VAL: Win a #1,500 Airtime/the Money in Cash!!!

Read this short post and find the How-To Win a #1500 recharge card (or the money in cash) below it. Enjoy the season.

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You think you wouldn’t love again, your heart is broken and you are a scum. You think this season isn’t for you; no one to express it to, and you just might have been deceived. Forget about the Valentine charade, disabuse your mind of the usual; if no one would take you out, give a hand to that helpless individual on the street beating the wheel barrow metal-sheet, shouting: ‘E ko ile bo’ta o!’

Accept this; love isn’t love when those needing your bits still suffer, when what your home-woofers go for will well put a boy through a Term in school. A low-school? Yeah, but it is still a school anyway.

You are capable to be loved, you must love too. Shun the fake brothers now, spite the over-pretentious ladies anyhow and love the few people around waiting for cares, the ones in your strengths. Okay, don’t think about those. You aren’t given to a large-scale charity, I know. But presently, try this: you know your friend took a long walk to work this morning. And you didn’t even ask yourself, who would walk mileages to work if Adenle is in his pocket?  Express this season to such a friend and tomorrow, he wouldn’t have to do a sweaty leisured walk to work. Try #500 and he would be saved. Take it down more, give him #100 and he wouldn’t skip lunch in a rush.

Let’s launch this season now. But before that, I must tell you a story. It is about Titi. I used to know Titi as a classmate. I knew Titi as a crush. I know Titi now, she is a friend. On the 14^th of February, 2005, Titi gave me a chocolate cake. She marvelled me. That day I began to see love in another way.

Years later, I would look back at that very moment and would take a cue from it, that as little as we were then and pure, Titi could sacrifice the conventional and give a mischievous boy like me a big chocolate cake as a gift. Recently, we had the opportunity to chat in our adult selves and I asked her what prompted her action years ago and she replied; I knew you to always silently grovel on my small chops during break time and I thought a large big cake on that day will buy me a break from your discreet covetousness. Funny, right?  It wouldn’t be if I told you that I didn’t only eat that cake, the little ants in our refrigerator ate it too. Every morning of the day, I would take a look at it, fearing that if I ate it too quickly, I may soon stop seeing the beauty of the big black chocolate cake and I left it there for days, only momentarily chipping out of it until ants took away the largest portion of the cake. In my case, Titi cared and the ants got it too.

Forget my sermon joor and let’s get to the How-To-Win proper.

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TrueTalk is celebrating the Valentine Season with a #1500 airtime recharge or the money in cash. TrueTalk is appreciating its readers this season. An average post on this blog gets 300 pageviews in few hours and that’s a lot to be thankful for. The winning amount could get you a book or a monthly subscription on your BB or a nice meal in an average restaurant this season. To win the #1500 recharge card (of any Nigerian network of your choice) or the money in cash, follow the instructions below:

1. Follow this blog with your Google/Yahoo/Twitter/AIM/Netlog/Open ID. (Do so through the “Join this Site” button at the left side of the blog)
2. Follow me @omotayome on Twitter.
3. In the comment box below, write your Best Love Message in 100 words (without TextSpeak/SMS short words, please). So, get creative!
4. Put your phone number below the message to be contacted if you happen to be the winner, include the Twitter handle you are following me with on Twitter and the ID you are following the blog with.
5. You must reside in Nigeria.

(Instructions 1,2,4 & 5 are only requirements for the main Instruction 4. The winner will emerge from skillful use of words in the 100 words Best Love Message)

Note: If you happen to be the winner, you could ask the recharge card to be converted to cash and sent to your bank account. Giveaway closes on Thursday 14^th February, at 22:00 GMT, Nigerian time. Thank you and enjoy the season! Yippee!

--- GIVEAWAY CLOSED ---

Opening Late 2013

Photo credit: Getty Images

It’s New Year. Never mind that January is almost spent. Believe me when I say the year has just started. At least for me, it just has. I lately finished a prolonged sessional exam. You mightn’t understand that. Well, you really shouldn’t anyway, it’s personal. But you still might. If you started 2013 with the burdens of 2012 that you recently dealt with, you would relate well with this; that the year has only started.

Do you understand the pains of feeling nothing? Can you say you have ever woken up to the fear of nothingness, a tasteless indifference? Now, see where I am coming from, life is full of sensitivities: the sensitivities of pains; of losses; of gains; of love; of hurts; of shame; of pride. When you wake one day and realize those are lacking, then you should die. Or preferably put, give up your life, someone else needs the space. For me, the year has only started, because now, I feel the statics of love; of hurts; of shame; of pride; of gains; of losses. Don't bother that some I got through empathy, at least, I am now more human than you are. My year has just started.

I will tell you little about my Mum, little about what she did today, this morning. She marveled me. Sometimes, I’d imagine how my Mum makes my Dad’s love perfect, and I’d be jealous. My Mum did something this morning and I hated myself for it. She surprised me. I have been suffering from indecisiveness lately, my Mum changed that. She took a decision, she was smart with it. She took a step, she did it briskly intelligent. Now, she has become a roadside seller, transacting in what she loves best, in the business she hopes to leave in our bloods. 

She’s comfortable, she is averagely rich. I wouldn’t know why she did that. But my Mum is a business woman, not the formal one, she is creative in it. My mum did something this morning, she set up a shade in front of our house, she commercialized the spot. More puff-puffs, eggrolls and pies.  Soon, I will begin to envy those school children as they take bits of my mother’s care. My Mum did something this morning, she took a decision when I was still snoring on my bed, dreaming about lofty goals. She took a step and tooled with it. I slept with mine. I have been sleeping on mine, drooling on it. She just started the year.

I have been in love. I was madly in love. I am still loving. Three different statements that capture the turbulence of my emotion. I am confused. No! That can’t be. I can’t be. Say I am a fool. I opened my heart and roses were not thrown at it. I never said daggers were hurled at it either. I hate poetry. If this paragraph is turning one, tell me and I will discard it. They say love makes you mad and write poetry, that’s stereotypic. How about this? It should be a diversion from the old; love makes you blogpost. That sounds better. I loved from 2012, packed its grime and trash to this year. The year can’t be messier than it is now. Love isn’t a mercy; call it a mess, a patient, a sacrifice. I want to unlove now and face the year. The year wouldn’t start with it. Folake knows better. Fake Folake faked me.

I have seen two deaths at a close succession. Two deaths on different spots, at different locations. One had blood spilling from his mouth and head on end. The other had mockery in its wake. I have seen two deaths, two different deaths. One was lying in the middle of the road with her fishes scattered about. The second scarred my love and changed her; made her vulnerable. I have seen two deaths. One I witnessed with its fresh body still warm. The other, I was told had been seriously mocked in sicknesses before its ghost took off. I have seen two deaths before the year started. Now, I am born because I have seen too many deaths for two eyes. 

Let’s start this year immediately! Welcome.