Living life: Man in a Bottle

I hate Nigerian movies because I don’t think anything good can come out of them – please don’t quote me on that one. Those humdrum story lines which always end up with a man in a bottle, or by some woman going to a medicine man so that he (her prey) can ‘stick’ to her forever. It defeats my understanding how a full movie industry of a country as populous as Nigeria spends most of their time knitting yarns about women going ‘under water’ to take orders on how to punish men, however philandering. Oga, where is the creativity? Anyway, the point is those movies are not good for your health, at all. There is this woman I know. Her free time is divided into two bolded items; sleeping and Nigerian movies! It is so bad, that every after a sentence and sometimes near the beginning and the end of the same sentence she throws in an ‘oga’ and a dramatic yelp even where there is no drama, as in a simple neighbourhood gossip. The poor lady speaks like a Yoruba woman and tries to behave like a wife of a chief, sometimes, tying ridiculous Congolese Kitenges several times around her body and her head. It does not stop there. The a.k.a chief’s wife knows how to add drama to a boring neighbourhood evening. When one of those beautiful damsels whose role play involves being punished by sinister co-wives, mother-in-laws or dead husband’s relatives, is showing on Africa Magic, she does not let a few tears escape down her cheeks. She cries buckets of tears, loudly for all and sundry to understand that the oga in the movie is being treated unfairly, sneezing uncontrollably and discharging snot in so gross a manner, she will make you puke. So do not blame me if I feel like venting fury towards those long five part films made in Lagos. Besides, anything that puts into girls the idea that with the help of a small bundle of Naira and a filthy ghostlike masquerade claiming to be in direct link with the spirit world, you can lock a man in a bottle, is more dangerous than the fellow in Iran who is purportedly trying to make a nuclear bomb. The thing is imagine me, with my awfully long structure in one of those Mutziig or Primus bottles, the big ones, curled in the bottom of one. Then the chief’s wife over there says, “Darling, who is the most beautiful woman in the world?” “You,” your tiny voice echoes out of the bottle, “are the definition of beauty”. Just imagine the ideas these people are putting into our dear Rwandan girls. Why don’t we just get back to real life? The only way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, not through the narrow neck of a Mutziig bottle as the ogas seem to suggest. Ask your grandfather, if you think I am lying. If that does not work, try a Nigerian movie (ooh, I didn’t say that.)Otherwise, I wish you a Nigerian film-filled Sunday. kelviod@yahoo.com