simply oroque's view

i am pretty numb at this stage. this is that phase you get you when you speed past shock, anger, frustration and helplessness...you just feel numb. not sure you actually can comprehend what is going on around you, and not sure if your understanding really makes sense. not sure if you should yell and call out the obvious, and not sure if you should be silent like others. so, for days on end throughout december, i couldn't stop trying to get the christmas spirit going. i felt like it was a year that was worth celebrating the christmas holidays not only because we have survived incredible odds but because goodness alone knows if we will ever have the opportunity to celebrate christmas in the years ahead, going by the current economic trends. and i wasn't the only excited one. millions of nigerian children were already dropping hints for their parents and being extra nice in the bid to wrest a few minutes of attention from the ever busy adults towards securing a really festive

its world AIDS day today. a day that is set aside to bring to top of mind, the global pandemic known as HIV/AIDS. as with all things that afflict the human race, we have come from blame shifting, to research, to prevention...and we are inching closer to a cure. how am i so confident? well, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in 2010 there were 1.8 million AIDS related deaths, down from 2.2 million in 2005. In Nigeria, we had roughly two hundred thousand deaths in over two million HIV infections for 2009 and that shows that our HIV counter programs work, or we are not reporting every HIV infection/death case... or we are lying to the united nations. either way, sounds like great news but that number remains a large fraction of the Lagos population for context and there is more to be done. however, my sincere happiness lies in the fact that for once, whether driven or led, nigeria appears to be doing what is right in terms of not being the last to tackle thi