Friendship or...

You know the way life throws curve-balls at us sometimes... A few years back I met this absolutely lovely guy I like to call Cece... Initials for his first and last names( I know not very original, but it'll do).

I met him at one of the IT schools in Lagos which I was attending at the time, he'd been studying there for about the same time as I had but we'd never run into each other. My course was in the mornings and his started later on in the day.

We were introduced by a mutual friend in the snack bar. And from the first words we spoke we clicked... We exchanged numbers and afterwards we ran into each other almost on a daily basis. (We never planned to o!).

We moved our schedules around so we could have lunch together and we talked for hours on end after classes. He eventually moved back to Owerri where his family resides (he's not married o!) just he's from Owerri.

You'd think that would stop us from communicating but NOT! We'd speak on the phone most times and we would be on the blower for hours.. My sister didn't find it funny 'cause I kept her up some nights talking to him.

We could be discussing the silliest things but we never got bored... from books, wines, what we wanted to be when we grew up (Yes!). We even imagined marriage, the works and it didn't seem weird at all... I know I must sound like a loony but we talked about everything..

In my mind's eye I see him in a black silk shirt unbuttoned to expose his chest hairs (and I don't do hairy!)

The only thing is that he never uttered the words 'I Love You' until after I left Nigeria. So you see my dilemma. We still talk and nothings changed but what can I do?

I'm engaged now to someone else. Just goes to show, if you leave some things too late they never happen.

What's Going On?

In the 80's Nigeria, life was so uncomplicated growing up, you went to school, had parents who loved the bones off each other, watched early morning cartoons and later went sight-seeing and to picnics on the weekends...

It was all good clean fun. You had library/literature class where you picked out books that added built up your moral fibre or taught you to dream big dreams for the future.

I remember my early years so vividly, everything was beautiful, untouched, unspoiled. We had Religion, Art class, Music Lessons, Algebra & Geometry (yes! aside from Arithmetic) Elementary Science, Home Economics and so on and so forth... And we were eager to learn.

I never came home from school and plonked my schoolbag beside the sofa and proceed to sit and watch the latest 'Nollywood' Home Video (that would have been hard 'cause there wasn't Nollywood back then)

No ugliness like today... I was at home today and lo and behold what was on TV? Some pointless Nigerian Film on the MoviStar Channel titled 'Security Risk'

The plot involved some gang of youths infected with HIV which led to their being ostracized going on a rampage into schools and various establishments and injecting people with infected blood... You can imagine the rest. It led me to wonder whether anyone at the TV Station actually bothered to screen the movie before airing it.

Children get home from school these days and are at times more ignorant than before they started their education...

There's no reading culture in the society today... Ask a child today about books like 'Eze Goes to School' 'Without a Silver Spoon' and you draw a blank expression from the child...

Parents are getting increasingly frustrated with the economic state of the country (Nigeria) that they have to spend more and more hours away from home trying to provide for their families. The children are left unsupervised for hours and resort to their own devices to while away the time... They become lazy in their studies because no one expects much else from them....

I shouldn't be worrying about this some of you might say.. I'm young, have no kids yet...so why am I bothered? I don't know it just annoys me.