Date Archives August 2019

Ask me what I’m doing for Nigeria

Educative 7 Comments

Hii guys. I wrote this a year ago and I still believe in the message the post preaches. Do you think you were given your nationality as a punishment? Do you think you’re in Nigeria for such a time as this? Tell me what you think!

I’m a Nigerian.

In a day I see maybe five people talking about Nigeria on social media and … all of them are negative.

Surely God doesn’t give us Nationalities to punish us. Surely.
I’m scrolling through my Whatsapp updates and I see that everyone is lamenting the recent shootings in Jos.
Then immediately after, I get a news notification; Nigeria has overtaken India as the largest number of people living in poverty.

A motivational speaker and leadership expert, Fela Durotoye put it like this when I listened to him speak at the Platform Nigeria:

“Soon, it won’t lie in us to blame our parents’ generation for what’s gone wrong in Nigeria anymore.

One day, your children would look at you and ask what you did to make Nigeria what it is today”

This haunts me. A lot.

I’m right in that place where my actions begin to become relevant for what happens in Nigeria. Right now, I’m simply still working on attaining my LL.B* and enlightening one person at a time through my blog posts. Right now, I’m keeping used water sachets and wrappers in my bag when there’s no waste bin around, rather than throw it on the sidewalk. Right now, I’m just telling the truth in my class and small groups rather than telling nothing. Right now, I insist on my subconscious and conscious mind believing in Nigeria’s greatness.

Right now, I’m practicing what it takes to treat Nigeria right. To make her great.

Right now, what are you doing?

To be honest, you have to be doing something. Ask yourself “what am I doing right for Nigeria?”

This brief post is really to say It won’t lie in us to blame anyone anymore. If we do nothing, oh, we’re getting the blame.

Love and Light,

Your Nigerian Ambassador (Debby).

*As you know your girl now has her LL.B.

Go ahead and give your comments.

2019 Life Update (2)

Life Diary Uncategorized 7 Comments

There are days when I remind myself that calmness is the way.

There are days I remind myself that poetry is my language, and that I can never, even if I try, escape solitude.

Living outside of home in the busy city of Lagos and hitching bus rides from the mainland to the island daily has left little to imagine, literary-wise.

I haven’t been motivated to document, I haven’t been inclined to create.
But I did travel home for a short while, and I enjoyed the familiarity of my family’s language, the shared laughter, the exquisite family altar.

Reading good poetry and writing in the space of my travel home, I was conscious of the fact that I’m slowly finding my way back to the heart of literature.
My love for law is unquestionable, but you can well question my love for a hectic and pensive life.

While I’ll love to practice, I would also love to dictate my hours. To study my bible, comparing translations with translations and journalling my findings. In the midst of which I’ll like to roll on the ground in worship. And no, Saturdays only won’t cut it.

While I’ll love to exercise my legal skills and contribute to the world of finance, I can tell you without a fee that I’ll like to read Wole Soyinka and Tiwalade and follow Rudy Francisco again. I’ll love to hold the pages of a book with a child and read to them, unrushed. I’ll love to imagine, and to create.

Law, literature. Where do you intersect? Where do you come alive?

But erhm…the part of that intense literature appears to suit the year 2020 better, or what do fellow students of the Nigerian law school say?

What do you think?

Love from this end,

Debby

Baby Blogger Steps; Taking new strides after a crisis

Life Diary 11 Comments

Hey guys. Greetings from this end. I agree its been a while. Regards, and feel free to chat me up using my Contact page. You can also reply newsletters when I send them. ?

There are fail-days. I go through them. I got extremely tired and had no desire to touch my blog this past weekend.

I had had a draft post I was to edit and put up on Saturday. It had also been a couple of busy days leading up to that moment, so I didn’t get to check up on the post.

Saturday morning; I got a devastating email from Mailchimp – my newsletter service provider. Very very devastating news. My account was suspended as soon I clicked “send newsletter”. My very first newsletter!

An account I constantly created for over a month – through the poor network, lack of professional skill, mega data expenditure, and so much time! My entire account was suspended just like that, and without using it once after set-up.
Boy, was I frustrated. I tried pushing that aside. I thought ‘let me atleast edit the blog post for today’. It was then that I found out the post was still too raw and I was in no mood to create a masterpiece. I just shut it all down.
I thought to myself that I may as well space out this blogging thing for a while.

But, I’ve since had time to get my energy back particularly since I got a personal message from a blog reader today thanking me for my consistency and how my last post blessed his life. Ah well. I’m back to this place. We will work the newsletter again, amen?

Like a person who had an accident, I’m here planning to take baby steps again after my blogging crises. Baby blogging steps today means simply writing as I want to – reminding myself that I do not need to be pressured on any front. I am growing and being. I am simply content being here this Sunday evening, 18:29pm in front of my laptop while a message plays aloud on my phone and birds tweet outside my window.
Today, I just want to put up some pictures on my blog and have fun while doing it. Its delightful being a baby blogger, yeah?

While I’m baby-blogging, I want to encourage you to “baby-do” whatever big thing is crashing right in front of you. Just take the baby steps at it, do the basics. Sometimes its enough.

Not everyday a masterpiece, sometimes just paint, write, be.

A/N: So this post is coming up many months after the crisis. Said crisis occurred at the end of January this year. I think I’m sharing this today because you need to baby-do whatever big thing is crashing right in front of you. But do not stop.

Being an adult requires doing lots of things, and sometimes doing them alone. It can be wearying, and while its not wearying to me right now, I want to tell whoever its wearying to right now, “take baby-steps”.

A baby doesn’t stop walking because he falls. Interestingly, the parents are amused with the baby’s bounce and fall, as its a harbinger of good news, our child is developing.

Sweet child, your father says your occasional fall shows you’re developing. Relax, and live in stride.

Your fellow baby sister,

Debby.