Why is aloe vera so great for skin, you may ask. Aloe Vera contains a combination of minerals and vitamins including vitamins A, C, E and B-12. It also has essential proteins and fatty acids, calcium, zinc, magnesium and germanium.

Here's how I used this awesome plant on my skin:

1. After washing my face at night, I apply Dickinson's witch hazel. This toner is everything! I heard about it for years but didn't think I would be able to find it in Canada. I found it in the pharmacy aisle at Walmart.

2. After the witch hazel dries, I would cut a bit off the plant, slice it open, apply the gel and leave it on my face overnight.

That's it. My skin cleared up pretty fast and I haven't had breakouts since although I stopped using aloe vera.

BOMA’S RENTAL RESUME

Looking for a place close to insert school name to call home

• Date of Birth: 

• Contact information: insert Phone number & email address 

• Current address: Family home with mum and two sisters. Leaving because it’s almost an hour away from school

• Current employment: 

• Past employment: Community Leader aka Resident at .... university. (this makes me look very responsible lol)

• Extracurricular activities: Cooking, event planning, student Ambassador, African &

Caribbean Students’ Association communications & events coordinator

• Personal references: insert 2 references

• Vehicle information: none

• Pet(s) information: none

TVXQ (DBSK) is arguably the most popular South Korean boy band ever!! 

Top 5 best selling Korean idol groups
1. TVXQ - 11,019,010
2. Girls' Generation - 4,070,170
3. KARA - 3,466,339
4. Big Bang - 2,967,430
5. Super Junior - 2,590,428

They didn't just conquer South Korea, they conquered all of Asia. 

In 2008, they were recognized by Guiness Book of World records for having the world's largest official fan club. 800,000 in case you're wondering. 

Here are some of my favorite songs:

Stand by you

Mirotic

I recently had my very first traffic incident in Victoria Island, Lagos.

Image source

I had just paid N150 at a toll gate that is about as orderly as a jungle gym, and was heading towards one of the many roundabouts on this particular road. It was a Saturday so I guess the traffic warden – LASMAN (acronym for Lagos state something something…) – wasn’t on duty. As I was making my turn, a car clipped my rear bumper. “My dad is going to kill you man!” That’s what my cousin said, very encouraging right? I parked and jumped out of the car to see the damage but to my surprise there was none! We then strolled over; confidently I might add, to see the other car. He was apologetic. We even tried helping him sort out his damaged hood. We went our separate ways. End of! There was no exchange of insurance information or anything of that sort.

Driving in Lagos can be one of the most daunting tasks. It’s not the actual driving that is difficult (if my mom can drive, so can you!), but the added elements one has to deal with. Pot holes, nutters posing as bus drivers, pedestrians, pot holes, bikes, roadside markets, potholes, dead street lights, disobedience of traffic lights and signs, pot holes. You’ve probably guessed it by now: I hate pot holes! My arse will be forever grateful when I return to Canada. I intern at a multinational financial services firm. Their building is 30% vacant because of… pot holes.

Oh I left out the seemingly demonic traffic jams that can spring up anywhere, anytime. Yes, there are spiritual forces at work because for as long as I can remember the Lagos government has been tackling traffic. A morning prayer that includes destroying the evil forces behind traffic might sound funny to some, but to me? Perfectly normal. I recently started dabbling in that practice and its working!! I wake up by 5:15am for my 8:00am job, and mind you I am always late. With the okada banned, power bikes have become very popular except these blokes take it to the next level by riding around in robo-cop attire. Have you ever seen a power bike in Lagos traffic? Pitiful. Its total essence—freedom and power—lost. And people do the most ridiculous things: driving or reversing into oncoming traffic even at night, stopping in the middle of the road to buy a newspaper.

The only good thing about traffic is that the road becomes a mall of some sort, with a food court featuring gala, groundnuts, ice-cream, fruits, drinks etc. Some products are absolutely ridiculous like teddies or towels. Would you buy a towel that probably doubles as a nighttime blanket for the mature looking lad selling them? And dog collars?? But people do buy these things. I’ve seen it and I was shocked. A teddy?! Then there are those that will go through the hawkers’ entire product line and end up buying nothing. I detest those folks…very cold of them. And this one guy does business on roller blades, weaving effortlessly through traffic. I thought that was brilliant!

Then rain! I could write a book on how rain can be so crippling in Lagos. Absolute madness ensues. Traffic quantifies. People are more impatient and a lot more aggressive. Accidents multiply. Drains overflow and streets are flooded. Rubbish floats around in the street and more bloody pot holes appear. Yesterday when it rained, my uncle’s driver bitch slapped a young boy that wheels around barrels of water because of a small scratch. It was so distasteful. I let him have it, and he has been ignoring me since. Can’t be arsed though. Everything just becomes congested.

The point is don’t buy a car you are not willing to let get damaged because your Lamborghini would be f*&%ed. I can’t count how many Toyota Prado jeeps I’ve seen since I arrived. At first I tweeted “40 Toyota Prado in this car park #swagballers” but then I later found out that these cars were built to absorb the impact of potholes #practical, but the one I ride in is 10 years old so most of the technology has depreciated. Leave your house by 5am and close before 5pm or wait till 10pm to avoid traffic on the island; if you live on the mainland you’re screwed either ways. When it rains, take that rain check and call in sick; and finally unless you own a Prado, embrace the potholes cos a pillow doesn’t do shit.

Church in Botswana is a lot of fun. It's exciting, really full of energy, inspiring and a total workout. Yeah, I said workout. We would dance so much during praise and worship that we would be sweating. Talk about a calorie burner! Today's Reminiscing Mondays post is all about my favorite Botswana church songs.

We attended Winners' Chapel, Gaborone and if you know this church, you would know that it is a diverse congregation comprising of people from all around Africa. This reflected in church songs as well, as we sang songs in Setswana, Zulu, Swahi, Yoruba and Pidgin. How amazing is that?!

 "The Baddest Female" by CL

1. Jeremiah Gyang ft M.I - Kauna Allah
Jeremiah Gyang is one of the most talented artistes in the Nigerian music industry. It's such a shame that his career never took off. It's kinda odd hearing M.I rap about gospel though lol



2. Sunny Neji - Tolotolo
Who remembers this? Turkey na for chop o.



3. Resonance - Chinwe Ike
It's quite unfortunate that they split up, they would have done great things. Esther is back in the game with a few new releases.

On my 13 hour flight from Atlanta to Lagos, I watched a fascinating documentary about the Maldives. It featured a brief exposé on the country’s pseudo-democratic rule it was subject to for about 30 years. When a young brown knight on a horse emerged to challenge the norm and champion the peoples’ cause, people straightened their backs – because as MLK said, “A man cannot ride your back unless it is bent.” He won the election and the Maldives lived happily ever after, right? Wrong! Within the first month of occupying office, his administration was faced with a new type of problem. Their country that is made of thousands of island was sinking, a consequence of global warming. This is what I see here in Nigeria. We won the fight, but we are now sinking. A new type of problem has arisen and now people are trying to stay afloat. There you have it! Title explained. 

I would like to thank God for this opportunity to come back home after so long, and all the experiences He has preordained— the spontaneous ones too. To my folks, thank you for footing some of the bill. Ms. Brown thanks for this small piece of your large pie that is Pearlle. Hope I spelt that correctly!

Wikipedia defines neo-colonialism as such:

Neo-colonialism (also Neocolonialism) is the geopolitical practice of using capitalism, business globalization, and cultural imperialism to control a country, in lieu of either direct military control or indirect political control, i.e. imperialism and hegemony. The term neo-colonialism was coined by the Ghanaian politician Kwame Nkrumah, to describe the socio-economic and political control that can be exercised economically, linguistically, and culturally, whereby promotion of the culture of the neo-colonist country facilitates the cultural assimilation of the colonised people and thus opens the national economy to the multinational corporations of the neo-colonial country.



The rhetoric we hear in primary/secondary school is, "Nigeria got her independence from the British in 1960 and became an independent country since then". Well, we're still bitches...just independent ones. Colonial rule is over but is transformed into neo-colonialism which still retains and maintains, in this case, economic and commercial ties. Unfortunately, in Nigeria this surface change in power is taken as actual history and the neo-colonial bit is almost ignored.  

The Niger Delta has amazing agricultural land and a lot of resources. The Ogoni people are a huge ethnic group that has lived there for centuries. Thanks to Shell and other companies, the livelihood of people who live in the Niger Delta is permanently threatened. Shell began drilling for oil in 1958 and in 1990 Ken Saro-Wiwa formed the Movement of the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), demanding environmental justice on their land. He was assassinated on November 10 1995 but the struggle continues. 

In typical exploitative fashion, Shell has ignored the well-being of the Ogoni people and other tribes living in the Niger Delta and this is of course being done with the support (direct or indirect) of the Nigerian government. In case you didn't know, crude oil accounts for about 80% of government income. The government doesn't just support Shell but also ensures that peaceful demonstrations don't take place.

Here's some of the crap that's going down:

Whenever we visited our family in Port Harcourt, we didn't really notice the effects of environmental degradation on the land. To be honest, we had nothing to really compare it to. The only thing we constantly heard was how the price of sea food was becoming really expensive because fishermen were finding it harder to catch fish. As kids, it didn't occur to us why this was the case.

We end this with the words of Ken Saro-Wiwa:

'We either win this war to save our land, or we will be exterminated, because we have nowhere to run to.'  

I have to shamefully admit that I did not celebrate World Sleep Day in all its glory on Friday night. I stayed awake till early Saturday morning and got about 5 hours of sleep before heading out to attend an event put together by a campus advocacy group I am a member of. I will hopefully do this event more justice next year.