A VACATION RENDITION……

Time and chance can sometimes be the best description of the ethereal entity we call world. Time and chance describes us beyond our countenances and where we inhabit in measures beyond mere rhetorics. Time and chance knows no bound in our everyday world, no doubt.

The same time and chance would bring a humble vacationer to the walls of his alma mater after about five years post graduation.

He had originally planned out to spend his vacation with his brother, Baffyand a friend, Debola who both reside in Abuja as more exclusive vacation spots were not an option at the time.

So Abuja it was meant to be. Save for the little coincidence of Baffy’s fiancée and Debola’s girlfriend being present at their different residences in the Abuja metropolis at the same time, the vacationer would have dined with Oga Jona and associates in Aso Rock. Not that it mattered, however, that the fiancée or girlfriend were around, one just likes respecting boundaries and spaces. 

An unscheduled call to Yomi, a friend who now lectures at the Faculty of Pharmacy, OAU where we both graduated from, for a holiday invite proved positive. Yomi, whom one used to call Prof from undergrad days, was honored to play host.He was well on his way to becoming a Professor with one tailing behind him.

Harmed with one’s copy of Wole Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth at Dawn, one’s scrap books, Ipad and laptop, one journeyed to Ilé-Ifè, the dubbed origin of life according to the rich Yoruba mythology. The myth itself fascinates and intrigues one. However, one was more presently interested in the serenity the University campus and Staff quarters had to offer.

And that’s what one got. A trip away from the bustling city of Ibadan/Lagos was nothing but rewarding. “A soul searching trip” as @toinlicious eventually christened it. Maybe that’s what I really did need at the time. Not sure I got that eventually though.

One’s day usually started with early morning jogging accompanied with subtle ruminations. On returning, one watches a little TV and then drift back to sleep. After all, one was on vacation. Peace of mind is when one does not have to think about work and its numerous encumbrances. Talk of bliss.

One usually lazes at home for the rest of the day. Except for the time one had to help Diran, one’s close friend, process his transcript from the transcript office in Ife. One would notice that the process still remains as slow and elusive as ever. One had to squeeze a thousand naira into some hand to ease the process.

In the evening, one might take a walk around the Road 20C staff residence of one’s host or drive to the University Conference centre to relax over a bottle of water or Coke while one continues reading You must set forth at Dawn. A wonderful book by the way.

One remembers one used to gather at the same Conference centre with Diran and Foluso to feast on their fantastic moin-moin elémi mejé which was quite difficult to resist. The moin-moin remains available. You may try it out if you ever find yourself in Ilé-Ifè. One caveat though: Go in the late morning.

At 50, the landscape of the OAU Campus has changed tremendously, one observes. There are several new buildings, lecture theatres and roads with several other constructions ongoing. Even one’s old faculty of pharmacy was getting a new wing. The OAU Campus still remains the most organized university in terms of structural lay out in South West Nigeria. Talk of GREAT IFE!!!

An excusable trip to the legendary “Buka” brought back some memories of a boisterous past. One was a regular caller in those days and it wasn’t necessarily to eat. Oneengaged in other self gratifying and inebriating hobby of drinking with one’s league of Medical student friends.

One would remember a precarious situation in which it came to one’s ears that some people actually thought one was in the department of Economics or Sociology at the time. And not Pharmacy or Medicine like my cohorts. One was indeed fortunate to have graduated on time and with a very good grade too. Youthful exuberance was unhindered back then.

That same me would become a teetotaler having abstained from all forms of alcoholic beverage for almost two years now and counting. Some miracle, people who knew one well back then would say.

Great Ife has always been dear to one’s heart and it remains so.  Maybe because one was able to find one’s self in the vacuous little cocoon one had always been situated. Great Ife laid the foundation for whatever one had become or hope to become. And one definitely plans to return to Ife either fully or on holiday again.

Many thanks to Yomi, my able host.

Foye.

WHAT’S IN A NEW YEAR?

Welcome on board folks.

It’s a brand new flight 2-0-1-3 to destination destiny. Whatever that means anyways for destiny itself can be sometimes elusive.

 

It’s that season once again when people often try to re-shape their so called elusive destiny by making New Year resolutions. An often futile effort that it is as it hardly lasts the first three weeks into the New Year depending on individual resilience of people who engage in it. All the same, the effort is worth it. The best way to get ahead, as they say, is getting started.

To be fair, I somewhat fall unconsciously into this fallible trend of setting resolutions on the turn of the New Year. More or less, it’s been engrained into one’s psyche from childhood and one does not but fall into it from time to time. As maturity and wisdom sets in, one stopped believing in and making “new year resolutions”. However, the self automation of the brain won’t let one be at the turn of the year. One just makes unconscious mental notes of what ifs and what nots.

In a few weeks time, this blog page will be clocking two years of consistent existence. And quite a number of mental notes have been made to make the blog more interactive for the reading pleasure of followers and readers. To be candid, the effort to run this blog has been worth it and I feel like I’ve achieved the purpose of starting it in the first place.

                                        

So what’s in a New Year? So much for entering into the New Year with a new slate and state of mind. So much for leaving behind the old year with our convenient amount of baggages. Yes, convenient for we try to shed some off to ease our way into the New Year. It’s often a convenient way for us to assert some form of control over our existence in this world of ours. It’s a convenient way for us to say we are still living and making profound decisions.

Decisions that we may easily renege on if not properly founded on cogent reasons. However, for a sufficiently deep mind, the relevance of the decision itself rests on the process by which the decision was arrived at. The New Year just helps bring time and chance together for most people.

I would meet a young lady during my recent vacation in Obafemi Awolowo University Campus and she’ll tell me she was shedding away all her numerous boyfriends and was looking for a steady relationship. She would assert that she couldn’t afford to go into the New Year with such boyfriends around. I naturally twitched my nose and practically rolled my eyes for I wasn’t convinced. Of course, I couldn’t allow her to see that. I know how women can be.

So it’s a new year. Many dreams unachieved in the old year find their way into the New Year together with newer ones. Dream jobs, Marriages, Baby christenings, House warming, Masters or PhD degrees, new cars and new businesses find their way into individual dreams and aspirations for the year.

The race of “this year must not pass me by, I must marry by force” which most women folks fall into starts all over again in the New Year. And the guy that keeps pushing his marriage for some flimsy reasons finally gets stuck and makes up his mind to marry the current woman he’s with. Sometimes because she’s the best he could find. Most times, because she was the one around and available when he finally got ready to get married. It’s all a complicated conundrum; one not easily understood.

And the society itself keeps dangling on the teeters of imminent destruction. More people are going to die this year from war, diseases, poverty and accidents. More children will die of malnutrition and diseases this year. The world may not necessarily become a safer place in 2013. The war in Syria wages on, the instability in Egypt rages on, the gun wielding America pedals on and the oil subsidy conundrum in Nigeria drum a familiar tune of #Occupynigeria.

Let’s face it; it is far easier to dwell on the positives we expect in the New Year. If per chance, we do try to think a little of our issues and how to address them, maybe we’d be a better society after all. Will 2013 be a better year for the world? That’s one question I’m not so sure the oratorical Barrack Obama -the Time Magazine Man of the year for 2012 - can answer without stuttering.

Have a beautiful year ahead folks. I’m hoping we’d all have something to be thankful for at the end of 2013.

Foye.