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

Seasons are Confused

Yeah. The Earth's finally lost it, after all these decades of trying.

It can't decide if it wants it to be Rainy season or Dry season. Every few days it'll rain. But then, between those times, it's super dry and hot. So what is it? When it rains, it rains like a hurricane. A roof that we had built which was pinned down by NAILS splintered off of the wooden columns and flew into the yard like nothing! That's how strong these rains can get. Almost immediately I thought that it was Rainy Season after this. My Dad said no, though; "There's always a mid-Dry Season rain." But then, only two days ago, it was raining again!!! It doesn't make any sense. I don't know what to think. Maybe it's global warming? True. But perhaps it's just that Rainy Season's come early. But wouldn't that be global warming as well? I say that the seasons are getting all messed up. Because I know it's not just here that it's like this. In America, the winter wasn't so cold. If it's like this now, what'll happen a few years from now? What sort of conditions, what sort of world would we be residing in? Those are the questions that I'm beginning to ask. That, and how Terraria is so addicting. :P

Signing off,
The Traveler

Lagos in a Day Again

Yeah it's sooo late right now,

But we came back from going to Lagos at six in the afternoon. We left at six in the morning. We did it take so long? Why were we even going in the FIRST DARN PLACE? Well...we need car parts. One thing about Nigeria is that it isn't a very modern-car friendly type of place. So even though all these rich people are buying Lambourghinis and McLarens and Porsches, the problem is is that nobody knows how to fix those type of cars here. Why you would bring one of them over in the first place boggles me; you should see the conditions of the roads. A sports car's worst nightmare. So we had a Porsche come over to get fixed so we had to go all the way to Lagos and back in one DAY. And even with all of that work, guess what? The parts that we got were the wrong ones!!! See, that's the other problem; nothing is standardized here so you never know what you're gonna get. It's a pretty big problem. So we're always dealing with "OH-NO THIS IS THE WRONG FRIGGIN' PART WHAT THE HECK ARE WE GONNA DO" type of situations. Seriously, it's not the funny. At all. We lose money and we really are powerless to stop losing money. :( Well, no use in complaining, right? Even with all of that I still had a fun time in Lagos. We went and ate at an Indian restaurant! Might not sound like much but that's probably the only Indian restaurant in the whole country. :D So, longer post tomorrow,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Strike Ended

The strike ended like a week ago,

I've been super busy trying to code my new video game and making some new comic strips and STOPPING A THIEF (more on this later), but here's the thing: the strike came and went. And NOTHING changed. At all. The fuel subsidy wasn't brought back, and people didn't really get what they wanted. Everyone thought that this was it: the end of corruption in Nigeria as the rebels overthrew the Government. But then like only a few days after the whole thing started suddenly, the strikers, the noble rebels, say "okay. That's it. We're done. Everyone, we're gonna give in so go and work for the Government that we were so against a few days ago." I know, makes no sense, right? Well, my Dad believes that the rebels who were so against the corruption, the gas, everything actually got paid off by the Government to shut up and be subservient. It was pretty sad, and honestly I really can't take the public Nigerian force very seriously anymore. When I tell this to other Nigerians who were so charged up a couple of seconds ago they just laugh and shrug and say, "oh well! We'll survive!" No, I think it's a more serious issue than just shrugging the whole thing off. I'm really beginning to think that now there will be even more corruption and stealing from the public because now the Government knows that Nigerians aren't going to do anything to stop them! So in other words, Nigerians might have lost the little power that they had once had just because they decided to give in. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's going to come a day when Nigeria is once again for the hundredth time forced under new government (this has happened a lot in the past 50 years of the country). My Dad said things didn't used to be like this, that the people had a lot more power, that the places were cleaner, that even Naira had twice more value than United States Dollars. I think that these "golden years" was actually the country coasting off of the wealth and scraps that the British nation left behind when Nigeria became an independent country. I really don't wanna think that, I kinda want to believe that old Nigeria would be like how my Dad describes it even if Britain hadn't colonized it. I don't know. I really don't. But, there's still (hopefully) a long, loong way to go for this country. It's only been around for 50 years! A lot of empires started badly, and then steadied out. Worse case scenario, there's going to come a time when this country is so absolutely horrible that the people will not take it anymore, and they will revolt angrily. They're already angry, but not angry enough, even though their politicians steal money from their pockets, become multibillionaires (in Naira), go overseas to the US and stay there while their homeland is crumbling. It's gotten to a point when if you're talking about a governor, you don't say, "so what have they done for the country?" You say, "so how much have they stolen?" Here's the really sad part: most Nigerians complain complain complain about this, but I'll tell you something; if they were in the same position as the stealing politicians they would do the EXACT. SAME. THING. Because everyone wants to be like that, everyone wants to have power and money like this crazy billionaires have. To tell you how bad it gets, some politicians get so rich they honestly don't know what to do with the money. I've heard of one who sent their kids or something in the USA and let them take private jet rides. And then they'll be taking pictures of themselves waving bundles full of hundred dollar bills in the camera. They even do their weekend shopping in Dubai, more than 3 countries away! And they barely invest it in research organizations or anything like that. They don't do anything worthwhile with it! I mean, you can only buy so many Lamborghinis. It's absolutely ridiculous, and the most maddening part is that nobody does anything to stop it.

Signing off,
The Traveler