Blame it on my chi.

Ndewo nu, Igbo ndi oma n’agu akara edemede m n’aka  ugbu a. Kedu ka unu mere? And good day to all you non-Igbo readers as well!

This post is about Flavour N’abania so if you’re tired of hearing me talk about him, biko kwuruga – just shift to one side, as we say in Nigeria.

Let’s have a moment of silence to fully appreciate God’s work, please.

Eh-he, where was I? Yes, so I understand as a Christian that whatever I ask for of my heavenly father will be given. Matthew 7:7 – ‘Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.’

In this case it translates as ‘Seek F(l)avour and ye shall find F(l)avour.’ Hallelujah? Amen!

WHY IS THIS NOT HAPPENING?

Is this because Christianity also makes provision for those times when you ask and do not receive – it is simply not in God’s plan? He knows what is best for you; you’re supposed to ‘Wait upon the Lord and he shall renew thine strength. (Isaiah 40:31). So this would mean  that meeting Flavour now or at any other time would be somehow bad for me.

 I don’t attend the so-called ‘New Generation’ churches but I find that a lot of them believe in speaking words into action – less waiting, more…commanding. I am comfortable with this approach with regards to my current Flavourless existence because it is similar to the Igbo belief system.

We Nwa afo Igbo believe in chi, your personal destiny, inseparable from your will. This is not a god to be bartered or traded or destroyed if they do not do your bidding.  This chi is both the physical manifestation of your will and the will itself.

So you see, I simply refuse to believe that it is not God’s plan for me to meet Flavour N’abania. I refuse. Mba. No. Nicht. Non. It is simply that my chi slumbers. For how else will you explain that ALL of my friends have met, touched, danced with or interviewed the Flavoursome One, eh?

Hear one of them : “Nwoke mara mma o. Skin bu so so mma eh!” (“He is so fiiiiiiiine and his skin is so lovely!”)

Needless to say, we have since parted ways.

I promised no more Flavour for a while on this blog, and I kept my promise both to myself and to you. I boycotted his music, I did not speak his name or allow anyone else to do so. Heck I even stopped watching  Alien vs Predator which I love because Predator’s  hairstyle reminds me of Flavour’s.

Now I have gone back to him in force, starting today. Flavour if you are reading this, I AM COMING FOR YOU. You cannot escape.

It is destiny.

If you have Spotify, and you speak Igbo listen to the skit below. It is supposed to be what happens when a group of Igbo boys hang out in a beer garden with the purpose of picking up chicks. The conversation is HILARIOUS. I would love to translate it but I have a feeling that it will make the whole thing dry and humourless.

Flavour – Skit By Waga G, Loye & Falvour

Sex Me Bad: Nollywood and ‘the Fairer Sex’.

Sex Me Bad by Violet Omojan Okokor

Forget the godawful title trying to be all Color Me Badd ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’, I think this book could make for interesting reading.

As someone who pulls her hair out at how BADLY Nollywood treats women (see here), it is refreshing to see that not only does someone else feel the way I do, but she has gone ahead to write a book about it! With facts! And stuff!

I’m still baffled as to why it came up in a search for Zulu Sofola’s works on Amazon – I had to go back and type the name of the book to get a clean link for you guys to click through to – but I am chalking this one up to fate today. I’ll let you know if it’s any good. There are no reviews on the Amazon at present so I am buying blind.

My fingers are itching.

Genevieve Nnaji

I know sontin about the Half of a Yellow Sun film. I have been sitting on it for weeks.

No, not that Genevieve’s part (may have)/has been cut. That’s old news.  But I may know certain factors surrounding this. In other words, why.

I would love to talk about it, not because of gossip – it’s not really my style – but because of the conversation I want to start about Nollywood and …and…grrrrr! I can’t even say the next thing because of the ultra smart people who will guess and I have my source (yes, the same one that worked on the set of the film) to protect.

We need this conversation. We need it.

What to do, what to do?

The problem with Igbo people today is…THEY BLANK OTHER IGBO PEOPLE

I don’t mean in Nigeria where everyone likes to stick together to receive a larger cut of the national cake.

As the US Igbos are a special case (very organised, even down to their local governments at home) and I haven’t met any other Igbo people in my travels elsewhere, I’ll concentrate on Ndi Igbo in the UK.

Igbo people in the UK like to blank other Igbo people.

This is apart from during special events where there is a gathering of like-minded people such as the 2nd Annual Igbo Language Conference holding today and tomorrow at the School of African and Oriental Studies here in London. That will be full of thinkers, intellectuals and (wannabe) arty-types.

Igbo people on the street however are a different kettle of fish.

I am not saying that just because we speak the same language we should automatically bie oma and exchange phone numbers. It’s silly to assume that just because we come from the same ethnic group, we should be best friends. But we are a group that frequently moans about how few of us there are and how marginalised we are, wah wah, so unfair! A little nod of acknowledgement wouldn’t go amiss. Instead what is usually the case is serious blanking.

This snobbery is directly proportional to two things: a) How wealthy-looking/refined the prospective Igbo-speaking party is and b) How cosmopolitan the area is. Sometimes both things are related.

When I used to live in Newcastle, I was a blank-er. Apparently, not looking ‘Nigerian’ enough (don’t get me started on the ridiculousness of this) meant that I did not find myself leading a trail of homesick Nigerians back to my place like The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

These people were always male and viewed any Nigerian female as a potential mother-wife who could clean for them and provide them with above-and-below nourishment. They were open to a varied below diet but for above, only Nigerian food would do.White people do not eat food now, only potato-potato and bread-bread all the time; so their girlfriend-slaves had to go to Fenham to the only two shops that supplied African food and hair extensions and the odd boubou at astronomical prices.

(But as soon as it was graduation time, their boyfriends promptly disappeared to London, got great jobs, made tons of money and were never heard from again.)

Then I moved to London.

After meeting Liyonard and his ilk, I realised it was much worse. I was still the blanker but London is such a great leveller that everyone figures they have a shot at you. The average Igbo man has such a strong sense of self that he does not believe anyone is higher/richer/more knowledgeable than he is. If he is not as rich as Bill Gates, it’s because he hasn’t started yet. And Beyonce only settled for Jay-Z because she was getting old and hadn’t met Azubike/Chinedu/Emeka. If not eh! He would have eaten her like meat, true to God. He would have only touched her once and she would have borned  seven children one by one (because multiple births are from the devil, tufiaa!)

In London, the men don’t so much follow you home, as expect you to be in their houses when they come back – they are a scarce commodity after all. So while I could speak Igbo on the phone openly,  if a person got over-familiar and I told him where to go, he would because there were plenty more fish in the sea andwhothehelldidIthinkIwasanyway?

About four months ago, on my way back from church, I decided to nip to the shops with This Boy in his buggy.  I took a quiet residential side-street home. At the halfway mark, I noticed this family standing around a vehicle.  The man arranged some things in the back seat   His wife locked their front door and stepped out into the street. She spoke in Igbo to her husband and he responded.

I had almost passed them when I thought, ”Eh, it’s Sunday. Let’s be neighbourly’. So I turned around and said in, “Are you guys Igbo?”

The man ignored me, lifting his daughter into the back seat. His wife quickly smiled.

“Yes, we are. How are you?” she replied, also in Igbo. She was polite but cool, swishing her Brazilian/Peruvian hair over one shoulder. As she tried to talk, her husband sent her on little errands; ‘Pass that’, ‘Tighten that’. Where before she stood by the door, preparing to get into the vehicle and no doubt rest her legs ahead of a long day standing around in heels, she was now forced to carry on a fragmented discussion.

“Ngwa nu, go well,” I said to her after about thirty seconds of stilted conversation.

“Stay well,” she said back. Her husband still pretended not to see me.

I assessed myself: Fifty quid buggy with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee emblazoned on it (hence cheap), sensible (boring) Anglican Church clothes and shaved widow’s head. Versus their huge black Jeep and shiny clothes.

I had become the blankee.

The moral of the story?

Igbo people, don’t blank your siblings . Blanking is bad, m’kay?

This message was brought to you by The Association of Ndi Igbo under Five:

Achebe: A great tree has fallen.

Today, I’ll be on Focus on Africa TV from about 5.30pm GMT.

I’ll be talking about Achebe and his influence on my life and our society. It’s just for about three minutes so if you blink, you’ll miss it.

In other words, don’t miss it.

I haven’t done an Achebe post yet but I will do because love him, hate him or be indifferent to him, Prof Chinua Achebe made a difference.

And now he’s gone.

RIP.