Today in zaga-a short story
My placenta is buried here,this is where I have lived from cradle till date-Zaga knows me as much as I know her.

People here live simple lives,the pathway from cradle to grave for most inhabitants is etched in stone,lack is a daily companion,it is bound to the air they take into their lungs like inseparable twins.

Mr Ama sits under the Neem tree in front of his house daily since retiring from civil service after thirty five years-it has become a daily ritual."Kai kai" he lets out a scream at a group of boys hunting lizards in the adjoining shack, only then does it become clear that he has just fixed new glass windows and doors on his  two room face-me-I-face-you house and must therefore keep watch to fend off thieves and rascals.For company, he has a transistor radio that has seen better days.In Zaga,he was considered fortunate and a man of means.

As I make my way to the secondary school where I have been volunteering as a physics teacher,I hear the familiar voice of Mr Ama;"Good morning Ibro",Morning sir I reply as I walk pass another group of bare footed boys playing football improvised from used polythene material on a sandy patch of earth,completely oblivious of the consequences of a life of perpetual intellectual gloom."Olamide,Olamide,pass the ball to me",they all chorus at the lanky brown haired boy with the ball.I look through the sea of dust that clothes the playground,I recognize the boy to be Ayuba,the seventh child of Bulus,the security man at our only secondary school.It has become the trend in Zaga that young lads take on the names and in some cases mannerisms of celebrities,everyone of them is doing it.They have  all substituted their names for those of celebrities so that at every corner of zaga you turned you hear names like Olamide,Phyno Phyno, Terry G,M.I and many more.They all want to be musicians and footballers.Society has turned value system on its head.Graduates such  as myself are stars performing to an imaginary audience in the current scheme of things.This is not how a sane society should be.If before, we were sitting on a keg of gun powder, now we are jumping on it.But who cares?.

As my 20 minute trek to work winds down,a lorry carrying furniture and kitchen utensils drives by,belching thick dark fumes that masks protesting tyres as the driver fires at breakneck speed oblivious of the toxic cocktail he serves our lungs.A wedding has just folded up.Men here hire and fire women at will,it is nothing.Firing and hiring refreshes the appetites of the loins of the malefolk here.It is normal.

As I walk into the school premises,I am reminded of the fact that Sevilla had just humiliated My favorite club the night before,my gloom deepens.

By Randolph Samba,

A medical doctor,writer,blogger and motivational speaker .

Cc Lalasticlacla

Randi,Laroba and Nfor(4):Armageddon is upon Gora.....

Today Laroba reflects on the story Jabi,the 80 Year old sage.Randi and Nfor are out playing football.

An uneasy calm hung over Gora like an ominous cloud,heavy with anguish and loss-everyone prayed for a rain bow.Gora had been a tranquil community that gave and supported life for eons-Gora was a mother,she gave life;was a common dictum amongst it's inhabitants.It was their pride.But now things had taken a turn for the worse very rapidly,occasioned by events in neighboring villages.

Jabi was now 80,his sunken eyes had seen the beauty;they'd seen the beast-in man.His brain that stored the images that his now Rheumy eyes had fed it its entire life was still keen;sometimes he wished he would develop selective amnesia,he wished he could forget the gory images of the civil war that still haunted him to this day and remember the lessons it taught him,but his brain kept these very fresh-it was his blessing and his curse.He'd lived in Gora for over 60 years now,which Unlike other villages, was a beacon of hope ,an embodiment of the true spirit of community even among individuals from diverse ethnic and religious background-in Gora,they were humans first before anything or anyone else.Gora mocked the wanton depravity that humans elsewhere were capable of.This gave him hope,hope in the much that can be achieved if society developes the deliberate,collective resolve to spread the message of love,peace,forgiveness and oneness.Gora was a Nirvana,The creator's proof to doubting mortals of the existence of paradise.

It was 7:00 pm, the sun lay tucked away In its bed behind the curtains of the night sky above Gora.It an was immaculate sight to behold but Jabi was restless, a solitary cold sweat ran from his forehead right down his massive belly as it moved up and down with each laboured breath he took,burying itself in his navel-This was not a good sign,that he coudn't help but feel that way,made it worse.He was troubled by what he'd overheard a group of youths discussing that evening as he took his routine stroll,he couldn't remember the details of their conversation but he was sure it had been about a growing rift and distrust amongst the indigenes of Gora,events in neighboring villages had spilled over into Gora splitting them along ethno-religious lines,this seemed to have been going on for sometime now because from what he could make of it,people that once stood as a unit now stood on different sides of a line that had been drawn between them,by who?they never seemed to care,now they were only waiting for the minutest provocation to swing into action.He was terrified to his aged marrow.They had never tasted from the bitter cup of loss,destitution and utter destruction that war brought, war tore suckling babies from their mothers' bosoms.what could be more savage ? He thought to himself.They seemed determined to write on their generation's canvas with the blood of their brothers,sisters, mothers ,fathers and children.He had only a few years left to breathe,he was more worried for them than for himself,violence it seemed had gone 'glocal',for it was only a matter of time until a child lay in a pool of its own blood in Gora's village square.What a shame,a big shame.

He was not going to let this madness come to fruition,he had to move swifly to call for a stakeholders meeting,the youth held him in high esteem and would listen to his voice of reason, yes, even if this would be the last thing he would do,he was willing to do it,it was a battle for the very soul of Gora and he was going to stop at nothing until he had educated fellow Gorans.He had prepared his speech and rehearsed it over and over in his head ready for the stakeholders' meeting the next morning when like a thief,sleep crawled up his gray beard and closed his tired eyes as if to say' well done old man you have worked hard enough already' he snored away as if in agreement into the now tense night air over Gora.

Boom boom boom,tatatataaaaa and loud screams of women and children startled Ema to his wobbly feet barely seeing anything in his immediate surroundings, a shadowy figure clutching what seemed like a bag lay in the distance,he couldn't make out what it was amidst the ensuing pandemonium, a burning hut in the distance casting its flamy light on the shadowy figure,he made out the figure to be that of a lifeless pregnant woman clutching her two year old little girl.His feet were wobbly,everything happened so fast sparing him no time to process everything .He couldn't run even when he tried to,'This is it',he heard voice in his head say.They got to his hut and his screams became more and more distant as the flames drowned his wisdom ladened voice.,Evil had brought death upon Jabi and many more like him-all good and Innocent people going about their pedestrian lives.Armageddon was upon Gora...

By Randolph Samba

A medical Doctor, Blogger(9jawow.com.ng ),writer, entrepreneur and motivator.....

Randi,Laroba And Nfor (3),The Beautiful Soul That They Killed….

Randi, your countenance contrasts with the amiable weather that we have today, tell me Randi, what is it that weighs you down so much my friend?

Ĺaroba, your observation lends credence to the saying that ‘ the face is the window to the heart ‘, I was in high spirits until I happened on the story of Arun. It has thrown my hitherto buoyant spirit into unprecedented despondency;one many hardly recover from.I may not be different I’m afraid.


I don’t like sad stories myself,lest I fall into a major depression but since this is a story about a real human being,my curiosity outweighs my inhibitions in the circumstance, let me hear the story please,after all a ‘sad story shared is a burden shared’ as they say.

Kai Laroba kenan, ‘a problem shared is a problem half solved’ is what I know o,

Sha the story goes that Arun was born into a family of four children in a deprived area of town,his parents passed on quite early in his life-he was four when this tragedy befell them.As is customary,the outpouring of grieve that accompanies such inevitable dark moments was no different, just this time it was a gathering of their fellow have-nots who had come to mourn the passing of one their own-seen as a somewhat merciful release by many.

Hours rolled into days and days into weeks,weeks into months,Arun’s parents death seemed to have connived with ill health to rob the eldest daughter (who was now 15 but looked thrice her age) of the vigour and vibrance girls her age enjoy in places where things work,this seemed too much for the poor girl as she succumbed,Arun heard someone say she had gone to join their parents,where?he didn’t exactly know.He was a child.

Everything Arun learnt,he did so on his own,he was a loner,never talked or smiled to anyone.People around knew something was different about the boy Arun and since they couldn’t figure it out,the voice that speaks in people’s heads swung into action,telling them things like;something sinister plus bad luck hung around him like a toga,he was a bad omen,he was everything ‘good people ‘ prayed against in their closets and by street corners.They wouldn’t touch Arun’s issue,not even with a ten metre pole.Boy,did this ever bother him?was he befuddled by this cold hand of friendship extended to him?was he overwhelmed by all these?if ever he was,he never let anyone know.Life had served him several dishes of loss and pain,all coming thick and fast at a time he was supposed to be growing.He was scarred.No one cared,not even one person,it had become a normal anomaly, at least in Arun’s haunted world.


Many years had gone by,Arun was now a young man,he had always left the slum he lived in every morning,returning very late every night to a thunderous hostile welcome of the barking Bingos in the neighbourhood.He came back at times of the day when couples only touched,speaking in subdued tones only occasionally. This activity was rampant in the slum,how did he now?the swelling numbers of malnourished children strewn about the nooks and crannies of the slum were a testament to this ‘adult football’ played only at nights in the dark.This worried Arun a great deal,he wanted to help the community.He wanted a different life for these children left at the mercy of the vicissitudes he was no stranger to.

Twenty one years had gone by since the death of Arun’s parents,and little had changed in the way of infrastructure in the slum he had always called home from birth,no one cared,an adherent of the karma ideology would have believed unshakably that they were being punished for the harsh way and manner in which they had treated Arun.However,Arun knew that nothing could be further from the truth,their collective despondency and deprivation was thrust upon them by their leaders.It had nothing to do with karma.

A new twenty bed maternity sprang up in Arun’s community,something they have never dreamt would happen,a motherless babies’ home was also being constructed at a feverish pace some few meters away from the maternity,a standard well was also being dug.This development was greeted with a frenzy and sent the slum’s rumour mill into over drive.some said it was done by the government, others said it was the white men,others said it was one big faith based organisation like that-no one knew for a fact.



A crowd gathered at the newly constructed maternity,their number swelled fast,a few angry voices could be heard screaming at the top of their lungs while majority of them with their hands across the chest spoke in hush hush tones.Someone had vandalized the new maternity that was set to be used in a short while,nothing was left.As they boiled with anger,a member of the youth shouted this question aloud-why do we stand here and act as if we do not who did this to us?As if controlled by a single brain,the mob matched towards Arun’s shack chanting olè,death to olè, death to olè.Someone broke the door and brought out a semi clad Arun,a tyre was placed around his neck and he was set alight and left to burn like a beast.

It was when a delegation from the government came to the community that it was disclosed that it was Arun that built all those structures.he had saved up money from his daily hustle for the last 18 years to help the community.

Now you know why I am sad,Laroba.

Jeez Randi,I am speechless, Arun was truly a beautiful soul that they killed.What a world?.



By Randolph Samba

A medical Doctor, Blogger(9jawow.com.ng ),writer, entrepreneur and motivator. ..

Randi,Nfor and Laŕoba;Too-much-talk-about-nothing........

Ehen,before I forget,have you heard the latest gist in town?

Yes Nfor,everyone hears everything that happens these days,all secrets are open now-a-days.

How can you say all secrets are open now -a-days?Laŕoba,you have started again abi?

Which one is I have started again? that I'm saying the truth as always has now become a crime abi?,as a matter of fact; someone said he heard that all walls have ears these days,and the fruits on that mango tree are actually eyes disguised as fruits and its leaves actually ears,all very sharp and sensitive as though they were in their prime.I wonder what extraterrestrial body they might be focused on,as we speak.

Aha! I said it,I'm not mad after all,the gods be praised indeed!

Who said you were mad?Randi

Laŕoba,I didn't believe what I saw the other day,I thought a knot was loosened in my upstairs,

Do you know that I caught a fruit on that mango tree,infact two fruits;all fully matured,blinking feverishly as if in a heated competition for a crown for who sees best,as if that was not dizzying enough,two elderly leaves on the same tree were flapping and repositioning themselves to listen in on this same latest news in town Nfor just asked you about.I could give the best psychedelic medication a run for its money-were it not true.

Randi, do I sense sarcasm or is my imagination running wild again?

Nfor,sarcasm or no sarcasm, I have made my point and contributed my quota on this too-much-talk-about-nothing.

I think I should keep everything I hear to myself next time,mtchewwwww,nonsense.

Nfor,someone I consider wise once said and I quote "the best advice you can ever get is the one you give yourself",so, I think you have done well to apply the brakes to the rumour machine.

OK,I have heard you,Solomon ne ko Randi ne,Nonsense..



By Randolph Samba

A medical Doctor, Blogger (9jawow.com.ng ),writer, entrepreneur and motivator. ..