▶️ Watch on 3Speak

---

Hello Q-inspired, today I'm writing about one of my favorite albums of last year. It is hard to describe the effect this album had on me.

During the time the album came out, there was a lockdown affecting the whole of Nigeria...and the world really. But gradually we were coming out of it.

I went home to Bayelsa to be with my parents and since medical schools were closed too, I decided that I would take up sports to fill the void.

The next thing that happened was that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) went on strike and it held down my set of doctors around the country.

After waiting about 6 months for the CCOVID lockdown to be over the ASUU went on a 3-month strike.

Around the world

During the lockdown, some schools around the world allowed medical students to graduate and join the workforce as early as possible.

Also, young doctors were very essential at the time. Many of our seniors were affected and died during this period.

Boxing

During that period I started taking boxing training, preparing for the National sports festival. It was a beautiful moment to see just how much I could push myself to accomplish.

I was not good enough to be selected but I got into the ring a couple of times and my coach said that it was a good sign that I was not afraid to fight.

Sacrifices

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=HzKt7zEuPuY&feature=share

My favorite song in the album was Sacrifices, at the time I was listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson's lectures and he made me more certain that Mental Health was the path I was going to follow in Medicine.

He talked about how Sacrifices were what separated Cane and Abel in the bible.

The lyrics of the song goes

I make sacrifices, bloody sacrifices!

Johny Venus sings at the top of his voice.

In the song, they talk about how they put everything into their art and how love demands sacrifices.

J. Cole especially talks about the consequences of what he made from sacrifices and love. He talks about his wife and all he wants to be for her.

If I was going to win then I had to make some sacrifices myself.

I also started seeing some ways I could have given more in medical school and in my relationships with people and ways in which I let people treat me bad.

Down Down Bad

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=NIXJEk7Figs&feature=share
This is the song that I used for most of my shadow boxing.

Initially, I didn't have a space to shadow box in because I refused to tell my parents that I was training for the sports festival.

When I did, she did not have the response I thought she would. She trusted that I knew what I was doing and just like she supported me in medicine, she was supportive of this too even though she had more warnings.

So it was me and the Revenge of the Dreamer III preparing for the sports festival that I eventually did not go for.

The beat and the style of the song were just perfect for those jabs, hooks, and uppercuts.

It was this song that inspired the art for this post. The reason I chose to do this was to elicit a reaction from the whole mess.

I chose to use colors that are Nigerian and would attract the nation's attention.

Just like Ruth E. Carter did in the movie Do The Right Thing where she made characters connect with African countries with their clothes.

My character is super Nigerian but he is out of this world too because he can't exist.

For him to exist, he would have to be out of the country and love the country so much that he represents it so openly and those two conditions can't be met.

Self Love

This is one of the songs I started liking very recently.

It says'

Self-love is the best love and your love is the worst drug.

Crazy how Nigerian Health care system doesn't want you to love yourself. While I agree with the fact that a doctor should be neat, I do not think that it is in any one place to tell the doctor how to be neat.

I like this song because it encourages us to accept ourselves as a solution to toxic love.

Also, if a patient doesn't want to be attended to by a doctor, it's the patient's problem, but if no one wants a certain doctor to attend to them... it's the doctor's problem.

I added the material design to my character's tie because the Nigerian flag has just green and white and you can't go anywhere but into patterns when you consider the colors.

Revenge

It is crazy how the Medical association could not fight for itself and till now it can't.

I saw a school trending because its medical school didn't want to be part of the ASUU strike but people said that the students were being selfish and that there is nothing special about them.

I beg to differ.

These people have been stressed and have high expectations and are fighting to be paid a small salary when compared to the work that they will be doing.

In my institution, things are only getting worse. Things are so bad that there has been a 90% drop in the number of Intern doctors.

It has caused stress everywhere in the system and it has been slowly happening and the people left behind are left to suffer and they threaten us with punishments if we do not work.

I started boxing because it would confuse those people who think that a doctor who knows the danger would involve himself in it.

I hoped do more revolting things in the future...but my job is trying to slow me dow.

My Art

I really hope I can offend the right kind of people with this artwork so they know what is going on.

They are so focused on the wrong things in the country, like how we look while working and not the work we do.

It has been a period of long-suffering for me and those struggling with me.

Thanks for stopping by!!

Check out the rest of the album here,

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lJCvt8P9WJDNcmDzhwCfOu5xkXWRa45QA&feature=share

---

▶️ 3Speak