Blog Mongers I

Hano lives at 2, Fortworth Avenue. He lives in a three bedroom, two and a half bath, walk-out basement townhouse. He drives a Volkswagen Jetta. He leaves for work every morning at 7.00 am so that he can beat the beltway rush and make it to work for 8.30, after which he would spend the next thirty minutes setting up his desk, making scalding hot tea to jarr him awake and check on his internet affairs. This is one of his favourite times of the day. The time between 8.30 and 9.15 when the office is quiet and empty of his other colleagues.

This is the time he runs through his check list of blogs, reading and leaving comments. He has his favourites because almost every other day, they have a new post up with content as intriguing and as entertaining as the commentary that follow.

There's Shady Lady, a young Nigerian woman who blogs out of her base in New York and posts the most outrageous tales about her exploits with people she knows are dubious and shady. There is Tantalizers, a young Nigerian man who loves to cook and works in a bookstore. There is East Of Here, a Rwandan journalist who fled to France when the genocide began. There's Seffi Appiah, a Ghanian woman who always finds something amusing about her daily commute to the senior citizens' home where she works as a nurse. There's Lace And Ankara, a young Nigerian woman who imagines herself to be the next vogue in the making for her blog is filled with borrowed reports and commentary on the latest fashions from all over the world. There's Michael Butts, whose blog Hano does not understand but finds fascinating because of all the information pertaining to technology displayed and discussed there.

Hano reads blogs from contributors all over the world. He is familiar with the different cultural groups on the internet: the Africans, Asians, Europeans, Americans, South Americans and Australians. He loves them all. The ones that he pays most attention to are the Africans because their tales are so unique and highly indicative of where the social consciousness is.

For instance, there is no morning that he stops at Shady Lady's without seeing some offended Nigerian calling her out on her supposed activities. There was a time that Shady Lady indicated that someone had reported her to the authorities and they had investigated her using her URL. That had been an interesting time because Shady Lady had gone offline for three months. While she was gone, the comments on her blog reached almost three hundred as various theories were thrown about as to her wherabouts. She later surfaced with a post full of curses for whoever she believed was responsible.

He loves her blog. He loves what she writes. It always makes him laugh. Especially when she decides to take digs at other bloggers. Her post on one female blogger, Sitting On The Rock got more than fifty comments in its first hour. Sitting On The Rock always wrote about her plans to get married before the end of the year and each post was an outlet for her frustrations at her lack of success in finding a mate even though she had intensified her prayers, fasting and involvement in church. Shady Lady cleaned the floor with her and the ensuing online brawl lasted all of three weeks with bloggers taking sides and expressing their own views on the issue.

Hano had watched it all unfold and die down. Shady Lady, bored, had moved on to other issues. Sitting on the Rock had fled the blogging world. The drama was over. And it has been for a while so, Hano is a bit bored with what the posts he sees online in the mornings. No one is saying anything important and no one is pushing any new projects.

After scrolling through a few blogs, he moves to his email. He hits the "compose" button. He sends two emails.

The next morning he is tickled to see one of his favourite female bloggers, Express Lady give a spill all post on her relationship gone sour with another blogger, Aristocrat. He checks the blog hits and smiles.