Thank you kisses and farewell to Ojukwu

I want to thank all of you that thanked God with me in your comments on my last post. May God’s blessings continue to follow you and your loved ones everywhere you go..

My brother is doing very well. The dude is one of the nicest people I know though he knows how to get under my skin sometimes. I kept thinking to myself, Who was going to get under my skin if anything had happened to him? I appreciate life more than ever now and I thank God for life.

Meanwhile, I find myself calling ‘Jehova!’ more often than not these days. If I am in a bus and it makes an abrupt stop, this lady would call ‘Jehova!’ Watching Lagos ‘okada’ riders in action hasn’t made it easy not to. The peculiar thing is the way I say it though; in this ‘well rounded Igbotic’ accent! I just completely forget where I am and say it the way my grandmother would. I guess I am yet to get over the shock completely. But I will get there.  And I do need to stop stunning people when I do that. It is unbecoming.

I did weep a little when I heard of Odumegwu Ojukwu’s death. My mum used to sing us war songs that they sang during the Biafran war. She was a child then but was old enough to know how this man was respected. Some were songs in praise of the war lord. May his soul rest in perfect peace. Click here to read a short article about him.

Wishing you all a great week ahead.

Lily Johnson

The saddest and scariest day of my life...

I had the most terrible experience on Monday 14th of this month. My younger brother Andre had gone to work as usual (he is an IT student at an organisation at Ikeja) and when he didn’t come back till 11pm, we knew something was wrong.


Someone sent my sister a message on Facebook that he had been involved in accident at Egbeda and was left for dead on the Express. That night, my folks went out in a car with our landlord to look for him. They searched all the hospitals in the area and didn’t find him. They even went to Ikeja General Hospital to search and was told that they hadn’t admitted any accident victim.

I don’t think I have ever been in that kind of situation ever in my life.

Meanwhile, we were trying to find out who made the call to the person that informed my sister on Facebook. It was already 1:45am Tuesday morning and we were yet to get any concrete information concerning my brother’s whereabouts. The guy that contacted my sister said the guy that called him said he had seen my brother lying on the Express, took his wallet, got a card and called the number on it and it happened to be his.

The biggest question was, Where at Egbeda? How was he? Was he still alive?. I kept shouting at the guy asking these questions. He had no idea.

The guy who was my brother’s friend gave us the number of the man that called him. It was around 2am and my folks were going up and down looking for my brother in streets and ditches. Best believe it. It took time him time to pick the call.

His story

He had seen my brother in a ditch near a filling station. He appeared drugged or something. He just took his wallet, took a card and called the number on it. So where was he, he wasn’t sure. He had called an ambulance immediately after that. He didn’t stay to know if they later arrived.

He described the filling station. My parents and landlord who had been roaming the streets of Egbeda began to look for this filling station hoping and praying that my brother was still alive. They stopped at all the filling stations they saw to search. The search wasn’t fruitful.

They had almost given up. My mum who is a very strong person had broken down in tears and my sister’s wailing resounded in the night. It was 3am.

Then they sighted the police and stopped to ask them if they had seen anything concerning Andre.

They said they had, described my brother to a ‘T’ and said he had been drugged , before being robbed of everything including his shoes, trousers and shirt and thrown out of a moving vehicle but he was lucky that he fell into mud and sustained minor injuries. They had taken him to a nearby hospital. My parents were taken there. My brother was unconscious, was nearly naked and hadn’t received any form of treatment.

The good news however, was that he was alive.

What really happened...

My brother entered a bus going to Egbeda at Ikeja. Shortly after, the guy beside him bought ‘pure’ water and gave him one explaining that the hawker didn’t have change. He was thirsty though so he thanked the stranger and drank some and told him the water had a taste. And that was it. Both the hawker and the guy were in on the ‘deal’. Nobody knows the full story and no one will ever know but I will be forever grateful to God for saving my brother’s life. And I pray that none of you would ever be this sort of situation ever in Jesus’ Name. Amen!

May God always protect you and your loved ones.

Lily Johnson

At random

So I watched ‘Ice loves Coco’ [a reality TV show] and saw Coco working out. That woman looks so in shape even though she is voluptuous. One particular routine caught my eye. Okay, while most of us work out in ‘canvass’ or sports shoes, she works out in high heels. And she was doing squats in them! Now, some Hollywood starlets with beautiful behinds like Kim Kardashian and Jessica Biel have sworn that they got that not by injecting fat from their thighs into their behinds or butt implants but by doing the squat routine regularly. That particular exercise looked.. weird and I thought okay, let me try this because it looked really challenging and I love that kinda stuff. Not because I wanted [or needed a bigger derrière. Why am I laughing?]

So I wore these babies and did the squat thingy. They aint exactly stripper shoes but as we would say in this part of the world, 'Who send me message?'

 After exactly 25 squats, this dear girl was exhausted and breathing like crazy. That exercise targets your thighs and hips. After squatting thrice without holding anything, I felt it was for the best to hold a chair. Believe me; Coco makes this thing look easy. It took everything I had in me to get to 25. So there, I tried it and I think I would exercise like that once in a while. If I remember. Or totally forgot how errr..’really exercised’ my waist was.

Speaking off Kim K, a week ago, a particular young woman on twitter and a group of people were sort of bashing Tyler Perry for casting the reality TV star in his new movie. I know lots of people just don’t like Kim K. Yeah, I know she has a sex tape, posed for PlayBoy and all that. But what is wrong with Tyler casting her in his movie? I really don’t understand what that was all about.

I really don’t like how some Lagosians stress these poor boys that sell stuff on the roads. Like it’s just too much to bear sometimes. So this overly made up, gum chewing, loud young woman calls on a guy selling drinks and took Lacasera from his plastic basket while the boy was running as usual to catch up the bus driver that kept switching lanes. Then she starts looking for money in her purse, pauses to answer a call and talked utter gibberish for a few minutes while this young man was still running! And after a while, she brought out a thousand naira note. The young man still doing the semi marathon struggled to give her the balance while holding the basket and enduring her chanting ‘Don’t give me tattered money o! Ehen!’

Can you imagine? The money she gave the guy wasn’t exactly fresh out of the printing machine. In fact, it was old. I know it seems like I’m being a bit sentimental here after all, it’s what they do some people might think. But hey, it is hard enough for them that they have to do this for a living so I think it is fair that you have your money in your hand before you call them so that you guys would finish your exchange business without the poor guy having to run from Ojota to Maryland.

What first came to mind when I saw Tonto Dike’s tattoo on Linda’s blog was Wow! Till now, I still cant get past the words ‘Wow!’, and ‘Way out of the ordinary’. Tonto Dike is a Nigerian actress

Or what do you think?

Have a wonderful weekend y’all!

Lily Johnson

Pictures from Lindaikeji.blogspot.com

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