Intermission: Ekwe

All things being equal, 2011 is the most wasted year of my entire life. Nothing went right. Nothing.
Let me see… this year has sucked too much in terms of a lot of things…infact, almost everything. If anything bordering on “exciting” had happened this year, it would simply be that random moment when I stumbled on http://afrosays.wordpress.com in May, after following @uberbetty.
Yup. my life was pretty much boring, as always, until I discovered that blog. When I realised @xoafro was a computer science student, I was pained. Let me outline my thought process.

“Wait, this guy writes all these amazing stories. Yet he happens to be a computer programmer? How does he do it? Where does he find the time? Wait, I am a computer science student, why don’t I write such awesome stories? Nah. This can’t be. I can’t carry last. I must do my own”

..And that was how my blog transformed from a sounding board for my retarded thoughts into a notepad for my imagination.
Really, I could just say something like…wait…Let me put it into a thought process form again. All this coherent ranting is weird to me. I am writing this post on the spur of the moment.

“Mhen, this year has been bad. I hardly got to make any money, plus all these people and family frustrate me endlessly. I have almost no friends. The three or four that I have are too far away from me. Nobody visited me in my house throughout this year. This isn’t what I thought life would be at this age. Why is school making life difficult for me so? Why? Why?! I changed my number and no one noticed. I need to get a life…blah blah ”

But I thought about it days later, and discovered I had been looking at it all wrong. Three people I know who graduated in the same year I was supposed to (2010) have died this year. The fourth one was in 400l. I knew them all personally. They had dreams like me, they wanted to get rich soon and make their parents proud. They had planned to conquer the world too, before things we all take for granted like malaria, typhoid and driving killed them. It saddens me greatly and made me realize that I am quite an ungrateful bastard. I leave my house, maybe once a month, and come back safely. I don’t go to the streets to beg for food. My roof has not caved in on me. I didn’t hit my head on the wall and acquire a brain injury. I don’t take drugs because I have a stupid belief in my body’s immune system to kill infections, I don’t even get up to pray anymore. Yet, I still have breath. I still have hope. I still believe that things can only get better. My friends don’t have that luxury anymore. They can’t tell you about their year because they are under the earth now. Corpses.

If God has deemed it fit to give you breath today, you have had an excellent year.

Three days ago, I just missed being hit by an okada. One side-step possibly saved my life. If I had not looked back and moved sideways in an instant. You people would have just been tweeting at me, not knowing I was a cold piece of meat. The next day, I had to cross Third Mainland, where people have been dying every day. My heart was in my mouth because I had never been in a swimming pool and I could imagine how very quickly I would drown if the insane driver just had a spasm at the wheel and veered the BRT into the water //_\\

I am still here though.

Forgive the disjointed manner of this writing. I feel no compunction to make it more formal.

It has been an excellent year for Ekwe Martin.

=====================

Wow. We are grateful Ekwe. Thank God for keeping us all to see this day. To read this post.

Merry Christmas everyone. Regular programming resumes at noon with Arinola. Do not miss our Christmas post. 🙂