While thinking about all that I have to be thankful for, this song came to mind:

Give you The Praise

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This song was written by the worship and multicultural ministries pastor at my church and he’s the one singing in the video above. The song doesn’t sound like it usually does because at church there are a ton of other instruments and singers accompanying the instruments. The words are great!

So, what am I giving God the praise for this week?

1. For the way my parents love me. I have never doubted their love for me, and this feeling just grows. The older I get the closer I feel to my parents. I am so thankful for who they are and how devoted they are to my siblings and I. I am truly blessed.
2. The unbelievable generosity of my friends. I signed up to raise $1,000 for a cause dear to my heart (finding a cure for diabetes) and my deadline to raise this money is May 26, four months from today. Already my generous friends have helped me reach 39% of my goal. Every time I get a notification of another donation my heart just swells. By supporting me financially these people are also supporting my upcoming 5K run/walk and I am so motivated to train my heart out.
3. My “just enough and not too much” house. My colleague told me about a cute book with the title Just Enough and Not Too Much that teaches kids to be happy with what they have and to not want more things than they actually need because a cluttered life is often not a happier one. Although the book is for kids we can all learn that lesson. My two-bedroom house has plenty of room for me, but I have this tendency to be a packrat, to the point that I’ve been telling myself that I need a bigger house. But will that encourage more of my packrat behaviour? Probably, which will lead to me being grumpier and stressed (that’s what having too much stuff does to me!).
4. My church. I’ve been going to this church for just over a year and I feel freer and more able to express myself at this church than I did in my old church that I attended for 20 years. I know that my former church must have prepared me in some way for this church but it’s still so great to feel this way. The sermons too are really good (though I need to work on applying them).
5. People who are following their dreams and making things happen, because they inspire me. One really can go from having an idea, to posting pictures of it or publicizing it to Facebook, to registering a company or buying a storefront. I was very excited to see someone reaching the next stage in accomplishing their life goal.
6. Unanswered prayers, even though I’m disappointed by the answer. It’s funny because I don’t know if I actually feel thankful for this quite yet…but I hear you should give thanks in all circumstances so I’m trying this on for size!

I hope you have plenty to be thankful for! To close, here’s another original song by Pastor Paulo.

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(This is kind of a continuation of What’s in a name?.)

When my parents were deciding what to name the precious daughter that turned out to be me, my mom told me they decided to give me a Yoruba first name so that I would always have a tie to my heritage, no matter where in the world I ended up. My two middle names are also Yoruba, and they were given to me by my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother. My parents hadn’t planned to raise their children in North America: my father had received a scholarship from the Nigerian government to study abroad, and the deal was when he was finished his schooling, the government would bring him and his family back home. However things had changed by the time my dad had finished his degrees, and the government was no longer able to honour their part of the deal. By this time my brothers had came along and my parents realized they’d be in North America for longer than they planned.

The result then is four Yoruba children with names that are regularly mispronounced by our Canadian friends. Because my siblings and I were heavily exposed to North American culture in comparison to Yoruba culture, which we mostly got from our parents, the four of us developed our own mix of the Yoruba and Canadian accent. As a result, when we’re pronouncing each other’s names we almost get it right. Our exposure to Yoruba from our parents allowed us to develop the ability to pronounce certain letters that don’t appear in the North American alphabet (like ‘gb’ and the Yoruba ‘p’), so we pronounce each other’s names better than other Canadians would, but not quite as well as a Nigerian would, if that makes sense. There are some intonations that don’t come naturally to Canadians or to us, but as ‘Titilayo’ (Cara Harshman) has demonstrated, with practice it can be learned.

Most Yorubas my age who were born or raised here have Yoruba first names, and those are the names they go by. I noticed that there are some Jennifers or Jessicas in the much younger generation, but I don’t know if that’s their first name or their middle name. As I think of naming my future children (the ones who still need a father), my plan (provided I marry a fellow Yoruba who feels the way I do, since I can’t expect someone from another part of Nigeria or from another country entirely to agree to my plan) is to choose Yoruba names that are relatively easy to pronounce in North America. However, I don’t plan to sacrifice a great name just for pronounceability’s sake! Instead, I intend to do my part to teach others how to say the name and encourage my kids to do the same. I don’t know if I’ll use English middle names yet; right now I feel like that’s a no.

If my parents had known that I had given up correcting people regarding the proper way to pronounce my name, and that I was introducing myself to non-Nigerians using the “Canadian” pronunciation, they would have reminded me to be proud of my heritage and not allow my name to be mispronounced. However, when you tell someone how to say your name and they try several times and just can’t get it, you have to move on, and my parents get that. As long as you can tell someone is referring to you and as long as they actually do try to pronounce the name correctly when you tell them, I don’t think one should belabour the issue. BUT, there is no excuse for me pronouncing my name wrong!

In the recording of my voicemail message at work, I pronounce my name properly, but if someone calls me, I tend to say “*name of organization*, *butchered version of my name* speaking”, because I don’t know if the person on the other line is someone that I’ve introduced myself to in the past by saying my name incorrectly. I know: I have unnecessarily complicated my life! Thank God that in the grand scheme of things this is a minor issue that can be rectified, one introduction (or reintroduction!) at a time.

• If you live abroad, how well is your name pronounced compared to the proper pronunciation?
• Did you shorten or modify your name to adapt to your new environment?

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1. Get home from your parents’ house at almost 2:00 in the morning.
2. Remember that you don’t have a placard. Also remember you meant to buy bristol board but didn’t.
3. Go to the kitchen to warm up your homemade pot of turkey soup so that it doesn’t spoil. Notice that you have a shallow cardboard box. Bring your find to the living room.
   
   
4. Cut off the sides of the box.
   
5. Think about the message you want to write on your placard.
6. Examine your Sharpie collection.
7. Think about the message you want to write on your placard.
8. Officially become the last person alive to discover Shirley Eniang‘s YouTube channel. Watch several videos.
9. Think about the message you want to write on your placard.
10. Pick a message that will fit on the placard.
11. Plan spacing of message. Plan poorly, requiring a restart.


12. Complete your message.
    
13. Head up to bed around 4:20, but not before realizing that the word “Nigeria” does not appear on your placard.

The above isn’t meant to take away from the seriousness of the Occupy Nigeria cause and the hardships that people are facing.

Here’s how today’s event went:

My plan was to go for a few hours as I was going to work later in the day. I went to bed too late to get to the Hi.gh Comm.ission (HC) for 10:00am and I didn’t arrive there until 11:30. I found a parking spot easily, in front of the police! I don’t know how these cops do it but they always seem to be prepared to manage protests. I guess people tip them off and they probably have people who do keyword searches for that sort of thing. I was still impressed.

I asked the police if they knew whether the protest was happening, because I was afraid that I could have missed it. They said as far as they knew the protest was happening, that it was the reason they were there. They also said the organizer of the protest was parked a few cars behind them. Because I was wary of joining a group of people that might have a different agenda other than appealing to the Nigerian gover.nment to end corruption and all that ails Nigeria, I decided to record a video of the HC. While I was recording, a guy I guessed was the organizer of the event came up to me and told me the protest would be starting in about 45 minutes, once a critical mass was reached. He named a number of people in our local community who would be joining the protest. He offered me one of their signs that was in his car but since I had made my own and didn’t want to inadvertently carry a sign that might be in support of a cause other than the main cause, I declined. He asked to see my sign and I showed him. About 30 minutes later he came to my car with the signs and another protester. They asked if I wanted to carry one of their signs. Since the signs were handwritten like mine and weren’t linked to any cause, I agreed to carry one in addition to my own. After a few minutes, another guy joined us. 15 minutes later, a close family friend and his daughter showed up and I love this guy: he asked what we were waiting for; and said we should go protest! The organizer said we should wait for more people but my family friend and his daughter grabbed two signs and went to stand in front of the HC, waving the signs. I grabbed my sign and the other sign, and ran to join the eager protesters, and the protest officially started about an hour after I got there. We chanted “Stop corruption, not subsidy!” and “Stop corruption…in Nigeria.” There were just six of us.

A few people tooted their car horns in support, and even those who didn’t show their support in that way tried to read our signs while they drove by, which is good. One elderly lady asked me questions about what we were protesting and you could tell she got it, saying that it’s the poor who suffer when subsidies are lifted.

Over the next 45 minutes we were joined by four people, two who were there to join the protest (one with a megaphone), and two who wanted to record the event for their own purposes (pardon my cynicism but when you’ve interacted with someone before you learn what they’re about. Hopefully I’m wrong though!). The guy who brought the megaphone kept saying the wrong thing, which was made worse by the fact that he had a megaphone. He was chanting “Stop corruption, stop subsidy!” until I reminded him that the subsidy was stopped already…we want them to bring it back! We passed the megaphone around and tried to create a peaceful commotion.

One guy had to leave, so we were down to seven protesters. After an hour and a half most of us had to leave: the family friend and his daughter had an appointment, another protester had to got to school, and I left for work. I heard a larger contingent was expected an hour from the time we left, but unfortunately I don’t know if that happened.

In all I don’t think we made an impact. The protest didn’t attract any local news stations and HC staff were not affected enough to look out their windows. Only those people who went into the HC for visa or passport issues seemed interested in peeking at us from inside the HC.

I’m glad I came out and chanted with all my heart because I really am thankful that I live in a country where I did not fear joining this protest, nor did I fear the police presence. I am thankful to live in a country where a member of the uninformed public would stop me to inquire, where drivers would honk their horns in support, even if they didn’t have a chance to digest what the cause actually was. The worst part about the protest was the temperature— -25 degrees Celcius is just too cold!

Aloted was kind enough to tell me that the strike was called off in Nigeria today, and maybe that’s why people in my city didn’t show up in large numbers. I learned the the price of fuel was lowered, from N141 to N97, but that is still significantly more than N65.

I’m not sure what will come next but for once in my life, I’ll be paying particular attention to what happens next on a political issue.

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You can’t go anywhere on blogville without hearing about the Occupy Nigeria movement that was sparked by the fuel subsidy removal, leading to more than doubling of fuel prices overnight (among other things). I want to talk about how this particular issue touches me from the perspective of a Nigerian who was raised in diaspora (ugh, I don’t like the way diaspora sounds).

When something serious happens in Nigeria, like bombings or a presidential election, I often don’t talk about them (on my blog or elsewhere) because they’re usually related to politics and I’m politically apathetic (I do vote though!). I’m not interested in Canadian, American, Nigerian, or any politics. I care about people, their struggles and how their lives are affected by politics.

Because I’m out of touch with politics, it’s hard to share a strong opinion when I’m not in Nigeria experiencing the event. So, that means I base my opinion on information culled from twitter, Wikipedia, and other online sources. Phone is my main mode of communication with our family in Nigeria, but when we talk, it’s more to make sure everyone’s alive and healthy than to have in-depth discussions; it’s just too expensive.

Though I lived in Nigeria between the ages of 3 and 6, I didn’t get to experience the (political, social) “system” because I was too young. If you’ve gone through Nigeria’s secondary school system, or post-secondary education, you have a better idea of the Nigerian system, how things work or don’t work. It’s not just that you have a better idea, you’ve actually lived it, and you may have even been a victim of the system (sadly there are many). So when you hear something like this fuel subsidy removal, even if you’re in diaspora and have been for decades, you’re more stirred to respond I think. If you spent at least some of your teenage years in Nigeria, I think it gives you a deeper connection to Nigeria’s political and social issues than I will probably ever have.

In the past, I’ve let that stop me from posting about various topics. I often think the opinion of someone who barely lived in the country really does not matter. I know for a fact that I have a naive view about Nigeria and what is needed to shape the country up but what’s the harm in sharing my opinion? Maybe I’ll accidentally share information that’s wrong, but that’s what the community of readers is for. If you ever see anything that isn’t quite right, or if you feel like educating me, please do! It’s how I’ll learn.

Speaking of naivete, a few days ago I was telling my friend about the difficulty my mom, sister, and I had returning to Canada after our visit to Nigeria in 2008. I was recounting the bribes we were asked to paid, increased, no doubt, the moment they heard my sister and I speak, and how they went through all our suitcases by hand. I told my friend that next time I’ll travel with an oyinbo person because surely they wouldn’t dare open the suitcases of an oyinbo and riffle through their belongings, or ask them for bribes. Wouldn’t they be afraid of how they’d be perceived on an international level? My friend just laughed and said our countrymen will try even more with a Caucasian, thinking they have more money than the average Nigerian. A sobering thought!

So back to the fuel subsidy removal. I learned about twelve hours ago that there will be an Occupy Nigeria protest in front of the Nigerian embassy in my city on Monday. I was about to share this information on the Facebook page of the Nigerian association that I’m the interim communications person for, when someone (God) told me to check with the president and vice-president of the association first. In the end, I was asked to wait before sharing the information, and that didn’t surprise me because while waiting for the president and vice president to reply to my email, the answer came to me. The current high commissioner who runs the embassy has been very supportive of the work of our association. Even though the protest is not against the embassy (though God knows it could be!), the embassy might take the protest personally, because we’d be asking them to speak up and do something about what is going on in Nigeria. I’m wondering if it’s ok for me to go and protest. As long as I don’t say anything about belonging to the association or imply that the association endorses my actions, I should be fine.

There are people who will never protest because “things never change” (others may choose not to protest because the cause doesn’t mean anything to them; that’s fine). Well maybe things don’t change (quickly anyway!), and maybe they won’t change, but at least you can say that you did something and stood up for what you believed in in 2012. You didn’t just sit there complaining. Like they say here all the time when it comes to voting in politics, If you didn’t vote, you can’t complain!

If you live in the Nation’s Capital (that’s Canada’s capital) and you’d like some details about what’s happening on Monday, please let me know!

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In my first entry this year I shared my goal to blog twice a week. It’s been nine days since that post and I’m just updating! I deserve your boos and jeers, so bring it on! ;)

I’m really excited about what 2012 has in store for all of us. The sermon at church last Sunday was the perfect start to the year, and it was called A Fresh Start. I was reminded that we should not dwell on the successes of 2011 because they’re in the past. So if 2011 was the most phenomenal year ever, thank God for it but look ahead to 2012! We’re also not supposed to dwell on the failures of 2011 either because that will hold us back from progressing in 2012. So for all those goals that I’ve had since the inception of this blog in 2008 (yikes!), that I haven’t yet acted upon or achieved, I can no longer beat myself up about them. Even when I see other bloggers doing big things that I want to do, I have to look forward to 2012 and to making those goals happen this year. I have a lot more to say about that!

For now, let me share some things that I am thankful for:

1. That my father is home, even though it’s because he’s on leave for a not-so-great reason. He’s doing everything he can to get well and I am trusting God that my Daddykins will be healed.
2. That my sister is enjoying her new job. It’s a short contract that should end next month, but we’re hopeful that she will be retained.
3. That Babatunde, my youngest brother, is flourishing in his career, even before finishing school. He just has to fight the distraction of not letting all the opportunities that await him once he’s graduated stop him from actually graduating!
4. That my other younger brother has been rather pleasant of late (we have a complicated relationship). Things took a slight turn for the better on January 1 so I think that’s a sign!
5. For the generosity of a great friend…thank you, Allison!
6. That a friend who was supposed to travel late last year had his travel plans delayed because he was able to be there when his friend fell deathly ill and needed to be taken to the hospital. My friend was living with his friend at the time too, which I think was also part of the plan to ensure that my friend could see this serious situation and act promptly.

   I’m also thankful that his friend is getting better every day.

7. For enough to meet more than my basic needs. I got myself a new laptop and some other things I wanted recently. It is a true blessing to be able to do these things for myself once in a while.
8. For an upcoming collaboration that I’m nervous but also excited about. EEEEEEEeeeeeeeek! I squeal (out loud) every time I think about it.

What are YOU thankful for?

(And yeah, I know that image is not much of one but at least it’s a picture right? I did say I wanted to post more pictures with my posts!)

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Happy New Year! Thank God we made it to 2012. It’s easy to forget that not everyone who was looking forward to this year will get to experience it so I already feel blessed. I hope you’re thankful for your life and excited about a fresh new year and all that can be accomplished in it.

On the topic of accomplishments, I looked over the list of things I shared that I was looking forward to in 2011 and how disappointing: I only accomplished one item on the list! People who set goals and actually accomplish them intrigue me (and make me envious of them, quite frankly!) so I need to master the art of goal setting (and accomplishing). One big thing I fail to do is regularly review my goals to make sure I’m on track (and adjust them if necessary). Once I’ve completed my list of goals for 2012 I plan to set monthly (and maybe more frequent) reminders on my phone remind me to revisit the goals.

My blogging goals so far are:

• blog at least twice per week
• post more pictures with my entries
• redesign the site
• cut down the number of categories I have for this blog (36 the last time I checked–way too many!)
• incorporate All the single ladies unite! into this blog (I think)

What goals (blogging or otherwise) have you set for yourself this year? Please share!

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