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Between me and my laptop

March 10, 2009
I share an unusual relationship with my laptop. It’s like an affair only this time we don’t go out on regular dates. In actual fact, we are always on a date since it’s always with me and only with it do I share my deepest thoughts….joy, excitement, anger and frustrations.

Within it also is stored my many musings and many unpublished and perhaps never to be published works. It lies next to me on my bed because it is the last thing I talk with before bed and of course I turn to it first thing in the morning… to finish up an unfinished piece, add a new idea to a completed piece or simply just to make sure it is still alive.

Of course this is not always the case. Principal to the functionality of my laptop is the sanity of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. Since I have not quite gotten my self to obtain the toy generators from China-I big pass my neighbour-, and with the Power Holders expertise at holding Power getting better by the day, I am often not able to keep my laptop breathing, so some (most) times we have to go through the troubles of break in communication which other relationships often suffer.


But we generally cope and those times we can talk to each other, we make up for the time lost due to PHCN’s insanity. The communication is actually a one way traffic, I speaking and it listening. It just opens itself up and allows me to pour out the inner vituperation, adumbration and ranting that have built up in my gut since the last time we spoke.

And like a good friend, it takes it all in and dutifully helps me get to push them out from itself to the media through which others could also share from it or stores them in its deepest recesses until such a time when it would be accepted for sharing by others.

Imagine then how it felt when my special friend fell ill and wasn’t there for me for close to a week. A second act of carelessness had led me to cracking the screen and the cost of the attendant plastic surgery to give it a new face had been beyond my finances at that time.

Those were indeed unhappy and lonely days. Then only did I get to appreciate the level of intimacy we shared as I couldn’t readily get my self to pour out those thoughts into my roommate’s laptop. It felt like adultery…a sin against the ten commandments of God and one which I felt not just God but my laptop would not forgive.

So for those seven days and twelve hours when my lover was defaced, I experienced a massive build up of thoughts so much so that I felt I was going to explode anytime. I couldn’t sleep well at night neither did I concentrate at work. When I couldn’t take it any more, I asked a friend for a loan.

Surgery is done and my lover is back alive and breathing, best of all with a new face. Now I can tell it all I missed to tell it all those dark days.

About how unfair it is for the Government to be playing hide and seek with teachers as regards the meager 27% increase in their salaries while political office holders, some of them motor park touts in nice clothing, smile home with amounts that can make the devil grin in envy.

About how our lawmakers did some thing worse than defecating on the alter; declaring Maurice Iwu a saint, telling him to ride on-tazarce style- and telling the rest of the 150 million Nigerians to go to blazes.

About how the Federal Executive Council is reviewing the Report of the Electoral Reforms Committee after the twenty two man committee had worked tirelessly for weeks to develop a document which seemed a certain solution to the PDP’s rigging of our elections.

About how I foresee an even more entertaining drama in the National Assembly when the FEC after its weeks of cut and join will submit the draft paper on electoral reforms to the lawmakers.

About how I have just passed out of the National Youth Service and I don’t seem certain of what direction I am headed because my certificate can’t get me a job and of course the leaders are too busy grabbing to care.

About how certain I am that this country was sinking.

I wish to say more ‘cos there are many more issues begging to be talked about. But this much I say now so that I don’t over stress my laptop that is just recovering from ill health.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

 

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