Oho! My afamzers! My body is tired, but I know that if I do not do this blog post now, then I shall never do it. And even when I eventually get round to it, it will be so far out of your minds that it wouldn't be worth my while. I love the blog and stuff, but I'm in it for the page views and the retweets. Well, that's not strictly true but, there are the posts I write for me, and then there are the posts that I write because the blog needs to grow. Anyway, that's enough of an introduction. If I write too many words, the strangers that will flock here because of the fact that it's the AMVCA's I'm writing about and not my relationship with the toilet will leave. Naughty Strangers. My bowel movements are even more interesting than the AMVCA's. For example, yesterday I had the most efficient blasting session ever! It only took 5 minutes, and when I wiped, I discovered that my bumbum was as clean as a whistle. This is good; clean bumbum, happy heart.

It turns out that I'll have to split this blog post into 2 parts, and this is fairly annoying because, that means I'll have to work twice as hard. Harrumph. No matter. My name is Afam. I am a trooper. When the work concerns the blog I work like a madman who doesn't need sleep. My mind is so blog oriented now, that I stay up late looking at the statistics, and crying and wailing.

"Why, Why, Why, did I only get 100 page views today. Oh help me somebody! Help me! Oh Help me I say. What can I do to make the blog more trendy? I shall tweet it. I shall tweet it like a crazy person."

And so that's the reason why I've been on twitter, tweeting links to the blog. With only 800 and so followers my reach is only so large. Sometimes I get a retweet, but it's been fairly dire. I'm not going to be coy about this. Go now and tweet the link. I'm incredibly grateful already. Yes! You are lovely, and kind and good. You will never do a fart that will embarrass you. Pimples will not grow on your forehead. You will never encounter an Indian Cockroach. Amen.

And so, and so, I'm going to talk about the things that I saw behind the scenes at the AMVCA's. It isn't going to be as rich as the version I did last year, but you'll make do. Last year, I didn't have much to do, but this year, I stole these pictures while doing my actual job. Clap for me! I am great!

I do this a lot. I know you give me compliments, but I always give myself compliments for insurance. Don't stop complimenting me. They give me life. When I feel shitty and completely out of my depth, I remember that 

This right here is my mate Jason. He's a radio host on Cliff Central, which is a South African Radio Station. I've never been to South Africa you know? It's such a shame, but I have a feeling that I'll make it there some day. Maybe I'll even get a South African accent. The question is, should you work on the accent before you go or when you're there? I'll think I'll do the former, because Nigeria has taught me that accents are like pure water.

And this is Osas, with the lads. Before I took this picture we had a really long chat about journalistic integrity, but enough about that. When I'm with fleeker than the average women, I tend to act like I'm on drugs. My gaze lingers, my palms get sweaty, and time slows down. I'll say more about this later.

She did the opening spoken word dance hybrid of a thingy at the AMVCA's and during the performance I remember thinking that she had such flexible arms.

Can you see what I mean? I took three pictures of her! No, I can't explain why I did. She's engaged, and I haven't got room for anyone but me and the bitch, Sabrina. Sabrina is actually a bitch. She's an old bitch but I'd be lying if I didn't say that she's a good bitch.

And here we have the Mavin children. I was going to call the guy who's probably old enough to be their father randomer, but calling people random isn't very nice. Gentleman is better. The two Mavin children in the shot are Di'ja and Reekado Banks. Reekado's good, but Di'ja is probably better. I mean look at her looking like a soul sister! Afro on fleek.  I really have to stop saying on fleek, the word gives me a headache.

Yass. Sometimes two is better.

Eheh! Now we've got my very good bantering companion Stephanie Coker. The day Stephanie refused to let me, Afam, hellur, get my picture of her, I was very miffed indeed but it looks like she's recovered from her camera shy Afam hiding ways. Stephanie, it was good to have you on the big daddy DSLR. For those who don't know who Big Daddy is, he's my camera. Now, let's talk about how she looks. Yes, she's pretty, and her hair's alright, but that t-shirt. Some of you are probably thinking that I'm about to say rather mean things about it, but I'm not. It's a great tee. I think I'd wear it. It says talk Disney to me, and this should serve as a manual. If you are a man, or a woman, or anything inbetween and you're confused that Stephanie is Bae, please go get some good pick up lines from the Disney Channel, and I predict that the both of you will have a happily ever after.

Here we've got Diamond, the Ugandan singer. He's really quite good. I haven't seen the AMVCAs yet, but from what I saw he's good. No, he's better than good, he's brilliant! And that his feature wth Waje, Coco baby, is actually kind of banging! When I first heard it, I didn't really feel it, but it's grown on me. Good music always grown on you. But you knw? I haven't met Waje yet. I need to rectify this.

That's him again. I'm not sure why I'm still commenting underneath every image you know? Ah! It's because of that guy in the jersey like t-shirt. Look at that smile. You can tell that he really enjoys what he's doing.

This shot is a bit over exposed but is that really so bad? I like over exposed things. Over exposure for the win.

Yaaaaaaasss. I need to duplicate that dance move. It's the original shake your tail feather.

I really can't find anything to say about this one. I was feeling myself that day. When I was still young in the business of collecting pishos for my personal use, I had to take loads of of shots before I got one barely usable one. I didn't even care that much then, all content was good content.

And here's Eddie Kadi. I expect that I'll get more pictures of him at the gidi culture festival.  Eeesh, I've got to  apply for my press pass. :(.

And here we've got P square. I'm still not sure who's who but take it like that. I haven't eaten today, and that's probably why I'm so glib. But I'll power through. I didn't get to speak to them because they're a weee bit diva-ish, but that's to be expected isn't it? They're like the Nigerian version of One Direction or something.

And here we have Ebuka Obi-Uchendu before he changed. I know quite a lot of you are looking at his face and his physique but I can't get over the size of his feet. They look like they're a size 13. Aren't large feet inconvenient?

Lastly we have my buddy Ill Rymz who showed up in a Porsche. He calls me Spanky Lou, and I'm not sure that I like this. It sounds like a porn name.

Happy Days,
Afam

Dear Mama Afam,

The last time I wrote you a letter, I was 12. I was a terrible 12 but then again when I was 12, I thought you terrible too. You’d sent me away to a boarding school that I didn’t really like, and I refused to stay completely gone. When your peers were celebrating their freedom from their children, you were dealing with lengthy letters, and weepy phone calls from the Vice Principal’s office. And then let’s not forget the times I fell ill (one life threatening illness a term for the first two years) because that school was in the middle of nowhere and the malaria that the mosquitoes gave there was vastly superior to that which I had encountered in Lagos. You must have worried till you were nearly as ill as I, and I was pleased. I’ve always been a little bit of an attention monster so I spent all my time in hospital smiling secretly because I knew you were worrying yourself ragged.

So forgive me if I’m not sure how exactly I should go about this. Our emails, are significantly less flowery than this, and our iMessages are even worse. I bark demands at you and you bark counter demands back. And what’s more, this letter isn’t just for you. It would be nice to apply copious amounts of tunnel vision to it, and bang it out, but I can’t. It’s for everyone. That makes it more difficult, because our jokes would be lost on them. I find it difficult to believe that anyone who reads this will be consumed by the giggles every time anyone says monkey bottom. I just cracked up. I’d explain it to the lot of you, but you wouldn’t get it. I think it’s a genetic thing. There are some things that simply can’t be got.

There are only two things I want to say, and those are I’m sorry and thank you. I’m sorry for a lot of things. I’m sorry that I break more things than I fix, even though you and Papa Afam are partly to blame for that. I cannot understand how you did not consider that some of your worse traits would be transmitted into one of your children. Of course you couldn't possibly have predicted that I would  be the sole inheritor of the disorganization, carelessness, and the lack of coordination that the both of you are afflicted with.

I’m sorry that I do not tell you that I love you enough. The thing is I don’t think I need to. Words can be so inefficient! There is no one word that can summarize everything I feel when I think of you, so love will never do. I suppose it would be better for me to say that I cherish you, but that hasn’t got the same ring to it as love. Love sounds nice, but it means too much while managing to mean too little. How can I say I love my Macbook pro or my car aka loser 644 damaged, and then go on to say that I love you. You bought me the Macbook pro and loser 644 damaged and as such you cannot share adjectives with them. The very thought of it is ridiculous. I’m sorry that I don’t listen. Well, I do listen, and I do agree, but my brain suppresses the instructions that I find distasteful and only focuses on the ones that I find agreeable.

Lastly, thank you for everything. I’m aware that everything is very broad, grand and unspecific, but it will have to do. You’ve done too much for me. You continue to do too much. Sometimes I cannot believe that you’ve read everything I’ve ever written, and that’s a lot. I write more than the lot of you know. Thank you for not disowning me after seeing me do some incredibly cringeworthy things. I cannot believe that you survived the Mammy Water halloween incident, and the sexy clown debacle, and the flash costume unzip me scandal, and the my son has been dancing on instagram debacle and the help my son just bought a cat onesie thingy.

I'll wake up tomorrow when you come to wake me up for church, because my just woken up mind is incredibly adept at hitting the snooze button. And I'll probably forget that it's mother's day then because I'll probably be the victim of hang over amnesia. But even as I groan, "ready in 30 minutes", you'll know that this entire declaration of love was completely unnecessary because you carry my heart in your heart, and I do the same for you.

Love you like Always,

Afam

 Ah well! We started from the bottom, reached the top and now we here, which is somewhere in-between the top and the bottom. It isn't a good place to be, but I'm content all the same. I use too many buts these days. I don't think I can help it. Something is always one thing, then another.

Take me for instance. I'm Afam, son of Mama and Papa Afam, acquaintance of many, friend to a few, gifted by birth, and punished by life. It's all so dramatic here, but I imagine that this is why you love me. The words come so painfully tonight. It must have something to do with the fact that I'm watching Little Women on television. I'll labour on for a little while.

I hang out with all sorts these days: vagrants, creative people, designers,  industry perps and the like. To them I'm at best a content co-ordinator and at worst a hanger on. When I talk about being a blogger, they make me out to be some gossip monger. I dare not tell them that they over value their own importance, and that the readers of the good dear old blog, are far too refined to care about their daily proclivities. You care about culture - about things that are large enough to stop or start conversation; and you care about me. You do not so much care that Linsday Lohan photoshopped her buttocks on instagram, or that Seyi Shay went grey, then brown, and God knows what else. These things change too quickly for anyone in decent employment to notice.

I cannot bring many of these people home for Papa Afam would despise them the second they set foot in it. He wouldn't quite despise them, but they would be the face of his frustration with me. It's one of the weird things here, what is a successful actor to a self made man like Papa Afam. If it came to a pissing contest, he would ask them how many exams they'd written and they would fail to impress him. They would fail to impress him even if they owned the whole world, because love means seeing those you hold in your heart to better than either you or they can imagine, and Papa Afam loves me.

Last week Sunday, he made us lunch. Please note that his making us lunch isn't a sign of his love, it's a symptom of his indelible sense of duty and propriety. In Papa Afam's mind, it is customary that families sit and eat lunch together on Sundays. We had been slacking on this family tradition, so Papa Afam decided to step into the kitchen to ensure that no-one deviated from the master plan of his perfect Sunday afternoon. I could not bring myself to refuse him. To skip a Papa Afam cooked meal is to dance with disaster and misery. It's the sort of thing that leads to conversations like this,

"Good morning daddy."

"What's good about the morning?"
..............................

"Dad, I'm going to Stranger."

"Only a madman would go to a place called Stranger."
................................

"What is this blog of a thing?"

"I don't know really?"

"Why is it called the Ramblings of a Madman? Do you know that people will actually think you're crazy?"
..................................

The thing is we're all crazy. I think it's crazy that on Christmas day we had both turkey and duck, and that on New Year's day we killed a Ram. It was great, I loved it, but it's nuts. There's a shanty village not 400 metres from here! That's bonkers no? And last week Sunday, we had Pheasant. I don't even want to tell you how insularly weird that is.

With life the more things seem to change the more you realise that they never did in fact change. We hide our sameness in tales of growth and and lovely things. However the things are always just things, we remain the same underneath.

The other day I was sitting with Mama Afam in the living room upstairs, when a cockroach appeared. Mama Afam couldn't see it because she didn't have her glasses on but that didn't deter her. She walked in the direction of its scuttles and bent toward the floor with squinted eyes. When she saw it, she exclaimed,

"Ah it's a Cockroach!"

 She hobbled away to find a good slipper to finish it with but as she returned to do the deed the cockroach took flight.

 "Ah!" She screamed.

"It flew! It must be Indian!"

After she'd changed slippers - because Indian cockroaches require different slippers for the killing - and killed the roach, I said,

"Stop this! That's how people will start to suspect that I wasn't born on the Island."

And I wasn't. 

I am weak. This weekend was beyond tough. Sorry, I've got to stop for a minute because the music playing at Cafe Neo is just so bad! It's worse than bad! I've got ants crawling in and around my head because of this. Normally, I wouldn't complain about bad music but their music is usually good and when it's not it's low enough that it doesn't bother you. Oh well, what's an Afam to do?

Ah my Afamzers! I'll be honest with you. When I decided that I would write this one, I had some difficulty populating it with words. I wanted to say other things that had little or nothing to do with what I wanted to say, like, I'm getting a new dog. I'm not sure what I'm going to call it yet, but it will be even more awesome than Captain Reginald. Now, you're probably thinking,

"so what was it that Afam wanted to say?"

Thanks!

You made me a fan club on instagram the other day, and I damn near died. You fulfilled my dreams! Well, sort of. I mean, you must really love me if you've made me a fan club right? So thanks for the love and stuff.

Oh Lawd! 

This one's going to be one of my most self indulgent in a while. But first let's have a brief flashback shall we?

Back in 2013, I was even more mad than I am now, because I didn't care so much about consequences. I could say anything. When I realised that it was the same people I was chatting shit about that I would be looking for work from, I dialled it back a bit. You know how it is don't you? You can't call your future boss a flying nincompoop. If you do, all that cash money will never reach your bank account. But...

Butts are the stuff of life. There's always a butt. 

But... when the Genevieve magazine instagram account did what it did yesterday, I couldn't help but laugh myself to sleep. It was terrible. I was revelling in the night nurse high when I saw the gbammest gbosh I'd ever seen. Lawd... it was terrible. But before I continue, I need to tell you lot, what the what Genevieve Magazine is.

Genevieve Magazine is a Lagos, bigs boys and bigs girls magazine. It's quite large and it may just be profitable. Ah my afamzers and friends, it is very difficult for magazines to be profitable here. The owners often have extreme chop all the money syndrome, and adverts are slim and hard to come by. Also, employees are lazy, I don't mean to be a bitch, but have you ever been to the TW magazine website?

The one problem with being alive that I seem to have is that there are so many people giving bad advice for all the wrong reasons. Don't worry this one shan't be very long. I'm quite offended. I'm too offended to wax lyrical about the cold that I have. Yes, I have a cold. It is quite terrible, but don't worry, tonight I'm rejoicing because I'm going to be out like a light sedated. Night nurse for the win.

Once upon a time, I was feeling a bit down about the blog, and I said to this useless friend of mine, "Friend, I don't know what to do to move this blog forward."

Before I continue I think its only right that I tell you all how useless this friend is. Ah! My foes! He is so bad that it would be better for me if I had never made his acquaintance. I mean have you ever had a friend with a basket mouth? All the gist you dispense will just keep coming back to you like your words are boomerangs. One day, I had to make that dreaded call. Yes, I called him and said, please, please, please and please, don't talk about me to anyone ever. I now it's a little bit over the top but what else could I do. I don't need anyone telling me about the brief moment of madness I had when Captain Reginald died. I really don't. If you do give my stories away, then please don't give it to people who are so tactless as to bring it back to me. 

I do quite like his company, but I don't know why I'm either hearing about my matter from someone that I hardly know, or hearing about someone else's matter. Nothing is privileged. Nothing is sacred. I don't like this very much. You see, I don't like being tickled or poked. I absolutely despise being touched. So when this individual chose to reject my vehement protests against being carried, and lifted me in the middle of the road, I was ready to do murder. My body is my own. It is not anybody else's. I own it. And if I say that I do not want to be touched, carried or tickled, then I shall not be touched carried or tickled. It is a big deal. It is the biggest deal. You don't treat the holy Afam temple of Afamness like it's a dustbin. How dare you? Do you know what has been spent on this temple? Do you know how many prayers have been prayed over this temple? So when the temple says, Thou shalt not touch me! And you do, you're going to get it. And he did. At first I panicked, and seized up, then I remembered that I had the control. He got a double punch and an accidental head butt. It sounds extreme but it isn't to me. If you touch me without permission I shall die. I'm not joking. I will literally die.

I can't stress this enough. Sometimes a hand on my shoulder is like a line of fire. I lost myself there. Let's get back to it.

"Afam, both the story and the way it's written cannot be funny. Only one of them can be funny."

"Friend, say what???"

"Afam, I know what I'm talking about. I have an English A level."

I didn't say anything after that. I couldn't. What could I have said? When someone demeans everything, you can't teach them value. My words have no value, my body has no value, and my stories don't either. It's sad, but it's really not that sad. For some reason, I still think he's a friend, even though he isn't my favourite friend at the minute.

I'll conclude this now.

If blogging were easy, everyone would do it. If writing were easy then everyone would do it. Because not everyone does it, and even among the ones that do, so few do it well, it is safe to assume that it is actually ridiculously difficult, and that the impression of ease when it's done well is an exercise in mastery.

Happy Days,
Afam

Hello. Hello. Moosh. Moosh.



Moosh moosh is hello in a language that could quite possibly be fictional. In that way, it is quite like Iyana Paja. Let me take you back a few years. Yes, let me take you to the days when Afam was still in the mind foetus, because you know that Afam spent 22 odd years being developed in the mind of one perfectly ordinary individual. Or something like that.

Who is this individual? Well, some people call him Dami, one very special lady called him Handsome, a grandmother called him Tosin, some classmates called him Jamal. He liked Jamal, it made him feel cool. I could go on about the names of my creator for an age and a half, but I think I'll move on.

When this individual was interning at a consulting firm, he met a group of people who were interning at a bank. For some reason or the other they were talking about where they lived. Handsome was fine with this. He was perfectly happy to talk about the house in Lekki and maybe even the flat in Ikea that had come before it. When one of them said that she lived in Iyana Ipaja, Handsome couldn't take it. He burst out laughing and said, "You're taking the Mickey!" The girl was surprised, not because she found it offensive, but because she thought it peculiar. She said, "I'm being serious." Handsome just couldn't take her seriously, and he was right not to, because to the undiscerning ear, Iyana Paja sounds like the name of a fictional village which has no place in Lagos, an aspiring mega city.  He said, "You're having a laugh. Anyone who knows anything about Lagos, knows that there's no such place as Iyana Ipaja." Yes, yes, tragedy!

And let's move on. This blog post isn't entirely new. The pictures have been up here for an age and a half, but I was extremely dissatisfied with the post. It seemed like something darling Linda came up with, and I couldn't stand it. I literally didn't look at the blog for two weeks because of it. Because it is my blog and not another's I did the only thing I could do considering. I decided to change it.

Denola Grey and I are friends. Yes, there, I said it. I'm a little protective of my friends because, they're important to me and I don't like to share. But, seeing as Denola went on Spice television and declared me his best blogger friend in all of life, I feel obliged to tell you all that I do know him, and as a result I can't summon up the vitriol or the cattiness to say anything bad about him. It's such a bore, I know. If I could unfriend him I would, but he's too important to me. If I unfriended him I'd have no one to tell me the following.

"I don't understand your situation. You're not ugly so why is your hairline running away from your face."

"The surface area of your forehead increases daily!"

And other things like that... It's a new sort of bantah I learned recently, and it is quite enjoyable. I'm so good at it that all I have to do to achieve a similar level of friendly twattishness is stare and cock my head. I'm sorry if this makes no sense to you. I really am. But the thing is, I'm not all there, and the blog's called The Ramblings of a Madman so what were you expecting?

So on the morning on Valentine's day eve I called Denola up. I hadn't seen him in a while and I had the day off work, so I thought it would be nice to hang. Unfortunately, he wasn't as idle as I. He told me that he was doing a Valentine's day shoot with Toyosi Kekere-Ekun and Makida and Dodos. I asked to tag along, because anybody who needs an invitation to do anything is a loser. You may quote me on that. If you don't want me there, then don't tell me about it. People in Lagos are often rude like that...

Enter Afam and typical blogging media type Lagos person

Afam: What are you doing today?

Person: I'm going to the ________ event.

Afam: Oh cool! Free Champs?

Person: Oh yes! Champs. Small things to eat. Fabulous location. It's too bad it's invite only. I would have asked you to come.

Afam: Is that right? I'll see you there.

*Biggest smiles for douches like that. Secret smiles for my real friends.*
That's Denola and Makida. I don't know what they were doing. But you can probably tell what they were doing. You're clever and stuff. Applause for you. Clever Afamzers. Well done. I'll tickle your belly when I see you next. 

I don't know if you know this but I really like Makida's face. She's very pretty, but some times, she looks like an Alien. I like the Alien Makida. Stop it. I'm a fashion person now. The more provocative the face the better I feel about it. If I tell you that you're pretty in an ordinary way, I'm not being very n

We need to tell these boys that too much cleavage is bad for you. I mean it. Too much Manvage will give you allergies. Mama Afam told me this, and she's right. Ever since I stopped freeing the nipple I stopped breaking out in hives and sneezing every time my chest greeted the world.

Selfie time with Dodos and Denola. She's thinking, "Damn I'm so on fleek right now. Die Camera, Die!" Yes I know. But this is blogger behaviour. We're in it for the likes, the views and the cash. In that order.
When your friends are using their lips to give you blush you know you need some new ones. There is some truth in that I think, but you shouldn't take that comment too seriously. Issajoke. Iiskidding.




 






Okay, okay. I'll see you in a few weeks. And I may be at the AMVCA's. I think my invite is in the mail. I hope my invite is in the mail. My invite had better be in the mail...

If I do get an invite, Imma man up and get a stylist. I can't go through the stress. I can't. I can't. I can't.  And no Mama Afam, you can't be my stylist.




Happy Days,
Afam.

I'm not quite sure where this one's going but I'm sure that we'll get there. Pah! Come on! You should be used to this by now. I'm often not sure of where I'm coming from or going to, but we make it work somehow. Now, I feel compelled to tell you what it is I mean by making it work somehow. Life is a tricky messy thing, but it all works out in the end. There'll be a conclusion. There's always a conclusion. Even if the conclusion isn't what you hoped it might be, take some comfort in the fact that things do in fact conclude, always.

Back when I was love struck with love lost, I started writing something...

Every now and then we get with people that aren't the forever people. That means that you won't be together forever and ever, and that one day, your feelings of profound selfless love will turn into feelings of I love you but I'd sooner see you headless. Yes! Such is life. Nothing lasts forever. The loving somborri of today is the emotional terrorist of tomorrow, and the emotional terrorist of tomorrow is the, I swear it was the devil that possessed me to consider of next tomorrow. Like I said before, such is life. Shit happens. Everything ends, and nothing is good in the world. Yes I'm bitter. No, I don't care. Anyway, because my heart has been the victim of much sufferhead and torture...

Naturally I didn't finish it. Why on earth would I want to finish a thing like that? It's vaguely amusing but, I think I'm done with that. There are so any tales I could tell of

Thank heaven! I couldn't bear it. So I cast it aside like a burnt out cigarette and returned to business as usual. But, lately I've been thinking about the forever people and who they might be and that's when pack came up. The forever people are pack: your ride or dies, your ever dependables, the people that show up for you when all's said and done and the people that you show up for too. They're the people that don't understand you and are somehow fine with it. We're people. We're not always supposed to be understood you know? So now, more so than ever, I'm focusing on the way of the pack.

It is pack to run off on your own for a while on some adventure or the other. Pack won't judge, they'll let you go.

It is pack to not always be pack. Packs are living breathing coteries. You may leave one and find another, but you'll always remember that for a time you were brothers in battle.

Pack remembers the best of pack. Always. And even if there are hard times, pack remembers how those hard times led to something better.

Pack bleeds for pack.

Happy Days,
Afam

In other news, I'm contemplating writing less about me. Or writing about me as I did 3 years ago. All of the good, none of the bad. Life affirming, never wallowing.

By now you should all have heard. Yesterday, at least two masked gunmen stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed four men who worked for the paper, Charb, Wolinski, Cabu and Tignous. It is sad. Things like this are always sad, because it's an assault on the right to free speech and expression. That right is one of the easiest ones to take away. If you kill someone because of what he said, then a great number of the people who think as he does will fear for their lives too. It doesn't matter how loudly you rally against the aggressors because you know that deep down, there's a smidgen of fear that cannot be denied. Because of who I am, and where I am, I understand this. There are things you do not say; there are articles you do not write. When people ask you why not you laugh and say that you're disinterested, but the truth is you don't really want to invite any form of persecution into your life.

In Nigeria, more than a few journalists have been killed by unidentified gunmen. Their cases have never been resolved. I am not so optimistic as to believe them random events. I know that all men must die, but, in Nigeria, some men die with a question mark. And while death is horrible, there are many things that can be done to break a naughty man's spirit. I don't know what they are and I'm grateful for this. I like my body unbeaten. I like my purity unsoiled. I like myself alive. So while I'm gutted by the deaths of the fallen journalists, and cartoonists. I'm not going to join the Je Suis Charlie Hebdo social media campaign, because I am not Charlie Hebdo. One day of screaming for press freedoms in France will not absolve me of my skittish words when discussing issues that are perhaps better left undiscussed for the sake of safety. In my opinion, to be Charlie Hebdo is to speak out unreservedly without care of what might happen to you because of it. I do not do this, so I am not, or I cannot be Charlie Hebdo. I would like to be I think, but I also like myself unworried and unharmed. So today I'll think about all the ways I'm not Charlie, and what a shame that is.

I've just got to say that some of you people are trying it. I don't mean you afamzers/famzers. You guys are lovely and wonderful and brilliant. I mean the other ones, the ex-afamzers. I mean, I know we didn't work out and stuff, but that doesn't mean I died. What kind of God awful exes are you! Jesus!

It's just like one ratty imaginary ex of mine said to me just now,

"Afam I haven't seen you around for a bit, are you dead, or ill?"

Of course the bit of my brain that thought that has been lobotomized. I do not like it when my body parts wish me ill.

In a similar vein, some of you guys have been coming up to me and asking whether I still blog or not. Dudes! Chicks! Twats! Don't ask me, read the bloody thing! And if you're genuinely not interested, fine! Don't bother me! I won't bother you! Or better yet, google the ramblings of a madman and find out. Stop making me uncomfortable in public.

And now that that's out of my system let's get to the matter for today. Yes, I'm not blogging for the sake of it today. I have a matter that I'd like to discuss. No, not discuss. You lot are not really involved. I'll take it again. I have something that I'd like to blog about.




At this juncture I feel that it is important for me to remind the lot of you that I, Afam, am not an Orphan. I have a Mama Afam and a Papa Afam. While Papa Afam is awesome - I mean the guy is just amazing. If I'm half as strong as he is, I'll move mountains, and tame devils. And if I'm anything like him I'll find a nice Isa L'Eko babe with a brilliant family and settle down. - Mama Afam is beyond. She's like the beyond in Bed, Bath and Beyond. You get a Bed, a Bath, a Laptop, Love, free advice, a rottweiller, a bull dog, a bottle of Amapola (aka what I'm drinking as I write this) and a prayer warrior all in one chocolate 35 year old body. I realise that you must realise that if Mama Afam's 35 then she had me when she was 11. And I know that this sounds unreasonable but you must learn to ACCEPT it to. What this means for you is that if you should ever run into Mama Afam, you must flirt with her. Flirting can be flattering which is why I have a couple of numbers that I'll never use. I like to think of them as souvenirs of my youth. In each of them is a future that I said no to. I like my little mementos time. In one timeline there's an Afam who's a single dad with a terrific 5 year old and in this one there's me. I'm losing the plot here.

What I really mean to say is that there's so much that's been done for me. In 2012, when things seemed particularly bleak, that woman stood by me through thick and university paper work and process. There's really nothing I could say that could possibly describe the depth of feeling that I have towards her, and the brilliant thing is that I don't need to say anything. It's all there, in every look, in every sigh of frustration, in every tear, in every shared laugh, and in every hug, that I have never loved another as I love her, and that I think, is enough.

Happy Days,
Afam