MIE BLAK KADZ R IVYLLL

Translation: My black cat are evil.

WAIT! DON'T SPAM ME W/ HATE STUFF YET! What I mean to say is that every Nigerian says that my black kittens are evil. I just changed the "your" part so I could catch you guys' attention. :) But seriously, I'm pretty much sick of this. All they do is complain about how black cats the Devil and all that. One of them even said we should have gotten white cats instead. I call that stupidness. They think that all of these fears of black cats are just a part of their ancient culture and tradition. IT'S NOT. I did some background research and discovered that actually, in their Origin stories about the world, the Yoruba main God's son came down to the Earth. He brought a chicken to make land, sand for the land, and a BLACK CAT for FRIENDLY COMPANY. In the Yoruba religion animals can talk, and the black cat was completely nice. I think it's really sad that they have their own stories twisted. All of this black cat junk came from Europeans. It started with some Pope and then it skyrocketed since that. Even here. I see it as kind of racial self-hatred as well. Look at it this way: the Nigerian who said we should have gotten another type of cat had at first just said she was afraid of our black cat. That's not as bad, but why was that she said that we should have gotten specifically a white cat instead? To them, white is right. I seriously don't believe in that. White is not right. Neither is any other ethnicity. We are all Homo Sapiens. This is a problem not only in Nigeria but all over the world. We seriously need to deal with this. If we don't, we'll all be thinking somebody is better than another. That's not cool AT ALL. D:

Signing off,
The Traveler

Maybe I'm Just Outta the Loop But...

...am I the only person who didn't know that plantains are giant leaves?

My parents own a plantain farm in the BACKYARD backyard, and I went back there today with my Dad to go and prune the plants or whatever it's called when you chop off the dead parts. Plantains look weak to me, IMO. They're just tall stalks with a lot of brown dead skins covering them. A lot of their leaves shrivel up and die and just hang off of them. And even the healthy leaves look sorta wither-ishy. My Dad says they're really really hardy. He just says we gotta do all this chopping off all the dead parts stuff because we want the biggest fruit we can get from them. I'm pretty excited but already I'm a bit disappointed. About a year ago when we had the chicken farm (I posted about that, search for chicken farm) I thought we would have so much chicken on the dinner table I wouldn't know what to do with myself. This was such an untrue moment, it was absolutely unbelievable. Instead of getting chicken galore we had to watch all of it get sold to the customers. We probably ate maybe seven out of the hundreds of darn chickens that we were selling to everyone else! I think it's gonna be another one of those situations when the plantains start bearing fruit. I love plantain. I love fried plantain (dodo), I love plantains made into chips (ibekere). I love it ALL. But unfortunately for me the rest of the country does as well. :0 So what am I supposed to do? I'm just gonna have to be tortured and watch all of the plump fruits be sold to a whole bunch of people I don't even know. Or maybe I'll wait until the minute the plantains are ripe, snatch them all up, fry in them in the middle of the night, and eat them all selfishly. And then the next day I'll probably throw up for three hours straight from grease overload. I might have to reboot myself after that. NOT COOL.


Signing off,
The Traveler

Years

It's been a very long time since we left for Nigeria.

I remember back when I was 11 and I was so excited about coming. For some reason back then when I googled to my heart's content about Nigeria I could never get any good information about the country. Right now though, if I google "Nigeria" I get way more stuff than I could ever want. That's strange. I seriously can't believe that it's been...over two years?...since we came here. It's felt like forever. Not in a bad way, but not in a good way either. But at the same time, it seems like time is speeding up too fast, that it's just rocketing away. I might be confusing a few people, but I don't mean to; that's the best way for me to describe it. Look at how much stuff I've done here, and it such a short span of time! I traveled to Abu Dhabi, met new people, did all sorts of stuff. I sort of wonder where I would be in my life if I hadn't come here either. What would have happened if I had spent the last two years back in Durham, in North Carolina? Would I have seen and done so many new things? I bet not. This might sound extremely weird: I kind of miss the sort of things that I wouldn't have even noticed if I were in America. Like having a nice high-pressure shower for a change. Or being able to just walk down the street to the nearest electronics store and buy whatever I need. And socializing with friends who were raised in the same culture that I've been. Don't get me wrong, I'm super glad I came here because I've seen a lot of awesome stuff. I also believe that if I had never come here, then I don't think that I would've ever gotten the idea for L I N E S, the webcomic which I'm about to start publishing soon. I think a lot of things wouldn't have happened. Like I would have never gotten Shep, Night, or Harry Potter of course. And we would have never even have thought of the possibility of acquiring a few pet goats if we were in the USA. It's weird. It's like I like it here and I'm grateful for all the amazing experiences I had, but I wanna go home and experience the boring stuff at the same time. That doesn't make any sense to me. I want to experience going to the grocery store, and laughing with my friends, and just goofing off. I'm confusing myself.

Signing off,
The Traveler

The Dog. He's Big.

Ok, the title's not accurate.

It's more like: "AH! YOUR DOG IS TOO FRIGGIN BIG! HE COULD CHOP MY HEAD OFF!!!" Yeah, that's more like it. The exclamations in capital letters are what Nigerians usually say when they stroll into the yard and see Shep. I posted a few pics of him about...forever ago. He's grown. A lot. When I mean a lot, I mean "people who are afraid of dogs, don't try to imagine what he looks like" a lot. Like bigger than big itself. Bigger than...I can't tell you how big. Ok. I've exaggerated. But on a serious note here, Nigerians are really afraid of dogs for reasons that I can not understand. It's like they have some sort of repulsion to them. And they'll be all like "HAHA YOU CAN'T GET ME" but for example if Shep was let loose in the yard then they'd be screaming their butts off. My Dad claims humorously that if the police tried to search your car and you had a    German Shepherd (or Alsatian if you're British) in the trunk then they'd just let you go right on your way. Even with all of their machine guns and all that. I don't know what happened. It's not that every Nigerian doesn't own a dog. There are quite a few who do. There's actually this breed of local dog which we have named the Local Dog breed. Yes, I know, we put a lot of effort into our names for things. The problem is though is that most Nigerians beat their dogs all the time :(. Positive reinforcement hasn't come to Nigeria yet! There was actually this one girl who I met who said she wanted a dog so I was all like "Ok" and then she looked all confused when I said that I'd be back after I walked my dog and she asked me "Why do you do that?" This is the girl who wants a dog. Go figure that one out. Then tell me. It'll save me the trouble.

Signing off,
The Traveler