Becoming The Muse

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my socially distanced corner of the internet as our country hunkers down for new lockdown measures starting Monday 14^th of June in face of the rising cases of COVID.

Growing up I used to really love peanuts, my grandmother, bless her soul, used to make sure when I visited her, regardless of the season, would magically conjure up a batch of preserved nuts that had been boiled and dried and would pack a bit more for me take back home.

Eating unshelled peanuts is an interesting art, sometimes you crack open a shell only to find it’s empty inside or you pick the biggest looking which turns out to have a sophisticated culture of mold…

You can count your lucky stars if you weren’t just crushing the nuts open and tossing them into your mouth because what would follow next, would be a rude awakening as the foul taste invades your mouth spoiling everything for days… Noooooooo

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that sometimes I cant tell if its the citizens who are nuts or it’s the government that is nuts or maybe when you earn peanuts no one should fault you for acting like a monkey… Yesterday the Vice president announced new measures to curb the rising COVID cases.

The government says it makes decisions based on scientific information available at the time… Which is why just on Thursday the president had said that musicians and artists could start having shows and even donated musical kits to some creatives.. then a couple of days later the Vice President who is also the minister of health was announcing how due to a general complacency in adhering to preventative measures, new measures would be implemented.

As gatherings have been banned guess that’s that and that is that. Looks like going into town is soon going to be an ordeal again. I can imagine roadblocks will be back up and police asking one to show that they have legit business to be travelling.

….Meanwhile the battle with pirate minivan taxis had been raging on with a melee which resulted in a taxi vans burning down, some say police caused it throwing tear gas anyhoo, the police say vendors and touts set it on fire and truth is…, well it just means it will be that much harder to travel…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that I was chatting with some friends from The Pearl of Africa; Uganda and they also had lockdown measures re-imposed with possibility of total lockdown, following a wearisome increase in COVID-19 infections. A large part of the blame is again due to poor compliance of preventative protocol.

I understand the need to force compliance on people but the measures always seem about an authoritarian power consolidation than a remedial solution to the pandemic… Cant help think of a scene in iRobot when the robots are telling people to stay in their homes, for their own protection a curfew is in effect….

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you just finished the second week of the Afrobloggers WinterABC Storytelling Festival and still going strong.. if you missed it here are the posts I published this past week:

Of Being A Creative: Money Matters… about managing finances as a creative and avoiding being the “struggling creative” statistic.

Of Being A Creative: The Soul Beneath… if you want to understand where I create from

Of Being A Creative: Things Not To Say To A Blogger… 15 things you should avoid saying if you don’t want to trivialise the work a blogger puts into their craft.

Of Ghosting: A very unlikely ghost story you wont see coming

Coffee with Kites For Peace: A CoffeeChat conversation with Suraiya Essof, Founder and director of Kites For Peace Zimbabwe.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that Twitter is still restricted in Nigeria and the hashtag #KeepItON is being used in solidarity. Former US President Trump was hailing the president of Nigeria on his decision to ban twitter….Moving on, while chatting with a friend from Nigeria they were telling me how they were waiting for the other shoe to drop, last time when the lights went off that’s when they had the Lekki Massacre happened; now what will happen under the cover of the Twitter outage… Yesterday Nigerians had a June 12^th Protest…

The happenings in and around African countries is always so weirdly familiar and I was reflecting on this as I read a blog post by Wonani about the Zambian Politics and the Constitutional Debate.. which echoes a crisis our own constitution seems to be facing as the Chief Justice battles to stay in power, you would think only presidents did that…. well we all a little nutty I guess.

What good is a constitution if it cant be upheld, is it like a beautiful looking nut full of promise which you crack open to find…. its not quite what you expect

Whats going on in your neck of the woods… anything driving you nuts?

~B