Language Please

This is quite sensitive for me cos. i have also fallen victim by this. I grew up in a society that believed that if i spoke my native language, it was bad and it would spoil my English. Well being grown now and more learned, ...that was all cock and bull , only a continuous means of colonization on everyone. Why does something that makes us who we are, have to have a bad connotation. Why is it that if i spoke in my native language Yoruba, people view me that i cant speak English or i am an illiterate. Believe me, the best known Yoruba scholars i know ..have a great command of English. But why do the majority feel that way. When i was in Secondary school, we hardly spoke Yoruba and if you were spoken too,we answered in English thinking that it was cool not to be able to speak the language. Now i think that was just bizzare. However, i still see so many people just want to deny there real identity and become something else. I guess they rather speak like ghetto peeps from the west ( america to be precise) than speak like the kings and queens they are with their mother tongue.

I always wonder why the whole world says motherland but Nigeria says fatherland. I guess it goes back to the fact that we are so much of a patriliineal society. How can i change that.. How can i change the fact that some men are just so chavinistic and stupid and women dont even help matters. anyway i guess i derailed from my language topic but i could not help just airing my disdain for naija supression of women. to be contd....

Also another issue i have is with people who come to this country America and change their names to better suit the so called americans. My aunt always says if one can pronunce Schwarzenegger why not a yoruba name.In my school we had these group of taiwanese people who came here to study and all changed their names.One was ysin Hu and we called her Kate, one kept changing her name every week from julie, to jessica to what have you. I even hear naija people changing their last name or shortening it . This is ridiculous.If you are important believe me people would pronunce your name however it is and whatever mouth and tongue manipulations you need to do. Do Americans go to china and change their name to Lee or chan? Hells NO!!!. Ive even seen when naija people only name their kids with so called american /english names such as Brian, Sean etc and no Nigerian name. I mean where is the heritage. Am i that ethnocentric that i think its a problem? Or i should just let people do what they want to do. I guess thats why I am not GOd unless......................................................

African.....how i hate and love the word.

Ok this might sound strange, but as i hate the word African, i also love it.
I love the word African, as it stands for so many positive things as i am...but why is it that when anyone refers to me as an African or from Africa i cringe. Dont get me wrong....I love who i am and i am so proud of where i belong and would not trade it for anything. I believe my hate for the word "African" has nothing to do with any embarrassments, I just hate when i hear that word being referred . For instance why is it African art but not European Art. Why are we all bottled in one category when we are a people of diverse and different categories. I might not be well informed but art in Nigeria varies from Nok Culture scuptures,the benin bronzes, to various eras of designs. But why is the whole of Africa categorized under one huge umbrella. When you see art from the North it is very different from the west, the south , the east. I mean someone walks up to me and says "oh do the African dance". What the hell does that mean. like we all Africans have a type of dance where we move our hands and legs and jump up and down and do the hokey pokey and we turn ourselves around? Only in Nigeria i know a few types of dances such as bata, atilogwu, egungun and many more dances. No one ever says "hey do the European dance" or the "North American dance". crazy! Crazy i say.
Well i have been told by my friends that i am making this more of an issue than it really is. That there is no big deal if we all summed up under one group. Well this might not make any sense to someone else but it does make sense to me. SO as Africans, lets begin to give names to our individualities and not generalize. No more "African music "but Fuji, apala, Afro juju, juju, hip life, high life and all the works. Egungun Dancers taken from Youtube.


Igbo Dancer taken from Youtube

New calling in life

I have always known that there were a lot of goals i had outlined for myself. However, I found a new passion. My friends always told me i should be an activist of somewhat because i always raised issues about evil doings of us humans especially towards women. don't get me wrong, I still have my passion for art and design but the same way a father loves his three daughters equally is the same way i have found a new love in my life which is raising issues. I found this full revelation a couple of days ago while i was watching a you tube posting of New dawn with Funmi Iyanda. I was listening to a woman discuss her passion/irritation about the new proposed bill on indecent dressing in Nigeria. I was so excited about her enthusiasm and i say i have never felt so excited about anything as much as i did, when i was watching her. When i discussed my excitement with a fellow friend, he joked with me and told me i had an "activists orgasm" whatever that means. Now i know that i have this passion, what exactly do i do about it? How do i go about helping others that cant help themselves. How can i speak for women who are being subdued everyday in their lives. Well i say i would start from somewhere. So i intend to continue blogging and join this new craze in finding how i can air my frustrations without yelling at my friends in the process.
Anyway i don't think i can end this post without airing my views on this ridiculous bill on In descent dressing. I am a born again Christian; but sometimes, Nigerians need to remove religion from their government at least in some instances. "indecent dressing" is a moral issue, so why should the government feel they need to impose a law on our moral behavior. Well if so, I say they need to pass other bill telling us how to live our lives and while at it, tell us how to run our families and give husband and wives rules to consummate their marriage. Ridiculous isnt it? i read that the Senator Ekaete who is the front runner of this bill in her good heart says that she is trying to reduce cases of rape . That there is a high volume of rape cases in the country and yes, it is caused by females "indecent dressing" what ever that phrase means. So this lady decided to punish women and punish victims for the crime a man does. How in the world would you want to frustrate more the lives of women to appease men. This has got to stop. This case reminds me of a woman who finds out her husband is cheating on her and decides to confront him. She confronts him and all hell come down as both start exchanging blows, and of course we all know who wins the domestic squabble. Trying to counsel the couple, the family member scolds the man a tiny beat and then asks the wife to kneel down and beg her husband.....WTF!!!!!!!! Well i guess in a country like Nigeria, no matter what the man does, the woman is to be punished for the mans evil doings. I have to stop here cos i might just take my anger on this poor keyboard.

Module 4

This last module was very easy compared to the previous two. I think it was easier because i had used the program before and there were less formulas and formatting. The new things i learnt here were the usage of charts and tables. I also have never used the auto wizard before. I am glad i have gone through this class because i can use all these applications to their full potential.

Module 3

This was a huge task for me because i have never used Access before and i do not know anything about it unlike the rest of the Microsoft office applications. I have learnt a few things over the past weeks how one can make reports easier and condense wastage of time and paper to do reports. i can imagine that this tool would be a great tool for researchers minimizing their findings and sorting out their reports. I hope to master this program more as time goes on. The formulars were the ones i had a little trouble with as I was not sure what symbols to use or not to use.

Module 2

Module @ was a little bit more difficult than modules 1 because i was less farmiliar with the module 2 program. I am very exciited about my new knowledge of excel because i have worked with it in previous jobs but not really understood how things went about. Now i would say I am more confident in that aspect.

Module 1 Contd.

After completing the first project, it seemed very easy but a little time consuming. The only problem with one of my projects was the part of the resume template. My browsers would not download the template. Anyway the first module has been completed. There are so many tiny bits of information i never knew now i know tips and short cuts to make word easier.

Module 1

I believe i have concluded the first module form the publishers content and i have done some practice quizzes. The contents seems easy enough to understand and a bulk of the content i am already familiar with. Some acronyms i knew but never knew what they stood for. interesting to finally find out. I still don't understand where to find the homework or if i have homework for this week.

My first Online class experience

It has taken me about three days to full find things and understand the workings of an online class. I am still finding it a little bit difficult to understand the tempo and the flow of the course materials, how to get them and what assignments are due and how they are due. I think by next week i shouls be able to get a hang of it totally . I hope it is not a hard class and i hope to learn a whole deal from the class.