Dad, when did you first have a wank?

My jaw is literally, literally hanging open.

Someone just sent me this link and normally I loathe YouTube links, but I opened this since the source was the Hubster and…well, just watch it. I CANNOT believe the questions this boy got away with asking his father, or the cool and collected way his father answered every one of them.

This is what I call suffering for your children’s art and suffer dear not-so-old dad did. The boy made his dad watch ‘Two Girls, One Cup’. (WARNING: Watch THAT at your own peril.)

My parents got off lucky. I have not even put half their human crap in writing for all the world to read, especially given that it’s stuff that happened to me as I grew up with them and I am entitled. Also, I am in awe of the relationship this father and son have; the freedom with which they discuss sexual matters is astonishing and refreshing. My parents are still squirming about the fact that since we figured out how babies were made, we know they that have DONE IT six times at least.

Eww.

My first Valentine EVER.

I think my feelings about Valentine’s Day are well documented on this blog but just in case I haven’t made myself clear, let me say that I just never got the whole fuss behind the day. I still don’t.

Needless to say I have only ever attracted people who are as anti-valentine as I am; my first boyfriend didn’t care for it, my last boyfriend – now husband – doesn’t care for it and anyone else in between probably thought they struck gold when they found out I didn’t much go for the whole forced displays of affection malarkey with its exchange of material goods and expectation of directly proportional sexual returns. Since a lot of them were of the donkey persuasion (I was going through a self-hating phase. It was a long phase), it would have been hypocritical to single out one day out of 365 in which to pretend like they were Homo Sapiens.

So naturally when I found out my Estimated Delivery Date fell on the 20th of February plus or minus one week, I started praying not to have our child on the 14th. I intensified my efforts when I went into labour on the 10th.

“Please can you check me?” I asked the midwife, glancing at the clock. It was 10pm on Sunday the 13th of February, 2011.

“You’re still 4cm dialated,” she said, biting off the corner of her sandwich. I could see what looked like goat’s cheese mixed with saliva gathering at the corner of her mouth.

“Noooooooooo! This Boy why won’t you come out now?!”

He took his sweet time, arriving at 5.06am on Valentine’s Day.

“Okay God,” I prayed, holding the bloody bundle in my arms,”Since you are obviously having a laugh at my expense, please could you make sure that nobody starts calling him…”

Beep. Beep. A text from my father-in-law. ‘I name this boy Valentine’.

SHIT.

This Boy ‘made’ me a card at playgroup for Valentine’s Day. And even though all the other mothers gave me pitying looks when I remarked that it was my first VD card ever, I don’t care. Coming from This Boy it is the best thing ever because he is and today I finally have something to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, my darling.

Sins and Valentine: a mother’s text

UR LOV is d reason Y many are happy 2day. Its VALENTINE.Enjoy d day.“Yet dnt let ur FREEDOM lead u 2 sin” (Gal5:13).Tnx 4 loving me. Happy Val.God bless. Mum

Bless my mother for this. But my own is, what sin is she talking about again? Because the only ‘sin’ an Igbo woman would refer to on valentine’s day would not technically be a sin for me, you know?

Interpretations welcome.

No, I can’t ask her. I am afraid of the answer.

Blogger of the month: Sugabelly

Sugabelly

I came across this young lady when I was looking to have something illustrated for my former blog. I forgot all about her blog when the project fell through but recently I have taken up with her blog again.   I envy her boldness and vulnerability online. I may be outspoken in person but it is much harder to be open in this virtual space when you don’t know who is judging you.

Anyway, below is just one of the reasons why I (sometimes, grudgingly) admire her.

Now how can a group of people with such rich cultures feel empty culturally? And what has this got to do with religion? Let me explain.

Nigerians (at least most of us in the Southern half) embraced Christianity. Unfortunately, the people that they learned Christianity from were a group of small-minded pricks* who taught them that anything even remotely connected to their culture was evil and should be shunned. (Lol, shun the non-believer). These idiots even went so far as to force new converts to take Israeli-European names like Joshua, Joseph, Mary, etc. As if our own names were not good enough, leading to the current situation of Nigerians with stupid-as-fuck-English/European/Israeli names e.g. Polycarp. Really? You really want your child to be known as Polycarp? What the fuck happened to good old Ekpeyong???? (Don’t even get me started about the olodo of a woman that punished her daughter with the name “Queen Elizabeth”) And even when they no longer explicitly forced us to change our names, the drama mellowed into an ungodly proliferation of Chi- and Chukwu- names. [If I had one kobo for every Igbo person who has a Chi or a Chukwu in their name, Bill Gates wouldn’t be able to tell me shit]

(Note, Europeans got to name their children a whole variety of European names that had nothing to do with Christianity and were even sometimes PAGAN names – Diana for example – but nobody ever told them that if the name wasn’t Christian they couldn’t have it, yet Nigerians were forced to give up our own names and answer theirs)

But I disgress.

Back to what I was saying. These “Christians” in Nigeria do have cultures, very rich, amazing, varied, super cool cultures, but they are AFRAID to embrace them because they feel that by doing so they are somehow aligning themselves with the devil. The problem is, humans NEED culture. We really do. We need to feel like we belong to a group and that group has certain norms, rituals, and habits that set it apart and we belong to it. This is the first problem these people face.

Click here or on the photo to read the rest of this well-written entry. It is a bit long though, but no less interesting for it.

She’s also a wicked illustrator. I am currently reading her ‘The 10 People You Meet in Nigeria’  illustrated series. This is her drawing of an Aristo:

Update: Just found out this series was featured in The Africa Report magazine of November 2012.

Eze comes to London!

I had to wait until This Boy was down for his nap before I could risk opening the package that these came in and taking a photo.

You see, it’s his birthday next week and This Boy loves books. If he had caught me, eh, I would have spent the rest of today reading and re-reading them until I was coughing up dust with every word.

I am so excited! I ordered them from a website called Amamife – ‘Knowledge’, how apt – which I have since nicknamed Ngwa-Ngwa because of their super fast delivery.

I also found some Pacesetters books Africabookcentre.com, which is great. I can finally finish my collection. At £5.70 they are more expensive than I used to buy them on Pacesetters.com (at £4.40) but the latter website – as of yesterday – has simply disappeared, so I’ll have to pay the higher price. Every Igbo bone in my body aches at the thought.

Back to the Eze books, I can’t wait to see This Boy’s face next week. Right now, mine looks like this: