The Kabiesi's Complaint: We Too Are Spirits

May the truth of our inner selves show us some tolerance. For either of ignorance or forgetfulness we've acted with apathy in regard to our origin and identity. We've acted as though we are nothing of the spirit.

Frantically we go about speaking out our fear of *Abiku. We accuse her of being alien. We say she' s a foreigner with no bearing in our midst. For what! All because she's labeled Abiku, the spirit child?

Yes, she's spirit with all her oddities. But what else could she be other than what we are. You villagers, hold your peace and leave the little one alone. If you think her strange, you too are strange. For like her, you are spirits born of a spirit God.

"Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." - Gen 1:26a

*Abiku, "predestined to death", is a Yoruba word used to mean the spirit of children who die before reaching puberty (precisely before the age of 12), and also a class of evil spirits who cause children to die. In my own view, it is a superstition that has cause a lot of psychological pain to familiars because of the stigma associated with the spirit child. (Reference and Source from WWW.SACRED-TEXTS.COM

This Is Just A Misunderstanding

“A baboon laughs at the buttocks of another baboon.” – Kenyan Proverb

This place, a section of Kaduna’s prison, is where they keep me along with the ones they call the “civil lunatics”. In my own opinion, the state prison service couldn't have come up with a more admirable name for mad criminals.

Admirable too is the way Prison warder Jubril introduces the inmates whenever the politicians were visiting for inspection. With a prideful smile, capped with bushy whiskers, he would say, “You are very, very much welcome to The Prisons of the Civil Lunatics”. As though, with proper scrutiny, one couldn’t tell too quickly that the prison was not the same thing as the place for the gifted students of Kakuri Immaculate College. It wasn't a place to be proud of but a place for sick, crazy people, of which by God I do not belong.

My cellmate, Felix, feels the same way too, feels he doesn’t belong here. But the difference between us is that he is really mad. Yet in all his jabbering, he makes a good case – a case he's made to everyone by now. “I need help!” you'd hear him say coherently, and then in between he'd go on and on with a peculiar language that the rest of us still find hard to understand. But usually, the conclusion of his talk would bring, with some measure of clarity, the point of his argument, “I'm really not mad, this is just a misunderstanding”.

*Photo Courtesy of the BBC

Jealosi

From the beginning, it was quite clear where I was heading with my life. Like my mother, everyone thought I was sweet. I was the most lovable kid in Church, or so our Pastor would say. I guess he said so in a way to woo my widowed mother; but nonetheless, I think he was right, for my lovability abounded for all to see. For though I was the youngest choir member, and though learning the drums proved forever difficult, I was always the one who would come first to church to set up for rehearsals. I was that committed, I was that much of a Church Boy.

Happily, I was showered with much attention for being the last and only son. And for that, I was the envy of my three elder sisters. Particularly, Comfort, the eldest, would knock my head at any given chance, as if to remind me of my place. But mother would always come to the rescue, lessening the sting of my sister's abuse. She'd explain that my sister was suffering from a disease called jealosi. She reminded me that I was the one with a bright future and it was only natural for others to be green with envy. She said I had greatness inside of me, waiting to come out. “Just keep living your life to the glory of the good Lord”, she'd often say. I believed her, and I was truly inspired.

 As a result, I talked a great deal about how I wanted to become a chemical engineer and a doctor all at the same time. Chemical Engineering was going to be my passport into one of the oil companies in Nigeria – where the salaries were fat. As for becoming a doctor, I just wanted to be like Ben Carson, the world famous neurosurgeon who was black and successful. How I was going to achieve both feats was not my problem. I was just simply young and vibrant, and of course, mama's boy.

From A Man Against The World

With my pen and journal, I write not just for the sake of my sanity, but also for whoever may care to see from where I stand:

Right now, I should be in ABU Zaria attending to my studies.  I should be at my 5th and final year by now, top of my class, with the bright prospect of making everyone at home very proud on graduation day. But that’s not the case, for I’m in prison.

They’d like to say that I had it coming, that my ears were deliberately deaf to the sirens, that I ignored all the warnings that shouted, “Stop!, Stop!, Stop!” But they’d never care to hear my own side of the matter.

It all began when I exercised my freedom of speech, when I started preaching my WEED RELIGION: Marijuana is far safer than tobacco; In fact it's even medicinal; Yes, it has tar but so does cigarettes too; Nicotine, the evil, evil substance responsible for lung cancer is found only in legalized tobacco but not in my weed, so why can't a man get legally high, and in peace.

Well, it seems now that only my friends would agree with me. Of course, only those who’ve once shared the meaning and experience in a lighted stick would know. 

Squatting in a close circle, I can still recall Biggie passing me the joint when it was my turn to take a drag - long and slow - and then I'd pass it on to Shehu, Shehu would do the same and give Ijide, and from Ijide back to Biggie – and so the circle continues until the last puff. Those were the good times.

Anyhow, there's one thing I know: if the lawmakers, the police, and all those who opposed my reasoning would just take a chance and smoke my weed, I'm sure they'd consider changing their minds. If that ever happens, they'd be making, for the first time, a conscious effort in seeing the big picture. That's all I'm asking.

Sadly, who would understand? Here such arguments hardly hold water. Basket minds are what you'd find in the Nigerian courts and big parliamentary houses – makers and perpetuators of an ill-informed law. For with a mixture of their collective ignorance they've created a law that has made the streets quite unsavoury. Even in the nooks and crannies of my beloved Kakuri, the mere scent of pot would set the police against you as if you were the most wanted man in the land. They've even succeeded in making it out to be a noble cause: The War Against Cannabis.

However, I sometimes feel I should have kept my mouth shut. In this world, if the bulk of the population chooses a belief, false or not, one man should have no business carrying placards in full view that say: ME AND MY WEED DISAGREE WITH YOU. Then again, I guess I would have been a coward if I had not shouted in the streets, the joints and, in the university – where I woefully thought perceptive minds existed. Anyway, with the help of a good smoke, how can a man not speak – how can I not speak my mind, of the lovely hemp plant, Cannabis Sativa!

"There’s a reason why the other man thinks and acts as he does. Ferret out that reason – and you have the key to his actions, perhaps to his personality". – Dale Carnegie

With Kate, I Know It’s Not Love

“Love…does not seek its own”

-1Cor 13:5

In my heart I know it’s not Love. Though it’s passionate, it’s surely not Love that I have for Kate when always I desire nothing less or more than to undress her, touch her and have sex with her, to my heart’s delight...and content.

Really I know it’s not Love – nothing to do with Love or the “making of Love”. It’s just sex, spelt L – U – S – T. That’s what I feel and it’s all about gratifying, satisfying and pleasuring ME - just ME. 

So it seems when I asked Kate out and got into this boyfriend–girlfriend thing it was really just sex to get. And get. And get. Not Love, to give - even once.

Now here we are, all messed up – Kate and I – wondering why I think we shouldn’t continue anymore. 

Well, I guess it’s a little clearer now. At least for me, it is clear enough: With Kate, I know it’s not love.

Love, Lust & Wisdom

So, so unwisely have I spent myself on many fields not my own. I have sown seeds that sprout nothing but nothingness. Nothing of love, sacred and beautiful - just of glands, of hormones fired in search of a thing that only lasted for a while and left me exhausted and empty, yet with greediness for more.

But now, I search for meaning! For the time has come, and it’s clear, in fact, clearer than any other thing that has ever dawned upon my heart. For I see now to forsake my lust and fix my mind on searching out my woman. I can no longer continue my youthful exuberant mediocrity. I cannot go round about anymore, spilling my streams on the streets – fornicating enough to earn the name, Don or Igwe, the King of Girls.

What is such a title, when somewhere out there my lady waits with a heart full of love – love far more precious than my aimless lust and yearnings marked with nothing more than a self-seeking streak? It was never about me, but about us, about our love. More so, it is of love versus my lascivious ways that the matter arises, my stringent quest for common sense: Which one would I live for? Is it to continue to gratify myself under the pretense of having a blast, or rather, the spending of time in finding the wife of my youth, my good wife, whose bosom and warmth I am deeply certain would satisfy me more than all my past sexual tomfoolery combined.

And not just for a while I know would she satisfy me, but always; and then, it would not be just sex, it would be the making of love, passionate and fervent. So I search for my heart’s content, for the one who alone is, for me, enough.

*Inspired By The Book Of Proverbs 5