Choosing to visit Portugal would be a wonderful option, and you´d be able to see some beautiful things hard to find anywhere else. One of the best things here are, without a doubt, the beaches. Blue sea, golden sand: sweet dreams are made of this, you can´t disagree. You´ve never felt so alive, and yet you´ll think you´ve died and gone to heaven. It´s perfect, but there´s more.

If you had indeed taken a trip to Portugal, after being dazzled by the beach you´d be bedazzled by the food.  Yes, we are also very good at cooking. Vegetables, meat, fish, you name it, we´ve got it all figured out. Bacalhau, Migas, Pastel de nata, these are all typical( and incredibly delicious) meals you have to eat if you come to Portugal. They will stay in your memory for eternity, an explosion of colours in your mouth forever treasured. 

But it´s not over yet. Our monuments and landscapes are incredible, and just like the food, they´re spread around the country in different shapes and forms. The northern part of Portugal is quite mountainous, making for great views. If you choose to head to the cities, you´ll also find Porto to be extraordinary,  with numerous landmarks impossible to list. In the centre there´s Lisbon, the capital, in which you could spend days and days visiting its every artery. Heading south you´ll find the relaxed plains of Alentejo, where even Nature sleeps, and eventually reach Algarve, Portugal´s southernmost part, rather famous for its beaches.  And if that wasn´t enough, we´ve still got some islands (Azores and Madeira) but it´d be hard to do justice to their beauty with only words.

And with that being said, we now talk about 2017´s wildfires. A huge fire crisis in such a small country could´ve only had devastating effects, and it did. All that was expressed above was quite literally turned to ashes.  

Breaking in central Portugal,  on one of the hottest days of the year, it angrily  ravaged across villages, too fast to allow proper evacuation.  You´d expect the government to clean up their mess and guarantee this wouldn´t happen again, but things didn´t really took off like that. Four years have passed, and the case has been forgotten, with every  summer a threat to the frail greenery.  Now it´s up to us to keep it in our memory.

The alarming rate of this uncouth development can be likened to a fork in the road of great future leaving the youths to form a larger demograph of drug abusers.

In Bariga, Nigeria, drug abuse, a trending issue, now goes beyond the use of synthetic drugs to stimulate the nervous system irrationally.

Many youths now engage in the act of inhaling odours from latrine pits, gum, smoking of dry pawpaw leaves etc. in a bid to get "cheap high". Others consume in large doses cocaine, loud, Skunk, heroine, a mixture of hemp and palmwine or spirit as the case maybe, to be in their own cloud nine.

Several socio-economic factors have been identified as responsible for substance abuse in the Bariga community. Peer pressure, escapism and curiousity are elementary factors identified. Beyond that, broken family relationships, drug abuse by parents and those around the child as well as poor parental involvement in the child's development.

If this goes unchecked, the country might be at the risk of dangers untold.

It appears efforts by agencies of government like the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in nabbing & prosecution of drug syndicates is working in checking this cankerworm, but is that enough?

There's no doubt we all have to do more to avert this crisis. Government must continue to empower institutions to check the movement of drugs on the streets, adequately scrutinize and license patent medicine stores, provide facilities to treat addiction and alcohol especially on an individual basis and collaborate with non-profits and corporate individuals.

Public enlightenment through the mass media, educational institutions, organized workshops and symposiums on the dangers of drugs and substance abuse would do a whole world of good.

Parents and guardians must complement corporate efforts by inculcating moral values and being true examples in this bid to help our community from burning any further.

"I looked into my eyes drowned in them
in their depth
Lost in a dream, where am I going
where should I go
Ran after myself like a migratory bird
Abyssal roots, A nomadic woman
seeking sincerity, drowning in the lines of existence
sketched in the passions within my body.
Who am I"

What do you do so you don't lose contact with your body on those days when you're probably sitting at your computer?

How do you think your body affects your mind?

 

Occasionally, you´re listening to music and it connects with you in a special way.  It can also happen with the lyrics, as relating to them or their message can help put a lightbulb on that box. Sometimes we forget we need to open the box and let it get some sunlight.

 

Even in different parts of the world, where cultures are completely different to yours, where people seem so strange, and the music they make is so different(you can´t even understand the lyrics!) you can still connect to it. The sounds are all so distinct, and yet  some of them connect to you and me. It doesn´t matter where you come from, nor does it matter where the music comes from; the key simply fits the lock.

 

 

If music is so varied and it still connects to us, why can´t we do the same? Maybe, in the future, we   will all learn with music and focus on connecting to each other.

Masks below the chin.

Scared people.

Fearless people.

Using their cellphones. Touching their faces.

Distanced people. Non-distanced people.

Mandatory mask. Non-mandatory mask.

Avoid going out on the street.

Going out every day on the street.

There is no alternative but to go out everyday on the street.

Food on the table. No food on the table.

Deaths.

Closure.

Deaths.

Opening.

Deaths.

Opening.

Deaths.

Opening.

Opening.

Unstable mental health.

Climbing on my skin like a collection of dry
withered twigs

When my body is
 contained in
 the swamps of 
the enveloping desert
 the beautiful wilderness
 is present.

An ancient
 passionate emotion

Calls on me 
to experience it again

My initial character
 returned to her home
   To her Exists form". 

 Even before we become whole, we begin in the womb as a fetus connected to the woman's body containing in her body the fetus forming into a body itself, the connection between the body and life can be seen as a connection between the fetus and its mother, to the most primitive

Examining the human body in front of itself allows it to connect to its embryos at every moment and re-admire the dialogue created and woven like the umbilical cord connected to the source of life.

From the moment we are created, the body is always present, in every existential part that will occur later in our life and even before we exist as individual people in the life system.

The body is a powerful breath, which allows us to experience and feel in our senses the creation,  the body is very primitive even though new generations are created, new centuries apply in the endless timeline of the universe, the body always exists.

We are part of infinity only in our present body.

Ancient hands are sent from the placenta, breaking through the space that envelops the body, soft, virgin, wandering in initial innocence, demanding to resonate in space, to be born of their body.

A moment of inner expression from the depths of the body, the longing for pleasure in the naked birth as on the day of our creation.

The initial membranous displacement within the mother body shell containing us, the eruption through the interior of this body, as fetal kicks visible on the mother's exposed abdomen, legs and hands, miraculous deep and communicative connection between the containing body and the contained body, between the various forms of creation, the gentle and powerful touch The tangle of the clean and rooted body, the desire to walk in our own body, to develop from it our formation.

 

Rolling over, folding hands, the first laugh, revealing the fingers, lines sewn to our skin, soft and whole touch, touching the cracked earth, feeling the touch of the grounded feet

first walk, fall, stray step in his own balance, standing up,

Run, run, run, run, stop.

A body is revealed in the tangled darkness.

The connection to the assimilated and breathing antiquity in the existence of the human being, connects him with the deep and primitive emotion as our re-creation.

The infinite and soft intimacy that is revealed before us, awaits with temptation the longing for man to reach his original source with the help and through our body, which is in every existential state and state, connected to creation and infinity

Just feel, wherever you are, here and now, in the time spaces in which you are contained, feel your exposed skin, sensitive skin, connect to the most natural source you can give yourself and we will always be your part, for the rest of your life.

Your body.

The connection into the depths of the emotion will allow communication with the body and personal development.

The body contains within it life, existence, human being

We were created from the union of bodies, we evolved from the body, we discovered ourselves in space as a body and within a body.

The movement, the pause, the feeling stem from the very essence, the existence of the body in existence.

In an interaction with one of such fellow, she described figuratively how it feels to be in a world where the individual flies above the ground level, touching the sky (if anything like that ever existed) - and the vaguely painted stuffs that I can make anything of.

But then, there is a certain sense of feeling - a feeling that carries the addict far beyond the realms of the ordinary.  Forgive me for sounding a bit awkward. 

I call this sensation that they get Flying without wings..A little bit comical, you say. Someone else may consider it as delusion and another sees it as outright madness. To the one who is digging it down with his/her stuff, the sweetness of the pudding is in the taste.

Here is a true account of a one on one encounter with a drug addict a month ago. 

She was a tall, slim lady in her late 20s lived in my area - Bariga, Lagos, Nigeria. She was a Dj who lived down the street - jovial and fun to be with.

In the conversation, Fiona ( real name withheld) told me about her first experience with cocaine - how she almost passed out and mocked to a scorn by fellow hookers. Fiona was introduced to drugs by her friends when they all attended a birthday party. She went on to tell of how she has consistently been hooked to it - day and night for 6 years- and the same sweet feeling of amusement, giddiness and indescribable loves that accompanies any single drag. 

At a point in our interview, she looked at me in the eye - studying it for a while, she asked: What is your 'high'? High, I asked. Yes, she replied: What is your high? As if she read my thoughts, she reiterated by saying not necessarily taking drugs but what takes me into that world of euphoria. 'What is your high?'

For me, I started out explaining, I find utmost joy and peace in little things of life. The joys of seeing the laughing baby or playing in the rings with children - finding in their space the shuttle to journey to a time when life was young, wild and free. That, I concluded, is my high.

I had barely finished talking when Fiona lit a cigarette, her innocent looks showing behind the shadows of her present not-too-good visage. 

Suddenly, she paused for a while, quench the cigarette and stood up. She signaled me to come to her and gave me a long, bear hug. At this time, Fiona whispered into my ears, 'this used to be my 'high'. Finally, she let me go.

Sadly, Fiona died two days after the interview. But in her memory I have written this piece, a topic up for the debate: What is your high?

I will now invite you to read and listen the testimonials of young people of Paideia, from São Paulo, Brazil, about these magical days:

My personal belief of human existence comes from the essence of desire, of passion, of the ancient emotion of self-recognition.

How the desire motivate us, human beings to follow our most honest, natural and devoted emotion in order to become the person we want to be, the person our soul, mind and concisions wants to take "home"- the space where we will find our most solid, bare and free form of our formation, become a whole, a whole of choices, desires, dreams and the certain self-vision of the human being that we are.

and still, we are not all the time aware  to those emotions  and our primitive self's and I think that that’s the most powerful and important tool we can give to our self-development  and recognition, those are here to make the self-fulfill possible.

The life journey that we are experience holds in his essence and his raw element the need of The feeling and thought which contains our desires and feelings in order to fulfill ourselves, to create ourselves, to express satisfaction that inspires us, the feeling of ability and realization in life inherent in every human being and necessary for the meaningful, different and exciting ways we go through our existence.

That’s why I'm here.

When you are starting to pay attention in your knowledge to the part when you have a right and free way to connect in one partnership with your soul, the road of becoming, of creating yourself throw the universe and existence find his own roadstead's, and you take from those roadstead's the power that will lead you to find your true meaning and the platforms that will contain you and will be part of you.

In my journey i feel and think that this platform, the platform which let people to explore and expose them self's to things that they are bigger than them, that will create them and will give them space to show and share their creations in the way of becoming, and I feel that I want to lead myself throw those foundations that I belive that my soul can see and find in them meaning that will lead me to development. 

I feel like we are all the Migratory Birds- looking, running, searching and trying to find the shadow of our-self's in the mystery of self-discovering.

I want to be a part of this migratory birds group on her way of self-discovering and becoming throw the journalism, writing and artistic ways of expression.

In summary, My deeper motivation in the most honest and ancient way is to make my journey meaningful.