Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Funtastic and Fearless crew


At long unwanted last, my 9 days road trip has come to an end. My eyes are as wild as an ocean but i'm trying hard to stop my tears from flowing.

For a while before now, Joan, Arinze, Chika and Eromo have just been my friends. I'll be extremely wrong if after my experience with them these 9 days, still refer to them as friends. They are now my soulmates, my bestfriends and my siblings. I love them so much.

Like i already told you in my note titled "Roadtrip" my crew and i left Nsukka for Enugu town, then to Owerri town where we louged for three days in the company of my newest set of friends, Shawn, Ana, Dikachi (ex-hubby), Obinna (model hubby), Enyinna, Austin and Carl. These guys made Owerri an excellent experience. We hung out in many bars and beautiful resturants, went swiming in exquisit hotels and they also organised a wild house party to bid us goodbye on the night before we left them.

On monday afternoon my crew and i hit the road to Uyo. We hung around the city for some hours and then boarded a bus to calabar when we got bored with Uyo. Our calabar experience was heavenly.

We arrived Calabar late in the evening and to the glory of God our saviour was Nd Obi, a wonderful friend whom until that day, i knew only on facebook. Nd help us get accomodation at Sankara hotel calabar, paid our bills and hosted the five of us for two days. Our stay in calabar won't have been as much fun as it was without Nd and Dele (Choko m).

We got to hang out in the popular Tinapa resort in calabar where we went shoping, boat cruising, photo shooting and so much more!

From Tinapa we headed straight to Atimbo where we were treated to a delicacy of boil plantain, scent leaf sauce, bush meat and palmwine. That palmwine was the sweetest i have ever tasted in my entire life.

On wednesday afternoon we went to Marina resort with our new friend Williams Etim. We enjoyed a horse ride, cooled off in a bar called Cal-a-bar with cups of chapman, saw the slave museum and took a couple of pictures too. Wednesday night was wild too. We went clubbing at Bay's bar club with Kingsley, Floyd, Samy and Edet.

I fell deeply in love with calabar after my experience there. The city is beautiful, well planned, calm, sane, oh my! Calabar is paradise. The best part is that the people are very warm and accomodating as well. I won't mind settling there with my family.

The F^2 crew stormed Portharcourt next. The city utterly betrayed our expectations. Leaving Calabar for Portharcourt was a harsh way to be welcomed back to reality. The difference between the two cities is so wide. I blunty have to say that portharcourt is an ugly place. Our host this time was a 400level medicine student of Uniport. Yep i forgot to mention that we were also hosted by Doctors too in Calabar. Honestly, i have never met any doctor like Kingsley, Floyd, Samy, Edet and Will who have so much fun and still top their class. Those guys are just too funky!

Ebubechi, our Uniport host was extremely sweet. He prepared a larvish breakfast all by himself for us every morning and made sure we drank boiled clean water too. His course work gave him little space for himself, yet he sacrificed a great deal of his time for us.

Our hang out points in Portharcourt were majorly in Eateries like Sammies, Big bites and Genesis cinemas where we not only saw a movie, we ate Chinese dishes there too. Our last night in Portharcourt was restful and smooth although we got home a bit late.

Sunday morning was basicly quiet and moody. We all feel sad that the roadtrip has ended and we have to get back to our normal lives. I'm happy that i got to break out, explore, do crazy things and enjoy myself a lot during the last 9 days.

To all those who thought we were just lying and trying to pull an "oti" on them, i hope you now see that we weren't playing. So sad that you didn't get to join us. Pictures from the trip will be uploaded soon on facebook.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Roadtrip!

Life in the life of an adult being is complicated but when you're confused like me, no longer a teenager not yet an adult, it gets a lot more complicated. Nigeria is not like america where a child becomes independent of their parent at the age of 18 and totaly free by 21. Its different around here cos at 18 your parents want you to understand you are grown and should act mature, but will hardly allow you make a decision for yourself or even trust your decision when you make them. Many parents want their children to act older to their benefit. That is, in situations where they want the child to show maturity (only). Enough of this rant cos i don't think it really connects to the story i'm about to tell.

My friends and I are out of school touring states in Nigeria. The overstreched 2008/2009 session finally ended technically on the 8th day of March 2010. Technically cos that was the last day i wrote an exam. My last paper and practical exam was moved to next session. We have been scheduled to write them as soon as we begin the new session.

First year students resumed on the 10th of march while returning students will resume on the 19th of march 2010. With most students going home to enjoy the break, me and some of my friends who stayed back in school cos our homes are far decided to embark on a roadtrip. We took out part of our pocket money and hit the rugged Nigerian roads. I won't tell you what the tour plan is, but i'll tell where we are now.

Owerri. Owerri is one of the cleanest and most beautiful cities in Nigeria. It is the state capital of Imo state "The eastern heartland". Owerri is a small city full of Igbo speaking Nigerians and home to five higher institutions including one of the best Federal University of technology called FUTO.

As students, my friends and I believed that the only way we could enjoy our stay in the city and get to know a lot about it was to stay in the company of students like ourselves. Our host is a FUTO student who is a cousin to one of us. We've been here for almost two days and so far we've been having a great time.

We've had a great time mixing up with FUTO students, touring the beautiful city of Owerri, hanging out in bars, hotel, eateries and clubs and ofcourse eating and drinking a lot. My only fear however is that i might get too fat but considering that i'm an expert at loosing weight, i know i'll pass.

Our next stop is calabar and we'll be joining in the Geology conference there too. Living in Nigeria or anywhere else can be a lot of fun, but it all depends on how well you pimp it. I'm blessed to have friends who make me happy and give me a reason to want to stay alive.

Yeah yeah one more thing. I've just met an amazing new friend whose name is Durga Sengupta. She's been a wonderful person to me and we're a lot alike in many aspects. She crazy, fun and creative like me. We call ourselves twin sisters and we're happy together. I'll keep you posted on how the trip goes. Bye for now friends"

Friday, March 5, 2010

Filthy Curse.

Racism is a curse. And i say to you again, racism is a curse. Racism is a curse that also drags along with it a more irritating curse that is definitely destructive.

It beats my understanding why anyone would look at a fellow human being as less human for any reason. Why should you deprive anyone of something on the basis of skin colour? Its crazy!

Recently, the author of "the Abyssinian boy" Onyeka Nwelue was deprive of a Hong kong visa. Onyeka was invited to Hong Kong to participate in the Man Hong Kong literary festival. Mr Nwelue who was invited to seat on the panel with some other beautiful authors from around the world was denied a visa yesterday and no reason or explanation was given to him. Suspision however, is that he was deprived a visa on basis of skin colour discrimination.

The very pleasant part of the entire issue is that some Hong Kong people along with the organisers of the event Mr Nwelue has been invited to attend have publicly condemed the actions of the embassy. The embassy's refusal to issue Mr Nwelue a visa is indeed a slap in the face of the organisers of the Literary festival.

An intelligent young man is invited to share ideas with you and inspire youths like him to better their lives yet you ask him to say away? Thats actually very dumb my friend and it makes no good sense.

Dear people of this beautiful Planet Earth, let us flee away from the "entices" of the dumbest evil called Racism, and our prosperity will know no bound.
Don't say i didn't tell you o.