the ArmChair Thoughts

Shortly after I wrote “saying A Prayer”, my [virtual] friend Tunde Shaba wrote a piece about the plight of African nations (in this case nigeria) that I found brilliant. The poem used the George Orwell style of awakening (in Animal Farm) to point the corruption that the country’s leaders are wreaking to the nation. And, [...]

Musically, I’ve not got around sharing the joy of the African (Nigeria) tradition; you might want to call it ‘just’ music. In Nigeria, music is a culture and this is an attempt I made to re-create the culture in this African dance performance at my school, University of Massachusetts Boston in its annual African Night. [...]

Very often have had my friends telling me how life in America is so not what it is from the outside (believe it or not, at least mostly) and interestingly  I thought, that’s often true. As I’ve mentioned severally in related post (see below), there is an inverse relationship between wealth [monetary] and satisfaction i.e. [...]

After we’ve spent many months together practicing African dancing and drumming, my white friend asked me: “What exactly is being African?” It caught me by surprise because I never really thought deeply about the question of Africanism. Why should I think deeply about it anyway? Born and breed in Lagos, Nigeria, no one in Nigeria [...]

I’m thinking of going back to the roots of my culture and following in the religion of my fathers. My fore-fathers where Africans, they didn’t care about who Jesus was, or who the Holy Spirit is, or some Western God. Somehow, I’m feeling that the West has sold us lies in effort to draw us [...]

Every now and then, I hear people say things like: “…there is issues is India, Malaysia, Brazil, Africa, …”, “…Like it happens in Africa…”, etc. ‘Africa’ is almost always in mainstream media categorized as a Country its a continent containing several countries. Even we Africans are country-zing the continent. Yesterday a friend was introducing herself [...]

Language, n.: a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. Apart from this definition, I think language as culture, an identity. And, it’s interesting how many are forgetting their culture (language) as [...]

Yes, blacks are victims of racism and in America, blacks are wondering if the election of Obama puts us in a post-racial society–isn’t there more to the rich African-American history than the recent hundred years past? … The lost history is why the ‘nigger’ culture has stuck and is exploited in the American culture, and the blacks think they have a culture to hold onto–sagged pants, violence, failure (yes, the culture feels its fine to be a failure), and whatever it is the negative connotations attached to blacks.

Thinking about life many times is interesting, even more interesting going through those phases of ups and downs and that’s beside the point. Almost anyone I meet and tell them I’m Nigerian would stereotypically (most unconscious I would assume) know my  country for either it’s frauds (which I’ve jokingly defending here) or positively for its [...]

Usually I don’t talk about mainstream news event until this one: A Nigerian youth tryna to blow a plane, wow, really. I’ve always argued with my friends that Nigerians (or Africans) would be the last to want to kill themselves because of some religion–they love life as it is and are quite ‘chicken’. Apparently, Umar [...]