Saturday, May 23, 2009

Solitude Was Mourning For Jasmine & Leye

Solitude Was Mourning

I see solitude standing by the window,
long after she spoke to Boethius
she came here just to see the hamarttan winds blow.

Leye oh Leye why did you have to go?
It was not your choice to go gently into the night.
In St Cloud we did not know what a tangled web Fortuna would weave.
Your elegy will always be a song called youth.
Death gave you came in spring with a load of discontent.
Leye your bones lie now in the city of lakes

The taker came, and now there are none to comfortless are left bereft
Is there no art to make your dry bones live?
Now only time will soften some aspects of grief.

From the first day your were my friend
I saw America again in your eyes.
Engineering was your game and in the mighty middle west
true love also came.
You were both two scholars united and now all we can do is
stare at solitude standing with her ashes in her hair,
Her cheeks are weepy in aspect.
with torn robes, she walks into the night of remembrance.

When my father told me my ears refused to believe.
When my father told me I said this cannot be.
When my father told me my eyes had a shocked stare.

Mr. Bello was a cheerful man
I am proud to say that I too knew him,
if only for a little while,
Leye I will always wish you were still here.

Power in Nigeria

The one thing that we know and love about Nigeria is that there is never any consistency. It is almost like everything in this country operates under the rule that if things cannot be just they should be arbitrary. In the land of African giantsthe lights don't just work as they do in other nations instead there is frequently no power sometimes for days or at work every five minutes we will get brown outs and blackouts.

As a result of this we do things like freeze the plastic baggies of faro water so that in the event of a power failure the things in our freezer will not go bad. Along with this intermittent, random power outages. The Power Holding Compnay of Nigeria will sometimes send wattages as low as 120 and other times as high as 280 so of course most electrical devices get damaged at the high voltages.

To add to the problems there are no standards for outlets and sockets here, some are like the UK ones, other are two round holes, so you cannot buy an applince and be certain it will fit in any of your outlets. Instead of applying one standard to outlets and plugs they can be anything.

This should not suprise me but it still does how everything is done worse than subpar but the only design ethic seems to be we make shitty because nothing should work. It is almost makes me think that Nigerians like confusion, discomfort, failure, and suffering.