NigeriansTalk

I love fic­tion. I love to get lost in a world that is not mine. A world of  fan­tasy and imag­i­na­tion, a world where any­thing and every­thing can hap­pen. For­tu­nately for me, I come from a land of great story tellers. We love to tell sto­ries in Nige­ria.  Grow­ing up, one could never get straight answers from par­ents. Every answer came with a story. Some came filled with proverbs and morals. Some came with jokes and riddles.

 Every inci­dent that hap­pens is an oppor­tu­nity to tell a story. Every­body is a poten­tial story teller.  Every NEPA (Niger­ian Elec­tic Power Author­ity) black­out was a time for sto­ry­telling. As we sat outside, family, friends and neighbours, stories would come pour­ing forth. Some told sto­ries of their child­hood, sto­ries they had heard from their grand-mothers and moth­ers. Oth­ers told sto­ries they had read and if you were really lucky, they would come with songs and dance steps. Beats and rythms… ah! the good old days…of mos­qui­toes and darkness…

Those days are long gone and I do not sit out­side any­more with loved ones telling sto­ries but I do read books! Lots of books! I spend hours at book stores and libraries. I love a good story and I am always look­ing for one. It is there­fore of no coin­ci­dence that I have found sto­ries in the Niger­ian blogosphere(or blogville as it is also pop­u­larly called). 

I have selected a few of my favorite sto­ries that have been writ­ten over the years. Of course, I might have missed a lot of good sto­ries, but these I remember…

Indigo  is one of my favorite posts from this very tal­ented writer, Jaja. I still crack up any­time I read this fic­tional love let­ter writ­ten from the swamps of the Niger Delta(Okay, I just wrote “swamps” because it gives it  a cer­tain, you know, “je ne sais quoi”). In it, the writer describes his new life as a youth cor­per to his sup­pos­edly very intel­lec­tual girl­friend. All I will say is that  it is “delight­ful”.  I love the absurd, and delaria always makes me happy to know that there is some­body else out there hav­ing ehh­h­hhh weird thoughts. Now enough of Jaja. This man claims he is done with blog­ging but I know he misses us as much as we miss him and I sin­cerely hope he throws us a bone once in a while…something short will do. I miss his writing.

Cat­walq, cat­walq, what can I say? A tal­ented lady whose  mind it seems, is con­stantly at work. She writes and writes… and writes. I have had a hard time choos­ing from her work because she has so much! But I decided to go with the ones that I absolutely remem­ber.  Greener pas­tures is the story of many Nige­ri­ans. The allure of the city and the some­times ter­ri­ble con­di­tions in which many young chil­dren are often sub­jected to, all in the hope of a bet­ter life. Sis­ter­hood of need is  a story about the meet­ing of two women and a story of betrayal, trust and friend­ship.  She has been writ­ing for five years now and I hope she keeps writ­ing. I always look foward to her stories…one never knows what she’ll write about…no, thats not right. You can always depend on the fact that it will be some­thing to make women THINK!

Ever heard of Pius, Nigeria’s first astro­naut?  No? well then, it seems you must have missed atu­tupoy­oyo, who is still around ( I heard he recently resur­faced from the depths of Nige­ria where he relo­cated to and was never heard from again…but like I said, there are rumours that he is still alive…). So many short sto­ries to choose from, but in the end, any die hard fan of Sher­lock Holmes would do what I did. I have cho­sen On a brief meet­ing between Sher­lock Holmes and King Jaja of Opobo.

At this point, right in the mid­dle, it is only fair that I spice this post up, and what bet­ter way of get­ting things all hot and spicy than intro­duc­ing our very own king of erot­ica? “Ubong da” writes erotic stories…oops! unfor­tu­nately, it seems  you have to be invited to be able to read the hot stuff…it used to be free…well, too bad, I guess. Let’s move on.

Allied…writes and writes…and writes. Like Cat­walq, I do not think I can do jus­tice to her work. I just came from her blog and there is so much that I have not yet read! Whoa! What shall I do? Again, I shall have to rely on my memory…I hope they both under­stand and not hate me for my choices…but who cares? I am doing this review, so I get to decide. I there­fore pick “The Engage­ment” because I enjoyed it very much.  Stolen Child­hood is from 2007 but I still remem­ber it,  the “flog­ging” of a child in church, in a bid to “flog” out sickness.

This post, Mother love, is one of my favourites from  Porter deHar­qourt , who graces us with his pres­ence from time to time.  From sugar to shit in just a bit   is short , sweet and…bitter? Can some­thing be sweet and bit­ter at the same time? He seems to have aban­doned his blog…but some­how, I think he is busy writ­ing a novel or something…surely he must be writ­ing somewhere?

 Finally, this inter­est­ing exper­i­ment, 14th and seren­ity is worth check­ing out. It’s a sort of “hand the baton” kind of thing, you know, one writer stops the story some­where, and the other conitinues…the links to the blog­gers who par­tic­i­pated are on the blog and I am sure you will find many more sto­ries on their blogs.

There are many blogs that I have not men­tioned and many more that I am sure I do not know about. How­ever, I hope this encour­ages you all to keep your eyes open for blog­gers who write because there is a lot of good stuff out there and for free too!

Keep read­ing!

Waffy