came a young man who ordered everyone to talk to five strangers and get to know them. I got to it, despite being impatient for the program to progress rapidly to "recreation". (My football cravings endure eternal.) As it turned out there were no footballs nor any balls whatsoever, and these commands to socialize were tricks to fill the empty time with SOMETHING, lest young blood took up free time with mischief. T'was then that I set out, with a mind half set on anticipated future football, to converse with five girls. I forgot most of their names on the spot.

But I remember Winnie, mostly because after she confessed her name I asked, "Winnie, like the runner or the Pooh?" Neither, she said, she didn't even know who or what those were. I confessed that I too knew little about them but for the fact that apparently they were a celebrity athlete and a celebrity cartoon of some sort. She took an instant liking to me, which was the last of my intentions. (Remember, the MC guy said 'talk to five people'. Just following orders.) Thereafter Winnie and I had sporadic talks during the week, usually when she cornered me anchored to one spot by a plate of food, but she was reading too much into my everyday banter. I caught her staring dreamily at me from a distance far too often. It was kind of cute, but my friend "Agrippa" had no qualms giving Winnie his number and claiming that it was mine. The deception fell apart in spectacular fashion less than a week later, after they had already exchanged texts professing mutual love. Overenthusiastic gun-jumpers, the pair of them.

***
There was football at last, on Wednesday. Of importance is that my brother scored the equalizer for our team in the dying minutes of a crucial semifinal game. I insist on taking some credit for that goal because I came up with the idea of making him lone striker while the rest of us huffed and puffed in midfield and defense. The goal itself was a thing of beauty, too bad there was nobody recording it for posterity (read Youtube.) But we celebrated that draw like World Cup winners. Eventually it was getting dark, so the final was rescheduled to the next day, on which arriving, there was once again... no ball. Maddening! Thus ended our (I insist, our) glorious adventure.

Come next day, Thursday, I met Joy, an innocent (naive) high school student buffeted by the tempests of adolescence (a Justin Beiber fan), on her way to who knows where within the Congress site, hugging a photograph to her bosom on her merry way. Ordinarily I would have chatted her up, to continue my disinterested analysis of her adolescent thought processes, but this time I asked what picture that was she was hugging. "It's my brother," she said with proprietary pride.

I took the picture to look at the alleged brother. It was my brother, the great goalscorer, standing tall and self assured.

"No," I said, laughing, "This is my brother."
She insisted that it was her brother.
"Where are you taking this picture?" I asked.
She said she was going to keep it for her brother. Where? In her bag.

I realized what I was facing here: a proper, real-life "love-at-first-time" crush. It was beautiful, except perhaps the part where she called him her brother as a pretext for buying the picture at a hefty twenty shillings from an opportunistic cameraman - the type who invade events and take pictures indiscriminately, in the hope that someone will pay good money to have their ugly mug removed from public display. Usually, it works on me. But my brother's not ugly, therefore stricken girls (so far, one) redeem his photo from the gallery of ugly.

Presently I spied the disputed brother strolling languidly into view, oblivious to the fact that his familial identity was being heatedly contested. 

"Hey look, there he is," I told the infatuated Joy, "Let's ask him whose brother he is, mine or yours."

She spun wildly to spot him, froze, stared, hardly breathing. Gathering her wits at last, Joy sighed. She hid, pleaded with me not to tell him she had his picture, and sneaked away, fleeing with the photograph tightly held to her chest. It was phenomenal. I'd never seen anything like it.

Of course I told him. What, me, fail to tell my own brother about his sister? Never.

Fragile Feminine Beauty

Men can afford to walk around looking rough-edged without the least qualm of conscience. Compared to them, the ladies are a delicate lot. If the feminist movement is doing all it can to eradicate the idea of inequality, the fashion industry is undoing their small steps with giant backward leaps. This insight came to me suddenly, as I beheld a well-dressed lady. Her dress was as colorful and as beautiful as the petals of a flower. Her hair was well made, she carried herself with pride and dignity, as if conscious that she was decorating the place by her mere presence.

I concluded that it takes a lot of work to keep a lady looking presentable. Let us not enter into the touchy politics of adornments, enhancements, struts, props, and weaves. Those fit into a much larger picture than just outward appearances - a real-world, wordless parable which conveys "handle with care". Think about it. If women were to expose themselves to the elements as recklessly as men do, they would be worse for wear and it would show. Their beauty is paired with fragility. I'm not saying there are no women boxing or pulling handcarts, neither am I defending lazy diva behaviors. Moderation is the answer.

I have a small sister; our youngest sibling. In her energetic childhood days my brother and I forged her into a tomboy, taking her to soccer games, high-speed bicycle-riding daredevilry, hard-sprinting chasing games and all. We always ensured she was on our team; she dribbled confidently between boys and scored goals freely, she was our pride and joy. Several times she ventured to confront bullies twice her age, the lucky ones got away with harsh verbal reprimands, one endured the awkward misfortune of being attacked by a little girl. Such a vigorous childhood wasn't always easy on her, since all those neighborhood football games were played on tarmac roads, so that a fall meant the flesh of the elbows and knees earned a bloody mincing. She got quite fast, tough and strong as a result. I was certain that she was fittin' to become the next Marion Jones.

Now little sister is not so small anymore. She has slowed down and parted ways with the tomboy in her - by and large. Wants nothing to do with exercise. Though occasionally one will hear her telling enamored boys "Nitakupiga!" Otherwise, she is coming of age with beauty and refinement. Plus fragility.

The point? Youth fades away, but while it lasts, it is beautiful. Our days of vitality are a blessing which deserve to be made the best use of - not with that YOLO foolishness.

Mama Love

Certain persons imagined they were doing me a big disservice by calling me “Mama's Boy.” They might as well have branded me with a badge of honor. I have long accepted and internalized the fact that I love my mother with a certain fixed loyalty. Some observers would call it fanaticism. What can I say? Mum raised me, my brother and sister, alone as a single woman for the majority of our lives. But it's not just that.

In my reading adventures, I found a book about corruption which accused corruption on corrupt elected leaders, corrupt citizens, corrupt public service and corrupt private sector. It was a real eye opener: corruption is everywhere because everybody's everything is corrupt. The author then made a special effort to single out single parents for corruption. At this point I evolved a dim view of the author.

Single parents love their children too much, said the author. In the absence of a romantic partner, they divert all the love intended for romance to their kids instead, over and above the share of love entitled to the kids as the kids. The kids then take advantage of too much love, in the process morphing into self-absorbed ungrateful brats who think their whim is law, to be enforced by the awesome potency of tantrum-throwing. Despite this unhappy outcome, single parents persist in over-loving their selfish little royal pains, to the extent that they resort to all manner of inappropriate corruption to find them good schools, jobs, opportunities, sometimes even partners...

Of course (I think) the author is wrong.

Women generally endure all varieties of inauspicious treatment from loved ones, the ones closest to them. Mothers especially make costly material and emotional sacrifices which are usually taken for granted by their children. Many will never breathe a word in complaint, accepting their lot to be their loving duty, some even enjoying it almost perversely. In these circumstances I strongly believe that it is childish to claim that we have reached the nirvana of gender equality as a society or as a human race. (Most men would not survive the motherhood challenge even if the childbearing part was cut out.)

Back to me. As a kid I preferred my dad to my mum, because my mum was the moral compass. Dad, on the other hand, was not emotionally available or physically present - but he was lots of fun when he showed up for brief periods, buying our affection with goodies and generally being the provider. In my small mind, the decision who to love more between a strict mother and a liberal affections-buying father was not a real dilemma. But, let's face it – (COVER THE CHILDRENS EARS!) - someone's gotta discipline the kids.

It took dad's death to come face to face with my mother's love for all of us. (This was a slow process anyway. Neither is the claim being made that us kids reciprocated that love very nicely – indeed, there is much to be penitent about.) Point is, I am here through very real sacrifices my mother made out of her love. One may claim that, due to continued exposure to such unconditional love, I am now a brat after generating an insensitive sense of entitlement to all good things in this life and even in the life hereafter. However, I assure everyone that my mother is not one to entertain such “hardheadedness” in her household. You don't get far in our household with ''looking lugubrious.” She continues to teach us values and things like that. Besides, in her own words, “I have taken you to school, and I have taken you to church...”

Therefore I beseech my writer friends to abstain from seeing corruption where there is only love, or at the very least, from exposing their biases derived from secure two-parent upbringings in their anti-corruption publications. Thank you all in advance. Now you can all run off and revise your manuscripts.