Payme's profile on www.omojuwa.com!

This happened a little over a week ago :)

MEET OLUWAPEMI ELUJOBA, SHE IS THE BEAUTIFUL SUPERBLOGGER WITH A HEART

She is the very first winner of our SuperBloggers series. Considering the plans and ideas we have for this writers and bloggers competition, I am particularly excited because our first winner is not just a person of competence but also a lady with a big heart. She chose to donate her cash prize to a charity called 1Child1Book an organisation founded bY child songstress Tosin Jegede. She took time out to introduce herself to us. Enjoy the short profile below.

Violent Acts - Lasting Change?

   "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
                                                                                          Mahatma Gandhi

Do not dismiss this as the musings of a naïve girl. Dad has always spoken to me about Nigerian issues (politics, tribal and religious segregation etc.) for as long as I can remember (we are side-kicks lol). We would vent our frustrations, suggest our solutions, and talk about possible miracles that could lead to change – all in our sitting room. Then we would end it all with the resigned knowledge that our country has such a long way to go – conversations like this end up with me feeling deflated when I realise how much ground we still have to cover has a nation. 

I believe I am not the only one who feels like this and I know that these feelings of deflation and frustrations drive the passion behind the on-going calls for protests be it online or on the streets. There are positive and negative effects for different actions, so my question is this: 

Have we really thought about our modes of protests?

Heroes and She-roes

This article has nothing to do with abusive relationships!!!

                      "Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

                                                                                               Betty Friedan

I have recently been thinking about some issues to do with the female gender and in light of today being International Women's day, I would like to share one with you :)

There are many beautiful sayings in my language (Yoruba) that describe how much of a blessing mothers are, for instance ‘Iya ni wura – mother is gold’, ‘Orisa bi iya o si laye – there is no idol like a mother in the world’ etc. I am sure that other languages have their own ways of expressing these sentiments. However, there is another saying that is frequently used when praising mothers which does not sit well with me:  

The Truth?

While growing up, we were told things about how big the world is; how it was waiting for us to launch ourselves. We believed if we stuck with school, stuck with our arts, got high grades and graduated successfully, we would be fine. That was until we got thrown in the deep end and roughly woken from our slumber. We start out being simple, nice and kind but end up as hard and cynical adults as the realisation that our expectations have been unrealistic dawns on us.   

Maybe if we had been told the truth about the world all along, we would have learnt to make dreaming and acting our second nature; we would have been focused on working hard and looking for ways to create the environments we dreamt of. Maybe we would not have been expecting to have things laid out for us; we would not have felt like the world owed us anything and our thoughts would have been about what to give.

TAKE A STEP!!!

"Nothing will work unless you do" - Maya Angelou

In light of my previous post, I would like to give some tips on how individuals or groups of people can raise money to support the projects that they have in mind in order to help their communities. I do not expect people to trust strangers with their money, so knocking from door to door, asking for donations will result in little or no funds. Organising activities which would involve donors’ participation would generate more trust. Here are a few tips on how to get started. Enjoy!

Project(s)  

I will advise to start with one project and then build on the success of that. Projects can vary from buying books for your school library, organising a fun day out for the less privileged kids in your area, to organising a grand immunisation scheme awareness for illnesses like Polio, Lassa Fever etc.

Finance

Make sure you know how much money the project requires before you start. You might even get discounts from suppliers who know you are working towards a worthy cause. Be very efficient and realistic with your plans. You gain trust when people can see that you are truly on top of things. Disappointing people is not the way to go!

To Nkem

 

            "Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone." - George Washington

This is to the memory of my childhood friend ‘Nkem’ (not real name).

I have been quite heartbroken and sad this week; angry too. I have just been told about the death of one of my childhood friends. She passed on four years ago and knowing about this is extremely painful but knowing the cause of her death makes it even worse and this is my way of grieving for her. I think writing will make me feel temporarily better and I hope it does her memory justice. 

We were childhood friends (neighbours). She was sweet and extremely nice. She had three siblings while I have one. We lived in a compound with four flats and a boys-quarter with about five rooms. Her family had three of the rooms in the boys-quarters – one room served as the sitting room (the dad sometimes slept there), the second as the bedroom and the third was their kitchen.  They were poor. Her parents were into farming – mainly Cassava. They trekked for miles to and from their farms daily and on the weekends, Nkem and her siblings went with them. My parents were not rich but we were ‘OK’. There were three other families in the flats and at least one of the parents in these flats had white collar jobs. We all lived in the same compound but still appeared worlds apart. The kids in the flats went to private schools. Nkem and her siblings went to public schools. As kids, it never mattered, we ate together and played together. The flats were all bungalows so we had lots of space in the compound for all types of games – hide & seek, role-plays etc. Childhood was amazing. I remember my sister's 4^th birthday – we all had pure unadulterated fun, the type that only kids could have.

The Nigerian Dream?

Growing up in Nigeria, I knew I was going to become a medical doctor. It was not a hard decision and I know that a lot of people especially Africans would understand. Back home, science students blessed with good grades are expected to end up as Doctors or Engineers and social-science/art students would become Lawyers and Accountants. Well, I could not really stand Physics so Engineering was out of it for me pretty early on. For students who ended up becoming medical doctors, the route taken to reach that goal was quite straight forward: finish secondary school with high grades, write Jamb and get admitted to study medicine and they were very much on their way. This isn’t the route for everyone but in my environment back then it was the most common route.

Compared with a few people that I know, I actually had a little driving force: I did not want to be a Nurse! Before you crucify me, my dad is a Nurse. A really good and passionate nurse if I must say and I admire him a lot. So my reasons?  Well, I must have been about 9 years old when I got admitted into hospital because I had typhoid (“the lollies being sold outside the school gates are bad for you, you don’t know where the water’s from” my mum warned, but Payme had to find out the hard way :|. The things we put our parents through ey!). Back to business, there is one thing I hate about hierarchy and that is the ‘rudeness’ that people with no professionalism bring with it. And I am sure Nigerians can testify to it that right from primary school to places of work, ‘SENIORITY’ is the order of the day. I saw how some of the doctors talked to the nurses like the nurses were less important and I did not like it – there goes my first reason. Also, while on my hospital bed, I was being pampered and treated nicely and I would like to think that this was because the nurses liked my dad who was their colleague at the time plus he was also a unionist. He was not a paediatric nurse, but even in his absence, the nurses were really nice. But there was a stark difference between the way I was treated and the way the other kids in the ward were treated even with their parents present. They got their drugs, injections etc. on time but there was a distinct lack of empathy and the nurses/doctors were sometimes impatient when it came to reassuring the worried parents. I knew this difference was because they regarded my dad as one of their own and being his child, it was simply natural for them to be nice. Right there and then, as a child, I decided I was going to work in a hospital (albeit for selfish reasons) – there’s my second reason. So, I was going to work in a hospital and not as a nurse but as a doctor. Simple!

Our Nigeria?

♫ Nigeria, my beloved country, working together is our aim ♫

I remember listening to and singing this song as a child, especially on children’s day (May 27). Are those match parades still held? Good times!

I am fully aware of the complexities surrounding Nigeria, from our politics to the economy and I know that the problems will not just disappear neither will one solution suffice. I am not for any political party be it PDP, ACN, ANPP or the labour unions. This is for Nigerians like me - ordinary citizens who are tired of hearing or reading about the same old things. My aim is to get us to think about the place we call home. I still stand by one of my previous posts titled 'Is a united Nigeria feasible?'. However, knowing what I know now, I probably would have written it using a slightly different approach.

Why is it that after nearly 52 years, Nigeria has not developed to the point of having things done in a real democratic way? Can we blame the majority of the Northerners who want to live under Islamic rule? Can we blame the Easterners who want to be able to enjoy the benefits of living in an oil-rich region? Can we blame the Westerners who want more support for their agricultural practices? Can we blame Nigerians who want to be able to practise their religions freely without the fear of being attacked? Can we blame the Nigerians that think each region should go their separate ways? Can there ever be a united Nigeria? Is the Federal government system working? Should Nigeria be broken apart?