I am Poetry

pHisayo - Poetry is the custodian of Society's sanity http://t.co/5tY0v5WyUQ

Moments from this year's poet's Slam. WordUp volume9..

This was such a fun and liberating event for me.
I never looked forward to an event the more this month.  (March 2015)
I performed two pieces to rousing ovation.
I promise to post videos soon as I can lay hands on them...

Me and My Muses slamming tomorrow. Yayest!!!

http://wordup411ng.com/phisayo-i-am-a-rebel-child-of-the-muses-wordupvol9/

Letter to My Next President

Dear next President,

In the end, it won't matter to me which party you belong to, or which political platform's dynamics came together to work in your favor and place you in the Presidential seat. All of that to me is inconsequential; you are now President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Congratulations!

If you are Goodluck Jonathan, and President, I think you will take a little time to gloat in you restroom, that in spite of the rage and outcry against you, you beat the odds again, by hook or crook, and here you are, President for another four years.

That's all well and good(Luck), I am not into the politics of anything, I just have one matter to call your attention to. Let them, whoever they are, indulge in the analysis paralysis that I've come to loathe with a passion because I'm aware that talking doesn't change a thing unless one backs the talk up with the required action.

If you are Muhammadu Buhari, I wonder if you are right now, looking through a list of Nigerians to prosecute already? Or at least to mark closely, since as you said, your priority is to fight corruption. Some will say start from your own backyard, but that is neither my style nor the reason for this letter.

Talkers will talk, some making intellectual and sound arguments backed up with facts and figures, they will even make plausible projections for the future of Nigeria, but I ask; what will they do after the talk?

Dear next president, the past is gone, we are living the consequences of your actions and even the inactions while you were president before this recent appointment; agonizing over the past won't help the present or the future.

What I ask is; what will you do about the present and the future?

I know too many young men and women who are educated, intelligent and willing to work. Young people who have big dreams and the self starting attitude required to actualize their dreams but who are starving to near death because nothing is working in this country.

This is not about War Against Indiscipline or SURE-P or who stole which national fund, this is about Usman the former superstar at City Bank in the United States who after proper education at Harvard gave up his job at City Bank because his dreams called him back home to his country to add his abilities to the service of his Country in return for the Nigerian Dream, whatever that may be.

Even though the definition of that dream was vague and undefined at the time, he had faith and a dream too big to be quelled by doubts so he gave up his job and the U.S. And came home.

Mr. Next President, Usman is currently starving. He can barely feed himself. The realities of Nigeria as it is today have choked his dreams to near extinction; he lives in constant doubt of his Harvard nurtured abilities. He is angry and disconsolate.

There are thousands like Usman in Nigeria today, who came home only to be disillusioned and broken by the army of things that are not working right in Nigeria.

When you see the urchins on the streets as you drive past in your bulletproof car to blaring sirens and escorts, I wonder what your thoughts are at the sight or even if you see them? I see them, those children who with proper education and care might have become exceptional people, able to provide vital service to our country as doctors, engineers, teachers or even farmers.

That woman selling groundnuts by the gutter, could she have become the petroleum minister, or vice president, if this country had been the type of country in which dreams are born and nurtured to fruition by policies that work and leaders who are less selfish and greedy?

Do you care?

What will you do about Oghale, the budding economist whose passion is analyzing the economy and painting a clearer picture for the ordinary man on the streets so that they can better understand how your policies affect them? Oghale didn't train at Harvard; he was born in this country and schooled in this country. And even though the books he read at university were the outdated editions and his lecturers on several occasions took out their frustrations at your policies and the way it affected them on Oghale and others like him, Oghale rose above the odds, because his ability didn't come from books. He's a prodigy, able to connect the dots effortlessly, able to see the bigger picture and recognize the anomalies in any picture.

Oghale's abilities have been recognized by the BBC, CNN, Aljezeera, and even local media houses are stepping on each other to get his opinion on related matters.

Isn't it sad then that Oghale is also starving and barely able to hold his laces together with what's left of his shoes? He knows the facts and numbers, but his efforts to translate them into livable income are being truncated by policies and inactions perpetuated by you and your cronies in the past.

What will you do about Tina, the returnee interior decorator whose dreams have turned into whims battered by the reality of the Nigeria of today? Or Tony the broke White Hacker, Funke the hungry Caterer, Chiemela the production guru whose daughter’s education is on the balance because her father just might not be able to afford the fees?

The list is long. You will notice that I am not focusing on any of the myriad issues that make living in today's Nigeria a tortuous trek, this is because I know you are aware of them and I do not wish to restate the obvious or join the train of talkers who are versed in the issues and postulations of how to solve them.

I am just a sad middle aged Nigerian woman who knows too many Usmans and Oghales and Tinas and who just sincerely wonders if you posses the ability to look past any inclinations to loot and plunder to the fact that Nigeria is dying right along with its disillusioned population.

We can barely think straight for hunger and dead dreams.  Positive outlook and expectations for a better future for Nigeria is at minus Zero.

We cannot dream because we dare not sleep. The country is in constant darkness because constant Electricity is still a wish even after several presidents have come and gone with promises and lies and this many years after independence.

The darkness spawns palpable desperation and crime. Who would dare sleep long enough to dream under these circumstances?

Do you care? Will you change this? We look to you to keep your word. You are after all, Nigeria's Next President.

Sincerely,

Olufisayo Olanrewaju

Lagos, Nigeria    

Selfies of Life

#WarOfWords4 "What is Left..?"

Back to the Dirt

One of my favorite books to read as a child was GREEN FINGERS AND GRIT by Anita Davies. Mainly because I could identify with the lives of the young girls in the book.

They had goats, rabbits and vegetable patches to wander through each day, and I had similar animals and some local vegetable patches of my very own to wander through.

I grew up on a farm. Not the romanticized farms of country westerns complete with thoroughbreds and hunky cowboys in weathered tight jeans, but a farm all the same.

We lived in our own home, in Barnawa, Kaduna, with lots of land to spare, so my Father decided to become an earth whisperer.

And boy did he make the earth sing. If there was a god of subsistence farming, that god dotted on my Father. Plants loved him; domestic animals thrived under his care.

We grew Maize, millet, yams, cassava, beans, sweat potatoes, groundnut, okra, hibiscus, spinach, bitter leaf, waterleaf, pepper, tomatoes, papaya, mangoes, banana, guava, cocoyam and still had room left to grow flowers.

 It was that kind of farm.

We also had animals; Goats, pigs, rabbits, guinea pigs, pigeons, ducks and chickens. Needless to say, I grew up well fed, but with brown nails from mucking out coops and pens and from tilling and harvesting.

Fast forward to a few decades later and I’m craving the same life I hated as a child. I wasn't the sort of child whose parents came home with shop-bought veggies in fancy packets, I was the sort who had to chase the chicken or go into the farm and harvest spinach or tomatoes or okra for lunch.

The sort who had to winnow dried corn from the last harvest for milling so the family could enjoy organic pap, or corn meal to go with the okra from the farm.

I thought life was cruel and unkind, even though I never complained about the abundance of food in my plate.

Our farm was mainly the subsistence sort. There were at least ten mouths to feed at any point in time, three times a day every day of the year, so the farm was kept constantly on its toes, and the dirt under our nails remained a constant feature.

But I am so grateful for that life. Growing up with nature like that, seeing the earth transform dried seed into beautiful green shoots and later into delicious produce taught me more about how wonderful God is than the bible could have done.

I learned patience; how to wait for the harvest, how to put in the sort of effort required to produce a directly proportional harvest and I also learned how to deal with loss, with unmet expectations, when the harvest, despite your best efforts, just goes wrong, because the sun was too eager, or the rains were too lazy to fall. 

The lessons I imbibed are still growing within me, bearing fruit each in its season, and I can never be thankful enough to my father for choosing that way of life and making us live and learn the way we did.

Now I want to become a farmer and I’m making small plans towards it. Maybe it won’t happen this year, having lived on a farm a real farm I know the sort of sweaty effort required, so this desire to become a farmer is not born from some romantic whim, I know I have to be very ready or I might as well not bother so I’m planning on taking time off circular hustling to go to the Songhai International Centre in Porto Novo, Benin Republic for a beginners course in farming and related studies.

I found out during research that there’s a Nigerian version of the school here in Nigeria!

The programme was conceived when Cross River Governor Chibuike Amaechi visited the Songhai Centre in Porto Novo and decided it would work well in Rivers State.

Work began at the Rivers Songhai farm in 2010, before then a group of 105 young men and women drawn from the 23 Local Government Areas of the state had been sent to Songhai International Centre in Benin Republic for 18 months of training in various specialized Agric and Agro based areas.

The Cross River farm project sits on a 314-hectare land in Bunu-Tai, an agrarian community in Tai Local Government Area of the state and is about 20 times the size of the Porto Novo Songhai model (trust Naija to magnify the scale of any viable enterprise).

We are sadly letting the rest of the world leave us behind where agriculture is concerned. We have become a nation of wannabe White Collars, while reality is screaming that we need to explore the green and brown collar territories.

There’s money in the dirt, and Agriculture presents an amazing scope of opportunities which can be explored from tourism to journalism and from husbandry to processing.

For instance, this link- http://www.smarttravelsuperfan.com/amazing-agritech-africa-exhibition-conference-tour/  opened my eyes to how a savvy tourism company carved a niche for itself in the Agric tourism sector, instead of haggling for the dwindling market share of mainstream tourism.

The Agritec Africa Exhibition and Conference held in Nairobi, Kenya from June 23-25, 2014 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi, Kenya. (I’m so sad I missed it.)

 I want to be ready to for the revolution that is coming, I won’t be on the sidelines when it comes, I will jump right in, both feet, and I’m sure my nostrils will revel in the rediscovered heady smell of fertile earth, and this time I won’t mind the satisfying sight of earth-brown nails.

Olufisayo Olanrewaju is a poet, lazy writer, shower-stall singer and trained Broadcaster on an indefinite sabbatical. 

She dreams of someday walking across a grain covered Africa, from Abuja to Zimbabwe, barefoot.