Bhopal

Death creeps
Death creeps
while the child sleeps
Death grips
Death grips
while the boy runs
The families of Bhopal are torn
The unborn are born
and on them the scars of Bhopal are borne
Alarms raised
but silenced
a boisterous town
silenced
pushed into the crypts of history
not to be remembered
Bhopal!
not to be uttered
Twenty two thousand souls
and counting
The pain, inscribed in the wrinkles of the Sari-clad woman
she lost her husband and her son
Perpetually sad, crying "Give us Anderson"

Dezenove

YES Dezenove, for those that don't know, dezenove is nineteen in Portuguese. Nineteen is a number...nineteen is the age I turned this weekend. I'm still very young o! anyway, we had a chickenfest. couple friends were coming over, and chicken was to be served...Well, the people were slated to come at 17:25..but it was only at 16:00 that we started getting this ready...all the chicken that had marinated overnight needed to be popped in the oven...the 'macaroni and cheese' needed to be made....the 'fried rice' needed to be made...as well as the pasta (fussili) to be exact...well lets say...apart from the pasta..nothing else was made (chicken was made of course)..reasons being..for the rice...no one had the guts to make the rice properly, by properly I mean each grain standing out...as for the mac and cheese...we didn't have an oven dish...so it was not possible to do it...the pasta was made however...strangely tho, we didn't move it to the general food population so ppl did not know it was available, so it remained untouched all night. (now there's a large-ass bowl of pasta in the kitchen a.k.a food 4 the week)
I had to go get Marlene from the station, she came with a French guy..Lionel (don't get crazy Laura)....and an American- William...from the ATL (we would go on to talk about Malcolm X, Hip-Hop and other stuff...)
Anyway, the eating began...I can't really detail all that! Everyone was eating and socialising while me and Will Smith (ATLian) Cranked that Soulja Boy...yeah...Zimbabwe Will (Mos Def) missed this joyous occassion becoz he was in London watching rugby....
Then...the cake..Dave bought the cake...the Barbie Island Princess Cake. He went looking for a West African themed cake, but was unlucky...so he settled with the next best option- a Pink Island Princess cake! yesir!! and I loved it....
Was it the best day of my life..Oh yes it was...(although Nov.13 might outdo this day)...Nov 13..American Gangster hits the cinemas!lol....My Nigerian sisters Thelma and Adeline were there in Full force...flatmates Fiona, and Vishal (aka Chef) & Laura (our french-fry gatherer..lol) Poetry dudes..David, Mark, Segun & Victor. Ovi and Andrew. Natalie, Matt and Jack...American Football lads, Jay, Ryan, Pete, Gordon..Friend's Forever- Marlene and Jeremy..Will & Lionel...thanx for making that a memorable night!

Darfur is always an option

Me and my friend William (Zimbabwe born) were chillin at a Uni bar during a quiz night. Chilling with this chick, who will, due to her darn ignorance remain unnamed. Well anyway, this girl, lets call her Sandra, is planning on going to 'Africa' next year. Now notice I said Africa...coz really that's where she wants to go..Africa. To quote Sandra :"Africa is such a different country"..."In Europe me talk about trivial things, but I imagine in Africa they talk about how much food they will have to eat, if the plants are going to grow"...
William and I battled to control our laughter...but internally we were rotfloao (Rolling on the floor laughing our asses off- for the IM illiterate)
But one thing.....she was worried..yes worried. She so badly wanted to see a tribal dance, but was worried that as a white person, she may be shot with poison darts if she dared approach the sacred dancing area. So, you know what..she came up with an idea: William and I were to accompany her on her Africa expedition, and everything will be alright. A white girl surrounded by two black 6 foot plus men is perfectly safe in 'Africa'
Where in Africa do you wanna go?, Inquired an Inquisitive William. Everywhere! I wanna see a tribal dance (I don't know how this tribal dance obsession came about.) "Okay" continued William "Julian and I are quite conversant with "Africa", perhaps we can go to South Africa" "Great!" Sandra interjected with tropical enthusiasm. "Perhaps we can go to Darfur as well!" William said, holding his breath to observe her reaction. Sandra took a sip of her beer, and replied convincingly "I trust you two guys to take me anywhere"
William and I sat down, perplexed, wondering how one soul can be so malinformed about the continent, and also wondering when we obtained our "Africa-tour guide certificates"
This just goes to show how the mass production of ignorance is perpetuated by cartoons like Tom and Jerry depicting black African tribesmen with bones through their noses, obsessed with eating human beings, and displaying lack of any moral development.
Africa...our 'country'...land of poison darts, dancing tribesmen, Darfur tourist resorts, and serious tribespeople, worried about real things like farming and water...not a celebrity obsessed one like Europe. Africa Oh Africa...Country of my Fathers

The Kingdom

So I saw the Kingdom on Monday, with my flatmates Fiona and Vishal, and it blew me away, it has one of the most emotional endings, and one of the most thought provoking as well. Jamie Foxx does an amazing job (duh!) the action scenes are well directed, only problem is a felt they went a bit Hollywood sometimes, you know, the whole....5 people kill 20 others without reloading, or being injured (mind you, the good guys are on the ground, and the bad guys are on balconies, now you don't need to be a precision-robot to shoot fools on the ground) and also the whole nick-of-time shit, like they about to kill a good guy but he gets saved in the nick of time (and no one heard his friends coming in)....I'm like kill him already....damn.
Anyway, not to slander the movie, it was really good, I'll give it 9.5/10. I recommend it to everybody...it'll prompt some people to go do research into the Middle-East.

Return 2 Bradford

The weekend was amazing. In a house with 6 Nigerian boys. Chicken. Jollof Rice. Partying. Sexy black girls. what more could a brother ask for...Oh and proper music, not indie rock. To sum it up, it was a blast, dancing till my thighs were cramping, stealing chicks off guys, eating, sleeping (and snoring) missing out on fights and what not.
Lol
Anyway, the party throwers were William and Demmy, my cousin Alex came up from Birmingham. As Demmy and William waited at home to make a grand entry, I and a couple of other guys left for the party. As a special guest, I didn't have to pay shit (others had to pay £3) anyway, we got to the place opened the door, expecting to find a lot of dancing Africans....lol...well, we had Africans, three of them...and they weren't dancing. Well the party was supposed to start at 22:00, and this was 00:00 and there was nobody there. Was this gonna be a flop, had I come to Bradford for a three-person party? Had I misjudged my brother's popularity? Was I to....(sorry I'm out of rhetorical questions)
Anyway, by 1:00 to party was packed and kickin'. Caribbean music, Nigerian music, South-African tunes....everybody dancing..two white people in sight, looking like they were lost. Sweaty black bodies, Gyrating to the bass infused rhythms of hip-hop, chanting to the repetitive choruses of dancehall, Frenzied females drenched in their own perspiration, shaking, shaking, non stop.
In short, it was a party to remember. After the party is the after party....crazy. There was a guy who wanted to get into a fight coz a girl wont let him touch her booty (some guys need help, seriously) Anyway, a taxi was promptly called for the guy and off he went..back to the hole he crawled out from.
Anyway, Sunday came, and everyone was too damn tired to go to church...so we tidied up and I scurried back home to Sunderland.....sorry old Sunderland, a city where you can play 'Spot the black person!'
Anyway, I'm having a dinner on Sunday, coz it's my birthday, I'm gonna be 19 yay, I'm still young (I love being young) having a couple friends over, eat chicken, and more chicken, and a bit more chicken...and some fish..because I feel fish have largely being ignored by many students.
Anyway, I'm off yeah!

My Life

So, in between playing American Football and playing No One (by Alicia Keys)I watch Scrubs. American Football has been great so far. So many freshers joined up, so many freshers left, when they saw how real the shit was! I dunno, many people join American Football coz of all the movies and how cool they percieve it to be, you got the pads, helmet, and you get to run across the field and score touchdowns (and possibly do a victory dance)....well that's what the movies show you....what the movies don't show is the hard part, the grueling training sessions...the aches and pains all over your body the next day. The boring part of doing the same thing over and over and over again. Many eager people quickly become disillusioned and quit...or dont turn up 2 training sessions, but are the first people out when drinking is involved!
Scrubs is going fine as well, I am pretty good in the Trivia on facebook...I'm quite the nerd.
This weekend I'm going to Bradford to party with William and the rest....should be fun.
I've been studying hard for my Power, Politics and the Media module, tryna be a nerd, stand out amongst peers and stuff.
This December I have an internship....I'm gonna apply to the PR department of Universal Music.. yeah, in London..that way I can get to see Jay-Z, Kanye West, Nelly...lol, dreaming big..anyways I'm out...I'm trying to get inspiration for a poem.

By the way Jay-Z's new album comes out Nov- 6 yay!

Movies to see- The Kingdom & American Gangster