First Contact: Your bank in your pocket.

 The cashless society has come to stay although we seem to be undecided on how best to move forward what with this new reintroduction of ATM usage fees of N65 by the CBN governor Godwin Emefiele. I don't think this new service charge is going to aid the financial inclusion policies, I mean if I'm going to pay service charge for using my card at outlets not my parent banking institution which will include everywhere that you use POS services these days, which is everywhere, I might as well use my cash directly. Anyway, one of the telecommunications network came up with an innovative way to use the cashless society by introducing a new product that will  help to take the awareness drive of the financial inclusion even to the grassroots level and create more jobs.  I was privileged to be part of the presentation through a stage play tagged "CARRY GO"Your bank in your pocket written and directed by the amazing Israel Eboh. Needless to say I was ecstatic about the project. Incidentally I got to play my glamorous younger sister. The character description was fully her and I guess a bit of me but with her name. It was uncanny. Now, I get people referring to me as Itoro which is actually my real life younger sister's name. yeah uncanny!The experience was fantastic. Beautiful energetic dancers, equally energetic, funny and ebullient actors all warmly wrapped in music that everyone else seemed to know except me and I used to think I was a connoisseur of old school music. Oh well, I conquered it eventually. This project presented many firsts for me on different levels. I'll talk about it another time. I met very interesting unique individuals. Isioma Williams the gentle head traditional drummer with a voice that can melt a diamond and there was the multitalented actor/dancer Barr Ugo Obaiyo who always seems to have a smile and a helping hand. And others that require no elaborate introduction...Saeed Funkymallam, Okey Onyegbule aka Okey Bakassi, Aunty Kenny...There's too much untapped talent in Nigeria. Really. Rehearsals were at the National Council of Arts and Culture NCAC which presently looks like a neglected, abandoned first wife(we need to take care of our facilities; 'if we don't, who will'?) performance at the luxurious Eko hotel and suites. I have discovered that performances can go one of two ways: bad in which case you come down exceptionally drained and depressed or great, in which case you come down high. The performance was great. Backstage was even more fun.  I finally got to meet my lookalike the lovely singer Ego Ogbaro who thrilled the crowd with back to back hits. People always claim we lookalike( I guess it's due to our very prominent signature cheekbones)we should probably act awesome sisters some day.

Ebola: Naija no wan carry last

 'Naija no dey carry last' . I don't know the person that coined that saying but whoever she was, she must have studied Nigerians forensically because she hit the nail on the head. Ever since the Ebola outbreak, the frenzy that has enflamed Nigerians about this particular disease has no close second in my opinion yet. What with the whole salt drama that claimed its own victims, the mad rush for hand sanitizers which can be found in almost every shop and offices now, the prices off the chains, by the way, hand sanitizers are basically anti-bacterial while Ebola is a virus not a bacteria, the no contact policy of everybody now... That reminds me, have you noticed how kind God has been? Since the outbreak, the weather has been cool. What if it had happened during the hot season when everyone is sweating profusely? This is the tropics after all, it would have been catastrophic.
Today I went to do some business at the bank, on getting there I met a queue. I thought it was the usual door drama but as it turned out, the poor door was not at fault today. The queue was for Ebola scanning. We all lined up to be scanned and after passing the scanning test, we had to wash our hands in chlorine water first before we could proceed to meet the door phase. Something positive out of this? well, rest of mind for the day. At least you passed Ebola scanning today, you don't have it.
Okay, after my business with that particular bank, I went in to a shopping mall to get toiletries, again my hands were sanitized and so was the handle of the shopping cart. After my shopping,I had to do another banking, the second bank had no scanner just sanitizer, again I sanitized my hands( at this point I'm thinking to myself that I'll soon loose some of my epidermis or develop dry scaly hands or something in that area, already the current weather has not been very nice on the skin, the loss of  surface lipids due to the cold weather and the constant hot showers one is taking now because of the cold have all connived to rob one of surface moisture and now these sanitizers...That aside, I'm wondering how long business owners will continue to bear the mass sanitizing expense. But one thing is for sure Naija have not carried last in agitating over this Ebola outbreak even though it might be too little too late. I mean Ebola did not just miraculously surface in 2014. It's been around since 1976 and 'no be say na oyibo man sickness oh'. It was discovered first in Sudan, one would have thought that that would be a concern to Africans but obviously it wasn't as it turns out that others that might not have been directly involved were the ones carrying out research and had an answer when it affected them.
I read an appeal made by some people begging the US government to give us drugs and I was truly saddened, not because they were waiting for us to grovel first but because we had again told the outside world that we were incapable of caring for ourselves and will always need aid.