This Coming Christmas...

Bam bam biyam bam bam… Top of the week to everyone! Don’t mind me please, I have, for some reason been humming the old song by Rihanna all evening. Don’t bother asking me the name or the words of the song because I don’t know and probably never will. This is coming from the lips of someone who nursed a dream of becoming a rock star at the age of six. Thanks to my Igbo father, that dream only saw the four walls of almost every bathroom I took my shower in and was always left there. I did however, have the privilege of meeting someone who actually defied her conservative Nigerian parents’ expectations of what a good Nigerian girl should be; subservient, have a safe professional job, provide both families with a huge litter of kids and give her parents a grand funeral when they’ve passed on.

Faith plays my character’s other love interest in the movie being shot at the moment. She’s one of the most effervescent ladies I have met who affects one almost instantly with her bubbly nature upon meeting her. I mean how many Nigerian women travel widely around the world for reasons other than shopping or hustling – and by hustling I mean honest, legal enterprise which,contrary to negative opinion, is what most of our wonderful ladies do? Faith travels widely on excursions, professional gigs and even skiing trips. Talk about breaking the norm. she had the gumption to stand up to her parents and do what she always wanted to do – music of the rock genre, and is actually very good at it. Like a smart Naija babe too, she made sure she bagged a good university degree, started a business that currently runs itself before gallivanting the length and breadth of the globe in pursuit of her dream. Youth reading this, please take note and be smarter than me. I’m meeting up with her later this week over coffee and that I am looking forward to.

Christmas is almost upon us and from the way things are, it looks like I’ll be spending my Christmas here in the US. I can’t seem to get a flight to Lagos earlier than the 28th so I’m looking to make the rest of my stay here in the States as eventful as possible. Fortunately, I tracked down two friends I haven’t heard from in a while; one’s in New York and the other’s in Dallas. I’m opting for the one in Dallas because my cousin lives there as well and it’s the warmer of the two. Even if I do go there, I wonder what the difference will be apart from the routine stuffing of one’s belly with food and drink; the very reason I want to run away from this place where I am. One of the greatest crimes one can commit, as I learnt from Thanksgiving, is to refuse people’s generous offer of food, especially as it is often a gesture of love in our African culture. Perhaps if we lived in the Roman times when there were vomiting troughs for the relief of overstuffed bellies so their owners could return to their gluttony, it would be a different matter, but my ever slowing metabolism dictates the pace these days.

As I sit here in this gray winter in Minnesota I keep asking myself what one does for amusement in this weather that does not involve drinking, eating, clubbing or the cinema? Ice fishing? Hunting? I can’t even shoot a catapult let alone a - Wait a minute! That’s it! I can go learn how to shoot at a shooting range! And then next time I come, I can take up hunting! Thanks guys, I got it; I got my mojo back! Now I can go to bed. No, I’ll do that after watching two more episodes of Family Guy and Robot Chicken. Have a great week everyone!