D Soup Kitchen

You've been here before, lost in a red, dancing shadow that's warm on your face like a million pecks at once. Pecks, if the kiss gets any deeper than that, you know you'll get Burnt by fire. We all have fires in our lives, not the kind of fire you build, the kind that breaks out all at once, a fire that consumes you,  threatening to steal all your peace, kill all your oxygen, destroy all that you own. And it always starts out small, a white lie; a compromise that isn't hurting anyone, an "it's really not that bad" that terraforms into a life-threathening cancer. Fire!! It's a pretty word, and somewhere in our souls, sometime in our actions we are lighting it up, chalantly, non chalantly, doesn't matter, with all the flammable material that is in you it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with it, because sweep a flame under the rug all you want, one day, that rug itself will catch fire. So what do you do incase of a fire? Ste...

All across Nigeria, plastered on billboards towering high o'er the insipient cities are "My Father My Father, That Witch Must Die!!" by Apostle Jaja, "You Will Kill Xmas Goat This Season" by Bishop Bantu, or "Operation Point and Kill" by-doesn't matter. The point is your way too cool for all of that, you're not hopping from church to church seeking for the next great Holy Spirit display of fireworks, or are you? At one point or the other in your walk with God, you've experienced something, something that gave you pause, something that even if just for the briefiest moment (before your mind got to rationalising) convinced you beyond a doubt that God is real. Maybe you've even challenged the notion of falling under the anointing, walked up to the preacher at the pulpit only to fall flat on your behind speaking in 13 languages. It happens. It's supposed to happen, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to happen enough. And ev...

If you are or have ever been in a Higher Institution, you've most likely had the common room experience. The common room is a common place you occupy, to sit on common chairs and watch common television. There are laughs, there are jokes and a couple couples having PDA (Public Displays of Affection) but look closer and you will see the splinter that is at the heart of all human conflict. The common room is communal, built to foster togetherness, and it's a good notion, a laudable thing really, but the thing is, we were never created to be common. We go to the common room because we dont want to be alone, we want the blanket comfort of being in a crowd, to take advantage of an instituted sense of belonging. We seek to show off our vast knowledge of the European league, to duke it out with naysayers that Messi is better than Ronaldo, to speak in slow whispers of waning or brimming love. We bring our variant selves and motives to common ground. It's not a bad thing, we go...

Everybody loves music, period. I was going to start this off by saying something witty, or catchy or even melodious, but this is music I'm talking about here, so me trying to write about how great it is would be like trying to capture the glory of the sun in a picture. You could darn well try, but nothing beats the real thing. Music is awesome! It's powerful! It's one of those few avenues (movies, books and drugs) that can give people  an escape from reality. Why else is everyone walking around under the dismissive nose of the older generation, wearing an earpiece, blocking out the whole wide world and its attendant noise. God made a million things and He said, "it is good" then He made music and He cried out "Turn down for what?" Okay Wayne, point taken, music's wonderful, get on with it. Right. Unlike drug abuse music is good, but not all music is good for you. Great music isn't always good music, good music isn't always great music,...

You see that #1 up there? Next to bad bad days? It signifies that this will be a series. Yeah we're gonna be talking about this quite often, because a bad bad day is something that happens often enough to be significant (and no that is not a curse, it is a statistical fact). Luckily though a fact isn't always the truth. Bad days start off like any other, you wake up, the clouds are in the sky, roots are in the ground, and all sorts of things occupy the space between. But after those initial moments of normalcy, something or a series of somethings happen that throw you off balance and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of your 24hours. It might be something someone says or does (and isn't it interesting? It's never that the Naira is down, or fuel price is up, or that another dozen graves are being dug because of Boko Haram), no, something or someone that pales in comparison to the economy or terrorism trips you up and has you tumbling downhill like Jack. And wh...