Tope Adenle's Blog

Conversations filled with dreams, patience and worries Imaginations and reality, joys of not knowing Panic from knowing too much, perfect imperfections  The fear of being consumed, the love for new territory  The friend who name is foreign, the choice lit up by darkness The journey to who we are becoming, the missing steps to glory The inexperience of long serving leaders, the nightmares from their moments The fruitless silence of a loud debate, the love of a new enemy The string of hope and the lectures of religion The knife that binds the rope of unity, dividing stronger than a calm sea The missing page of our history, a narrative of people divided by wealth The agitation for progress, the desire to embrace the struggle   The undefined destination no one knows, the revolution of the selfish The enemy of growth, the missing companions, the evaporating youth  But my country needs help!

Ample space in a tight corner only the mind can reach Demarcation of will, recognition of distance only the eyes can see The gap between now and never, the end, only the soul can feel The middle point, a place where the Sun resides in water The reality of tomorrow is separated by sounds of insects and colours of round balls in sockets But is tomorrow really a reality, when does it start? The sun changes its cloth three times a day, the 3 rd is a bath that takes away glow and shine The routine third shift of the hardworking sun, the start of tomorrow At the 3 rd shift, the workman comes home for his bath In the arms of the same women beaten up during the day, the daily routine of passion and pain The sun never goes to bed. Wrapped in the embrace of his familiar stranger, he looks up at his space The uncertainty of no existence, the promise of reward, a destination lost somewhere in time The map is the soul and the fulfillment is a...

In my private moments, I replay conversations. I pick from a mental bank of those I had with people and others I listened or watched people have. My recent favourite is that the Pope had with a little boy, my guess is, he has lived less than 5 years. First encounter was on my phone, the language was foreign so I made do with the text which heightened my interest. On their faces I could watch emotions while the words complemented my visual. The event was an open session where people were allowed to come to the microphone and ask a question that the Pope provided an answer to. This little boy spoke tears into the microphone, he struggled with his words but his tears were clear and defined. He taught me that there is nothing immature about pain . The pope made the little boy come to him to whisper his question into his ear. The boy asked his question, the pope announced it to the world with the permission of the boy. The little boy wanted to find out if his late father whom...

One of the things that confused me was the balance between first impression and second chances, I probably would have delayed on decisions a few times because I honestly didn’t understand how both scenarios play, a far left situation or open mindedness required the embrace of both? Maybe conclusions are not conclusive, maybe full stops don’t really end sentences as the end of a paragraph doesn’t always translate to the end of the narrative. Time is easier told when both clock hands are on the same digit, confusion really don’t exist if there is a balance, my problem all along has always been imbalance, myopic vision maybe, the type with experience as the known corrective lens. As the years rolled by, I have embraced the gambler’s mind, my cards are not as important as the cards others show and the next round is always pregnant with promise. A gambler knows that cards follow little or no logic, its chance and opportunity, what is presented is inferior to what is n...

When The Bed Got Smaller A long conversation amongst friends who hardly saw one another, a journey down memory lane; a time before beards or lots of height difference. Talks about how far they have come as individuals and how far apart they have grown as people. I guess I have given away their sex, it was a conversation amongst young men. They spoke about everything, the careless moments, the time life started taking a different meaning, a meaning that signified that life is more than having fun, that advice given and advise taken are two different things, that the mind has a mind of its own and that it chooses what is relevant and what’s not, subjectively. They spoke about the time that depending on a group was support when pride meant accomplishing bragging rights together, they spoke about periods when the bed was large and convenient for all to sleep. Life has made their beds smaller, now they have learnt that the way we did is different from how I now do it, in so...

  Sometimes, sleep eludes me, I think this ‘rest vehicle’ takes my patience for granted, there are nights I wait several hours before I eventually get a few hours of temporary non-existence. On nights like this, I mostly think about things that I have done and those I haven’t but wish I had, I think about the world as it is: the chaos and the hustle, I think about music and women (smiles), for some reason I associate both together…………………. Women just like music can be calm and soothing, loud and annoying, sad but deep, happy and vain (like any Birdman hook) and some are a combination of a lot of the ‘good’ that you just have to call them beautiful in and out, they make you relate to a song like A Long Walk-Jill Scott. So on this night, sleep took a long walk without me, leaving me staring into space, then PHCN hit, darkness swept in swiftly but I stayed there still and calm and then ‘thoughts’ came to my bed, my thoughts laid beside me like a woman, wanting conversati...

    The most interesting stories are really never told, maybe because they raise questions like: is it true he/she didn’t?   Can one really walk away from that? I feel that the fact that there will be immense doubts in the actual occurrence of the event(s) is why such stories never get out. However, it isn’t that the stories are not told, they are only told to few people who might never tell a third party, even when they do, the origin of the story is excluded, the real cast never mentioned, like we say at work, this flow has too many open ends……………….. I will tell a story that a friend told me, I will abide by the guy code, a few revisions here and there, but the essence of reality will be duly preserved. So my friend told me………………………………………..The Genesis, he was out of town for work, he stayed in this hotel with amazing whisky collection, he noticed that at the bar, after all, my friend is the most disciplined alcoholic, does he drink? Answer: Like ther...