Chapter 5 Part 1

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The next two weeks went by excruciatingly slowly. There were several public holidays granted by the federal government for the public to ‘prepare’ for the elections which was good because the tension between political parties was quite high with reports of attacks on candidates and their supporters by the opposing political party. Voting was uneventful in my neighbourhood. I convinced my parents to perform their Civic responsibilities, the zest of youth was still burning in me and even their cynicism couldn’t put out the flames. Unfortunately it wasn’t so uneventful in other areas. There were several stories of ambush and stealing of ballot boxes and even no voting in some states. The first weekend was the gubernatorial elections and we had a four day stay at home weekend. It was quite annoying to be forced to stay home. My mum and I entertained ourselves with the West African Idols show in the living room upstairs while my father monitored the elections on NTA and Silverbird Television downstairs, boring us to death. The next Monday, Mr. Babatunde Fashola was declared as the winner of the elections for Lagos state.

The weekend after, the Presidential elections took place and once again ordered to stay home for a three day weekend.

Apart from eating, sleeping and exercising, I had a lot of time on my hands and since I decided to start dating again, it seemed like a good idea to be proactive about it. Being stuck at home, the first thing that came to my mind was to join dating websites. A year ago, Emily, a friend from University had gotten married to a very sweet guy she met online and they were having a baby. Internet dating couldn’t be all that bad right? WRONG. I locked myself up in the study upstairs, logged on to google.com and searched for the top dating websites. The results came up

Top 5 Online Dating Sites

1. eHarmony
2. Dating Direct
3. MatchMaker
4. Match.com
5. FriendFinder

I signed up to all five as Foxygirl and joined Hi5 and Facebook, two networking websites. Lara, a friend from Nysc met her current boyfriend on Hi5. I was going for overkill.

The process of signing up was hilarious. For eharmony I had to describe myself on a scale of 1 to 7 using Stylish, Beautiful, Shapely, Overweight, Fit, Sexy. I out 7 for all of them. I also had to answer several questions relating to my personality and what Kind of qualities I was looking for in a partner. Smoker? No, Religion? Christian, Children? No, Height? 5”8 and above, Education? Graduate...it went on and on. It was a similar sign up process for all the other sites.

When I eventually got through the maze of questions and answers, I was disappointed to find out that most of the sites had no matches for me. So I decided to check out the profiles of others who had signed up in Lagos. To my horror, some of the profiles read

CletusBaba

well,i will like to meet some that is well behave, that is as the ability of keeping a relationship. some who as got the understanding of what it takes to make love. well to my own personal underatanding. i belive love speaks not the distance but the heart. i dont care if my lover is far away from me .it can only take me time to see and get her ,but if she is very serious and relly want me i will make her the queen of my heart.

TrendyBobo

Nationality-Nigeria
Marital status-married For me marriage is ruled out
I have Children?-two daughters
I want children?-No
My education-M.Sc; MCIT(UK);PhD
Profession-Sea Port manager
My income-Low
Smoke?-No
Drink alcohol?-Very, very rare(3rice a year/less)
Music- Jazz, Blues, Country, R & BFavourite artists: Nat-King Cole, Tito Puente, Mighty Sparow, Kenny G, Don Williams
Religion-Chrisianity
Romantic?-Yes
People that attract me in order of preference: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces, Libra, Taurus, Sagitarius Leo, Gemini,
Colour Combination:-red,white, blue,purple, black

Handsomenigga

I am very handsome and i am equally looking for a very beautyful american lady between the age of 28/34 i will appericiate whoever gets intouch with me for a long term relationship.

WillieP

My name is willie a men of 28 years of age i am single looking for a real and serious relationship,I am honest Godly and sincere and i will like me opposite sex to be an ardent church attender someone that beleives in God, i dont work i am a permanenet sunday school teacher in my father's church but will like to meet a woman to spend the rest of my life with someone who is very honest loving caring sincere and intelligent.....

What a waste of two precious hours of my life. I would never have it back. What a choice! I would rather shoot myself. Most of the men there were hungry leeches looking to prey on foreign women who would marry them and make them citizens of their country…even if it was Iceland. They would renounce their Nigerian citizenship with the drop of a hat. Certainly none of them were of dating caliber.

I spent the rest of the weekend reading some books on dating which my mother had purchased and I had refused to read. Seeing as I was bored I decided to pick up a few tips. She seemed happy to see that I was reading them and my father found the fact that there were books on dating hilarious.

Why didn’t I have this when I started dating’ he laughed out.
‘Dating my foot, I don’t remember going on any dates’ my mum replied.
‘What do you mean, I took you to my fathers farm’ at this point he was nearly rolling on the floor.
My mum couldn’t help but laugh at what she called his nonsense.

I didn’t know how else to be proactive except to wait for our night out the following week to see if I would meet any interesting guys. I wasn’t looking forward to joining the dating scene. Starting afresh and having to get to know someone from scratch again seemed daunting which is why I hadn’t bothered. I knew I would have to kiss many frogs to find a suitable prince and that didn’t sound very appealing. I wished I could just have discussion with God face to face. I would tell him that I wanted to meet a tall dark handsome guy who would actually walk up to me and tell me a code that God had personally given him, which I already knew of course and that would be it. Who was I kidding?... God wanted me to do some work too.