"Owwh yea! The sexy boys are coming back!"
*Female Namibian voice*
This piece is for the women who have been looking for real men for a while now - me sef I don notice say my fellow okurin meta (strong men) dey scarce these days. The Wild Wild West would be disappointed with how soft we have become *spits* tueh! *metal bucket rings* kpam! It is as if we have forgotten our roots, our days in the jungles and wilderness.
There used to be a time when a man was a man, when men grew beards to the fullest and chopped down trees with nothing but their bare teeth. Okay maybe not always their bare teeth; they used axes sometimes but definitely never chainsaws. There used to be a time when men were in charge, when they simply ordered and everyone else obeyed (abeg modern women no vex o, na just history I dey quote). Those were the days, the good ol’ days when everything was clean, fresh and green but those times seem to be long gone now. We-men have all become make-up wearing, rat fearing and beard shaving beings and we still dare call ourselves men; males of the past would be ashamed, *spits again* tueh! *metal bucket rings* kpam!
If you have, however, been searching for orijinal men, nature’s men, then your search is over; I see the light! Nature is bringing sexy back with the return of the lumbersexual, her original design.
[But Wait!] What is nature’s original design? Is it tall, dark and handsome with a thick beard on his face; is it tall, dark and handsome thick dense trees in the Amazon or Sambisa Forest; is it clean, unpolluted, portable water in rivers and streams or is it simply fresh breathable air everywhere? Is nature’s design two headed snakes, a 20% discount on cancer, birth defects or gene mutation? What really is nature’s design? Is it the extinction of the Dodo bird? - They were real, not just something from the Flintstones but we ate the last ones up in 1681. Is it the disappearing of bees? - Fifty years without insects and there would be no life on earth but fifty years without man and all life on earth would flourish, or so they say. What is nature’s true design?
Let me tell you why we are on nature this week; it was a green day at the religious institution that I attended last religious day, everybody seemed to have a touch of green in their attire and there was a particular family that was completely clad in green armour; from the cute daughter in her green overalls to the noisy son in his green Kaftan/Senegalese. Even the religious leader was not left out, he was dressed to match the masses. All this green reminded me of Connelly House, the house in my secondary school that wears green just like Slytherin in Harry Potter - I was in Regis House if you're wandering, red like Gryfindor. More importantly, this week I saw a frogling (small frog) in front of my house for the first time in my life! It was so strange that I had to stop and stare. Don't get me wrong, this is not the first time I am seeing a live frog, I mean I watch National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet and my secondary school was literally in the bush so we had snakes, frogs, bees and the full forest but this is the first time I have ever seen a frog anywhere close to my house.
This little frog reminded me that I am supposed to be a Friend of the Earth; yes I am a tree hugger. I love nature, green grass, fresh air, animals and the sights and sounds of life in general; if you have read The Local Hogwarts Express then you may have already noticed. That hopping anomaly inspired me to open google once again but this time on an eco-hunt and what I found was again overwhelming (I use google on the regular, read Hunger Games). Pollution is a global executioner, playing in the ranks of Great Assassins and Highered Killers like malaria. I discovered that we dump garbage in the ocean (just like that!) and according to some sources we dump about 14 billion pounds of rubbish every year, what is wrong with us? That is not even all. We allow untreated sewage to flow casually into natural water bodies, untreated sewage! No wonder there are no more fish in many waters, they are running away baba, do you want them to die *South African accent*?
More than a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, they say at least 5000 die daily for lack of that colourless, ordourless and tasteless liquid. This is sad because all the money being wasted on nuclear weapons could have been used to provide fresh drinking water for all these thirsty people #fact.
Oceans are becoming more acidic and countries like our beloved People's Republic of China (PRC) are literally ‘manufacturing’ carbondioxide, a major global warmer. There are more than 500 million cars in the world already and we are looking forward to 1 billion by 2030; vehicular pollution could double!
Noise pollution, highly present in Nigeria as ‘I betta pass my neighbour generators’ and unnecessary loud speakers and vehicle horns, is the most neglected type of pollution but still an equally deleterious phenomenon. There are also the notorious oil spills of which I hear the disaster at the Gulf of Mexico is nothing compared to what goes unreported in our backyard here in the Ogoni lands. I hear what Nigeria’s Niger Delta is suffering makes the Gulf of Mexico incident look like a tea party.
According to a report by Numbeo, Nigeria’s ECOWAS neighbour, Ghana clinches 100.01 on the global pollution scale. I was shocked to see this as well but I would bet on Ghanaian local football club, Asante Kotoko’s victory that this woeful statistic is due to E-waste, a new global menace; a lot of the E-waste in that country is brought in for dumping from abroad. Is that even fair? For some reason, however, Nigeria’s pollution is yet to be indexed, could it be that we are off the charts?! Chineke!
Maybe what the world needs is a hero like Captain Planet to take pollution down to zero (you would know Captain Planet if you were born in the 90s and watched plenty cartoons). Environmental activists like Wangari Maathai of Kenya, the Founder of Africa’s Green Belt Movement, a woman who rose from humble beginnings to win the Nobel Prize played her part in fighting for our planet. Julia ‘the Butterfly’ Hill one of today’s most credible environmentalist, popular for spending 738 days in a redwood tree is still fighting to save our planet. Gaylord Nelson, the Wisconsin senator that put the environment on the national agenda, the founder of Earth Day gave the world 'Earth day". What have you done?
You know, I have had to ask myself every now and again, what is it with humans and the current fears of being subdued by apes; blue monkeys from Avatar and chimpanzees from The Planet of The Apes? Maybe it is because we are abusing the earth and we are afraid that one day nature might fight back.
[Lumbersexual Banters] Have you ever been suspected of being a Boko Haram operative? No?? Mehn it hurts deep, it gets you right here (*points at heart*) and all because I was getting my lumber on #BeardGang. If you are ever travelling up north in Nigeria, better shave or else…don’t be like me and try to bring sexy back, all I will say is police. [Banter Part II] So I was riding with my older brother and his friend in a car and I was in the back seat with the friend’s daughter, a baby girl so as you can guess I had to take care of her but then imagine, baby gyal started tugging at my bear-bear and laughing! For some reason, she thought this was funny and as cute as she was doing this, it wasn't *forms straight face*.
[Back to Earth] Sight is an inspiration for sound and sound for sight, none is truly independent of the other but together they are a great pleasure to behold and an even greater inspiration for words. So why do we destroy the sights and sounds of our home, this planet we call earth, why do we destroy our inspiration? We need to learn to reduce, reuse and recycle and become so efficient with our resources that we can achieve zero waste and minimal pollution. I hope we will eventually choose to go green and save planet Earth.
[PS] When you are your own boss you can do beard gang, not that you are working for Hassan, Okechukwu, and Aboyomi Attorneys at Law and you want to keep gemu, nor be me send you o! Lol. As the real men are returning and the women are rejoicing, I bid you farewell and brighter days *Plays Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day*. By the way, NatGeoWild, Dicovery and Animal Planet should enter our own bush and do show na, abi we no get wild?
[Ad Lib] Please help a pretty girl (Hot Babe!) named Dumebi with her Instagram Questionnaire (Click on IG Questionnaire)
