Thursday, September 22, 2011

AND THE FIRE MONSTER CALLED ON US.

It was a Saturday like any other. I left home early in the morning. Lagos was as busy as usual on a Saturday; canopies were being erected for parties. Luxury cars with ribbons filled the streets carrying hopefuls going to tie the knot. One could perceive the aroma of rice and other delicacies we use for parties everywhere. I got home in the afternoon. I was spent. I walked into my street, albeit some people call it an estate. I said hello to the security man as was my custom. I went to one of the shops on the street or estate if you will. (Things here are very expensive. I do not know if it is that, they think people here pluck money from trees. Biscuits sold five naira outside are sold for fifteen naira in here and the list goes on.) I bought what I wanted. (Recharge card, same everywhere. Thank God!) I got home, climbed the stairs, and entered my room. The sleep that had eluded me the past few days came calling for attention. I pulled my shirt, and then I heard it. ‘Fire! Fire!’ I felt the sleep was playing with my brain somehow. My cousin dashed into the room. ‘The estate is on fire.’ I ran to my window, which was overlooking the street, and saw neighbours, carrying their things out, those that had cars were driving out. Where would they have driven? I ponder now; the other entrance into the two streets called an estate is barred. I ran out, dialling the Lagos state fire service number I had, it was not going. I ran up the stairs to the boys’ quarter, and then I saw the smoke. The clouds were dark and angry. We ran out the house gate, I gave the fire service number to others to try finally it went through. I ran to the street gate. The people that had shops in the row were parking their goods out. The frenzy was amazing. I helped those I could help. I calculated it in my head; this fire would have to burn over twenty houses before it gets to mine. It took thirty minutes before the fire service got to an estate that was beside the main road safety corporation in the state. People, were crying, over their goods and properties. I stood at a corner helpless. I knew I had to pitch in somehow, instead of waiting for the fire in my house (remember Titanic)There, I discovered that the fire started from the maxi foam company in front of the estate and that the man with the auto shop who had new cars in, the whole cars burnt, the engines were toast. The fire truck came into the street, a small fire truck. We had to break the wall so it, could pass safely to the factory. It could not pass a gutter, so we took the woods that served as a bridge into each shop and lay before it. You should have been there when we broke the walls down; these walls had been standing since I was a babe. The firefighters, took the pipe through the broken wall, the building facing the wall was already burning it was put out. Some people were trapped inside. A courageous young man scaled the building and used his might to pull out the protector in the veranda. Funny thing, the people did not come down first, they threw down their goods and belongings first. I called their attention that they could move forward into the street and pass it through one of the shop directly to the burning factory but they paid me no attention. Alas, the pipes were too short. The firefighters were just three so we lent them a hand. (How they could send just three firefighters with a small fire truck to put off a fire that had been raging for over an hour in a foam factory still makes no sense to me.) We ran, grabbed the pipes and took one end through the window, finally. There was a church in the compound at the end of the factory. There, we cleared the church; the band equipments etc, we took to safety. Now, we faced the fire monster directly. There was still a wall but there was a small building close to the factory, the men tried climbing, the roof was made of zinc and it was as old as the building. It gave way and they nearly fell to the ground. I looked there was a building attached to it but higher (the church) and its roof was aluminium. I shouted to the firefighters to wet themselves (their clothes were made of inflammable material) and get on the aluminium roof again no one listened. Ok, there is a leister generator climb on it and pour the water directly in, deaf ears. People, kept trying to drag me out. You are a young girl what are you doing here? You are the only girl here, go and join the others outside. I looked round, most of the men, had their phones out, videoing but not helping. I overheard one saying. ‘This is naija abeg; I can’t kill myself for another man’s thing.’ The water was being wasted. We moved the cars in the compound out. A carpenter volunteered to climb, so did others. One of the firefighters approached me and told me to tell my people to come down. In my mind, I was like if you cannot do it let others do. We yelled they came down. We prayed for the rain to come but it fled us that day, it went on a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. Then, we prayed to God for help in any form. The fire kept getting bigger. There where chemicals in the factory obviously but the water they came with was plain water. How can plain water quench chemicals? A man came to ask me, with his phone (I felt like slapping the phone out of his hands.) ‘Young woman, is this your father’s company? ‘No, was the answer I could give. Someone called me away. I begged the firefighter to call for back up; the backup came an hour later. The water was finished, so we waited for backup, though my brother offered to connect the pipes to our underground tank at home, we have like three pumping machines and more pipe than they did, they refused. The next thing we heard was an explosion, we all ran for our lives, it was a stampede. We came back later. We all understood that if the fire touched the house at the end, our estate would burn to the ground, that house happened to be an uncle’s house . When, the second fire truck came, then I noticed the crowd that stood outside doing nothing but watching with their phones taking pictures and videoing. I shook my head in disgust. Then, a security man that came with the truck decided to fight with one of the men helping. The security man was telling those of us inside to leave with his whip. I wondered where he was two hours ago. I dragged the man away from the security man. It was not the moment to fight it was the time for action. My phone had been ringing for hours. It was my mum. As I walked home, my hair was a mess, my nails broken; I was soaked and dirty from head to toe. I smelt of smoke though I am not a smoker and I had inhaled more smoke to cause me lung cancer than most people would in their lifetime. People stared at me perhaps some thought I was an idiot and the rest did not know what to make of me. I took no notice of all this, I only felt good that I had lent a hand, even though it could have cost me my life. I wish things were better and people could help one another. My thinking is this is someone’s livelihood, his main factory (maxi foam), and his dream. What if one day, when I have mine and this happens to me, I pray there will be people to help me not watch( the owner came, he stood and saw his dream burning to the ground, he had to be driven home. The owner of the car shop was out of the country. He was coming home that same day with new cars.) I hope they all have insurance. I pray no huge fire disaster happens in Lagos or Nigeria as a whole, it would be terrible. Imagine incompetent firefighters, no chemical water to put off fires, uniforms made of non fire resistant material plus ladders that are as short as the ones we have at home. Moreover, to top it off, people would rather picture your ruin or death than lend a hand because it is not their business.(the pictures ,thanks to my neighbour. He couldn’t cross the wall, fear. lol!) As I traipsed to church around six in the morning, the next day, I passed the front of the factory; I was shocked, lo and behold! The fire was still burning. What did that second fire truck do? I thought as I hurried on foot to mass. What more can I do but pray.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

THE HIATUS; 'Do not speak to the Press!'



  We all take breaks. It might be in our relationships, in our jobs, in our dreams, from something WE love. I took a break and it feels like a big hole in my heart. I guess that is what happens when you take a break from something you love. You get this incomplete feeling, you feel like something is missing. You go to bed the sleep does not come. You do other things but you know there is something left. I have felt that way these past weeks. It is not as if I did not want to but I could not because circumstances beyond my control came to play so I took a hiatus. My hiatus is officially over. I feel the hole closing up and healing up. My unexpected break is over. Therefore, what is one of the things that kept me away for so long? I answered the call to serve the fatherland. Sometimes I ask myself frankly, did I really answer the call out of my own freewill or was I made to. Give me a moment to think. I am back, it was not my choice and I would never have chose it, same goes for more than half the population I was in it with, sorry I meant am because I am still in it. We are made to spend one year as cheap labourers serving the fatherland they say but what has the fatherland done for me that I have to serve it? Nothing! From my days as an infant until my undergraduate days, nothing was done for me. All the fatherland could do was make the cost of living so high that our parents groaned under the pressure to send us to school with their sweat and blood. The fatherland made the system of education look like a child’s play. The fees are high, why couldn’t they make it free? Build more infrastructures for us?  Pay our teachers’ well so they do not carry out their frustrations on us? Some of us got free education through the public school system in the primary and secondary school stage but the education is horrible, the teachers act as if they are forced to teach, so you guess what happens. Let us not go into the tertiary education where strikes keep us at home for months on end. After that, this same fatherland makes it compulsory for you to serve it before you can gain gainful employment. Employment to make money and spend on your parents. Yes, the money for serving is up but how long will it last in this harsh times? The one year of becoming cheap labourers and pawns in the hand of the fatherland (moment of silence for those who lost their lives serving). We are uprooted from our comfort zones and thrown into the unknown; some of these zones turn out to be volatile and deadly. The fatherland knows this but he sends us there. When we end up dead, they dole out 5 million to our parents. What is that after a parent has suffered for years and spent more than that awaiting to reap millions from their investment?  Wouldn’t that pawn alive make that in just a year or more? Use that money to buy his first car? Look at it this way why not give us that money now we are alive so we can start up our own businesses, further our education and not end up unemployed after serving you? Why send people to far places and they end up in schools after that they come back to their comfort zones, unemployed and with practically no genuine work experience? Why not use that one year and train us in our fields of interest or create alternative interests we can learn not necessarily white-collar jobs so after this one year we can start our own businesses as entrepreneurs, create employment for others and help the dying economy? It has become a circle that after, since we know nothing else, have no skills we end up in white-collar jobs working for others to get richer, we see it as the only option. We are not groomed to think out the box and strike out on our own so we end up in banks, oil companies and telecommunications  when our small scale idea , if we were groomed to take steps could have grown to become a huge company like them too. After the one year, we say to ourselves we’ll go back to our dreams but we never do, we get lost in it all, the system makes us tired and kills the urge we had. The fatherland has placed us in a box and yet he wonders why it never grows. The fresh minds of the fatherland die rapidly in dead end jobs, they are so tired to stand up and fight for him. Yes, I am not happy that I too have fallen into that box. One year of my life will be wasted in a box when I could have done great things starting now with my fingers, discover the person I am meant to be and grow stronger doing what I love. Each day I wake up,i go to a work I do not love, I come back home drained out and unable to think of anything else because I have become a circle of routine; wake up early, work, come home late and sleep. Nothing productive is achieved for me, towards my growth in becoming who I want to be. The fatherland breeds unsatisfied youths who feel they can do nothing about it. The society has done it to us, by saying ‘after school you serve, get a good job, get married and have kids.’ Look at that sentence or is it a phrase ‘get a good job’ why is it ‘get’ and not ‘create’?  If you leave me, I will go on and on
  ‘Do not speak to the press’ Every time I heard it, it sounded ominous and the warning bells rang. Why would someone say that repeatedly if they have done no wrong? If your conscience were clear, you would never say that. I heard that a lot in the prison I was never allowed to leave. We wore our white prison uniforms; the sight blinded the sun when he looked down at us. I got to prison late. There were no accommodations, luckily, I got space. We were thirty-eight souls in each room, if there was an epidemic we would have all died. The rooms were too small, the restrooms unimaginable. Every time I went there to do my business, my business refused to come out, maybe it saw the environment. The food was ok they say, I never ate it. They say it is better than most of the other prisons because ours was a special prison. The clinic was an apology. They hoarded the drugs; any complaints received paracetamol, two tablets of it. It was the rainy season, they had no inhalers but pink liquid syrup, and they had that in excess. What happened to the drugs that were supplied to the clinic before the prison was opened?  Did I forget to mention I did not get my prison uniform until the week I was meant to leave prison? The cost of living provided by the Sherlock merchants in there was too high; I felt a pound of flesh leave every time I patronized them.  I heard we were entitled to a cow each day. I guess a lion ate half the cow before it got to us; my index finger is bigger than what we got. I heard a plate of food for each person per meal as budgeted is 500 naira but we got 100 naira worth. Some of us slept in twos in the tiny bunks, others slept in the church halls and on the floor. I also heard the prison kit for each person was budgeted at 70,000 naira. When I got my kit, I had never seen such substandard wears in my life; the poor people in the war country of Sudan wear better. The quality was an apology. To sum it up, they were worth 8,000 naira. No, they were not made in China wears, those are better, they could not have been made in the beloved city of Aba either, we were clothed but we were naked, any little movement the clothes gave way and revealed the rest. On the bright side, I met many lovely people who became my friends; they made my days bearable in prison. I thank them all for their friendship.  It is time for me to go now; you can imagine the last words I heard before I left prison, ‘Do not speak to the press.’ Are you the press? What is the worst that can happen to me? They trace my prison code through my name and increase my probation period. I hope they do it; I have always wanted to take the fatherland to his court and see the headlines in the papers. ‘THE FATHERLAND versus FRANCES, A SLIP OF A GIRL.’

Friday, May 6, 2011

Music or Fashion design, which is the higher form of Art?

                                                        (THE MUSIC SERIES, PART 1)
MUSIC OR FASHION DESIGN, WHICH IS THE HIGHER FORM OF ART?
  The word Art, according to my English electronic dictionary, is the expression of creative skills in a visual or non-visual form by creative activities such as painting, music and drama.  In my own words, Art, is something creative, that leaves a lasting impression, you appreciate it and it makes you happy, sad or thoughtful, It is an extension of what the Artist is feeling and wants others to feel and see through his own eyes and make their own.  Checked up on Fashion design, could not find such a word in my dictionary, so I will split the word in two. Fashion is a popular trend, a way of doing something. While Design is a decorative pattern. One can now say that Fashion design is a way of putting down a decorative pattern that becomes a popular trend and a particular way of doing or rather wearing some things.  Music, on the other hand is the art of writing or playing music by combining vocal or instrumental sounds in a pleasing way. 
  They both represent what Art is about but I believe Music is the higher form of art between the two. You may not agree with my point of view. Fashion design, we agree takes a whole lot of work, the Designer, has this sudden burst of creativity, he begins to draw it on paper like the true artist he is. After that, he tries to see his creativity brought to life, the way he pictured it, in form of a belt, bag, shoes, cloth or jewelry Etc. Music is conceived the same way. The musician has this song in his head; maybe he saw something or heard something and he is moved, he begins to put it down in writing or sound. He wants to tell the story to others. So, after the writing comes the making of the music. Here, we have the vocalist and the instruments needed to make the song the musician has created in writing into its final true form. This takes a whole lot because the vocalist has to get the right tone that portrays what the written music is about to pass the right message.  So, why would I still say music is higher when they go through the same process of creation? Read on.
  Art is supposed to last forever. There are songs by Dolly Parton, the Abbas, and Barry White that were released years before I was born but I love these songs. How possible? They were still in circulation on radios and TV stations and my parents still had their records after I was born. Cannot say the same for fashion designs; let me give you an example. I have no idea what was in the Christian Dior’s spring collection of 1986. That is to show you that fashion design does not last and it never leaves a lasting impression, it goes and comes with season. Today it is Gladiator sandals and tomorrow, peep toes. Imagine wearing a gown with a large tummy belt five years ago and you would have been laughed at, called a relic of a lost age and a fashion victim. Yes, we have songs that are rave of the moment but they never go off circulation completely, even after twenty years because people still love them. Yes I agree,when you wear a sexy gown, it makes you feel seductive and all, in jeans you feel free and depending on what you wear it with, if It is sneakers you feel so comfy and tomboyish, if they are heels; you feel like a lady. Yes, people dress according to their mood and certain dresses and other apparels can put you in any mood; black is sober and elegant, red is sexy and dashy, yellow is sunny, pink is girly etc. I shop a lot but most times, I can forget a cloth for a month, do not even remember it exists. I have art works. That is my first passion; I never forget I have those. Music on the other hand can motivate you, make you say wow, make you cry, happy, in love etc. yes what does that have to do with art? A lot! Art is an expression.
  Art is a universal form which music represents because it is a universal language. You can listen to music from different countries and you appreciate and enjoy them even if you do not understand the language. A very good example is songs from South Africa by Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Brenda Fassie. Yes, Fashion design is somewhat universal e.g. we have Calvin Klein designs all over the world but hey! You cannot compare the two. We do not understand the words in songs from other countries but we understand the art, the music, the expression used. Yes, fashion has different genres or kind, music does too. 
  Music is more in depth it tells you a story. It makes you happy, sad, cry, shout, dance, and motivated which is everything Art should be. Fashion design does not do that for you. Agreed, you feel good when you wear the cloth, jewelry, shoe or bag but you pull it off and forget it for months or years in your wardrobe or give it out. It goes out of style. Music like every true art does not. check out works done by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt ,Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso they never go out of style they are sought for and they were done years before my birth, centuries even. Looking at music, works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart done centuries back but we still love them. Yes I do.  What was the first work of coco Chanel? What does it look like? Found it online but prior to that, I had absolutely no idea and so those more than half the world’s population. As I said before, I am a fashion enthusiast, my friends will say I am fashion mad but facts are still facts.
  Music is free for all. It is something everybody can enjoy free, through the radio stations and TV stations like the sky. The rich and poor enjoy it, it is not expensive, and one can afford it in its originality, no need for a fake. However, fashion designed products, Pheew! Most people cannot afford the originals unless they get the knock offs.  Only the rich can afford the originals. Yes, the artworks I buy are expensive too but they last and do not go out of style rather it appreciates, the expression created by the artists moved me that is why I bought them.
    Music is art in its entirety and even the definition of Art wraps it up because music was mentioned in the definition and Fashion design was not.
     They say Fashion design is shallow and I agree to a degree because it makes an impression but it never lasts but is forgotten and dies off with time like a withered rose. Music, never dies, it lives on inside because Music is forever like Art.  Do you agree?