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Geegpay Writing Challenge by Itoro Akinbamiyorin.

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It was the last day of the 2019 GTCO festival. After hours of documenting the event in photographs which very few people would likely see, I still had a final task to photograph the runway show at 6pm. Then I had to wriggle out of the crowd and traffic fast enough to make it to the pharmacy three streets from my home. Baba Khemist was the only one who sold my mother’s arthritis medication at prices we could afford, and she’d run out two days ago. But that was still three hours away. In my current moments of pedal soreness, sour words began to whisper themselves around me again. Is this really worth it? Suddenly, a line began to form to my left for entry into a makeup Masterclass. Not very related to my line of work, but all I saw was a free hour-long seat. So I joined up. The speaker, Sir James, began the session with an iridescent demonstration on his model, and then slipped comfortably into industry talk. He opened the floor wide to questions, and his response to one was an...

I AM because YOU ARE (Ease Someone’s Life Today)

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In his summary of the core of ‘ ubuntu ’- the South African humanist philosophy- African Intellectual historian, Michael Onyebuchi Eze, wrote, “Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.” On my own, I can say, “I am human,” because biologically, that is true. However, the reality that would back that up can only be brought to fruition by the way I am treated by another human. If you treat me like a dog, then what is the use of my saying, “I am human”? The fact is that I am the person I am today because you have treated me with kindness and respect; because you have acknowledged my humanity, you have eased life for me. Therefore, I write this piece today to acknowledge you, for I am humane because you are humane too.   First and foremost, I am because you are; Love. The words you gave me, m...

THE TRUTH ABOUT RAPE CULTURE: A detailed exposé on the toxic realities of rape culture in Nigeria and how to combat it.

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What is rape culture ? First of all, what is rape and why would it even have a “ culture ” in the first place? Rape  is a type of  sexual assault  usually involving  sexual intercourse  or other forms of  sexual penetration  carried out against a person without that person's  consent . The act may be carried out by physical force,  coercion ,  abuse of authority , or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent , such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an  intellectual disability  or is below the legal  age of consent . The term  rape  is sometimes used interchangeably with the term  sexual assault (source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ). Culture is what people generally consider as the norm and the way certain things are done, interpreted or handled amongst them. Basically, culture is what people see as “okay”. So as an entirety, rape culture are the things ...

DEAR DIARY,

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It's been an exciting couple of "Ember" months so far. Here's a lowdown of my last 4 months in 2018. SEPTEMBER S kepticism: At the beginning of the month, I began to have doubts, not about my faith, but about my religion. Fake pastors, hassling for too much money in the name of tithes, offering and “I love my pastor” (L. M. A. O.), occult arts in the church, 24hour-long church services (I exaggerate, but in Nigeria you can spend a whole day in church without achieving anything else with your daily hours), deceit. We all know that this list is very long. So afterwards I began to wonder if switching to Islam would be a bad idea or not. In my honest opinions, Muslims always seem very rich to me, they keep to their prayer routines very strictly (a routine would make it so much easier than the Christian anywhere, anytime) and I could take the opportunity to learn that Hausa that I’ve been learning since Primary 4. But then I thought naaaaaa; with the way I s...

FAITH 101: The Shawarma Sandwich

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CAST YOUR MIND BACK... to a time when you were young and hungry. Or if you're still young like me, back to when you were hungry. I'm sure we've all been in that situation where we're so hungry, we could almost eat sand😵 ( although not advisable in any flavour whatsoever) and there's no actual meal-status food in our fridges. So what do we do? Especially when you still live in your mother's house like me and have no money of your own to order some Dominoes in. Or even in some cases when there is real food available but it isn't the real food we like, for those of us blessed with choice? Well, the answer simple👌. People like us, in either category, we inspect and pick out the odd bits and pieces available to us, toss them together on a plate and come out with an unconventional yet edible and pretty delicious combo that'll do just as good a job at satisfaction as any 5-star mummy-cooked meal.  Good examples could be yam and butter, r...

THE PILOT POST

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WELCOME TO MY SUICIDE NOTE. Ha Ha Just kidding. This isn't 13 reasons why.  This is real life. And whatever you watch on Netflix, I tell you dear reader, is NOT real life🙅. I know this for certain because no matter how many Noah Centineo movies I watch, I'll never run into him on any beach here in Lagos, like they run into celebrities in his movie "SPF 18". So I'll change up my introduction to: WELCOME TO REAL LIFE.  Because every confusingly controversial idea I'm about to put out to you about religion, food, music, love, art, literature, culture, psychology, money, dreams, aspirations and humans is real life. My real life. Which I hope you can relate to on one level or the other. So here's real life for you. All my life, I've tried to keep journals. Pretty little notebooks that I'd swear to make into amazing documentations of experiences and emotions I would undergo, capturing moments with words that  would make...