Life is a tad crazy for many of us here, that we begin to wonder whether we are going to make it all alive. The weather is cold, the little water we have access to is frozen and filthy, we live on nothing else other than the unpredictability of our means of livelihood. We have paths that lead to us, but over the years, no one has found a path to come to our aid. Our condition has charmed us on our soil, and the fear of the unknown world we may be stepping into if by chance we get the way out of here, also drained our guts.

******

I remember years ago, fleet of rides came to our shore and gifted out many things we wanted and things we did not even need, which perhaps we may not be needing till we sleep beneath the soil. I was curious and moved by their oratory dexterities, because all they said pinpointed our challenges and the promises made afterwards made me shed tears of joy. Alas, ten years and still counting, none of these heads of the luxurious weeps show up to fulfill one of the promises made to us, and most gifted items are no where to be found and the little found are neither felt by minor majority groups of our population nor accounted for.

******

We have been improvising before they came to promise us emancipation from dearth of stomach, physical and mental infrastructural deposits and empowerments. We do not seize to adapt to our climatic, social, economic and environmental conditions. We continue to believe the good time will come with good people who will come over here, and this time will stay with us, hear us out and will live with us everything we ever wanted and needed in the past, in the present and in the future to come- How to count and be counted at all times amidst woes, foes and throes of our lives. These are the recipes we want and need: showing us how, not telling us; taking us out to observe with our naked eyes what's told and to return an enlightened and well informed prodigal, un-parochial and patriotic sun of this potentially great though crazy soil.

(C)  AbdulHafeez T. Oyewole

Art: Wikimedia Commons