Best way to have is to give

I can trace my origins down to the village, hamlet and even the hut in which my forbears lived. My hamlet is called agbole-aiyekoto, which means the Parrot’s Compound, and if you read on you will find out why.

The last time I went to my roots, the old folks began to recite our family praise-poetry the moment they spotted me; and they didn’t stop until my eyes were teary from a swelled head. After a heavy meal of boiled cassava and steamed vegetables, I took a seat under the cashew tree and listened to the oldest family member recount how our hamlet name was derived. The story is quite pertinent for you and me today even though it happened in the era of my great-great-great grandfather. Of course, I can’t put a date to it but since members of my family tend to live long (Grandma just passed on at 99 years old), you can be sure it was a very long time ago.

Terrible Two

My friend has two younger brothers who are still in the university. Being identical twins, they have the same face, same build and even the same voice; but beyond these they are as different as lemons and oranges. They have very distinct temperaments and attitudes such that while one is sociable and sprightly, the other is amiable and calm. If you happened on both of them, you will either be charmed by the friendliness of one or the enigma of the other. The outgoing one was the leader of the debate team in secondary school and led the school to many competitions where they won trophies; he is currently studying to become a lawyer after graduation. The quiet one was in the science club and all his projects fetched his school the hefty grants that equipped their state-of-the-art laboratories and he is studying to become a civil engineer.

A gesture is enough for the smart

There are medical conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome where sufferers are unable to pick up on social cues; but they are not the people covered in this post. This post is about those who due to carelessness, absent-mindedness or pure lack of perception fail to catch the subtle (and sometimes the not-so-subtle) messages of others.

Rotting tomatoes

Bola went to one of the villages surrounding the city of Ibadan and was shocked to find that the cost of baskets of tomatoes and pepper was very cheap. It was less than half the cost of the cheapest baskets in Ibadan’s popular Bodija market. The distance between the village and Ibadan was a mere 8 miles and by the time she drove to and fro, there was no noticeable movement in the needle of the fuel gauge. She came back to Ibadan and set out to conduct a survey of what other women desired or loathed about shopping for these cooking ingredients. She designed a questionnaire and began administering it; but it was not long before she found that most shoppers hated going to the markets because of its filthy and noisy environment. Armed with the information, she decided to open a grocery store not far from Aleshinloye, another major commodity market in Ibadan. Her store was located on a fairly quiet street; it was neat and had a parking lot. She made contact with the farmers in the surrounding villages and entered a first refusal agreement to buy their tomatoes and pepper.

On the day she opened her store, the main selling points were the sane ambience of her store and the rock-bottom prices available there. She made flyers distributed them in the neighbourhood and informed friends and family too. Then the wait began. On the first day, there were no expectant shoppers queuing up in front of her store to get cheap tomatoes. The next day was even longer and still no customers came. Unlike non-perishables that have no expiry date, her wares were expiring and rotting away right