Dennessa Writes

You see the title, Ada? It should actually be a chieftaincy title or an award in itself. Welcome to the blog lovelies. If you’re not Igbo or non-Nigerian, Ada is the name given to a first or only daughter in an Igbo household. The Ada is usually the one on whom the onus falls to take care of the siblings, to be responsible for chores, caretaking, cooking, and a list of other activities too numerous to mention. In my place, Ndoki, in Rivers State, Nigeria, the Ada is also known as Nwunne (or like my dad called it, small mommy) because when the mothers aren’t at home, the Ada must step in and play the motherly role. Being Ada has its perks, you are respected, lauded, sometimes, but with the perks of being Ada come the numerous responsibilities. In every home, Nigerian, African or not, the first daughter syndrome is an actual thing. There’s a daunting neglect for that child because they should be independent, dependable, and of their own self take initiative at all times. They are the one...

Hey lovelies, welcome to today's episode - closure, a word that people truly use yet in absolute negation of its true meaning.  Looking back, I can’t believe this is where it all started, but… I was 9, I woke up to my mom’s soft sobs, thinking back now, I think she was trying to hide how broken she was, but I've always been a light sleeper so I heard the muffled, throaty, sobs. The ones that have you gasping for breath. My mom had just received an accursed call, my grandad, her father-in-law, and biggest support system had died. When I woke up, I rushed to her side and asked, tears filling my eyes, Mommy, why are you crying? She croaked her response, Grandpa is dead, before asking me to go and brush and get ready for school. It felt like the rug was pulled from under my feet and I landed bare-bottom on nails. All I knew about prayer at the time was this, the Lord does not despise the prayer of children, and a broken and contrite heart the Lord will not turn away. Armed with tho...

  Hey lovelies, let’s address something that people now call potato potatoes but is not shall we?   There's a new wave of the use of certain words in the past few years, words with very strong, deep, and heavy meanings if you don't mind my repetition of adjectives, but it is to stress the point that words like misogyny, chauvinism, male-identified and sexist aren't words to be used loosely, especially not because someone rubs you off the wrong way. I find that the influx of these words into our vocabulary, unfortunately, did not come with the meanings of the words because why is Amara calling Yinka a misogynistic because he has a preferred choice of appearance for his wife, her neighbor, who in fact doesn't mind?    Why is Tinuade calling Obialor chauvinistic because he has strong opinions she doesn't agree with? And why on earth is Dennis sexist because he believes that the right order of things is that humans should be heterosexual? I know that this Gen-Z era came...

  Hi lovelies, a lot has happened since the last time I came here, and for a while, I thought about stopping entirely. I felt I had lost touch with my love for stringing words together. My dad was a huge inspiration for my writing, he passed a couple of months back and I am yet to intentionally come to terms with it. In the past seven years, I have lost the loves of my life, a partner, a grandma, and a father. I feel like a soldier on sentry who has seen, inadvertently so, that doom is brewing but cannot leave the station and all lines are cut from the central. Most of the time, I sit in isolation, and I look for the next project to take on. I look for where to expend myself. I feel like I’m being watched, I feign indifference, I try to move on but, let me explain something to you, today, grief has a different character arch for different people. I know this from experience. Grief gives people a different perspective on life and while you might have suffered a similar loss, grief i...

Hello lovelies, compliments of the season. Let’s delve in, shall we… At the end of the year, seemingly every app you’ve used righteously that’s connected to the internet gives you an end of year wrap/survey, work places and/ organizations give you appraisals, KPIs, etc, these naturally, point out your prowess, your progress report, your lifestyle as it concerns them. Interestingly, it is a human thing to do; self-surveys, unfortunately, some carry out these surveys in comparison to a peer, a colleague, a sibling or even a rival. This tends to, most of the time cause a feeling of disappointment, despair or desperation. Now, in itself, a self-survey is not a bad thing to do, it is even still not a bad thing to compare and contrast as the case may be, it only becomes a bad thing when such comparisons and contrasts do not make you take positive decisions going forward.  An instance, in the past two years, it seemed like the girls in my circle all settled down, at first, it felt awkward...

There was a country… Good day lovelies, welcome to the blog, I can’t help but bring you laughter before we delve into the topic of the day. Have you seen that video of the guy who was singing Lord give us Ibu, take Tinubu? It is the funniest thing I have seen on Tinubu’s internet in a very long time, find it and watch it, life is too serious these days, take the moment to laugh. There was indeed a country… my country, Nigeria.  I grew up a typical ajebota, watched cable TV since I can remember, drank boiled water, then bottled water and then graduated to Cway straight from the dispenser. Went to the best/choicest schools in my city and had a robust vocabulary to choose from when I wanted to explain my discontent, a proper bottie. But, that isn’t what this post is about, it is about the nostalgia I feel for the country now lost. I might not remember the Abacha regime because I was quite young, but I remember that a bottle of coke was 25 naira, an egg costed 15 naira, and 5 na...