Nwoke ọma

That all missing persons be found and returned to their loved ones.

my brother, i know there are moments in life when all you want is to sit with a woman like this and open up about your deepest pain and your secrets. i know you crave that real, honest conversation to tell your story. but don’t… just reach for a drink and try to drown it all instead.

My Ghanaian colleague walked into the office Monday morning, chest out, wearing a Black Stars jersey like he'd personally won something. Chin up. Shoulders back. The walk of a man who had rehearsed this entrance in his bathroom mirror. His name was Kwame. We had an understanding. He pretended jollof wasn't a competition. I pretended to believe him. It worked because we were both lying and we both knew it and neither of us was willing to be the first to blink. It started properly in 2022. World Cup group stage. Ghana vs Uruguay. I bought him a meat pie from the canteen that morning as a gesture of goodwill. Pure diplomacy. He accepted it with both hands, took one bite, nodded slowly like he was considering peace terms, then told me Nigerian jollof tasted like party rice made by someone who showed up to the wrong party anyway. I looked at him for a long time. Then I said nothing. I let it go. I filed it. I archived it somewhere quiet in my chest and went back to my desk like a mature adult. He scored a goal that evening. Not Ghana. Kwame personally. He walked past my desk the next morning and hummed. Just hummed. No words. The most aggressive thing a man can do to another man is hum at him after a football result. I was collecting receipts. Then 2023 AFCON came. Super Eagles. Brilliant run. Final. We lost to Ivory Coast and I won't talk about that because this story isn't about my healing journey. Kwame sent me a WhatsApp message at 11pm that night. A photo of Ghanaian jollof. No caption. Just the rice. Sitting there looking smug. I screenshot it and saved it under a folder I labelled "Reasons." Last month everything changed. Some food blogger with 200k followers ranked West African jollof. Ghanaian jollof came first. Nigerian jollof came third. Behind Senegal. I didn't even know Senegal was in the conversation. Kwame printed it out. Printed it. On paper. Walked to my desk, placed it in front of me like a court document, and returned to his seat without making eye contact. I sat with that paper for three days. On the fourth day I forwarded him the FIFA rankings without comment. He replied with a photo of Asamoah Gyan's penalty against Uruguay in 2010. The miss. He captioned it "still healing." I replied with Nigeria's World Cup appearances vs Ghana's. He sent back a voice note. Just him eating rice. Chewing sounds. Three minutes and forty seconds of deliberate chewing directly into the microphone. This man was raised to wound people. I walked to his desk. Pulled a chair. Sat down. We looked at each other the way two nations look across a negotiating table when both sides are tired but neither is willing to say it first. He broke first. Almost. He said fine. If someone put a gun to his head. Nigerian jollof could be considered edible. I said Ghana plays beautiful football and Abedi Pele was genuinely one of the greatest Africans to ever touch a ball. We shook hands. Two pumps. Like diplomats finalizing a ceasefire everyone knows is temporary. He poured me sobolo from his flask. I gave him the last chin chin from my drawer. We sat eating each other's things pretending this wasn't the most intimate cultural exchange either of us had experienced all year. Then he said at least our waakye wakes up every morning and chooses to be great. I told him Indomie was invented to fill the gaps Ghanaian cuisine left in the human soul. He laughed so hard he knocked his sobolo over. I didn't help him clean it up. This friendship has no finish line. Just two men from countries sharing a border and an argument running since before either of us was born. The rice war never ends. It just takes breaks for jollof.

I won't forget one 4year old kid I met at the ER Was about to set a line for him and told him it wasn't gonna be painful to calm him down So he calmed down and I pricked him only to hear him start crying and say to me "Liar, Shame on you" 😭😭😭😭😭😭

You will grow older and learn how to use the word “friend” correctly.

@TheIgboWolf Ehen nau. First to do no dey pain. 😆

This is not the one we share food

“Don’t post my lovely wife on social media, if you do that, just know you have overstepped.”😂♥️ -Moment 93-year-old playfully warned his son not to post his wife on social media

Teacher: "Name 4 cities in Europe" Me : "Madeira, Manchester, Madrid, Turin & Manchester again"

It's my mum's birthday and my dads Whatsapp status caption is EVERYTHING….

@johndebosco 🙏🏾

@ChiefLyffBoxx It's part of the job, I'm used to it already 😂 Thank you

A special appreciation to all the choristers, lay readers, Mass servers and altar girls for their various contributions to the church, before, during and after the lenten season.

@johndebosco Sorry 😆

@ChiefLyffBoxx Thank you sir......that's how our parish priest too forget us as he was thanking everybody during the vigil Mass.

11:11.

Posting this here again, hoping more people get to see it #30DaysRantChallenge

@Adauremavis ✊🏿

This!!! I pray it remains like this

@Amaka63751690 Happy Easter to you 🥂

@ChiefLyffBoxx @chuks_el_bc They never see first🤩😄Happy Easter Nwoke Oma🥚

“Catholic people will be doing as if Jesus Christ died for only their church.” Ehhhhh So, you believe He died (For all of mankind, of course) right? Ok. To have died, it means He was born too, right? Ok. But you don’t even respect or rate His mother at all. So, you seeeeeee?.

Apple made its biggest mistake when it decided to discontinue the iPod.

@awesomenoel29 🙌🏾

@ChiefLyffBoxx My own patron Saint

Imagine the flex to be regarded as ‘The disciple Jesus Loved’. Big flex, brother John. Big flex.

@Officialmachuks Happy birthday, brother. Have an amazing year.

I am plus 1 today. God has been faithful. I thank God for all his goodness, mercy and grace upon my life. Happy birthday to me 🎂🍾🍾