Who Were You

Hello,

Tell me, who were you? Who were you before the world told you that your smile was too wide?

...that smile that wide was only a call to bandits of joy?  

Who were you before you met those who would have you eat but not be full, those who would fund your business but not allow you make it home with the proceeds, who were you?

Who were you before you learnt it was safer to keep your head down and lie low? Who were you before you learnt not to display your beauty because here, when theft happens, the owner is always at fault?

Who were you before you learnt that roses do not survive? ...That thorns survive where roses are plucked in their bloom?

Who were you before you learnt to keep the bile in and show white, pearly teeth?

Who were you before you learnt to play safe?

Before you learnt to cut your coat according to your cloth,

Before you learnt how to be realistic,

Before you learnt how to want less so that you would cry less

Tell me, who were you?

And what did you want?

For Daddy, in this, his sixtieth year

He sits in white lace and pink cap. He is having a cup of tea. He asks me, “Do you think it is better to love than to be loved?” He says he thinks it is better to be loved, especially for a woman. That if you can’t have both, choose to be loved. Me, perhaps, buoyed by the optimism of youth respond: both; it is good to have both.

I saw his picture in his seventeenth year recently and somehow, the stories he has told me about his past seem more real. One day, he was summoned by his headmaster who asked where his parents were.

“Olubunmi Gaji!!! Where are your parents?” He stared down at the young boy dressed in his uniform of many colours- mismatched buttons, skipped button holes. It was not everyday the  headmaster called students to his office to make chitchat about their parents. You see, this headmaster had seen something unusual. He had seen kisa, he had seen a dog smoking cigarette, he had seen a cat beating a gong.  

Two well-dressed people sat in his office. The woman’s perfume was like nothing that had ever entered the headmaster’s office. They were impeccably dressed. They should be. The man was an Oxford-trained lawyer. It was 1967. The woman was a nurse. She was very beautiful, too- one must not leave that out. And they had sat before him asking after Olubunmi Gaji, their son, who never had any textbooks. He found it hard to believe that this boy, dressed so wretchedly, could be the child of these people.

Just two years earlier, my father had gone to his grandfather’s house in great eagerness to meet his mother. She was to arrive from London that day. He had no recollection of her. The last time she saw him, he was a three month old baby she was dropping off with her mother. And that day, he was so excited. He was going to meet his mother at last. She was a celebrity to him. She was his Marilyn Monroe- he had seen her in pictures. That was all. Pictures of her in beautiful gardens in London. Did he wake up specially early to see her? Did he look at his tattered clothes to pick out the least tattered one? Did he rub pomade on his face? These are thoughts I grapple with.

When he got to his grandpa’s, he waited all day long. He waited till he fell asleep. He was 8 years old. He woke up with a start. It was dark. “Where is my mother?”

“Oh, your mother? She left already.”

He was dejected. She came and left without a single word to her eight year old boy who had waited years to meet her. He would meet her shortly after and she would only deign to look him over once before she moved on.

Years pass by. He becomes a man. He builds his own house and has done well without her. He still loves her so much. She is his Elizabeth Taylor, his Katherine Hepburn. The star. She is older. Her full hair is now a white halo and she tells stories of London. Of her responding with “White Pork” to “Black Monkey” when a racist man crossed her path. She died happy.

The day she died, she was the star. I saw a look on his face that spoke of pure shock. Perhaps, he never thought she could die, despite weeks of being in a coma. People like that weren’t meant to die. 

In spite of it all, he loved her. And he let her know it in many ways.

And now, I sit before him and I think he is probably thinking of the first love of his life: his mother, as he tells me it is better to be loved than to love. But he loves us and we love him- and what we have is the best.

May you, my friend, be confused

Shall we sing?

Give me knowledge oh Lord

Give me knowledge oh Lord

Give me knowledge to read and understand

Give me knowledge oh Lord

Not knowledge to cause confusion

Not knowledge to go astray

But knowledge to read and understand

Give me knowledge oh Lord

Okay. That was a song we sang almost everyday in my primary school days. If we weren’t singing that, we were singing:

Make me a good child like Samuel

He was obedient and so respectful

He would never argue with his parents

Always obedient, oh Lord

And where has that got us? We are a bunch of people who learnt how to read and read and then...? A culture who values obedience as much as we do is suspect. Since we do not want the knowledge to cause confusion, we become stuck in outdated confusion. No new thing here, no change wanted here. No, you might say. We like change. We even voted change in the last election. You call recycling an old head of state change? Like, that’s the best you can do?

Do you ever think confusion is a good thing? Do you know confusion is the portion of trailblazers? I don’t know about you, I know my best ideas have often come on the heels of skull puncturing confusion. Heck, who wants children that never argue anyway?

Is it not this children who grow up and say: But that is the way it has always been done? I have a feeling most people who grow up to become people worth anything could not exactly have been the never arguing child who learnt merely to read and write without ceremony. The Read and Write here is not even about writing or reading anything original. Child, “A” is for the Apples whose tree does not grow in your backyard... “Y” is for Yoyo... The teacher probably does not even know what a Yoyo is. We attempt comprehension passages. The teachers answer is always the correct one: Why didn’t Obi wake up early? He did not wake up early because he went to bed late. Could it be possible he did not wake up early because he did not feel like? Because he was ill? Could it be a learning opportunity if people are encouraged to have their imaginations soar? Could it? Really, could it?

As a people, do we need to go “astray” more often? Is going “astray” always to mean one is in the wrong? Do we, well, need to be less well-behaved? Perhaps, more confused?

Who Wants to be a Man, Anyway?

Why do some people say “grow some balls”? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding – Sheng Wang

I am pissed off. I am pissed off at men who say: “Feminism. You people want to be husbands? You want to be men?” Heck, why will anyone want to be the men some of them are, anyway?

I am particularly pissed off at women whose response to feminism is always: I am not a feminist because my husband and I blah blah and I believe my husband is the head of the family. Then, they sit back and look proud like well fed cats. They feel smug because they believe they have successfully dismissed all the talk of feminism with a wave of their hands. You should just go and sit down if you imagine you would shut down a discourse that has spanned centuries- baton passed on from generation to generation- by wearing the look of a well fed kitten and talking about “my husband and I” and our Christian marriage. Just go and sit down.

To make feminism the simple story of how it is well with you in your home is to say terrorism is not an issue because no bomb has exploded on your street.

In a world where a girl comes first in class and the teacher turns to the boys to say: “Look at you, you allowed a girl to beat you.” How will I not be a feminist?

In a world where a woman is expected to consider herself grateful to get male attention, how can I not be a feminist?

In a world where a woman with her money and accommodation needs is shunned by a landlord because she is a woman, tell me, how will I not be a feminist?

In a world where men walk around standing on Paul’s “Wives, submit to your husband” and demand submission from every being with breasts, forget that the scriptures they stand on says: “Wives”, how can I not be feminist?

In a world where I have seen a man stewing that: woman, common woman spoke to me like that? Woman wey I for don slap if no be say we be visitor-visitor; how can a right thinking woman not be slighted?, how will I not be feminist?

In a world where a stellar academic performance makes parents and teachers think you belong in a hospital in white robes with a stethoscope around your neck, I opted to study English. Tired of the headstrong girl I was, an older acquaintance shrugged and said: “Well, you are a woman. If it does not work out fine, you have your husband to rely on.” How can I not be feminist?

If it is okay in your world, it is not okay in the world of women who are victims of honour killings. It is not okay in a world where being a woman with eccentricities makes it likely you are branded a witch and burnt.

My feminism is not about fighting over who will cook or will not cook. What’s the problem with cooking anyway? Ladies, cooking isn’t your problem. The thing that is dancing azonto on top of some of your lives as women in this society is beyond cooking, which I consider a beautiful thing by the way, if it is your hobby. Some people, male or female, love to cook. Some can’t cook to save their lives and get no pleasure from it. In a normal world, the beautiful and sacred kitchen shouldn’t be the battlefield for rights. Let whomever the apron fits, who won’t cause fourth world war in the family’s belly and loo, do the cooking.  Do what works, I think.  

Hold on a sec, did you know that many state governments in Nigeria- perhaps, all- do not grant a pregnant woman maternity leave unless she is Mrs. Somebody? Yes, woman, let that and all that it represents sink in. I first heard of such in the year 2015. 2017, it is still on. You are pregnant and not married? No, no maternity leave for you, you bad girl. How can one not be a feminist?

The biggest roadblock to women coming into the fullness of their being is women themselves. You know, like the cow chained to a blade of grass? My feminism is premised on the belief that women coming into their fullness is an inside job. A woman should unlearn all the false notions that have been shoved down her throat about what she can, should, may or must do. A woman should know there are many things she can or cannot do but it should not be because she is a woman: “How can I, a mere woman be this or that?” Women have learnt to shrink into themselves. I simply wish for a world where a person can be all she can be without her breasts being stones around her neck, dragging her down. I bet if men had our bodies, they would even use it more to their credit. You may hear stuff like: why would you listen to someone who has no breasts?

Do you notice how men take pride in their bodies? Do you know men can be revered in Yoruba language as being special as against those who “urinate from behind”. How does that even make sense? Women need to value that special package of theirs and its immense possibility more.

Message from my Missing Earring

What are my earrings missing their pair still doing in my jewelry purse? Do you have them in your purse too or is there a special coach for hoarders like me? So, I have lone earrings that will never again find their pair sitting in my purse. One is from my days in Plateau NYSC camp, another is from my wedding. And others from different places with different interesting stories. I keep them, not because they were cast in precious stones. Some of them can hardly buy me lunch but oh, the memories and the lessons.

I am feeling particularly Zen today, you know how we all suddenly go owlish at times? I start to listen to what these earrings and the loss they embody have to say about life and relationships. There is the loss I see coming but live in constant denial of. With that earring, I am the fellow who keeps asking: Are you still there? Do you love me? Will you stay? I keep checking for reassurance. Walk a little, put my hands to my lobe. One day in the market, I put my hand to my ear and yes, it was gone. Somehow, you would say I knew the story was bound to end that way but the part of me that loved and stubbornly wore a earring with the eccentric clasp did not know that.

There is that earring that vanishes without warning. It just disappears one day. You never see it coming. Like my friend’s relationship of five years. We all thought it was the perfect thing. It was the kind of relationship that made you feel all gooey inside. It ended. No one saw it coming, she did not see it coming either.

So my lone pair of earrings sit in my purse and tell me stories of how happy we were together. Of memories and times. If I would be honest with myself, I know it probably never was that perfect. I could as well throw away the other pair. I know there is no way some of these earrings will come back. It is like phone numbers of people on my phone, people I haven’t reached out to in years. People who probably still have my number too but have not had cause to call me in centuries and probably would not. It is the application for learning French on my phone. I was all fired up for some weeks till activities rushed in. But no, I did not delete the application. It is just our way. Leaving a door open while sitting in another room. Grimly determined that should the other pair of earring ever drops like a miracle someday, I have its sister here, waiting. One day, I might complete my French lessons, I might pick my phone and surprise somebody or be surprised.

And then, like fairy tale endings intruding beautifully upon real life, sometimes, the unexpected happens. A lone earring meets another lone earring, squints at it and discovers they are sisters: Is it you? It asks and a beautiful love story begins. Don’t worry. I am not that sentimental to make this up. I truly heard of two people discovering they had the sister pairs. One lady gave hers to the other and they lived happily ever after.

Am I talking about just lone earrings? No, it is never just about it. It is a lot more. Like every jewelry piece, even a lone earring tells a story and has lessons to teach. And even if there is no lone earring hanging out in your purse waiting for its twin, I know you have lone earrings in your heart.

Tip: Talking about literal earrings, there is the option of converting that lone earring to a pendant. You could even go Emma Watson and rock your lone earring. There is another lesson there, you know.