2 Old Men, 1 Pretty Lady and Uncle BB

It’s not as though I knew it for a fact but when you hear the same thing over and again – that old people are very funny – you would more likely believe it to the point of developing knowledge without proof. Old people have barely fascinated me in my life. In my younger life, they scared me so much; I could have ordered the mass execution of all old people especially the ugly ones. But they are very lucky that I am not Hitler and this is not 1939.

Anyway, these 2 old men proved the legend right. I am sure I wasn’t going to work on that day but the bus was going to Obalende. It wasn’t a Saturday because people weren’t dressed for any Owanbe party. I’m almost sure it was a public holiday or one of those days I called in sick to simply not go to work. The truth is I doubt that I can truly relay that day’s experience as I experienced it but I would try and hope you understand, as did I.

One of the Old men had been in the bus before I boarded it at Sabo, my bus stop.  I don’t know his name so we’ll christen him Modestus. I believe Modestus was already entertaining the bus before I got into it because he made a remark as I got in that caused the other passengers to laugh but I didn’t pay attention to it. It was very unusual for an old man to insist on sitting at the edge of the seat in a bus whose conductor was extremely unlikely to shut its door; even at top speed! But Modestus did. I was seated on the back row and there were two passengers on the other end of the row.

Between Sabo and Alagomeji, the very next bus stop, he had opined about everything my big head could have mustered. He had gone from the almost nude way girls of nowadays dress and the butt-crack revealing way boys sag their jeans. He had lectured us on Nigerian history of politics and how IBB destroyed the country; and how Obasanjo may be hated but had done exceptionally well for the country and its image. He even dared to analyse the state of the economy as compared to other economies around the world with the 2 usual suspects, Uk and USA, being the chief comparisons.

He was practically showering the passengers around him but they were either too scared to speak or too respectful to inform him of the showers of over-aged saliva. In my mind, I couldn’t figure out how they could survive under such a barrage of salivary showers and still keep their cool. Only the driver and conductor were still aware of the outside world because none of us knew we had reached Alagomeji to the point that we were jolted when another old man, with one leg in the bus, asked Modestus to move deeper into the bus. Since I also don’t know this other man’s name, let’s christen him Philipus.

Because Philipus had one leg in the bus and one hand holding the door frame, he made it difficult for the driver to zoom off as he definitely didn’t want murder or manslaughter on his conscience. Modestus scanned Philipus as if in search of a reason to believe he was been spoken to. Philipus seemed a bit aback that this age-alike man refused to budge. He repeated himself, which seemed to assure Modestus that the request was inteded for him. At this time, the driver started getting frantic as LASTMA (Lagos State Traffic Management Authority) officials may be close and if they had caught him, he would be forced to deficate the twenty five thousand naira fine or ten thousand naira bribe for parking on the road to pick up passengers.

The whole bus urged Modestus to move into the bus so as to allow Philipus in and the bus could move on. But he remained adamant. Instead, he demanded that Philipus should go inside as other passengers previously did. Philipus just hung at the entrance of the bus and refused to change his own mind either. After what seemed like eternity, Modetus yielded to the pleas of the audience he was entertaining and promptly moved deeper in. He repeatedly reminded us that if not for us he would have refused Philipus from boarding the bus. He boasted that he’d have rather paid for the empty seat than allow Philipus.

All this while Philipus pretended to be too dignified to get angry until Modestus crossed the imaginary line: he called Philipus a small boy! By my woeful art of age guessing, they both looked 80 years of age to me and here we have Philipus being branded a Small Boy! This insult seemed to sting Small Boy Phil in the ears as he lost his cool in less than an instant. He beat his chest and scratched his bald head simultaneously as if he had a heart ache and an itch at the same time. He looked at us as if to gain the pitiful support that agrieved parties seek from witnesses of the case but some of us were laughing so hard, Philipus could have cursed them as did Elijah to some children in the bible. Some others weren’t sure of the emotions to hide and which to display. I was looking straight ahead to avoid any involvement in the possible placement and distribution of curses.

Philipus finally regained himself and confronted his assailant and here goes what I recall of their repartee:

‘Do you know me?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. You are a small boy.’

‘And you are repeating it?’

‘Of course, yes. You are small boy and I am not afraid to say it. What can you do to me’

‘Do you know my age? Or you think i was born this old?’

‘How old are you, my young man?’

‘I was born in 1934!’

‘No. It cannot be! You cannot be my age and behave like you did earlier?’

‘And how did you behave? You simply refused to act like a gentleman and move in.’

‘Oh. I refused to move in because I wasn’t sure who you were. I don’t trust a lot of young people these days, especially since they started this One-Chance Operation.’

‘And do I look like the sort that would do such?’

‘How do I tell? There are lots of criminals of your age all over the place.’

‘And there are stupid men like you littering our society as well; giving the elderly a bad name.’

‘You are not an elder. Stop calling yourself that, my friend…’

‘Who’s your friend, my friend? I say, who is your friend?’

‘You are lucky that Oluwadare is not here. I would have instructed him to teach you a few lessons so that you recognise me next time.’

‘Who might he be?’

‘He is my first son. And he would have taught you a few lessons here and now.’

‘And you think if Olusoji, my own son, were here you would have gone away scot-free? He would have yanked you off the bus immediately and wouldn’t have hesitated to leave a memory in your empty head.’

‘Do you think your Olusoji can stand my Oluwadare? He would be beaten like a stubborn child!’

‘I am sure your Oluwadare is a dwarf like you and would have been trampled on by ‘Soji. In fact, ‘Soji would not fight him; he would employ his belt and flog some sense into him.’

‘Do you know how old ‘Dare is? Do you know for how long he has been beating people? He was the champion wrestler in his school days in Igbobi College throughout his days. And when he went to London to further his education, he was known to be fierce as a lion!’

‘Soji was born in 1950 and is a dignified young man. He only fights when deems it fit. Unlike the animal you call a son.’

‘They are age mates so, I am sure your ‘Soji is not any stronger than ‘Dare.’

‘It is because you are not civil that that you are behaving like this. In those days, you would have been deported to your village for such an uncivil act.’

‘In which days are you talking about? When did you even come to Lagos?

‘I came to Lagos in 1949.’

‘Well, I came to Lagos in 1948!’

‘Then you must have been in the deepest end of your village to have taken this long to be yet uncivil.’

At this point, the driver swerved violently causing a panic in the bus. He had nearly lost control as he was now laughing uncontrollably. At Estate Bus Stop, a pretty looking lady was waiting for the bus to stop so she would board with us. I already had the usual opening lines running my head, “Hello, you look familiar…,” “I’ve been seeing you around…” and so on. I must have had my mind fixated on which line to employ that i didn’t scan her well enough to see her bare-bone heels before she dug one into my toe. I could swear those shoes were intended to be needles but the maker changed his mind halfway and made them shoes. I screamed and cursed and rolled on the floor holding the toe and back-flipped a few more times in my mind but all i said aloud was, “Ouch.” A deep-throated Ouch!

As she sqeezed her way past me and into the bus, I started to rearrange my entry. Just as I moved in for the kill and mumbled the first few sounds, little did I know I was in for a dead shocker. The guy next to her moved his face close enough to kiss her and as I was processing what possible move to make to dislodge his, it hit me. It came like a dirty slap and an uppercut punch in one cloud of deathly bad breath! The odour from the guy’s mouth ushered in a new environment in that bus! That guy could have performed any miracle he ever wanted with that smell! He could speak to Death and it will retreat. Not because he was nearly divine but NOTHING can take that kind of blow twice! Once, and you are done. As the girl looked to me, I couldn’t figure if it was for help or otherwise. I could have offered mouth-to-mouth respiration but I had to save my life before my purported treasure so, I left her stranded in his breath and made for the window right next to me. The air inlet of window of the bus was not big but my head didn’t also help matters. The big thing just took up the entire conceivable space of the window. In my struggle for the polluted air of the 3^rd Mainland Bridge, I heard the guy’s voice in the background. The onslaught on this suddenly poor fine girl was a hair’s breadth short of a death sentence by air pollution!

On her behalf, I brought my head back in and allowed some air into the bus. She was already going white from holding her breath and thus, dying. You should have seen how she rushed to the window for rescue. She didn’t mind that her endowments were sprawled out on my grateful back because I bent forward to allow her make it to the window. Waste of opportunity: I should have just leaned backward. She further borrowed my position to place herself well as she adjusted a few more times trying to find a better balance. And my chest envied my back for the happy weight placed on it.

One thing I learnt from Uncle Bad Breath is Mega Confidence. Having noticed and understood the obvious, he waited for the girl to come back from the dead and he resumed her execution! Here was a guy whose breath I could swear had something to do with a rotten, dead rat and he was undaunted by our brazen reaction to the new ecosystem. When the guy at the other end of the row couldn’t take it anymore, simply begged him to stop.

‘Bros, e don do.’ He pleaded. ‘She no wan hear again. She sef don gree. Just wait make we reach Obalende, she go give you her number, I swear.’

In my small mind, I offered what seemed like a solution but the man at the other end didn’t hide his emotions against me. I asked Uncle BB to face the other side of our row if he had to talk and the other sufferer fired right back in a manner likened to that of an Atomic Bomb.

‘Why he go face dis side? Na wetin I do am? Na me be d girl abi na my fault say d girl dey dis motor? Bros, if na play, stop am now!’

His loud voice must have alerted Modestus because he swung round to see what was happening. His entry couldn’t have been worse.

‘Are you saying that while I was looking out for a corpse on the road, it was this man who was responsible for that smell? My friend, your mouth is rotten!’

As Modestus made to say further, Philipus nudged him to say no more as the bus was close to the descent of the bridge leading to Obalende. The bus had barely slowed to 40km/hour when the first passenger lunged out of the bus. An onlooker would only have imagined that the bus was about to go ablaze to warrant that anyone would jump out of a moving bus at that speed. Others passengers who could, lunged after him as the driver slowed the bus for our escape. I could have jumped off as well but I was lingering for that chance with the lady that was snatched away from me. When we all got off the bus, I avoided the passenger who was at the other end of the seat in case he had other plans for me from my innocent suggestion earlier in the bus. And as I looked to the pretty lady, she was coughing frantically. I simply thought to myself that it was better to miss the opportunity entirely than to risk inhaling any more atom of the toxic deposit Uncle Bad Breath had put in her. I have tried not to remember that day or the people in it, but sometimes I just wonder just how her day went. She must have had the experience of a lifetime that day, as did I.

A Date With Danfo Drivers

I’d almost forgotten the experiences of the average Lagos commuter, especially those who go by Danfo – public buses – simply because I had the painful luxury of a relief car from my insurance company after my accident on the Third Mainland Bridge. Stop wondering how luxury can be painful, this is it. You buy a car; it somersaults within 6 hours of delivery in the most dangerous place ever due to multiple factory failures. The insurance company takes pity on you after five months and offers you a service that should have come immediately after your accident.

Enter: relief car!

The conditions are simple. You fuel the car and maintain it for the duration of 20 days after which the car is withdrawn from you eternally, except you want to shell out the N27, 000-per-day price tag for renting it. Oh, I almost forgot to add this: the car arrives to pick you at 7am and it is yours till 6pm. If you exceed 6pm, it would cost you N300 per hour. And woe betide you that it is a weekend, it’ll be One WHOLE thousand naira for every extra hour. Don’t forget it is called a RELIEF car.

So, my 20 days are done. Exit: relief car! And with it the unbelievable driver who stood me up for 30 minutes after he said: “I am coming”!

So, this morning the rain reminds me that the car, however painfully luxurious, was indeed a relief as it beat me from my doorstep to my office steps. First, I forgot I didn’t have any change to pay for the Keke Marwa ride: the effects of having a car pick me from home. So I owe him as we speak. Next the Bus Conductor threatens to throw me out of the bus for presenting him with a thousand naira note and promptly withholds my change – a whopping Nine Hundred and Fifty Naira! Typical me, I pretend to be a gentleman, even when it is obvious that I am a thug. I wait patiently.

Enter traffic.

The driver publicly declares that those headed in the direction of Ajayi, Onike and Queens’ College bus stops must alight the bus as he would turn off that route to join Herbert Macaulay Way from Customs bus stop through Harvey Road, Onitiri. For me, it was kif kif – same difference – as the bus would still head in my direction. Naturally, you would expect the world of passenger to cry foul and scream blue murder but to my new found amazement, they all alighted in the rain! The only thing they demanded was their complete and accurate change, which came after a few aggressive appeals from other passengers. I almost got into a shouting spree with the driver then I recalled I was pretending to a gentleman so, I shut up.

As I looked back to see what has holding the bus conductor from jumping unto the bus so the driver could continue the journey, I saw he was in the middle of a tussle with a passenger who was frantically demanding his change. I almost smiled as my new reality was dawning on me but decided to pretend further. After he broke loose from the ex-passenger and promptly jumped into the bus amidst random cursing of mothers and grandmothers, the conductor looks me dead in the eye, counts my change from the pile in his hands and hands it over to me. Now, I am thinking to myself that only two things may have led to this noble act: either he was suddenly exhausted from his earlier tussle and didn’t want more from me or he saw through the smokescreen of my good clothes and retro eyewear and decided I was indeed a thug who was pretending to be a gentleman. He was right: very right indeed.

We eventually make it to my bus stop, Sabo. For the record, I don’t own it but here, bus stops are bestowed on all passengers who alight there. Typically, what you hear is this: “No be ya bust stop be dis? U no go come down?” Leg 1 is done. Obalende is Leg 2.

It’s now 10 minutes and no Obalende bus has been kind enough to arrive empty and the population of Obalende goers keeps increasing. As the first empty bus arrives and declares its destination, the world converges on it! For a moment, Obalende seems like the Promised Land because nothing else could make a billion passengers want to find a spot in the overwhelmed bus. After the rush, the unsuccessful passengers start to slink away from the bus, while those who made it in are adjusting their rumpled clothes, dusting their dirtied feet and reapplying their smeared make ups. Some others are screening the faces and lips of the women in the bus in search of colours similar to the stains on their shirts and tops. And a few more are wearing victorious smiles of having made into Zion Train.

I could swear some people thought me a JJC (Jonny Just Come) as I stood in awe of the rush. I could have attempted to make it in but I pictured a nasty scene in my head and just resumed my original pretence.  As Bus 2 comes and announces, “Obalende! Obalende! Obalende!” I respectfully cross away from the rush and wait upon the next bus driver who shows up just in time for me to quickly drop my pretence, loosen up, jump into the bus, find a bad seat, sit and start adjusting myself in one quick move.  The drama would have been over from this point but the next bus had a few things to offer in the soonest future.

As we get to Obalende, one thing becomes clear. No more pretence. In fact, I am carrying a mental placard: NO TO PRETENCE! There is something about Obalende. Everyone is a thief, a robber and a worker. Everyone is also very scared. Motorists are scared of L.A.S.T.M.A and Passengers are scared of unscripted hikes in bus fares. We all are scared of pickpockets and they are scared of us, too. They catch us, we beg to get home. We catch them, we burn them. Literally.

So I jump into the bus that should literally drop me at the office and the bus conductor threatens to rip me off by N10 higher than the usual fare. Following that discovery, I disembark from the bus and h-enter another one – note my ‘h’ factor. In the new bus, I find myself seated next to a blob. When I looked closer I saw it was a woman! She was the fattest person on the Island that day. And she was ravaging a burger. I wouldn’t have been interested in her case if she wasn’t grumbling out food particles from her mouth as she urged us to “Shift hinside”.

Anyway, the bus heaves into life and we start the short journey to my office. On the bridge over the Obalende roundabout, the joints on the bridge are no longer connected and are bare. After three unsuccessful attempts to minimise the obvious impact of driving over the gullies, the driver starts complaining aloud about fat people that won’t stop eating. I could swear the blob was deaf because she carried on without a flinch. When we turn on to Keffi Street, I start to smile in my heart because I’m closer to the office. When the driver looked ahead and saw the array of speed bumps ahead, he clears to a side of the road, kills the engine and tells the lady blob, ‘E be like say you go come down for here.’ And when the people shouted at the driver for his action, his response did the convincing: ‘Una no dey see sontin?’

Tagged by the Queen

I was tagged by Queen of My Castle

Here are the rules:

1.link the person who tagged you…
2. Mention the rules in your blog…
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours…
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them…
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged…

Well, well, well (konga, konga, konga)

Here we go…

1. I appear very strong because I often keep a fierce-looking face, thanks, in part, to my stint with the Army through secondary school. I also have a very high tolerance level that I can accommodate bull shit to the brim. But inside of me I am as hard as cheese. I usually hold back from crying a lot, whereas people think am trying not to kill someone. At the same time, I can damn all the consequences and just go MAD without care!

2. I am an unusual mix of care-free, careless and extremely careful. To date, I watch both sides of the road at least 2ce each before I cross. In all of my examinations from Sec. Sch., I have not finished more than 100 courses because I believed all I needed was to pass, not necessarily in flying colours. I never forget anything. I still have some lines I learnt in Pry 2 in my head and can re-write them verbatim. But I can choose to erase my memory of something such that I will never recall a thing about it.

3. I stopped copying notes in JSS 2, i.e. 2^nd yr in junior high. To date, I keep the most important things of my life in my head. It has really boosted my retentive capacity but it also meant I never got any free marks for complete notes. Plus, I have been severally asked to leave the class because I appeared totally unserious. I graduated from the University in the middle of the class without notes! I have barely ever stopped reading all of my life. I don’t use the calculator because my head is actually faster than most I have tried to use.

4. I was the king of love notes in sec. Sch. and have had a way with words and advising my friends on relationships but I dint have one till I turned 25, which I practically begged for.lol. We broke up when I was still twenty-5, barely 3 months actually. (I am now in the ‘only’ thing I call a relationship. 1 year and 2 months and counting.)’Am still a master flirt though, but I never go beyond that, never! I love my woman to bits. E no easy to get wetin I get! Even sef, I don dey old.

5. I usually say that I speak 5 languages fluently: Igbo, my native one. The first I learnt actually. I can read, write, speak and understand it. Yoruba, the environmental language. I live in Lagos where the language is predominantly spoken by the settlers. I can also read, write and understand it. English, the third I learnt and had to speak ‘correctly’ to get qualified and transferred to a private school. French, I got my degree here actually. Same story as with the others. I speak other languages in bits and pieces but Ibibio leads that pack. My fifth language is PIDGIN! I am so competent here that I even form words, slangs and stuff. I’m the biggest advocate for the legitimisation of its use! That is why I can’t stand when am told not to speak in vernacular because I am speaking a language other than English.

6. Yes. Time for the big bang! I am from a family of 1 dad, 1 mom and 9 boys; now men. I am the 2^nd and have 7 younger ones. I am arguably the shortest at 1.75m in height. I am not sure how to place myself because some say I am fine but I grew in the firm belief that I am (still) ugly. (facebook: search ‘Cheely Chi’).I would like to repeat, or surpass, this particular feat but I hear that there is an irrecoverable short supply of women who can pair up with me. So, I am just going to stick to what my wife says.

Yes! I didn’t think I was ever going to get thru with this. I have tried. Now ‘am going to tag… Carl, Bighead, Princessa, Solomonsydelle, Smaragd and Uzezi.

I am a murderer!!!

Hey there,

It’s been a very long time since I last blogged. Not that I don’t have anything to say to you guys ‘cause I’ve been having the time of my life, I mean, both ways: good and bad. I’ve also been busier than any bee in the world because work has been offensively stressful. Worse off, the pay isn’t still great. I hope some of you know where I work so u can do well to avoid it or negotiate better before you take up any offer.

I bet you are wondering why I titled this so; it’s simple. For those conversant with Bible stories, remember when Jesus said any man who considered sleeping with a woman had done so already by thinking it in his mind…yeah, that’s it. I have killed a couple of people in my mind. I’m just waiting for them to die physically or survive it with a permanent scar to show for it. To be utterly frank, if I had rat poison yesterday, Friday, I would have poisoned some guys in my office. Don’t worry I would have shot some others long before then. So, following Jesus’ words, I am murderer. This is why.

There is a guy at my office I have done everything to manage but to no avail. His mouth is never shitless because he has it permanently stuck to the bosses’ arses. He’d kill to be noticed and kill more to retain such undue praises. Now, I don’t know if the bosses are oblivious of this or deliberately leading him on to keep ass-kissing and bitching all over the place. These guys are supposed to be pros but I am not sorry to say that they are bastards themselves in more ways than one. Unfortunately, one other idiot has found his own reasons to become an arse as well. I can’t believe my life right now. It’s all funny.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way a nice guy, and neither have I ever bothered to be on the good books of anyone. I take criticisms, which I prefer to praises, because they make me better by the day but I can never stand back-stabbing and ass-kissing! In my stay in this firm, I have made a few marks that not many people know and the few who do scarcely bother to give me the credits. I won’t go into this now; am going to leave it for another day. I hate most of my bosses now because they are either blind or bastards!

Back to being a bad guy, the truth is this; I have no fear, apologies or reasons to avoid collisions that must happen. The reason is very simple too: I hate people who rather than apologise for mistakes and make amends towards avoidance in the future, want to put up an attitude and CREATE reasons for their failure. I will never stand it! Not for all the money in the world.

Right now, I am the rebel of all time in my place of work because I have had face-offs at a time or the other with most people in the firm. I have also been the item of our general meeting for blasting that many people in my way. That meeting may have paved the way for my exit but fortunately, 2 of my bosses had the presence of mind not only to speak the truth but to logically defeat all the talk against me. I still thank God for it, because I jolly well may have resigned for that simple reason.

You must think by now that I am either perfect, or terribly adamant, even when I am wrong. Good. I am not at all perfect: in fact, I gave it up to fulfil my human-ness – imperfection that is. Secondly, I have a funny reputation for the best apologies. On two different occasions, I ended up apologising to two of my female colleagues after very hot arguments. On both cases I went on my knees publicly, which marvelled everyone around especially those who really believed there was nothing good about me. The day the issue came up at the office meeting, those two days clearly stood in my favour, and exonerated me as not being proud. But yes, you are correct. I am very adamant. I admit that I can be too much of a believer sometimes but I endeavour not to be blinded by myself.

‘Am glad I have been able to fix things with the other idiot and he’s back to being a correct guy. Thanks to a 30-minute project members’ meeting that saw my voice rise through the better part of it. Fortunately, my belief in collective leadership helped me ensure that I didn’t lord myself over any of my men. I can breathe now, but I am yet to decide what to do to the professional cock-sucker. Anyway, he’s off my chat list, facebook, hi5, and other fun stuff. Soon, he’ll be left with 2 ½ means of communicating with me: office email, colleagues and short, concise and very direct talk, like, “Can I have the file please?” and I point to where it may be without a word.

Finally, don’t just read this and leave me a comment. Please pray for me ok. I am Catholic so that tells you that I believe in God!

My friend from Pry 4

Guys, yesterday was one of those days that remind me that I truly have a weird gift of an incredibly retentive memory, believe me. This is what happened…

From childhood…

I started my schooling at a very popular but degenerated school. It was one of the schools that the government seized form the missioners: St. Dominic’s Catholic School, and St. Patrick’s School. They are both within the premises of the very popular St. Dominic’s Catholic Church at Yaba. I schooled there between 1985 and 1987 from Pry 1 to Pry 3 1/3. I left in the middle of the 1st term that year.

This school was full of my kind; ghetto kids receiving paid attempts by teachers, or so they were called, and coming from a very good background of determined but partly educated parents, I (with my 2 brothers: one elder, one younger) was always seen as special cases. “Special” here meant more flogging and stuff for small time offences. But I am grateful because it has paid off for the better. Anyway, I remember clearly that I never saw myself as one of them and was very excited when my mom informed us (me and my brothers) that she was moving us to another school: the University of Lagos Staff School! It was generally called Staff School.

I have a lot of small-time memories about the school but my all-time favourite one was when my mom told us that the children we were going to be meeting spoke only “English” in the new school therefore, we should start speaking good English. I never had a problem with reading when I was younger so my subconscious English was good. In the school we spoke only two languages: Pidgin and Yoruba, both of which I still speak, read and write with competence. The problem then became who to speak good English with. My brothers and I had been banned from speaking either of our school languages at home so we were confined to Igbo, our native tongue (which we were completely competent at) and sign language as none of us was sure of our ‘good English.’ Anyway, my parents noticed the unusual silence and loud Igbo dependence at home and started insisting that we spoke good English. I remember my brother lamenting: “Ke udi nsogbu bu nk’a. Ha anaghi akuzi anyi English na school! Soso Yoruba ka ha n’akuzi anyi, unu we si k’anyi na-asu English. Mnshew! (What kind of trouble is this. They don’t teach us English in school. It’s only Yoruba they teach us and you (my parents) want us to speak English. *Hiss!)

As time dragged on, we got closer to resuming at Staff School and ‘good English’ was not forthcoming. My parents now told us we were going to remain at our current school if we did not speak English, and having mouthed to those who cared to listen that we were leaving, I did not want to remain there and become the butt of all jokes. Besides, in my mind, I had resumed at Staff School! See small pickin mind. Anyway, on this fateful day, after school, we were trekking home; a roughly estimated 3km distance stretching through a very busy road that had seen me get knocked high off the ground in 1986. I was walking really fast and had my brothers well behind me. As a matter of upbringing, we never stray from each other. So, I turned and in a bit to hurry them to join me, something pricked me to speak ‘good English’. I had the liberty to choose from the banned languages (as my parents were not here) and the native one but I was determined to obey my instinct so I uttered the words: “Hurry up, now!” My brothers had come close enough to hear me clearly, and in utter disbelief, my elder one asked me to repeat myself. So I did. We ran through the rest of the 3km journey home just to announce that we had qualified to go to the new school. I had finally spoken good English and salvaged the pack! From then on, good English flowed on around the house to the point where it was discouraged for Igbo. But the banned languages were never liberated. We now speak them as grown ups after many fights.

At Staff School, everything was totally different! Here, local languages were not taught therefore we could not boast of speaking better Yoruba or Igbo than them. And good English was so well spoken here. In fact, it was the first time I saw a herd of people speaking good English in my entire life, which seriously intimidated me. But as was the case at home when Yoruba and Pidgin were banned, sign language and silence came to my rescue. I still don’t know how my brother managed in his class. He was ahead of me by one year so, we only met during breaks and after school. I remember he beat the hell out of a boy once, Akinola, for laughing at him. He never really explained why he beat him that badly but I can guess today that good English must have contributed its quota.

My most memorable days in that school were in Pry 2, Pry 4 and Pry 6 but Pry 4 is still my best. Most of my friends from primary school that I still keep in touch with were from that class. I remember the first time I voluntarily answered a question in class. We were asked to make a sentence with the word cat. I had just finished one of those Janet and John books (not necessarily Janet and John) and in the story a cat ate from a plate but by the picture in the book the cat was licking the plate. So I raised my hand almost confidently. The teacher looked at my direction and called my name. “The cat is licking the plate,” I said. I don’t know why or how but it sort of took the class by storm as they all responded in unison, “Hun?” At this time, I prayed for the ground to open and swallow me. In retrospect, if the ground did open, then I would have fallen into the class below, my Pry 2 class. Anyway, the teacher made me repeat myself twice more before they all got a hang of what I had been saying. Afterwards, my class took about 5 minutes laughing and falling off their seats after I had dramatised what I was trying to say by pretending to be licking my right hand back and forth. Even my teacher, about the best I’ve ever had, did not spare me. They all laughed so hard that I never answered any question till we all got promoted. To date, I am not sure I have answered up to 10 questions in class, even if I was dead sure I knew the answer.

Going to what happened yesterday…

I walked into my CTO’s office for something I had asked him when I saw this familiar face. I left and returned shortly to ask if the name of the lady he had just spoken to is “K?” “Yes,” he replied. “Is there a problem?” I said there was not and asked if he knew where she had gone and he informed me that she’s the sister of one of the guys on IT with us. I actually thought he was pulling my legs: at the office we call it, “yanking one’s crank.” I ran to the IT guy’s office and asked him if they were blood and he confirmed it to me. I still thought he was trying to yank my crank then I asked him what primary school he attended and he said Staff School. At this, I jumped off my skin. His sister was one of my best friends in Pry 4 at Staff School! ‘K…’

She was such a very queer babe with a mind of her own. At that tender age, she had known to do what ever she wanted without fear or favour. I would never forget the day she came to class with Ijebu garri with peanuts and cold water from her water bottle. She set the delicacy proudly on her desk during break and chewed away at all the “oohs” and “aahs” we were throwing. She said she usually did it at home and had no problem doing it in school. She was so serious with her lunch that she finished and went out to rinse the bowl she had used. The following week, another classmate brought eba with egusi soup. When we tried to mock him, he quickly referred to K and told us to keep quiet but he broke when we persisted. As soon as K returned after break, she was told about it and suddenly swung into action against the class.

This was in Pry 4. We were in Pry 6 together in the same class but this was the experience that burned into my memory. It’s 19 years later and I can still remember everything as if it had just happened yesterday. We chatted for sometime and I asked her if her mom was still finer than herself. I always thought her mother was totally beautiful because she was warm, friendly and very slim. I love them slim. She laughed and said she was still fine but not necessarily finer than herself. When I asked her about the light green 504 she used to pick us all up, she smiled shyly and said you have an unimaginable memory.

All trunks are jammed, please don’t bother!

I had just signed in to my Yahoo IM when the Yahoo Insider page popped up. It was about network congestion in New York during this Yuletide. You can read it up, if you like: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_on_hi_te/text_messaging_networks.

Well, it got me thinking about the entire buzz about networks in the West and stuff. In Nigeria, where networks have to be first sanctioned before they can consider performing, it’s not so bad since in Yankee it doesn’t work when you most need it.

I know you want to argue that their system is better than ours because they have been in the business longer and have far more subscribers than we do. But then, if you drive a Bentley and I drive a Buick, what difference does it make when they both breakdown. We are both immobilised! We were just warming up to GSM when the IBB (Ikeja Bomb Blast) sad event took place in ’01. I am not sure we have recorded such mayhem that would cause the entire nation and the world to shiver but try Yankee and you go fear fear! And there have been many complaints that telecoms systems fail at such critical times over there. I strongly believe we need to better our systems here; though, not because I expect the 3rd Mainland Bridge to collapse but i don’t mind receiving a text that Adedibu is dead.

However, my line is this: in 9ja, before we say “Ndukwe,” we compare ourselves to the West and Rest. Is it to mean that having known that we are arguably the most peculiar people on earth, we can’t move without comparing ourselves to others? We don compare so tey, we dey compare our main roads to Ghana and Cotonou own. Well, who no go no know. I’d advice that we investigate well enough before we make any system, people or country a rallying point.

The US see themselves as the police of the world but they record more domestic crimes than most other countries on CNN. Yet they render many homes childless by many senseless wars they have no business with. Wetin concern Oyibo with bleaching cream? No be say them even correct. Ibo people say na “mere mere n’iru gwompiti n’azu.”

I am not saying we should not look up to those ahead of us but we don’t have to look down on ourselves while we are at it: it’s too self-demeaning! I wonder why I am bothering myself when you won’t make any sense of this. Or, would you really start to see us a people capable of the solutions to our problems? Send me a text, if you feel me!

Starting out…

It’s the second day of the year and at 23:39 (GMT +1) Naija time ‘am still at work!

I have told myself that I must make a very firm decision about my time disbursement and management. The worst part is that I don’t readily agree that I’m a workaholic. The truth is I’m scarcely less busy; I never stop reading actually. And when ‘am not reading then I am doing something with my time; and I grew up thinking sleep was for the lazy! Besides, I don’t really read what people read. I, somehow, always find myself doing something only a few even know about, let alone, read or do.

Anyways, I just made this new friend. Some of you guys may know her by blog, Pamela Stitch. She thought she knew me but it turned out to be my name sake and childhood friend she knew but then we got talking and stuff anyway. We’ve been chatting for long hours (in 2 days) like we had known each other from before ‘cause our history brushed past each other’s somehow but that girl should just quit everything and go and join EFCC. She thinks ‘am “yahoo yahoo”: can y’all imagine that? I told her I was gonna tell everyone this, be very careful if you get to chat with her because she no go yarn pem but you go don tell your mama middle name sef. Anyway, I told stuff about me that are really harmless but the way the chick take lock up ehn, na only at gun point she fit tell you her state of origin for Naija.

But seriously, I truly need ideas on what (other) constructive stuff a young man can do with his time. I have given all my time to work and achieving personal goals that ‘am starting to think that I might be pushing myself too far. Don’t get me wrong, I am not at all eccentric. I have more room in me than you can imagine: I do extra long hours in the office EVERYDAY but not at all for myself! (I will tell you that on another blog.) I haven’t sealed off my NY resolutions list yet so, your advice will definitely help. To give you a clue, my utmost priority is to become better by the minute in everything I do. I am a very loyal, deeply family-oriented guy. I love like a fool! People say I am smart yet they pick ten thousand holes in most things I say so I truly don’t believe them anymore. So if you have tips on getting smarter, please forward them to me as well.

Finally, anybody wey know Pamela Stitch, make dem go tell am say I no be YY boy abeg. I dey work like jacky for my money! Cheers.

Can Greed save Africa?

Happy New Year everyone! I have decided to contribute mainly to issues that will better the life of Nigerians, and Africans in general. My targets include self-esteem, determination, independence, intuition, education etc. Anyway, I was referred to an article on Newsweek on Africa. I read it and for once, truly, I could not react in any definite way. I just know I was not particular enthused by the glaring truth. But then, it’s not as if Ihave any low-hanging fruits that can turn the country towards being an economic miracle: at least, not in the next ten years.

The article will follow below the next few lines, but I need to understand how you feel about it when you are done reading it. Don’t worry your head if you find your self reading it more than 2ce. I did, in fact, read it like 5 times yet i have no response to it. Here we go; knock yourself out!

It isn’t easy for Masoud Alikhani to check on his investment. The Iranian-born Briton owns a facility in Mozambique that turns jatropha, a hardy, drought-resistant plant, into biodiesel. An October visit starts with an 11-hour flight from London, his home base, to Johannesburg. From there he jumps into a four-seat Piper Seneca II for a wobbly three-hour flight to Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, during which one of the passengers, this writer, gets violently ill. On landing at Maputo’s airport, where soldiers stand guard on the roof, Alikhani spends an hour wading through the bureaucratic muck of visa clearance and immunization checks. Then it’s back on the plane for a 90-minute flight along the Indian Ocean coast to the province of Inhambane. At the 7-Eleven-size airport there, Alikhani is met by his brother and business partner, Said, for a 90-minute drive past wayward livestock and random brush fires to the village of Inhassune. At the end of a long dirt road, on a vast tract of reclaimed scrubland, sits the Alikhanis’ massive biofuel complex. They try to visit every two months.

The brothers are among a growing cadre of intrepid investors looking for treasure in the 30-plus sub-Saharan African nations stretching from Mauritania and Somalia in the north to the continent’s southern tip. There’s no blueprint for this kind of investing: The best opportunities must be dreamed up and then created from scratch. The Alikhanis saw upside in a fallow cotton plantation. In Nigeria, U.S.-based private equity firm Emerging Capital Partners last year helped acquire an abandoned factory in hopes of supplying the continent with desperately needed fertilizer. South Africa-based microlender Blue Financial Services, energized by an investment from Wall Street last year, now has 171 branches in nine countries, with offices opening soon in Rwanda, Cameroon, Swaziland, and elsewhere. All told, at least $2.6 billion in private equity deals have been struck this year in the region (excluding more-developed South Africa), nearly seven times the 2005 figure.

This is the investing world’s final frontier, so undeveloped and impoverished that it makes other extreme emerging markets like Colombia and Vietnam seem like marvels of modernity. Airports open and close arbitrarily. Roads are often unpaved and clogged. Gasoline and diesel are scarce, and rolling blackouts common. The medical precautions are even more forbidding: Traveling to mosquito-infested interiors requires a round of injections and weeks of antimalarial pills that often induce hallucinations.

In many ways, Africa’s economic situation seems hopeless. While $625 billion in foreign aid has poured in since 1960, there has been no rise in the region’s per capita gross domestic product, notes William R. Easterly, economics professor at New York University. What’s more, from 1976 to 2000, Africa’s share of global trade dropped to 1%, from an already negligible 3%. The U.N.’s scale of human development, which considers health, education, and economic well-being, ranks 34 African nations among the world’s 40 lowest. Thus far, foreign aid hasn’t made a dent.

Greed, however, might. Thanks to the global commodities boom of the past few years, sub-Saharan Africa’s economies, after decades of stagnation, are expanding by an average of 6% annually—twice the U.S. pace. And like bees to honey, investors are swarming into the region in search of the enormous returns that ultra-early-stage investments can bring. Blue Financial, for example, has already netted its early private equity backers a ninefold gain thanks to the 385% rise in its stock since its October, 2006, initial public offering in Johannesburg. Emerging Capital Partners has bought all or part of 42 African companies this decade and cashed out of 18, with gains on their investments averaging 300%. “The money we can make is matchless,” says Emerging Capital Partners CEO Thomas R. Gibian, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker.

The region’s public stock markets are attracting foreign investors, too.

Stocks in resource-rich nations such as Botswana, Nigeria, Zambia, and many others are rising to record highs. In recent months, investment bank UBS (UBS) and others have published thick reports on Africa’s investing opportunities, hailing as a major virtue the fact that markets there don’t move in tandem with those of the rest of the world.

Demand for African stocks is so robust, in fact, that it has created a bottleneck. Because these markets are tiny and illiquid—Zambia’s total market value is just $2 billion—foreigners can’t pile in all at once. Those who don’t want to wait on the sidelines must find their own opportunities away from the stock exchanges. “The private equity skill set is really in demand here,” says Gibian. His firm has invested more than $400 million in sub-Saharan Africa this year, vs. $325 million in the previous six years combined.

Of course, these investors may well be courting disaster. International monitors consistently place the region in the lowest tier of their rankings for business friendliness. Some governments, such as that of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, expropriate assets outright, while others bleed businesses dry over time. If those problems don’t do lasting damage to an investment portfolio, a commodities crash certainly would. A mass exodus of investors would snuff out Africa’s flickering progress in a hurry—not only its GDP growth but also the burgeoning informal economy that isn’t counted in official statistics: backyard and roadside businesses that have suddenly arisen to tap the continent’s growing income.

Many African leaders have come to regard private investment as the only route to sustainable economic development. “Investors put their money down for what they will get as a profit,” says John Agyekum Kufuor, Ghana’s President, in his palace in the capital city of Accra: “It’s business.” Botswana President Festus Gontebanye Mogae even appealed directly to private equity and hedge fund managers during a September trip to New York. Over time, these leaders hope, the benefits accruing from private investment will give locals more of a vested interest in the permanence of historically volatile institutions—governments, currencies, banks—and put sub-Saharan Africa on a path to self-sufficiency. But for that to happen, the region must first prove that it can be hospitable to cold-eyed investors.

Masoud Alikhani is no moral crusader; he thinks the “We Are the World” movement of the 1980s, which sought donations to end African hunger, “made beggars of whole nations.” The burly 66-year-old is among the new wave of investors at the tenuous nexus of venture capital and agribusiness in Africa. Five months ago he pitched a large hedge fund in New York on the merits of ESV Biofuels, as his company is called. The fund’s partners agreed to take a tour of the facility in January. “We are capitalists and opportunists,” says Alikhani. “We are doing this to make money. That’s the only way to help.”

Mozambique, one of the poorest and most neglected places in the world, seems frozen in time. After wresting independence from Portugal in 1975, the nation was ravaged by a civil war in which more than 1 million of its citizens were killed, maimed, or displaced. An uneasy peace arrived only in 1992. Since then the country has been on the tumultuous path to economic liberalization, alternating between double-digit growth and recession. More than three-quarters of its people remain desperately poor. Yet as Alikhani watches children pick through dumpsters outside Maputo’s airport, he sees only upside. “Mozambique,” he says, “is booming.”

With a degree in agroeconomics, Alikhani seems most comfortable when ticking off facts about crop yields and other arcana. He earned his Wall Street bona fides during stints as a trader at Prudential and Lehman Brothers (LEH) in the 1980s. From 1993 to 1998, he was CEO of a steel, metals, energy, and agribusiness concern in emerging Russia.

Today, in addition to his ESV duties, Alikhani holds board seats at three small, publicly listed commodities companies, including a diamond miner.

But ESV is a whole other bag of seeds. Last year, it bought a long-abandoned cotton plantation in a malaria-laden stretch of Mozambican bush, grabbing 27,000 acres with a lease for 198,000 more. It expects to plant nearly 17,000 acres, harvest its first jatropha seeds, and press its first batch of oil by this time next year. Assuming the Alikhanis and their two other partners succeed in wooing outside investors, ESV could break even by 2011—and sooner if biofuel prices keep rising.

Already, ESV has become the province’s biggest private employer, with a staff of 620. Locals who hadn’t earned money in years are making from $60 a month to as much as $2,000 for managers. “When we started, we told people it is a startup, a cash-eating animal,” says Said Alikhani. “The faster we begin production, the sooner the benefits come to all.”

Inhassune’s revival is already under way. Mosquito control, power lines, and potable water have quickly arisen from a barren stretch of bush. “I’d be the last person in the history books to go down as a philanthropist,” says Renier van Rooyen, ESV’s South African on-site manager. “But you cannot run a business when your workers are out with malaria or sick from dirty water.” On a warm weeknight, villagers greet the season’s first rainfall with dancing and singing. “There was nothing here before,” shouts Ineve, a fieldworker, over beating drums. Others proudly brandish newly issued government ID cards. ESV employees have been lining up behind the schoolhouse for hours to register to vote for the first time in their lives.

Women stand out as the most eager beneficiaries of the ESV experiment. Many walk as far as five miles each way to get to the plantation. (The Alikhanis say they plan to import bicycles from London.) Women are also disproportionately willing to budget the time and money to tend small patches of onions, maize, and papayas, which they sell at Inhassune’s new 20-stall marketplace. In a nation haunted by AIDS, “women who work are not subordinate to the will of men with risky behaviors,” says Pablo Smango, a public-health inspector in Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city. “They control more of their own destiny.”

PROMISE AND PERIL

The most obvious investing opportunity in Africa lies in its most pressing need: food. The continent supports one-seventh of the world’s population and holds nearly a quarter of its land. But according to UBS, sub-Saharan Africa produces just $178 worth of goods per agricultural acre, compared with $457 in Latin America and $1,077 in Asia. A crippling fertilizer shortage is the main problem.

Emerging Capital Partners, the biggest U.S. private equity firm operating in Africa, sees opportunity there. Among its most daring investments is a $35 million stake in Notore Chemicals, a massive fertilizer project in the oil-producing Niger Delta, home to daily kidnappings and an ongoing armed rebellion. Government graft and neglect ran the 12-year-old plant aground in 1999; Emerging Capital bought its stake in the shuttered facility in 2006. “The government figured a dollar in its pocket was more valuable than the $10 it would make by fixing the conveyor belt,” says Genevieve L. Sangudi, a 31-year-old Tanzanian-born, Columbia University-educated MBA who shuttles in from her home in Washington to oversee Emerging Capital’s portfolio.

A trip to Notore’s facilities in the heart of the Delta shows both the promise and the peril of investing there. The first leg of the journey is to Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital of 15 million, as dysfunctional and chaotic a city as any on earth. Packed minibuses sit bumper to bumper on overburdened highways as beggars tap windows in search of charity. The landscape is dotted with barbed-wire fences and burning piles of trash. “If someone in Lagos sees a pothole,” goes a local saying, “he doesn’t ask why it isn’t filled, or where to find the gravel to fill it. He wonders: Where can I buy tires big enough to ride over the pothole?’”

It takes two hours to travel the 18 miles from the airport to the Protea Kuramo Waters hotel, a high-gated, diesel-generated fortress where, because of the chronic lodging shortage in the city, occupancy is reluctantly granted at $500 a night, a sum that doesn’t guarantee a working toilet.

The next stop in Notore’s private airplane is Port Harcourt, a bleak Delta city an hour away. The locals here have endured years of neglect at the hands of multinational oil companies and government officials easily bribed out of enforcing environmental regulations. Natural gas, a valuable by-product of oil drilling, is simply burned off in open flares, further darkening the Delta’s wretched air. “The Delta is now Nigeria’s biggest risk,” says Bolaji Balogun, 40, founder and CEO of Lagos investment bank Chapel Hill Advisory Partners. “It needs its own Marshall Plan.”

Emerging Capital and Notore want to redirect natural gas to a more beneficial use: nitrogen fertilizer, of which natural gas is the main ingredient. “You cannot let this humongous asset waste away while Nigeria flares gas and imports fertilizer,” says Onajite P. Okoloko, Notore’s 41-year-old chief executive. The Delta native shakes his head as he recalls his father and uncle blaming God instead of tired soil when their maize and fruit crops wouldn’t grow for consecutive seasons. “Half of Nigeria’s economy is agriculture,” he says. And yet “70% of the country sits on arable but poorly used land. Do the math.”

`AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY’

On their arrival at Port Harcourt’s tiny airport, Okoloko and Sangudi are greeted by a former U.S. Special Forces operative turned mercenary for Notore. He ferries the group into a double-armored SUV. At the airport’s exit, a local armed guard jumps in. “Welcome,” he says, clutching a machine gun. A flatbed pickup truck with five more armed guards leads the nervous procession.

The 1,380-acre Notore facility, rusting and overgrown with weeds, sits in a marsh surrounded by gas flares. The decrepitude belies Emerging Capital’s tall plans for the plant: By next year, Notore will become the only nitrogen-based fertilizer producer in sub-Saharan Africa, going from zero output to 600,000 tons per year of high-grade urea pellets. Okoloko is looking to hire 1,000 locals. Having locked in a 20-year gas contract on favorable terms, Notore will produce its fertilizer at less than $100 a ton; the market price is $350 to $450. “It’s stronger and cheaper than much of what you find in the West,” says Sangudi. “An amazing opportunity.” “We want to compete internationally,” adds Okoloko. “But we have to take care of Nigeria and Africa first.”

Sangudi will be moving from Washington to Lagos in a few months, another young financier flocking to the region. Bankers and buyout shops—from Renaissance Capital and Morgan Stanley (MS) to Deutsche Bank (DB) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM)—are piling in, trying to one-up each other by offering huge signing bonuses for local talent. “The capital coming in is blind,” says one of Sangudi’s friends, who works for a big private equity rival. “It needs my eyes.” The influx is worsening an already dire housing shortage. Owners of decent apartments in Lagos now demand as much as three years’ rent in advance. Sangudi notes with bemusement that leasing a two-bedroom unit could set her back as much as $80,000. “There is serious money to be made here,” she says.

Agriculture isn’t sub-Saharan Africa’s only investment draw. Microlending—the making of small, unsecured loans to ordinary people—is bringing in big profits for a raft of publicly traded companies all across the continent. Blue Financial is among a new breed of so-called salary-microlenders, which make loans only to formally employed borrowers and take payments directly from their paychecks. The set-up helps Blue manage its risks: Bad loans are only in the 3%-to-4% range, remarkably low in a part of the world where fewer than one in five people has a bank account.

Unlike its peers, however, Blue has turned a relatively small Wall Street investment into rocket fuel. Early last year it secured $15 million from insurance giant American International Group (AIG). The deal gave AIG a 23% stake in Blue and two board seats—and gave Blue the imprimatur of a Wall Street titan. Blue expanded its operation from three nations to nine in a year. That burst set the stage for Blue’s IPO last October—fresh capital that has spurred even faster growth.

Blue has also turned its equity into a critical component of its lending process. It uses the cachet of its AIG stake and surging stock price to coax cheap capital from development banks like International Finance Corp. and the Netherlands Development Finance Co. “Our equity investors give us leverage,” says David van Niekerk, Blue’s 34-year-old founder and CEO. “All of a sudden, knocking on doors has become a hell of a lot easier. You have to play that trump card.” Blue keeps its cost of capital low—around 14.5%—and loans money in the 20% to 30% per year range, a fraction of local interest rates. Brisk demand for loans has sent its revenues jumping 140% this year as earnings per share have soared 400%.

On a chilly October morning, van Niekerk, tanned and dressed in a crisp peach-colored oxford shirt, looks more like a playboy than a financier. He’s aboard the company’s swank eight-seat jet for a trip to branches in Botswana and Zambia. The plane lands in Gaborone, a global diamond hub near the Kalahari Desert that’s plastered with ads from local loan sharks. Thebo, an electrician, waits outside Blue’s branch practicing his lines. He’s in the market for a home-improvement loan, in a race against the soaring cost of cement. “I need this,” he says. “I can’t afford to stop buying petrol and food just to work on my house.” Behind him is an ad for funeral insurance. Botswana is full of reminders of mortality; AIDS afflicts up to a third of its adult population. Van Niekerk goes into the back office to check on a row of salary-verification agents who typically approve applicants within an hour.

By lunchtime, the jet is off to Livingstone, Zambia, a tourist hub near the breathtaking Victoria Falls. In town, branch manager Calculus Siachono reports that Blue’s business is brisk. He notes with pride that a local man is making a fortune building and selling oxcarts and is on his fourth loan.

Some complain that Blue’s salary-based lending does nothing to help unemployed or informal workers. Critics also argue that Blue takes advantage of its borrowers by, essentially, mortgaging their future labor. “It’s indentured servitude,” says Wagane Diouf, a native Senegalese who runs AfriCap Investment, a private equity firm that invests in microfinance companies that don’t use paycheck deduction. Van Niekerk counters that Blue has no recourse if a borrower loses his job, and that Blue’s development-bank financing stipulates that its lending can’t be abusive. “Why would we jeopardize that?” he asks. One financier says salary microlending is hastening economic evolution. “Pioneers in African banking collect high fees. But others will come in to compete, and eventually the banks will buy them all out—and everyone’s borrowing costs fall.”

That result won’t come to pass, of course, if Africa’s inexperienced borrowers turn out to be worse credit risks than microlenders anticipate. But the case of Mercy Mubanga, a 52-year-old grandmother, widow, and breadwinner for a family of eight, offers hope. She earns $185 a month as a police department secretary in the township of Maramba, in southern Zambia. Thanks to three loans from Blue—at progressively lower interest rates—she has tripled her income by moonlighting as a backyard poultry farmer, raising chickens to sell in the village market. After paying for a tin roof and hiring two men to expand her coop, Mubanga now seeks another loan to double her flock, school her two grandchildren, and perhaps build an extension on her tiny house. “We really must have more space,” she says, rocking her 2-year-old granddaughter.

New York investment bank Nova Capital Partners helped make Mubanga’s transformation possible. The seven-year-old boutique has found a profitable niche lining up financing for African companies. In early 2006, Blue hired Nova to find a Wall Street backer. Nova, aware that AIG’s money managers were looking to expand its Africa portfolio, made the case for Blue—and scored the investment. That cash, in turn, made possible Mubanga’s loans and many others. But Nova’s bankers are unsentimental. “We’re driven by what our investors want—returns,” says Nova Senior Partner David S. Levin, ripping into a crab cake at New York’s Palm West restaurant. “There’s only so much time to do this before everyone else gets in.”

Roben Farzad: roben_farzad@businessweek.com

What do you really think: are his arguments true or false? Can we really find redemption through the greed of others? Lemme know your thoughts.

Come 2008

This is s simple plain invitation to all who care. I will resume (almost) daily blogging from the first day of the year!

I will endeavour to be very truthful and interesting so you never get bored reading me ok?

cheers.

Marriage: a societal obligation?

Recently, I was reading a recent edition of Awake! by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s the one about moral decadence and stuff. It brought something to my mind; what had been bugging me for a while now. It was actually the topic of discussion among my friends and I some weeks ago. I remember once on a local TV, Inside Out with Agatha Amata, it was discussed openly with guests. I don’t remember exactly who said what but there were arguments in support of the action, but in the favour of men. It’s extra-marital affairs. I can’t say if this occurs where you are but there are reports that these are on the steady rise around the world.

I understand when people say marriage requires maturity. I completely agree. I only have an issue with maturity itself. What does it mean to be mature? I would easily agree if it’s said to be a process given the changes in human life. But does the maturity for marriage entail the shameless betrayal of vows and the uncanny demand for allegiance and faithfulness of spouses. I believe what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and most would agree too. So, I ask myself why this is so bloody rampant these days.

I must admit here that I have played my dirty part in this shame. I can’t exonerate myself from it; I’d be telling a big lie. In any case, I didn’t originate any of my involvements. It only happened that there were needs that I helped fulfill, of which I still feel guilty by association and I am sorry. To me, the real issue is, why start something you can’t keep with? Why get married if one can’t stay in it. It’s so stale to find married men with single women in sexual compromise. Since there’s no crime in being single, or having children outside marriage why then get married and ‘sleep out’? Some men even abandon their families for their ‘girlfriends’. I don’t how good that feels when compared to the woman leaving for a much younger man: may be her own son’s age. Some other men believe that once they provide for the home and service their wives, then there’s no need to complain. Can the woman trade places with the man, or service her husband and carry on to other men since she has performed her duty as a wife? Ask any man this.

I believe that marriage has become a societal obligation because it’s the society that really bothers younger ones to get married. Yet, the same society openly condones the moral decadence within it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not calling for a perfect society but what is the point in pressuring people to get married if there’s no encouragement to uphold it. Parents advise their children to get married without having left (m)any good reasons and examples to foster a good union. The funniest part of this is that the men who cheat on their wives, especially with far younger women, insist on the fidelity of wives to them and can readily shoot any man who goes near their daughters. I have this friend who ‘celebrated’ his last day as a bachelor with a woman other than his proposed wife and started sleeping out the same week of his wedding!

To most women, “men are dogs” and men just simply agree in character. But then, these “dogs” are not homosexuals. Women help make them what they are so, who’s fooling who? Worse off, this has fed the mentality of most women I know. To them, a faithful man is a perfect pretender. Do men also look out for a homely “bitch” to take care of the home and kids? I wonder.