Good day nairalanders. Please which institution is the best in ISO certification in Lagos.

Good morning all. Please I would like to know the cost of the following certifications
ISO: 9001
ISO FSMS: 2200
HSE.
I would also like to know about the process and cost of becoming a member of ICCON and ISPON.

Please fellow nairalanders. I need information to validate this invite and the company too. Thank you

What does it mean?

Is there anything like a "born again Christian?"

Goodbye is inevitable. No matter how long you put it off, the time to say goodbye will eventually come. When that time comes, you will need all the courage you could get.

Is there ever a right time to say goodbye? Especially when it is so final. You see, A wife and her husband can say goodbye to each other as one of them goes off on a short trip, they could also also say goodbye every morning as each goes off to their different workplace. A parent can say goodbye to their child(ren) at the front of the house as the child(ren) heads off to join others in the school bus; or in front of the school before the child(ren) enters the school premises. But it is only temporary, because they will all return home latter in the day, that same day.

A person can say goodbye to friends, family members, relatives after a visit or a gathering but it is temporary, because they are going to see each other again soon, definitely.

A father can say goodbye to his daughter after walking her down the aisle to the arms of the man she would spend the remaining of her days on earth with. The mother would cry after the solemnisation, tears spilling from her eyes like water from a kettle, rolls down her cheeks, spoiling her mascara or eyeshadow and blush and all. The tears would collect at her red painted lips. She would open the lips to say goodbye and she would taste her make up, she would also taste the tears of goodbye. But the goodbye is temporary because she may be leaving their house to begin making her own home, but she is not leaving their lives. She would return from time to time to report her husband, or to seek advice, and all whatnot.

But when goodbye is so final, when you know that saying goodbye is also saying "it's unlikely we'll see again". When is the right time to say it? Is there even a right time to say it?

At dawn yesterday morning, Modakeke came to see me. We sat on my balcony and talked for long. We talked about the town and its so many associations, senseless associations; imagine Roasted corn sellers association of Nigeria, Modakeke branch. What in God's own earth is that. We talked about how these numerous and senseless associations is slowing the progress of the people. If the people do not progress, how will the town progress?

We talked about the new ọba Adedoyin market and how it could bring the people of Ife and Modakeke together after decades of hatred, malice, and war.

We talk about Modakeke youths, the boys are venturing into societal vices, Yahoo plus, substance abuse and the likes. And the girls, especially the teenagers getting pregnant even while in school. So many "After one girls".

We talked about the fine SUBEB school (Aregbe schools as they are called), new modern school but old teachers, old both in age and in mentality.

We also talked about the part-time students, part-time apprentices of different trades: Tailoring, hairdressing, motorcycle repair, woodwork, vulcaniser, even vulcaniser!

As we talked about these, Modakeke became sad. Then to cheer her up I teased her about her food. Locust beans everywhere and in everything. From common vegetable soup to jollof rice to (I heard) pepper soup, even pepper soup! I told Modakeke that I won't be surprised to see locust beans in white rice and boiling water. And we laughed, long and hard.

As the sun began to seep out of the heavy clouds, it's crimson rays bathing us, Modakeke stood up to leave. It's Wednesday, Adedoyin market day and she had to go get her wares ready. Then I said my goodbye, Modakeke did not respond. As I saw her off, I told her she and I may have so many differences but we have one thing in common. We both have the vitality of youth, and the potential to be great but it's up to us to decide to be great or not. Circumstances, or environment, even the Nigerian situation cannot hold us back. If we did not not eventually become great, it is because we chose not to. We got to the Junction where we will part ways, Modakeke said to me "You can stay if you want to. There are lands everywhere, you could build. I still have fair maidens regardless of the many after-one girls, you could marry. My environment is clean, and conducive, the weather is great, you said so yourself, and is not over polulated like the Lagos you are so much in a hurry to return to. "I cannot stay, even if I wanted to" I replied her. "There is a big world outside here and it's waiting for me. I must go on, I am not like the green hills of Ife that remains in a place. I am the oshimili; the great river that must keep moving."
After a brief moment of silence, Modakeke said "Everything inside of me is reluctant to accept your goodbye".

We parted ways at the junction where four roads meet, each going to different directions. One going westward towards Lagos (the path I will take in a matter of hours), one going eastward towards Ondo, one going to Modakeke township, one going towards Famia. There, we parted.

About the time the sun began its journey in the distant horizon, casting a russet glow on everything around it was when I came to sit on my balcony, one last time. All across the evening sky, the birds were leaving, making their way from God-know-where eastward to God-know-where westward. How could they know when it was time to go, how could they tell time?

Where does time go, where has the past 11 months gone?
We often lose track of time. Despite knowing that certain things are inevitable and it is best to get ready for it but still we'd say we lost track of time. Maybe because instead of getting ready for the inevitable, we chose rather to enjoy everyday, every moment, with those people around us that life has blessed us with and making it count. These people, without them it would be like you're in on a deserted shore. And you all know the time will come when we'll all have to go on. Well, now is that time.

I'll tell tell you where the past 11 months has gone. Time is a continuum, an endless continuum, so it never goes away.
Every event has its own portion in time, and when it ends another event begins. All those moments we cherish so much are like those events, and they are engraved in the tablet of our hearts where neither seasons, nor circumstances could erase them. The past 11 months is going to be an erasable memory engraved in my heart, and from time to time I will choose a particular memory and relive it.

Midway in its journey beyond the green hills of Ife, i looked up and felt like the sun stood still. I check wrist watch to be sure time hasn't stopped also, and I saw the second hand ticking. I looked up again, then it dawned on me that the sun was reluctant to set on a little town that is reluctant to accept the goodbye of a man who has to go.

O

chibike69:

I hated the rain until I danced with her in it;
I started liking it that moment, then I slipped and fell;
That same moment was about the time I started falling for her. So I love the rain: Heavy, torrential with stormy wind accompanied with claps of thunder and lightning, a rainstorm.
My house has a balcony, not a rooftop balcony, the verandah type. The balcony overlook the town Northwest ward. Sitting on my balcony, you could see the tall stature at ife east, and the Lagere tower, and the Ife Hills range, the green caped hills. I usually look forward to evenings because the sight of the sun westering in the western horizon over brown rooftop and green caped hills is just breath-taking, not like the Caribbean sunset, a Modakeke sunset. But this evening, the sky decided to rain instead. There wasn't a Modakeke sunset, but it rained; heavy and torrential with claps of thunder, just the way I like it.

It started as a light drizzle then it became torrential. I was on my balcony, enjoying the scent of the rain while polishing the boot for the last parade, and reminiscing on the past 11 months. The end of a story is the beginning of another, the end of one phase brings another into play.

If I were to write a book about my NYSC, I would write the dedication last, on the very last page, and It will be to Modakeke.

Modakeke is not just the town, the little sprawling town in Ife-east area named after the raucous sound of a certain specie of stork, and occupied originally by old Oyo empire natives who fled the empire.

Modakeke to me is the little kids, teenagers in the same cream and brown uniforms, despite being students of different public schools. At the beginning of my primary assignment, I was in a dilemma whether to tell them or not that osun state and Nigeria as a whole is a state, the same state as the Nigerian and omoluabi rags (flags) mounted in their school compound. I did not tell them, I guess I was busy minding my business. O Lord forgive me for being busy minding my business. Anyway, I don't think it would have made any difference if I had told them. Because they know as much as I do that the country is in a filth, that the country has refused to leave the filth, that the filth has become the country. I believe that they know as much as I do that the Nigerian and Omoluabi rags (flags) could be changed into something cleaner, fresher, newer, better. But the same cannot be said for the so called omoluabi state (the state of virtue) and Nigeria as a whole. I'm actually impressed that they know all this, and even more; that Nigeria isn't made to work for them just like the òpòn imò. It's all a scam.

At the beginning of my primary assignment, I wondered what they would do when they eventually realise all these, but they have realised already and have began to take steps to give themselves a life in the filth. That's why most of them in addition to going to school are also learning a skill; part-time students, part-time apprentices of different trades: Tailoring, Shoe-making, Motocycle repair, hairdressing, vulcanizer, even vulcanizer. In fact school to most of them have become just a place to learn how to read, and write. Nothing more. Imagine such a misplaced priority, imagine the consequences of that: SHOP owners. Do you know the meaning of SHOP?. I'll tell you. "Sit Here Operate Poverty". That's the kind of Life they are building for themselves, in the filth.

Modakeke to me is the woman next door who gets angry anytime I take 3 oranges out of the 9 or more she sends her son to give me, or a bunch of banana instead of the two she brings.

Modakeke is the other neighbours who talks about me all the time in Yoruba, in my presence laughing while doing that, not knowing that I understand all what there were saying. Just imagine the look of shock on their faces the day I spoke Yoruba to them

Modakeke to me is the woman in better-life market who reserves different kinds of fruits; avocado, pineapple, banana, coconut, oranges, plantain, mangoes, African cherry fruit for me. Because I told her the first day I went to her stall that I love fruits a lot. Imagine a petty fruit seller reserving her goods (perishable goods o) instead of selling them because Corper likes fruit and would come to her stall to buy.. Such faith! I won't forget the look of guilt on her face any time I visit her stall and she doesn't have a particular fruit I wanted, the look stays even if I buy some other thing instead. It happened again two weeks ago when I went to her stall for fresh corn, and she doesn't sell corn.

Modakeke is the deaf and dumb guys that frequent the bet 9ja shop I usually charge my phone on days when electricity is scarce; four of them, anytime they see me they would throw their two hands up in the air, raise one foot and stomp it on the ground_ in the twale style, the street style of salutation of respect. Once, one of them made a sign language I couldn't understand, then he pointed to the army green cap I was wearing, that was how I knew he wanted it.

Modakeke is my students, the little noisy ones in grade 5 who begged me to teach them with Yoruba, the much older grade 6 students who offered to teach me Yoruba (because I told them I can't speak their language) in exchange for teaching them info tech. The triplets and many twins in the school that makes it a habit confusing me and sees that confusion as entertainment. Those triplets in grade 5 especially. But eventually I was able to tell them apart, thanks to Omirin Tokunbo.

Modakeke is freedom from Lagos traffic, and general stress.
Modakeke is climbing elevated landmasses and descending to lower grounds, stopping from time to time to catch my breathe and appreciate the beautiful landscape of the town, as I do my Johnny Walker thing to bible study and other fellowship activities.
Modakeke is not worrying about school; lectures and semester GPA.
Modakeke is not minding time because you know you would get to wherever you want to go in no time.
Modakeke is not worrying about making it to the BRT terminal on time so I won't have to wait for long for the bus.
Modakeke is complete self-dependence 100%. The spacious and well arranged room makes me miss home. The electric bill that comes at the middle of every month and the account balance that keeps depleting by thousands of naira weekly despite the mostly-rice meals keep telling me "you are on your own". I call home every Sunday evenings and when asked if everything is fine, the response is always the same "everything is fine" even when I'm worried, or afraid of the uncertainties of tomorrow.
Modakeke is the sometimes-annoying teachers and principal of Saint stephens middle school.
Modakeke is the acrid smell of locust beans everywhere and in everything.
Modakeke is the ignoramus okada men that would want to charge you 3x the normal fare, because you are a Corper and they believe corpers are very rich.
Modakeke is looking forward to the end of the service and when it eventually comes, feeling reluctant to leave. Because you have met such wonderful and awesome people and saying goodbye to them isn't easy.
Modakeke is asking yourself "where does time go? "where has the past 11 months gone?"
Modakeke is postponing goodbye by a day every day.

This is a sequel to old notes and memories. If you are reading this for the first time, you can check my profile for the 3 episodes of old notes and memories.. Your comments would mean a lot. I do hope you enjoy reading this.

************
In death, it is all silence.
Silence is a steady hand, palm flat and facing downward; like that of a corpse in casket after it has been prepared for interment; the state of infinite silence. Some people are alive not just to live but because their demise would leave a void in others that could never be filled.
There are sometimes I feel like killing but taking another life is not legal. Recently I found a way to actually kill people in a very legal way.

I have an addiction, an addiction to walking. Science calls it wanderlust; a walking disorder. It started when I was a child, and to make it worse, I also have this habbit of pulling people's legs, even my mother's, science calls it sarcasm. Once, I told my sister I would kill her if she doesn't give me an extra piece of meat. She asked how I would kill her, I said I would turn her into a cow and drag her to ajelogo abattoir. That was my way of calling her a cow. I got two dirty slaps at both sides of my face instead of the meat. Another time, while being punished for going to the river to swim, I told my mother that something in the swamp called me and I wandered off to answer that call. Along the way, I met others the something in the swamp also called and they decided to wash in the river so I joined them. I told her I met fishes with human legs and humans with fish head at the river and that they would come for her in the night if she doesn't stop flogging me. she got scared, it worked.

One day, on my way to school I bought milkose and goody goody from an old woman who sold at the roadside. It was morning, I was her first customer. Several people, both students and non-students had been passing along the way that ran in front of her stall but I was the first to stop by and patronize her (so she told me). I was still waiting while she searched her waist pouch for my change when three other students and a middle aged man stopped by to buy from her. she called me olowo aje, and she gave me three extra milkose sweets. That same day, in the evening, my feet started to itch so I left my mother's shop and wandered off. I met some boys I use to play football with, they were hawking vegetables, and they had football with them so I followed them. I returned home 9pm, I told mama the woman I bought sweets from in the morning told me to follow the boys because I am olowo aje otherwise nobody will buy their vegetables. It wasn't enough anyway, I slept outside that night. I was nine years old.

That was almost fifteen years ago. Ekene doesn't mind that I have an itchy feet, she doesn't mind that I prefer we trekked rather than board a bus sometimes; in fact she even loved it. She believed in me, she believed it when I told her walking will increase the length of time spent together because when the brt bus stops at ketu It would mean goodbye, and neither of us like to say goodbye.

Mama once tried out a solution to her problem; my problem, my wanderlust. It was during my rebellious teenage years, I was fifteen and my rebellion was at its peak. I had other problems too but wandering she considered the worst. She stared putting in place things that could distract me from wandering inside our congested home, she even made peace with the neighbours she had issues with so I could play around in the compound with their children. It worked for about a week. When Ekene came along it was different. She did not see my itchy feet as something that could be referred to as a problem, she encouraged it as long we wouldn't walk to the river.

Ekeneoma was my best female friend, the one i thought was one of the reasons i have to wake up in the morning. I fell in love with her. I told her i love her and she said she love me too. Life became a bliss; Sebi it is said that the greatest feeling is to love and be loved back. There are so many things about Ekene I would like to tell you about but that is a story for another time. Anyway, I couldn't imagine life without her but I wanted to know what life, my life would be like without her, So I killed her.
I started a story and I made her a character, the story isn't the one with a hero and a heroine, it was an unusual type. I wrote about my wanderlust, I wrote about Ekene's eyes, and her smile, I wrote about her hair; her conrows and about how much I loved to play with the smoothly plaited tress. I wrote about the many times we walked together, I wrote about our blissful life, I wrote about the fights and quarells we were yet to have. And I killed her. She told me she would do anything for me, go anywhere for me. So I asked her to go to the river with me and she agreed reluctantly. At the river, I drowned her. I had to, it was the only way I could know how life would be like without her.

It's been three months since I killed her.

I still have the impulse to walk, but she wont walk with me anymore, so its a meaningless walk, a meaningless life. I haven't found out how life would be without her because I haven't finish the story. However, i know it would be one painful, miserable life, one that isn't worth living. So I guess I would kill me eventually in the end, because I can't live without her.

This is the final episode of old notes and memories. For those reading for this first time, you can check my profile for the previous episodes.. I hope you enjoy it.

The days that followed after she left were one of the most difficult, I couldn’t believe she was gone so I would always go to her house and sit in the usual spot we used to sit together in those evenings we weren’t fighting; in front of a barber shop opposite her house hoping she would just descend the spiral stairs like she used to and come sit with me. Time passed and I stopped going there, and I forgot about the note she gave me, and then life got busy. It’s been nine years.

Her name is Lola. She was that person I knew meant so much to me but never acknowledged, I never told her either, never will.I turned to the last page of the note and saw something else she had written in red ink, something that has nothing to do with economics or any other subject, something that pierce my soul like a thousand needles.

Remember me when I am gone away,
gone far away into a distant land.
When you can no more hold my hand nor I half turn to go yet turning back to stay.
Remember me when no more day by day I speak to you of the future;
one we both could have had.
It will be too late to wish, to counsel then or to pray.
Still you will remember that I waited.

Every of life’s situation is meant to teach us a lesson.

My life is filled with mistakes, some that aren’t even mine but I carry it upon me nevertheless. There are two kinds of mistake: The first is that mistake I wish I could go back in time and change, one that made my past regretful, the other is that mistake I am glad I made, because it taught me so many things. I believe it’s the same for every other person.

Life will always give you the same situations to deal with in diverse forms.It is one of the differences between life and formal school. You see, in the classroom you would be taught a lesson before given a test but life will give you a test that would teach you a lesson; sometimes the lessons of life could be bitter, sometimes sweet, sometimes a mix of both and the interesting thing is that providence have a way of repeating the same test if you fail ituntil you learn the right lesson. No matter the standpoint of argument, the past is a learning ground where you can always go to when life gives you a test. Maybe that’s why my mother has refused to do away with that table, she wouldn’t throw away the past, she could be presented with another situation which she could need a lesson from her past. Life has presented me with a situation that requires a lesson from the past, could that be the reason I decide to come home?

I didn't return to school the next day. In the evening, I went to the house where she used to live, her sister had moved out years ago. Aside that nothing has changed; the street is still the same, the shops opposite the compound are still occupied by the same owner, including the barber. I thought that place was frozen in time like a picture or maybe it’s trapped in the past. I sat in front of the barber shop; exactly opposite the house and watched the spiral staircase like I used to do while I waited for her. The sight of her descending those stairs was like Venus descending from the cloud. A girl was descending the stairs; i stood up quickly thinking it was an apparition of Lola. The girl that was descending the stairs has Lola’s slender figure, her descent down the stairs is quick and not majestic like Lola’s, and her hair was short in the trending Anita Baker style unlike Lola’s Alicia Keys’ braids. Our gaze met and held for few seconds when she got to the foot of the stairs.” I have to tell Ekene before it is too late”.I sat there for another ten minutes or thereabout after the girl went away before i stood up to leave.
In the barber’s shop a song has just finished playing, I hadn’t been listening all the while but I caught the last part. It sounded familiar; “tell that someone that you love, just what you’re thinking of. If tomorrow never comes.”

So now I sit here alone,
Blinded with tears and grief and all that,
For nought is left looking at
since my delightful land is gone.
A violet bed is budding near,
Wherein a lark has made her nest,
And good they are but not the best
And dear they are but not so dear.

Thank you for reading.. Anticipate the sequel "I killed Ekene".

All love stories are the same, and it always begin with the girl..

I was in SSS2. She was my classmate, she was my friend, she was my neighbor. We argued every time, about almost everything.
One time, during break-time in the third term there had been an argument and I didn’t feel like walking home after school with her so I lied to her that the principal told me to see him after school hoping she would go home while I waited in one of the classroom. She knew I lied of course and had waited beside a kiosk outside the school gate, for three hours. I was shocked and embarrassed when I came outside and saw her standing beside the kiosk. I was already stuttering a lie but she smiled and said she knew the principal never asked me to see him, she knew I had waited back in class to avoid walking home with her. As we walked home, she informed me about her parents telling her to decide if she want to continue staying with her sister or return to Abuja. She told me she want so much to stay but something and someone is pushing her away so much she had to go. I asked if it was her sister, or her brother –in-law but she didn’t reply, she changed the topic instead. That evening, she asked “what is love”? I told her love has no real definition, it can easily be demonstrated than defined and even the demonstration of love sometimes doesn’t really make plain and comprehensible it’s true meaning. She had laughed so hard and called me the realist before going on to tell me her own definition of love. She said “love is a string of coincidences that draws together significances and becomes miracle. Like my sister giving birth this year, like me coming down to this place to stay with her, like me sitting here next to you”. Then she had added “it won’t mean anything to you anyway, you don’t believe in coincidence”. “I don’t believe in coincidence” I had replied, “There is a reason behind everything that happened in this life”. “If you don’t believe in coincidence, then you may never understand what love is” she said “How can you say that” I had snapped and that was the beginning of another argument. Not so long after was the day was when she gave me the note. She left before the term ended and she didn’t say goodbye.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
Blank and unchanging like the grave.
I, peering through said:
“let me have some flower buds to cheer my outcast state”
The spirit was silent,
He took mortar and stone and built a wall.
He left no loophole great or small,
Through which my straining eyes might look..

The door was shut.
I looked between it iron bars and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Glowing in the moonlit starry night,
Pied with all kinds of flowers, bedewed and green.
From bough to bough the songbirds crossed
From flower to flower the moths and bees,
With its nest and stately trees.
It had been mine, but now it is lost.

***********

It has also been said many times that the past is not something to dwell on or brood about, that is true, but it is truer that the solution to the problems of the present lies in the past and the key to understanding prospects of the future lies also in the past.

I have a habit of keeping old notebooks, a trait I got from my mother but hers isn’t just books, it could be anything. There is a table in my house, an old almost dilapidated table that is always bent either to the left or right depending on the weight on it. My niece called it the dancing table because it wobbles whenever she rest on it. Mother has refused to get rid of that table, she said it reminds her of when we had so little. “you can’t forget your past, you can’t get rid of it either”she would say whenever we wanted to throw the table away.

I had returned home from school one evening tired, hungry and worried after a five hours chemistry lab session. I was in my second year in the university then and though I was staying on campus, had returned home unexpectedly for no reason but because I felt like. That evening, that table was bent to the right. I dropped my bag on itand it wobbled to the left as if dancing the“ikoro”dance. I stooped to straighten it and underneath it, I saw my bag of old notebooks, beside the bag was a page from one of my early secondary school note where I had scribbled something about love and fire of passion. I felt so drawn to the bag that I forgot all about the chemistry experiment and the hunger. I started removing the content of the bag one after another, thinking about each memory attached to them and reliving it. I saw my JSS1 computer note and remembered how a teacher had made fun of me because I couldn’t define the function of a computer mouse. The only mouse I knew then was a type of rodent and that was what I told her. “A mouse is a type of animal that is similar to a rat and is found in the home”. Some students in the class, the ones that had little knowledge about computer had laughed while the others hada look of confusion on their face. They were as confused as I was; what could they be laughing at, a mouse is a rat nah, abi..just like jerry the mouse? I saw her note, the economics note she gave me days before she went away. I traced the intricate but fading lines of her handwriting and smiled as I recalled how I had teased her that dayas she was writing her name on it. I had asked her the day she gave me the note why she would give me her economics note and she had replied “just for keepsake” then she had added “one day sooner or later you will find out the real reason I gave you this note”. I’d always thought it was because I told her I liked economics or maybe because she said one time that it is rare to see a science student who knows more about economics than a commercial student. I had never really thought much about the note, not even after she went back to Abuja from where she had come to stay a while with her sister.

All love stories are the same, and it always begin with the girl...

If not for the cross
We hold so close to our heart
the cross where Jesus died,
But so much more than the blood stained cross
is that he rose from the grave to live forever.

He didn't want heaven without us,
Our sins were great but his love was greater,
What else could bridge the gap
That sin wretched apartIf not for the cross.

His words, on the cross were few
So much he accomplished
Through his death upon the cross
And in his rising from the deadReconciled us back to God.
"It is finished".

She stood there overwhelmed with guilt and embarrassment, not knowing what to say. “the baby could get a cold if you continue standing there, even you aren’t immune to it” he said as he reached over to unlock and open the passenger door for her. “erhmm” she started to say after removing her baby from her back and strapping the seat belt “I’m sorry i was just carried away, been standing there for a while hoping that someone would be kind enough to stop and give me a ride. I guess the sound of the rain must have drowned everything else, i didn’t even know when your car stopped”. She glanced at him hoping to catch a glimpse of something, anything like a smile but the expression on his face was indifferent. “God bless you”. “I’ve always liked the rain” he said “it helps clear things off my head. Usually on a day like this i would just walk in it for as long as i can, i don’t know why i decided to drive today but i guess it paid off”. “It sure did” she replied. “you jut moved into the neighborhood?” she asked after a while. “Not exactly” he answered, “i grew up here, been away for sometime, my family house is at crowther street”

As the car got close to the junction which leads to crowther street, she began to gather her baby and was already thinking how she would walk the remaining distance to her own house, but he didn’t turn into crowther street, he continued to drive straight, towards her own street. “I know you live here but i don’t know your house” he said. “it is farther down at the end if the street, the unpainted bungalow by the right side” she told him. The silence that followed was soothing, then she heard him ask “is that your daughter?” she nodded yes “her name is Ola; Igbo for jewel” she said. “I had a daughter too, she was my jewel, my everything. She died three months ago”. “I’m so sorry about that” she said, “how old was she?” she asked. “she was almost three” he answered. “she was born with a congenital heart disorder. The doctors here and in the US where she was operated said she wouldn’t live longer than seven months but she was a tough one. The operation was successful but the doctors said there would still be complications, that i shouldn’t get my hopes up. And indeed there were complications, many of them but she fought each as they came. She gave up the fight three months ago”. He was smiling as he took a picture from somewhere on the dashboard and gave it to her “her name is Iretiayo, she would have been named Enitan given the circumstances of her birth, but her mother insisted on Ireti”. “where is her mother?”, she asked “she died shortly after a birth. i came back here to mourn peacefully, i don’t like sympathizers and their half-honest condolences. No one around here knows what happened; why i returned to live in an empty house, a house I left years ago. I know they would have made up different stories but that’s their business. It is better that way, they could say all sort of things about why i came back and it doesn’t matter as long as they would let me be”.

Minutes seem like hours and after what seemed like an eternity but was just ten minutes, he stopped in front of her house. As she alighted the car, there was so much she wanted to say to him but she didn’t know if it would sound right or wrong coming from her; someone who has been so judgemental about him. However, as she walked to the gate, she turned and asked him to come in for a cup of Choco drink but he declined. “not today, some other time maybe” he said. She stood there by the gate and watched as he put the car in reverse, she stood watching as the rear light of the car became distant tiny red spot in the rain. Finally she pushed open the gate and walked in. For the rest of the evening, as she busied herself with her domestic responsibilities, there was only one thing on her mind, “A distorted truth”. Later, with her baby sleeping quietly beside her husband, she pick up her pen and pad and started to write.

It is very easy to be condemnatory about people whose appearance doesn’t appeal to us; it is even easier to say this and that, to be disapproving of people we know nothing about… It’s human nature.
She has a friend who sells groceries at a store beside a laundry shop. She usually stop by to chit chat with him some days when she had nothing else to do after dropping her baby at the day care center. she is a writer, although she would tell you instead that it’s something she is doing to keep in form and to pass away time pending when she would get another job. There was once an argument between she and that her friend; it had started with a random question she asked one time she couldn’t help but comment on the group of women who usually sit together inside Ruby’s place; a make up/ saloon shop at the opposite side of the road and sip iced tea over other people’s life. Their victims are celebrities mostly, but sometimes it is their neighbor or an absent member of the group.

she had argued that there are many sides to a story, and that the truth sometimes isn’t always the truth because everyone who tells a story would tell from their own side, their own version.

He argued that there are just two main sides to a story although could be said to be three: The truth, the distorted truth and the lie. The distorted truth and the lie doesn’t really have any literal difference, a lie is a lie. Hence, the two sides to a story are the truth and the lie.
Then he pointed towards the make up shop and said “whatever they are saying there cannot be the truth. Even if it were, it would be edited; an edited truth is a distorted truth; a distorted truth is a lie”. She had laughed and said “you see it’s the same thing we both are saying, just from two different sides”.

He always sits in front of the laundry shop smoking without care. He is a stranger in the area even though that’s where he grew up. rumor has it that he recently returned to their family house at crowther street after seven wasted years. ” i sabi the mama well well”, one of the rumor mongers once told her. “she nor be my friend o, but she dey always buy market from my hand; she be my customer. i been hear say na the boy stubborn head and him yama-yama life na him make the mama die quick. chai! that fine woman”. Another time, she had overheard the gossip group in Ruby’s place talking about him when she went to retouch her hair. “do you know his father disowned him?” a plump one had asked another, an equally plump and ugly woman. “are you serious” she had replied. “is that why he left home?”. ” for where, na the papa pursue am comot for house o” the owner of the saloon had interjected. She had then clapped her hands i the usual gossip style and uttered “wonder shall never cease…hmm!”.

She doesn’t know him, hasn’t spoken to him before and cannot in any way say if what she heard were true or not. She can’t help looking at him every time she passes and would always wonder how someone could be so nonchalant about his life; the way he smokes, how he sits in front of the laundry shop every day, like someone who have nothing to do, no where to go, no responsibilities, no care. And she would shake her head in disgust and in pity and mutter to herself “a wasted life indeed”. One time their gaze met; she was returning home after dropping her baby at the daycare center, she had stopped by at the friend’s store to pay courtesy. As she was leaving, she wanted only to take a cursory look at him but he was already looking at her. He greeted her good day but she didn’t reply.

It rained heavily that evening; a slight drizzle that quickly turned torrential. The sky was grey black when she left home to pick her daughter at the daycare center, she knew it would rain so she took an umbrella hoping to be back home before the drizzle turned into a shower. She didn’t waste time with her usual pleasantries with the daycare owner, she strapped her baby firmly behind her and quickened her pace. The first splatter of the torrent hit her umbrella when she had gone just few blocks from the daycare center. She quickened her pace further but that only got her close to a huge mango tree beside the road where she took shelter. she hoped she would see out the rain and when it got more intense, she started waving towards passing cars, hoping one of them would stop and give her a ride to as near home as possible but none of those cars stopped, not even the ones whose owners she saw at the daycare center. Dejected, she stood and watched them pass reading the stickers pasted on their rear windshield. ” I AM A WINNER”, “2017 MY YEAR OF EVERLASTING JOY”, “GIVERS NEVER LACK”, “JESUS is LORD”, “MARK 12:31”. “MATTHEW 22:39”. Some were so big they cover a large part of the car’s rear windshield. She stood there, lost i thoughts as the rain continued to pour, her sandal and the hem of her dress already soaked with muddy water.

She didn’t notice the car as it drove towards her, she didn’t knew when it stopped. it was the car horn that jerked her out of her reverie just as the driver was winding down the passenger’s window. She was overwhelmed with embarrassment when she who the driver was. It was him; the chimney, the one she had heard so many bad things about, the guy whose greetings she had ignored a number of times. Then she remembered she didn’t saw him in his usual smoking spot earlier when she was going to the daycare center to pick her daughter…

what if u asked her and she does send it, does that also indicate she is interested in you?