From the East, with pictures and a weird gist..

On the 27th of September, I and my large family buried our 90 year old grannie who had passed away a few months earlier. We had gotten past the sadness and all so we just celebrated the life of the matriarch.


Here are some pictures from the event which took place in Akama Oghe in Ezeagu Local government of Enugu state, Nigeria.



Mum, Berl, Lily, Dami[my bestie] and Ursula[at the back] Berl and Ursula're my younger sisters.



In my room after dressing up for the ceremony



'Abacha'. African salad. Yummy!




A cousin, Ursula, Berl, Lily and Andre[younger bro]



Dancing!!





The 'udu'




'Ogene' [Metal gong] and a drum




The 'Ichaka'





This guy can dance!




A sort of local gun or something called 'Nkpo na ani'



A Fulani woman turned Igbo



She danced vigourously with that calabash on her head and it didnt even shake!





Masquerades. I and Dami werent allowed to take this picture because we were women so we got Andre to do it.



The guy in the Tee shirt and brown trousers is the 'rainmaker'

However, I witnessed something really weird and thought I should share it with you guys. One of my uncles called a ‘rain maker’ to make sure that it doesn’t rain on the day of the ceremony. On the day before the ceremony, the man staggered into the compound like he was very drunk. My dad had made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with anyone playing ‘god’ so the man came to see my uncle. When I saw him, I tweeted ‘The rain maker is here’. The tweet to my surprise, didn’t post. This continued for a while. Then I tweeted ‘Rainmaker’. It appeared on my TL. So anytime, I added ‘the’ before ‘rainmaker’ , the tweet would disappear somehow. Twitter might have had problems then but it was weird that it happened only when the man was around and I did tweet about other things and they didn’t ‘disappear like those tweets had.


The rainmaker’s name[let’s see you disappear here] was Romanus. On the day of the ceremony, it was drizzling a bit. He brought out some herbs, put them inside water and started ‘chasing away’ the rain. It did stop raining a few minutes later. Throughout our stay, it only rained at night. According to the villagers, it was the ‘rain’ in his stomach was what was making him stagger all over the place and not alcohol. And when he sleeps at night, the rain would be released.

Dear reader, isn’t that one of the weirdest things you have ever heard?

We didn’t even know what to think about the whole things but allowed ourselves to be puzzled for a while. Like really? This guy is not a herbalist but he could stop the rain from ruining this day? Okay!



The man in sunglasses is my dear father.





Set for church service on Sunday




Monday morning. Waiting for the bus. Wearing hairnets, no make up whatsoever and as tired as hell!



We did have a great time anyway. And drank a lot of fresh palm wine too.

Hope you guys are okay.

Lily Johnson





I Am ....Lily Johnson.: Preview "From the East, with pictures and a weird gist.."

I Am ....Lily Johnson.: Preview "From the East, with pictures and a weird gist.."

The wearable and The weird

I love shoes! Every woman does right? It’s just that while some of us buy beautiful shoes when we can afford to, some of us run into serious debt because we just can’t help but buy any pair of shoes we like.

I really need to go shoe shopping after my exams because I need a few more pairs. I was just checking out some shoes online and saved some pictures.  I tagged the collection, The wearable and The weird.

Check them out...

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I love some of them but some, I just wonder why on earth I would want to wear anything like that. Fashion I guess. 

I just want to know which pair of shoes you think isn't what you would go out of your way to buy but you could wear them just to know how it would feel or something.

It is No 10 for me. The shoe looks like something used for home decor but look at the shape! It is just out of this life and it looks wearable.

I think No 18 was designed for a trendy, fashionable, talking peacock.

Thank you guys for wishing me good luck with my exams.

Lily Johnson

Pics from Polyvore.com

A letter to my dear readers

Hey dearies,


I hope every one of you is doing great. I just finished a set of tests and would start my exams this week. I have been studying and doing a load of assignments and that explains why I haven’t been doing any blog rounds. I have also been so stressed emotionally as well as physically but this girl is strong and of course God is on the throne.

Life just doesn’t stop throwing things at us sometimes without even seeing if we can handle it or not. We have to strive to see all the positive things thereof and deal with the negative stuff the best way we can.

I hope to be back soon.

Take care. Muah to y’all

Lily Johnson

My humble opinion

I am so sorry for being M.I.A for a while. It’s just that I had a lot going on for me. I have been extremely busy and soon going to write my exams. I am so happy I am almost through with my programme and hope I come out with something better than I had hoped for.

Well, I also heard the stories most of you guys heard about the violence against women that made headlines last month. I still read somewhere this morning about a woman that cut off her husband’s penis. So it is not just against women, it is that some couples have embraced violence instead of good old communication. And the fact that people don’t do what they ought to do before getting into marriage.

Marriage is supposed to be a union of two people who after finding out they love each other unconditionally, complement each other, can live with each other, can tolerate each other, have mutual respect for each other and want to live for each for the rest of their lives, decided to make the union legal or bring it before God for blessings. Just as any relationship, marriage does have its crazy times but if there is love and tolerance, I believe it would never get to violence. The couple might have screaming matches to vent their frustration and stuff but would not bring a knife to each other’s bodies. 

The problem is that people are getting married daily for reasons that are wrong and even funny. Sometimes, a woman might marry a man she knows doesn’t love her but thinks everything would work out because she loves him to bits. People marry for money, security, to get away from family, to make some ‘prophesy’ to come true, to attain a particular status in the society, to be identified with a particular name maybe because the family is famous...it is a terrible situation.

Before and after marriage, couples should always pray together. I am talking about holding hands and praying for God’s guidance. There is something about you and your fiancé or husband holding each other’s hands to pray. It is very intimate. Let him pray for you and you in turn should pray for him then pray for each other, your relationship, your marriage and every other thing.

I still believe that if a marriage isn’t destined to work out, it wouldn’t. I am not carrying placards encouraging divorce but there are some situations that there isn’t any other solution to them than just walking away. Some women [men too] would have been alive or less damaged if they had just done that.

May God in His infinite wisdom guide and protect us all.

RIP Titi and Olori Bolanle

Lily Johnson