Introducing Kfa Fashions

I very rarely do red carpet events as I am more of a casual dresser generally. However, when I do get dragged on by Denrele et al I can usually be found wearing something from this "new" designer. I am therefore excited that she has decided to spread her wings and is holding a three day show at The Coral Mall, 21B Idowu Martins, VI from this week Friday 22nd till Sunday 24th.

The first two days are an exhibition of the clothes (you can buy as well oh). On the last day there will be a major fashion show from 2-4pm. Yours truly will be MCing this event (a first for me). So I look forward to all the Lagos Big girls and Big Boys coming out to support her. And me. (Gulp).

Check Kfa out on their website - http://kayfafashions.com/

A different Life

I went to South Africa a few weeks ago for a month, to get some therapy for my daughter who has Aspergers.We stayed in cape town, I have travelled quite a bit and still continue to do so but cape town is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.We rented a flat on the beach front. I would wake up with questions and apprehensions about my daughters care but once I caught a view of the beach or the mountains that surrounded us I felt such a sense of calmness and well being.I would take her for walks on the beach every day after therapy and every day the sea would present us with a different gift it could be a preserved sea horse amazingly coloured. Shells,bits of coral and so many different kinds of seaweed that my daughter suggested we take them home and cook them this is one kid that loves her vegetables.
Never have I felt so comfortable in a country I have never wanted to visit, always put off by the history of apartheid. My first trip out by myself to the mall I noticed that I blended in with the crowd completely as eighty percent of the people looked like me now you might think what is she talking about ? But this was an amazingly rare experience because as a mixed race person you tend to stand out a little.This was a kind of nirvana for me because when people looked at me they saw themselves and looked at me accordingly with a knowing acceptance,well what they thought they knew if you catch my drift.I went to the salon for a hair cut and one of the ladys asked me how long I had been away as she assumed I was a South African coloured with an english accent.I know SA has been getting a lot of bad press recently and some of it deservedly so but I have never met a friendlier more relaxed bunch of people blacks,whites and coloreds alike. The cost of living seemed to be lower than living in Lagos,the quality of life is amazing all this just five and a half hours away from Nigeria.

When I got back I wanted to relocate and had a bit of a cry as nepa took light once again and the local security teams started banging their iron bars as they do every night just as you are getting into a nice sleep presumably to scare off armed robbers.I had been used to the sound of the ocean putting me to sleep and I thought how much more comfortable my children would be in the Cape totally be able to blend in and have a healthy out door life on the beach,surfing,sailing........but hey there's no place like home is there ?

Too Close For Comfort

The evenings of our first few months of moving into Lekki were filled with sporadic gunfire in the area as it seemed to be the season for armed robbers,so maybe we got a bit desensitised to hearing the noise and went into automatic pilot locking the doors,putting the lights out and staying away from the windows making sure the security men were locked into the compound with us and so on.I heard my first detailed eye witness account on Xmas day, we had an open house and lots of guests.The last set of guests came in early evening and recounted there near miss experience at The Palms a mall just down the road from us.Apparently they drove past the armed robbers who were on their way to rob The Newscafe Restaurant and bar were they proceeded to strip everyone of there money jewellery and mobile phones. From there they headed to shoprite on the inside of the mall and robbed them of all there takings and terrorised shoppers.I remember sitting there and thinking how insane the conversation sounded as we drank champagne, it seemed as if we were discussing the weather.

The mall was robbed again last weekend,and my daughter reminded me at that exact same time I was pressuring them to get out of the house and go to the mall to watch a movie.I thank God they did not give in to my trying to get them to go out and have a good time.They tend not to go out as much as they did in England,there is just not that much to do out here.
I was out the other day getting some groceries from shoprite trying to Ignore the bullet holes on the walls outside and just get on with it,as everybody does out here,when a wall of fear hit me so strong it made my eyes water. I had to sit on one of the benches in the mall as I felt nauseous.Here we all are going about our normal lives with fixed smiles on our faces and we are living in a war zone.
Last night was a little too close for comfort,I had just finished settling the little ones to bed at about 8pm when the gunfire started it sounded like one of the robbers had gotten hold of an automatic weapon and the gun fire went on for about 10minutes.They were robbing the local restaurant a mere four doors down from me. four doors down!,and yet we wake up get dressed and act like nothing happened,is this healthy? I don't know....are we as a nation too cavalier in our easy going attitude when it comes to our lives on the line?or is it that we have no choice but to be cavalier, because are we not just here by his grace?

Women Beaters

What kind of man finds it within himself to beat women?,is it learned behavior?.
There has been so much stuff in the papers recently mainly focusing on our sports heroes I couldn't believe it when I heard Nigerian former football international Godwin Okpara had been arrested for rape and torture of his adopted daughter.(I reckon she might have been his housegirl,but comon!).Then there's Andy Cole arrested just this week for assaulting his wife.I was also talking about Gazza on my show last week, as he was recently sectioned under the mental health act. He openly admitted to beating his wife on a regular basis in his autobiography. I also had the honour of meeting Frank Bruno a few years back, he came across as a wonderfully charming man,I wasnt aware at the time that he apparently used to batter his wife on a daily basis.What is it?.I suppose we shouldn't assume they should know better just because they are celebrities, earn shed loads of money and are, or where leaders in there fields of expertise.I think we somehow assume falsely that money makes people better.Well it obviously doesn't

Perhaps there are religious and cultural issues to also debate here.A friend of mine was quick to point out Ephesians 5:22-23 to justify the patriarchal dominance of the male.Islam religion also tells men how to control there wives by beating them with a stick no wider than the length of there thumb.
Some women say that alcohol contributed to there man hitting them.I suppose alcohol does have some bearing on behaviour,but I think that a person who would beat you when drunk would still beat you when sober.Violence occurs when someone decides that its ok to physically abuse you,What do you think.

Here we Go....

Had a brilliant time at Brila 88.9fm yesterday (no pun intended). It was such a buzz being live on air. I have never seen so many knobs and buttons. Its like being in a plane cockpit, push the wrong button and you could crash i.e. go off the air. I interviewed Ewigbe Enobahare, the Kano Pillars Goal keeper, reviewed the morning sports pages, did sports entertainment news i.e. told everyone about Gazza being locked up under the Mental Health Act, Ashley and Cheryl Cole's marriage wahala(shock horror he's been sleeping around!!), Posh and Pecs (I mean Becks) wanting to adopt a baby from Sierria Leone (puh-lleeze) and Ronaldos new mansion and so on ..

I then, with great glee and excitement, opened up the phone lines to talk about wedding rings. Some of the players that went out to Ghana conveniently lost theirs as they had to take them off before playing so I opened up the topic a bit and asked what people thought about wedding rings. Should they be worn permanently or do we have the freedom, male or female, to wear them as we like. There were lots of interesting responses like - Africans don't wear wedding rings! But surely if you are going to fully embrace the Christianity imported from Europe, get married in the church in front of hundreds of people then surely you are going to have to wear a wedding ring.

So I'm on again next Saturday with more sports entertainment, interviews and juicy gossip as I find out what sports celebrities are up to. If you hear anything juicy please let me know so I can spread the news to all my peeps. And I am especially looking for all you ladies to give me a call as I am going to be asking who the sexiest footballers are. We will try and keep it down to 100!! (LOL)

Talk to you guys soon.

On the radio.....

Hey guys please check out my new show on Brila FM every Saturday from 11am to 3pm for the next four weeks. I will be looking at sports from an ENTERTAINMENT point of view and there will be plenty of opportunities for you all to phone in and ask questions which I will not have the answer to (LOL).

Really though it will be news, chat, entertainment, gossip and lots of fun along the way. With a few surprises thrown in.

Brila is on 88.9FM and their website is here http: //www.brila-fm.net/index.php

Y'all come and join me now, you hear?

valentines day at lekki beach

with oga off travelling the world as usual and my two older ones after much begging and pleading (and then playing the you don't love us you went of to New York, and left us card)in England for the half term.I decided to spend valentines day with my two younger ones at lekki beach.As usual on arrival we were defrauded of our money
for the beach and also for the new tariff they have just introduced for the car park,the car park meaning a strip of sand with no clear definition that they occasionally hose down to stop you sinking into the sand,I dont mind realy and I quite like the beach area boys they try to keep the beach clean and are on first name terms with my kids so its all good.Gosh it was so romantic the water was so so blue like it had just been imported from Hawaii the sand was valentine clean, fine and powdery. I settled my self down on my favorite beach chair like an old aunt, put on my Jackie Os and began to watch all the action.couple number one descend down to the beach she looking all black Beyonce, with her little plasic valentines rose and he looking all Taye diggs with a bottle of Baron de Vlle red wine and a glint in his eye( today na today)she touched his arm and whispered in his ear to my imagination promises of delights to come in one of beach huts that affords the privacy to be erm.. romantic later on, and then pushes him off to haggle with the horseman on a white charger cos she wants a ride,the horse man who is charging valentines prices begins to irritate Taye Diggs as he is not willing to part with N700 for Beyonce to take a ride.Beyonce begins to fiddle with her bra strap and the horseman offers a quick discount, as they gallop of into the almost but not quite sunset Taye Diggs buys guguru and epa(peanuts and popcorn)couple number two enter my radar (she like Oprah Winfrey he unfortunately not steadman) mainly because she decides my little homely patch is good security for her bag and shoe which she, after greeting me like we were friends, drops by my seat.Her rose is made out of cloth unlike beyonces little plastic one and a bit larger.They run towards the water hand in hand,totaly immersed in each other you can almost tell they've farmed out the kids to family and are desperately trying to seek romance again.

I glance over at Taye Diggs who is now polishing off his red wine , not leaving much for Beyonce,whilst pacing up and down the beach wondering were she is.Oprah runs back with, not steadman and they retire to one of the beach houses for some....rest.
I briefly check that the tide hasn't pulled away my children and then on hearing
smacking noises coming from the beach house behind me I adjust my chair away from Oprah, and not steadman,and return to gaze at Taye Diggs,well you know, eye candy now, after all its valentines.He has finished off the bottle of wine and is running up and down the beach looking for Beyonce,asking all the other horsemen if they have seen de broda on de white orse ,no oh! we neva see am ! With Taye about to go into melt down Beyonce arrives with, did I say the Jay z lookalike!.... well he was yellow.
Now Jay z has a very satisfied look on his face and Beyonce looks like she had had a good ride, Taye looks as if he is about to take Jay Z out, but Beyonce whispers something in his ear. As Jay z gallops off I ponder on what she could have said to explain her absence for 45 minutes, if only I had super powers.Meanwhile Oprah comes out of the hut looking like the cat that just got the cream,and not steadman looked,
rested.As she began to look frantically for her bag I motioned her over,
not wanting to spoil her good mood as I had moved her bag for safe keeping.
So how was it now I said very forwardly she giggled like a school girl picked her things and ran off.Oh happy days so how was your valentines ?

New York Pt 2

I have a very bad habit of not blogging as much as I want to as I think that some things simply do not merit blogging about, but maybe they do. New York was fantastic. Everything I expected it to be as usual. I shopped till I dropped. Made a note of all the latest designer bags, bought the ones I could afford and mentally tagged the ones I couldn’t afford and headed down to Canal street market, home of the designer knock off bags. I am sorry but I just can’t resist the place. It’s like a huge Aladdin’s cave filled with colourful sparkly jingly rubbish but if you dig hard and deeply enough -into the various back street caverns and cars you get dragged into - (your stomach in your mouth I must say), you come up with some amazingly real bags, everything as it should be, down to the lining and certificate.

I don’t know how my bag and shoe obsession quite came about but its a habit I like to feed and though I have some real high end bags I just can't justify having to pay thousands of pounds for all of them especially as some of them are only in fashion for five minutes. But really, it’s ridiculous some of them I have never even carried, but hey I like beautiful things across the board, from art to furniture to good china and glassware. I don’t think I am alone in this and maybe its just part of being female. Besides it doesn’t matter how much you weigh - bags and shoes always fit:->

The best part of the trip apart from having oga with me was the Colour Purple. I remember when I first looked on line the tickets were pretty pricey so we decided to go to a discount ticket booth on the day of the show for some cut price tickets. We timed it to get there about half an hour earlier so we could be first in line at the booth but we soon discovered everyone else had the same idea and the queue was 2 blocks long. With a heavy heart we decided to go to the theatre and pay full price and justified it as a worthy expense. I kissed oga and left him to work his magic as I ran back to Macys to continue my shopping (God I sound so shallow but I have to buy up everything I can as I just remind myself I am not going back to England after this trip. Instead I’ll be going back home to Lagos where walking into a shop fully stocked with everything you need at a reasonable is just not an option and I'm running out of unmentionables at the minute and I'll be damned if I’m going to Tejuosho market to try them on over my t-shirt as all my Igbo brothers leer at me (whilst at the same time trying to sell me material).

I get back from Macys some four hours later to find oga tucked up in bed watching a football match and enjoying his down time as he should be, but how far with the tickets now? You know I really want to see that show! eh? .. You should have thought of that before you ran off to Macys, he replied without looking up from the tube. Haba honey look at the pretty things I bought for you now I responded (actually they were for me but you get the drift). Anyway he kept me wondering and stressing for half an hour before he whipped the tickets out of his pocket with a flourish. That’s my man. I was over the moon. Now this would be a really memorable trip.

As we arrived at the theatre we saw the same people that were queuing up in the afternoon to buy tickets from the discount booth now queuing for the show. Oga said he did not know what the wahala was about as he had gotten the tickets from the theatre for $29.00! I wanted to see the show so badly I didn’t mind sitting in the rafters but to my amazement we had the best seats in the house in the front row. It was so close I could see the hairs on Chaka’s arms as she belted out songs from the play, which was incredibly soul warming and moving and made you think how easily you can waste your gift of life by thinking you couldn’t amount to much but even then God is faithful and can bring you out of very bad situations with great reward. This show is a definite one to see when in New York.(Just heard that it is actually going to close this month due to lack of ticket sales. Can you believe it?)

We left on a high but decided we couldn’t take in another humongous meal at a restaurant, so decided to go into a deli type shop opposite our hotel that we had noticed. I wished we had gone to a restuarant immediately we opened the door. I had never seen so much food under one roof in my whole life, there was a sandwich bar, a dessert bar, a cheese bar, a seafood bar, Chinese, Japanese and American food then there was the breakfast bar with every type of breakfast you can imagine including fruit and twenty different kinds of muffins. And surrounding all that were boxes and boxes of cereals, drinks, milk - lo fat, high fat, no fat, slow fat, chocolates, packets of biscuits... I could go on. Now by this time I was beginning to feel a tad sick and a bit disoriented (IT REMINDED ME OF THE MACYS SHOE FLOORS. IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH. SENSORY OVERLOAD.

I can't remember what oga got but I left with an apple and went upstairs to our room incredibly hungry, made a very bad cup of American tea, had my apple and decided to put on an impromptu Victoria’s Secret fashion show for oga (the only way to distract him from football) to show him what one can purchase in a four hour shop at Macys. Needless to say he was distracted. Oh the joy. I can’t wait to go again.

Should I stay or should I go?

I have been invited to be a guest presenter and agony aunt of sorts on Unilag FM 103.1 at 9pm tonight. The hot topic of discussion is "How to weather the storm of an affair in your relationship".

I am not sure if I am fully qualified give advice on this subject, but I will do the best I can based on my own perspective. I suppose the big question will be "should I stay or should I go?. How does one determine this though? Does time invested in the relationship count towards giving it another go? Does being married and maybe having children involved put you under pressure to recommit to a relationship with a person you want to trust but just cannot? As opposed to being single and dating where you can use your get out of jail free card? I wonder though can anyone truly be monogamous for the rest of their lives, once in a committed relationship?.Does an affair just mean sexual indiscretion or could it be unfaithfulness to our partners as soon as we start committing time and energy on communicating in an inappropriate manner with someone other than our partner. Questions.Questions and even more questions.


What I do know is that it takes discipline and hard work to maintain a strong,trusting,respectful and sound relationship. Human beings are programmed to want and need love on a continuous basis we are also programmed to seek for attention and affirmation not only from our partners but also the rest of society and these needs need to be addressed on a continuous basis.

I believe that if our partners stray we need to accept some degree of responsibility not just because we may not have fulfilled our partners needs, but because we have not fulfilled our own. We need to take responsibility for drawing people into our lives that do not belong, that were never our portion, were not what God intended for us and who we simply do not deserve.

It should be an interesting evening.Please join me if you can.

New york Here I come

I have been invited to present an award at the Future Nigerian Awards on sunday,an event which holds yearly to give kudos to all the innovative youth that have made impact in Nigeria it looks to be a great event.with heavy weights such as Ngozi Okonjo Iweala world bank MD and various ministers and first ladies it will be a sight to behold I'm sure.I am also looking forward to seeing one of the nominees, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie hopefully receiving an award for 'young person of the year', and I will be unashamedly chasing her for an autograph as I am a huge fan. I enjoyed 'Half Of A Yellow Sun' even more than 'Purple Hibiscus' I suppose being from Igbo land made me more sensitive to the topics she was dealing with.

Monday morning I am off to New york for the week and I am counting the hours to getting on the plane.I am desperately hoping the flight entertainment will be showing Will Smiths 'I am Legend'.I am a complete sciFi freak ! not to talk of horror movies it doesn't matter how bad they are I'll sit through them to the end.I love plane journeys as you are forced to do nothing (unless you have the kids with you) but meditate and watch an unseemly amount of TV.Tuesday will be an insane amount of shopping at the mall for everyone that is associated with this family, Naija Stylie,even the driver must get a shirt ohh!!,then I am going to see the 'Colour Purple' on Broadway one of my unfulfilled ambitions and do a few comedy clubs.I will also go for a walk in central park, as it is a beautiful space full of hidden adventures, and try not to get mugged.Then there is the food, Americans know how to do food and I will eat to my fill with no guilt attached as I will be walking everywhere!
so on that joyful note I will blog off for the week and let you all in on my adventures when I get back.

Good years

And a Happy new year it is,I pray that 2008 matches all the expectations we have of it as we go about our daily lives trying to live better, be better and achieve all of the resolutions we have set for ourselves.

I have never been good at keeping new year resolutions so have given up on setting them for myself,but I do try to give myself targets to follow for the year.One that wasn't on my to do list is to have a stab at remixing Taxi driver a song I released as a young teenager almost two decades ago. To my constant surprise it is still played on the radio and requested to be played on the radio! it seems to be a well loved song plus I have had my blog friends amongst other people telling me to give it a go, here's me thinking my pop-star days were long over.

So with an open heart I gave Cobhams a ring on Saturday (he is one of the most prolific Nigerian producers around today)I had the privilege of meeting him a few months ago at the Muson Centre where Keji Hamilton was showcasing his new afrobeat record. So I asked him if he remembered the song and to my surprise he began to reconstruct drum,bass and chorus lines to me over the phone,and he sounded very excited about working on such a project.We are hoping to meet up sometime this month our schedules permitting.I mentioned to a blog friend the other day that I might not be brave enough to embark on such an adventure and then I reread one of my mother's poems.

Good Years
Bring back the happiness I once knew,
Find again times to look forward to.
search for pleasure I once felt within,
Return all that was mine,
Life again will begin.


Wind back the new years,
Rebear the old,
Turn back the new thoughts,
The old thoughts enfold.

Darken today's eyes,
Give light to past years.
Bring back bygone joys,
set death on new fears.

Dry up the tears shed for every new day,
Bring back the good years forever to stay.

Made me think..