Turn Up The Pink & Save The Ta Tas...

One fateful morning, years ago while getting ready to go to the office, my phone rang. It was my dear friend, MM who was supposed to pick me up for work. So I thought she was outside my house already. 

I took the call to say I was on my way out…and I heard her crying… 

Ha! Whattapun?

MM yaya? I asked?

“Please come, ki zo, zo kawai” she said, still crying.

What could it be? MM wouldn’t talk; she kept crying.

In a state of total confusing, I ran to MM’s so much for free ride. 

I met her still crying. She cried even harder when she saw me.

I was confused. 

She was a mess.

I didn’t know what to do so I held her tight still asking what the problem was…

“I felt a lump...” she eventually said.

Ha! Mogbe! Lump?

Cancer?!

M and I held each other and began to cry.

We cried because we thought M had breast cancer and was going to die.

The ignorance of it all!

Well, we got ready and went to the hospital; puffy eyes and all. 

The Dr. examined MM, carried out some tests and we waited for the results. 

The days waiting were the longest days of our lives. M lost weight, we cried all the time! Just making eye contact made us cry.

They were days of sober reflection. 

Well, results came back clean.

                                             

The lump was benign.

She did not even have to go through surgery to take it out. It was drained with a syringe and all was good. 

All is still good with M.

All this happened before I wrote THIS and THIS 

we have more sense now.

Today is the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness month, but I believe everyday should be. Adult women of all ages are encouraged to perform breast self exams at least once a month as “Forty percent of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump, so establishing a regular breast self-exam is very important” and if, just if you find any abnormality, talk to someone, go to someone, speak to someone and by someone I mean a Dr. in a hospital. 

Remember that the best protection is early detection and a false alarm is better than being ignorant.

To those who are fighting Breast Cancer, I say #StayStrong.

#SupperSammy 

#Peddi

#Rejoice and many others who have lost the fight...

#RestWell 

#La’Millish.... Happy birthday sweetie!

XO

'Epp Me!

Hey God! 🙆🏽‍

My people, follow follow is not good.

I tell you, follow follow is not good!

As I write this, I am sitting in a vehicle waiting for ‘Stee. 

Remember him? He’s the one we did this amebo with HERE 

So this is what happened.... I was bored in the office and my boss sent ‘Stee on an assignment.

I decided to follow...an ci kafan kare.

I had no business whatsoever going with 'Stee, but I really could not afford to sleep so THIS does not happen to me again. 

You see why I chose to do follow follow?

Anyways, I’m here now. Even more bored than I was in the office.

Just sitting  In. A. Car! 😫

I should have stayed in the office, I tell ya! 

This was supposed to be a 20 minute assignment and we've been here for this long!

It’s past closing hours, I’m stuck here and have been here for about 2 hours.

Chai!

Who sent me to do follow follow?

What have I gotten my humble, hard working self into?

I shouldda just stayed in the office. This was not the plan.

Epp me, please.

Where Is My Chicken...?

See, I love food..

I love to eat...

I might even be a foodie. Maybe not a foodie foodie but a foodie alright.  

Let me explain; there are days when I can compete with a horse and win and there are days when I can stay without eating anything at all. There are days in which I crave a particular thing and I will eat that one thing for a week or more. Then there are days when I’ll only drink tea for as long as the system agrees with it.

But the interesting days are when I get to eat!

And boy, do I eat!

Anything and everything goes on such days.

So…I was on foodie mode while travelling, I had all kinds of snacks in my bag…and I still wanted to eat! So imagine my joy when it was time for food…

Yay!

The lovely lady asked if I wanted chicken or beef with my rice and of course, I said the cutest "chicken please".

Like duh, which Nigerian wouldn’t go for chicken? 

Isn’t the Rice and Chicken combo in the Nigerian Constitution?

So I sat up smiling and waiting for my rice and chicken.

The rice and chicken arrived…

Yay, right?

Nope. 

No yay!

No yay as when I opened my food and saw the ‘chicken’, my jaw dropped to the ground and it sat there for a pretty long time!  

Isn't this what every Nigerian 'sees' when rice and chicken is mentioned? 

What manner of audio chicken is this? 

Ha’ahn! I did not see any chicken at all!!!

Haaaa!!!

I looked very well and almost looked under the food pack for my chicken…

Haba! How will this woman look at me and ask if I wanted chicken and bring 4 soft cubes of something…

I am sure all Nigerians on that flight were disappointed because they must have all asked for chicken. I know this because at some point, the lady said she’d be back with more chicken and she disappeared for a while.

Just Imagine the level of disappointment…

30,000 feet above sea level; that’s some major level of disappointment I tell ya.

And this didn’t happen to me alone. Just the other day, while chatting with Miss B on her way to the land of the Kwame Nkrumah, she said “you should see the fake chicken sandwich they gave me, they rubbed it like butter”

“I no dey even see chicken at all…”

So this is an airline thing? Did they miss the memo that Nigerians do not joke with their chicken?

Please, people of airlines, next time you offer chicken to a Nigerian, endeavor to make it visible because next time I hear but do not see chicken in my food, I will ask out loud "where is my chicken?"

Oh, hey Millish...

How Yaji almost disgraced me.

                                           

Hey People!

Remember the Abroad gist I was giving you guys?

Well, it continues here….

So, I have heard from a lot of people (Pssst, Miss B) how certain food items are not allowed into some countries and how sometimes one could get flagged or even fined for carrying said items…

Well, Yours truly decided not to take any food items along when travelling so as to avoid stories that touch the heart. So I happily packed my bags but just as I was about to leave the house, I thought about yaji. 
What Northern person doesn’t have yaji handy, just in case?

That is how I took my yaji along oh.
I arrived the abroad with my yaji and was very convinced that carrying it along was  a very wise decision as the blandness of the plane food almost got me sick. I said to myself ‘Thank God you carried your yaji because if this is how the abroad food is, then there shall be wahala…

Moving on...

I got my bags and was struggling with them when I heard ‘do you have any agricultural something something in your bag?’  I am not sure if it was the phoney the lady was speaking or my ears were temporarily blocked but I truly did not hear the rest of it after agricultural….

Now the problem was this.... at the point, I could not decide if yaji was agricultural something……so I walked up to the lady asking and nodded (better to be told nah, you are clean than to be nabbed, right?)

After the nod, she directed me to a guy who asked where I was coming from.
“Nigeria” I said, and I would have raised 2 fingers in the air, Naija style but fear did not gree me. 
He smiled.
I smiled back at him

Do you have kilishi? He asked

Me: No

Him: Egusi?

Me: No

Him: Crayfish?

Me: No

At this point, he is probably thinking which kind fake naija person be this and I was  thinking to myself “looks like I am crushing this thing”. 

Crushing it!

Then he asked:

Him: So, what do you have?

Me: *crickets*

Him: *waiting for answer*

Me: *blank*

He looked at me, I looked at him.

He smiled, I smiled,
He was waiting….

Are you wondering why I was quiet?

Ewoooooo!!!

I was quiet because I did not know the name of yaji in English!

I tried. I tried hard and in my most humble, meek voice, 
I said “yaji”….

Him: What was that?

Me: Yaji…

Then I tried to explain what yaji is to him… he said "oh, ok. Can I see it?" Behold, that was when village people decided to gather…. I had no idea which of my bags had the yaji. Remember it was at the last minute I decided to go with the yaji? Well, the truth is that I was not the one that actually put the yaji in the bag so I had no clue where it was!

I held my head in anguish and thought “they have followed me” Brother man was waiting for me to make a move. I decided to say the truth. I told him I was trying to figure out which of the bags had the yaji and he waited…

I finally found the yaji and I showed it to him. He looked at it, smiled (again!) and let me go. I thanked him and walked out of the airport into a very windy road, with no clue which way to go and one of my bags fell off the trolley… 

Yup, I was a mess after about 24 hours in transit but I made it out with my yaji in tow…

And that is how yaji almost disgrace me in the abroad.

Before I conclude, please who knows what yaji is called in English?
Help me. Please. Because I cannot come and go and embarrass myself anymore. 

Oh, have a great International Day of the girl child... 
#GirlPower 
#CelebrateGirls
#GodBlessGirls 
#MommaOfGirls 
#CrushTheGlassCeiling

Xtra! Xtra! Read All About It!!!!

Hey People! 

It is me, Vira, remember me?

Please say you do! 

I know. I know we have talked about this disappearance act. 

I have tried to reply all the emails I got and I will do better. 

I promise....

Thank you all for putting up with me and visiting this page even when I have nothing up.

Thank you!

So...Your girl was in The Abroad and I brought gist...

The place is actually full of normal people...whowuddathought?! (wait. maybe i was in the the wrong places?) 

I did not see anyone making out or doing 'things' on the streets and I was looking out for it...*sigh*

They weren’t all semi naked walking around despite the fact that it was summer (all these film people be deceiving somebody) and nope, not everyone was fit, trim, tall, all model like with flat tummies, flipping long hair and prancing around...

time to stop being deceived by movies, Kim K and friends.

It wasn’t  cheap!!!!!

Especially for my Nigerian self with the current exchange rate. 

Every time we had to pay for anything, I'd convert the cost to naira, and my heart would ache. 

Everytime! 

Now, before I go on, I will like to ask; have I ever publicly declared myself a cheap skate?

No?

Ok, this is my official declaration that I am indeed a cheapskate. #NoShame.

Now imagine a self-declared cheapskate being charged $18 for an uber ride. 

The thing is this, the $18 did not pain me but when I got a debit alert of N4,680 from my bank, I passed out a little!

                                  

Four thousand six hundred and eighty naira!  That is three hundred and twenty naira short of transport fare to Adamawa state from Abuja oh! *mogbe* 🙆

At this point, I advised myself to stop with the naira to dollar conversion. I would not have survived to tell this story if I had continued that behavior. 

                              

I visited a lot of cool places across 5 cities and I loved every bit of it. The Willis tower is definitely one place that I loved and I am glad I got to visit. We were on the Sky Deck on the 103rd floor. Yup, 103! 

It was breathtaking, I was all awww and uuuhhh till it was our turn to step on the deck and the lady looked at me and said “everyone gets 1 minuet for a picture” 

Ha! 1 minute pere!?!

After following a queue for 2 hours to get to that point, feeling like I trekked from Okija to Ikom?  

Nope, not gonna work, the African in me was definitely going on ‘African time’ mode. And I am proud to let you know I took some extra seconds to get more photos...one minute fa, if I hear!

All in all, it was really cool and I’m glad I got to visit...legend even has it that Bro Barrack proposed to Sis MichMich in that building...(research for yourself before you start spreading gist from me please).

I was tempted to do one of these crazy poses for the 'Gram but who knows when village people will decide to come and break glass? 

Moving on....

This is a PSA!!!

Not everything in the Dollar store actually goes for a dollar!!!

I fell for that one.  *wipes lone tear*

Imagine my cheap self  happily prancing into the $ shop in my queen of cheap shopping state of mind...*wipes lone tear*

I was even thinking to myself 'we die here today'...

Imagine the betrayal when the first item I saw did not in fact cost $1.

Who did not live to be a $ store queen 😰

  

Was I in the wrong shop? I looked around and I was indeed in the $ shop. Ha! So whattapun?

Is this how Nigerian politicians learnt to deceive people? Only true cheap skates would understand my predicament...

It hurts till this day and I have not stopped asking....

WHY?!

Moving on...

Those Chinese nail technician portrayals in movies,...not lies!

Not a single one.

Totally accurate...them no send person at all.

They kept chirping in their language and even giving me instructions in the language!

And I could totally tell that the little old lady was gossiping about me. Don’t ask me how, I just do....

I was even thinking of....... Doing Nothing!

I respected myself and kept quiet before one of them would hadouken me back to Naija before my time. 

 The act of the Hadouken...
now you get it.

Oh, next time you see me forming for Keke, remind me that I was in one of these and it was cool. I actually liked it, it had music, the guy was nice and decided to appoint himself our tour guide sabi sabi somebody. He was quite friendly but i think he jobbed us small by the end of the trip. He seemed too happy and even offered to snap photos of us...are you thinking what I am thinking?

Not the actual one we rode in, I have never seen this guy in my life.

Self appointed tour guide was not the only overly friendly person. They all seem to be super friendly and smiley and chirpy. Before you know it, pictures of children and grankids are on display...Just like that!

Leaves you wondering where being friendly ends and amebo begins. *sigh*

That was definitely one of the problems I had being a zero friendly person (not proud of it but...)

Exhausted from all the friendliness and trying to figure out if it is amebo or not...

All these aside, it is a beautiful place and everything works! I kept wondering when our Nigeria will get to the point where light will not blink in a day, where the roads will be all good and car exhausts will not have to be changed every time one travels an hour out of Abuja. 

When will we have hospitals that work? 

When will our government feel jealous of all these other countries and decide to replicate what they see when they travel to the abroad? 

You see that Murtala Mohammed airport that we think is cool? Lol, my friend said “ai it is like motor park for them” ; she speaks the truth.

My people, have you ever been to Yola International airport? 

*Wipes hardcore lone tear*…

Lets' end the matter.

I know the onus is not strictly on the government because we sef get our own. How will the environment be neat and beautiful when we stay throwing bawon gyada from moving cars? When we will not drink pure water and dispose the sachet properly?

We need to do better please, we need to someday celebrate our country with real joy in our hearts, with pride and true patriotism because we are indeed happy to be Nigerians. So we will not be using side eye to be looking in awe and marveling at the beauty of the obodo oyibo like I did.

Oh, Happy 58^th to Nigeria, we will get there some day.