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Drink plenty water. i mean always

Get a brain please

where will you be working?

i am not surprise, she actually looks like someone who will do that. Ashawo

Read more on http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/in-nigeria-youre-either-somebody-or-nobody.html?_r=0

IN America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure.

The earliest indoctrination many of us have to this mind-set happens at home. Throughout my childhood, “househelps” — usually teenagers from poor families — came to live with my family, sometimes up to three or four of them at a time. In exchange for scrubbing, laundering, cooking, baby-sitting and everything else that brawn could accomplish, either they were sent to school, or their parents were sent regular cash.

My father detested it when our househelps sang. Each time a new one arrived, my siblings and I spent the first few evenings as emissaries from the living room, where our family watched TV after dinner, to the kitchen, where the househelps washed dishes or waited to be summoned.

“My daddy said I should tell you to stop singing.”

Immediately, they would shush. Often, they forgot and started again — if not that same evening, on a subsequent one. Finally, my father would lose his imperial cool, stomp over to the kitchen and stand by the door.

“Stop singing!” he would command.

That usually settled the matter.

I honestly cannot blame my father. Although they hailed from different villages across the land, their melodies were always the same: The most lugubrious tunes in the most piercing tones, which made you think of death.

Melancholic singing was not the only trait they had in common. They all gave off a feral scent, which never failed to tell the tale each time they abandoned the wooden stools set aside for them and relaxed on our sofas while we were out. They all displayed a bottomless hunger that could never be satisfied, no matter how much you heaped on their plates or what quantity of our leftovers they cleaned out.

And they all suffered from endless tribulations, in which they always wanted to get you involved.

The roof of their family house got blown off by a rainstorm. Their mother just had her 11th baby and the doctor had seized mum and newborn, pending payment of the hospital bill. Their brother, an apprentice trader in Aba, was wrongfully accused of stealing from his boss and needed to be bailed out. A farmland tussle had left their father lying half-dead in hospital, riddled with machete wounds. Their mother’s auntie, a renowned witch, had cursed their sister so that she could no longer hear or speak. They were pregnant but the carpenter responsible was claiming he had never met them before ... Always one calamity after the other.

Househelps were widely believed to be scoundrels and carriers of disease. The first thing to do when a new one arrived was drag him off to the laboratory for blood tests, the results of which would determine whether he should be allowed into your haven. The last thing to do when one was leaving was to search him for stolen items. In one memorable incident, the help in my friend’s house, knowing that her luggage would be searched, donned all the children’s underwear she had stolen. And she nearly got away with it. But just as she stepped out the door, my friend’s mother noticed that the girl’s hips had broadened beyond what food could afflict on the human anatomy in such little time, and insisted that she raise her skirt.

Every family we knew had similar stories about their domestic staff. With time, we children learned to think of them as figures depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, as if they had been created only as a useful backdrop against which we were to shine.

Not much has changed since I was a child. My friend’s daughter, who attends one of those schools where all the students are children of either well-off Nigerians or well-paid expatriates, recently captured this attitude while summarizing the plot of my novel to her mother. “Three people died,” the 11-year-old said, “but one of them was a poor man.”

It reminded me of the conversation in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” when Huck tries to explain a delay in a journey:

“It warn’t the grounding — that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.”

“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”

“No’m. Killed a nigger.”

“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”

The World Health Organization has reported that Nigerians are the highest users of such products: 77% of Nigerian women use the products on a regular basis. They are followed by Togo with 59%; South Africa with 35%; and Mali at 25%.


Studies have found that men are also beginning to bleach their skin
South Africa banned products containing more than 2% of hydroquinone - the most common active ingredient in in the 1980s. But it is easy to see creams and lotions containing the chemical on the stalls here. Some creams contain harmful steroids and others mercury.

While skin-lightening creams have been used by some South Africans for many years, they have become more common recently with the influx of people from countries such as Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are even more widespread.

In a bustling African market in the centre of Yeoville in Johannesburg, it is skin lighteners galore.

Walking through this community is like walking through a mini-Africa: you can find someone from any part of the continent here.

I notice that many of the women have uncharacteristically light skin faces while the rest of their bodies are darker.

Some even have scabby burns on their cheeks from the harmful chemicals used to strip the skin of pigmentation.

They don't want to speak openly about why they bleach their skin, or even have their pictures taken.

Psychologists say there are also underlying reasons why people bleach their skin - but low self-esteem and, to some degree self-hate, are a common thread.

But skin-lightening is not just a fascination and obsession of women. Congolese hair stylist Jackson Marcelle says he has been using special injections to bleach his skin for the past 10 years. Each injection lasts for six months.

"I pray every day and I ask God, 'God why did you make me black?' I don't like being black. I don't like black skin," he tells me.


Skin lightening creams are popular in many parts of Africa
Mr Marcelle - known in this busy community as Africa's Michael Jackson - says his mother used to apply creams on him when he was young in order to make him appear "less black".

"I like white people. Black people are seen as dangerous; that's why I don't like being black. People treat me better now because I look like I'm white," he adds.

Entrenched in the minds of many Africans from a young age is the adage "if it's white, it's all right", a belief that has chipped away at the self-esteem of millions.

Until this changes, no amount of official bans or public information campaigns will stop people risking serious damage to their health in the pursuit of what they think is beauty.
To read more go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20444798

If you can allow your child (boy or girl) to watch that then you can say it is appropriate

Toh its not their fault now. Afterall in Nigeria nobody preaches satiation. If not i believe an average Nigerian with his/her senses will know that its better to die poor in Nigeria than live this kind of life.

brosss: This is a victory for morality........

i think you mean immorality

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Can you imagine Sha, Enjoying the fresh air as promised by the president

Since you people don't want Dangote to make money then just protest for tax free importation so that the white man will be rich. Stupid Negroes. Shell is exploiting you, you don't say shit, because they are white but if Dangote does one small thing every maggot will start disturbing. Racist fools

Don't forget believing in local products (Sunday Mba)

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