Which Way, Nigeria?

Nigeria is a country where nothing works. It is oft-said that every man is his own government here, providing himself with water, power, security, education, healthcare; grateful if an elected leader fixes some roads while he loots the state, unsurprised if he doesn't even bother with the pretense of government. It is a testament to the average Nigerian's resourcefulness and resilience that any of us survive at all, let alone find a way to make some sort of happy life, but we do. We fold our tongues into the corners of our mouths when confronted with our country's many mind-boggling failures: navigating the madness of arriving at the international airport in Lagos and having to walk, rain or shine, lifetime's worth of luggage or no, to a shuttle bus station a kilometer away. Or delivering your first child in what is purportedly a private specialist hospital, only to be told when you go into active labour to 'hold on, don't push, the doctor is attending to another person now'. And this after running from another private maternity hospital when you discovered your doctor was lying about your child being breech so he could charge you the extra N500,000 for a Caesarean section. Or attempting to sue one of the many service providers who fleece you and deliver nothing, and being told not to waste your time because they have enough money to bribe judges. The frustration, the powerlessness, settles on you and you keep quiet, find a way to pull through, turn the knot of anger into an anecdote, laugh at it with people you love, remind yourself, this is Nigeria. E go beta.

E go beta. But when, my people? How? I recount the small things because I can, if I try, wrap my mind around them. And if I can't wrap my mind around them, I can tuck them neatly into a pile of Things I Can't Afford To Forget when navigating my survival in this country that continues to exist in spite of itself. Small things like the police is not your friend, civil servants require bribes to do their jobs, your mechanic is ripping you off, your gateman thinks he can make passes because you are unmarried and living alone. But the big things, like my friend dying because NEPA wires started a fire that the fire service arrived too late to put out, like my mother's death from a misdiagnosis, like being blamed for my rape, those ones I can't tuck away. Those ones refuse to be spun into small talk or cookie-cut into conversation fillers. And the insane things - planes dropping out of the sky like rain, the slaughter of schoolboys by terrorists and soldiers alike, the weaponized rape and abduction of schoolgirls, the unchecked looting of sums of money so fantastic that the poor it should have gone to can't understand what they have lost - those ones remind me that little drops make an ocean. And this one is poised to drown us.

How much more will we take before it is enough? I don't know. But I am afraid to continue to be in this country. I march, write, sing, protest, but who is listening? #BringBackOurGirls has shown me that Nigeria is where it is, not just because our leaders are greedy, shortsighted and selfish, but also because they are actually incapable of being anything other than what they are. And I am afraid. We are in trouble and I can see no way that it will be fixed because those in power are too thick with corruption to let it happen. I want to have hope, but I don't see what I will base this hope on. And, in case you missed it, this scares me.

Which way, Nigeria?

Bills, Bills, Bills.

In case you didn't know, I identify as a feminist. (These days I'm leaning towards womanism because I think it might speak a bit better to my experience as a Black female, but that's another post entirely). For me, it is always interesting to talk about feminism, even though I'll admit I haven't quite mastered the art of detaching my emotions from the conversation, because it is always interesting to hear the many skewed (albeit sometimes understandably so) perceptions that people have of feminism.

I was out to dinner with my boyfriend and a small group of friends, and inevitably the issue of my relatively recent conversion to the feminist religion came up. A girlfriend stated that she had no use for feminism as she had no desire for equality with men, because men and women are simply not equal. Someone else mentioned to my partner that dating feminists must be cheaper than dating 'regular women', because they (we?) always insist on going Dutch, to which we both laughed and established; he always pays for dinner. The outcry was instantaneous and loud, and the general consensus was that I wasn't doing feminism right.

I'm not sure how the 'feminists want to be men/do what men do' argument gained such currency, but in my experience it is second only in popularity to the 'feminists hate men' argument. If I had a kobo for every time the 'feminists, who pays the bills on your dates?' question has come up on my twitter feed, I'd be earning at least minimum wage every month for simply existing. I find it interesting how, when oppression begins to be discussed, the most common form of derailment is to reduce the issue from an institutional, systemic problem, and make it about individuals. Discuss racism and white supremacy, and someone is sure to argue that 'not all white people...'; discuss sexism and patriarchy, and someone is sure to say you hate men (usually because they're certain you must be incredibly unattractive to them).

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: feminism isn't about men. Nor is it about rejecting traditional gender roles or refusing chivalry.  To borrow a quote from Minna Salami, "feminism is not simply about being an independent or successful woman. It is about recognizing and taking a critical engagement with patriarchal structures that oppress women..."

Feminism is about recognizing that women almost always draw the shortest straw, pointing out the instances where this happens, and doing what we can to rectify the situation in those instances.  We earn much less money for doing the same (and in some cases, like African women farmers, even more) work than men. We are less educated, abused more, and denied more opportunities than boys. We die younger, bear more of the burden of raising a family, and are always, always reminded, that we are less important. Don't believe me? Just look around you. The evidence is everywhere.

So, in the light of all this, should anyone in all seriousness be able to tie the validity of feminism to who pays for a dinner date? I think not.

PSA: Comments

If you guys needed any more proof regarding my tech ineptitude, here it is: someone pointed out to me that only people with Google+ Profiles are able to comment on my blog. I wasn't aware of this, and while I'm proud of myself for figuring out how to change that in less than 20 minutes, I'm afraid all your lovely comments posted on google+ will vanish into the ether.

I only hope that one day in the near future I will figure this thing out, once and for all. Till then, please bear with me! 

The Scenic Route Still Gets You There

I wrote my last exam in Uni this morning. Can I get an "Amen!"?

I'd been looking forward to this day, anticipating this moment, for such a long time that I didn't know how to feel when it finally came. The end of my apparently endless undergraduate career, lengthened by three strikes that lasted a total of a year, and a year-long break to have my daughter (and, as it turned out, grieve my mum), arrived this morning at 10.24 am, and there were no fireworks! I found it a bit underwhelming, in all honesty.

But here I am done, dusted, on my grown woman shit, and pleased as punch. My sixteen year old self would never have been able to picture the events of the last six years - hell, my current self still has trouble recognizing my reality sometimes, but I am finally done with the University of Ibadan and vowing never to write another exam ever again in my life.

I still believe going to Uni was a waste of valuable time, considering how crappy the system is, but I'm grateful for the friends I made. I really lucked out in the friendship department, a fact which was never more obvious than when I fell pregnant in my not-so-final year and then lost my mum months later. If you're one of those people who think female friends are too much hassle, you need new friends (or a different attitude). I never liked school, but having people who genuinely had my back and with whom I could make awesome memories definitely improved my experience.

I'm really not sure what the point of this post is supposed to be, beyond sharing this small seed of happiness that I have. Like one of the half-unread books on my shelf says, life turns man up and down. Even if it was not part if the plan, you can still make it work.

Misadventures in Tech Land

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Girl Power, Rah Rah - Nah.

This post is a bit 'for the record'-esque, so I will be brief: my feminism (because I believe in the concept of different feminisms) is not about usurping power, it's about being given equal opportunities and equitable treatment.

Let all children, male or female, go to school. And let girls have safe, clean toilets at school.

Let all people, male or female, get jobs based on merit, let their salaries and promotions be based on the same performance criteria, and let pregnant women be treated fairly in the workplace.

Let all parents, male or female, be allowed to participate in their children's lives in the public sphere in the same ways/whatever ways they choose, without their competence being called into question.

Let all adults, male or female, be able to explore and express their sexuality in healthy, consensual ways without judgment or reprisal.

Let girls and women contribute, lead, create and succeed, without questioning their abilities or qualifying their output with 'feminine' (read: 'less worthy of respect') qualifiers. 

Let boys and men be vulnerable, in need of help, emotional, asexual, non-violent, paternal and faithful, without qualifying their actions as 'feminine' (again, 'less worthy of respect') qualifiers.

My (and most other feminists') feminism isn't anti-man, man-hating, militant rampaging. It's not about men. It's about systems of oppression and the usually but not exclusively male-run, male-upheld institutions that promote and perpetuate them. It's about patriarchy, about kyriarchy, about the dehumanization of women and men due to subjugation, abuse of power and denial of rights.

So, guys, don't flatter yourselves. This shit ain't about you.

Die. It's Easy.

It is probably for the best that Nigerian hospitals don't have the manpower to perform routine autopsies on the unusually deceased, because the sort of Cause of Death reports we would receive would be the stuff of a truly macabre imagination. In Nigeria there are a thousand ways to die, many of them too amazing to be anything but stark reality.

You can die from a two-year old misdiagnosis given at a government hospital, or from an asthma attack because there is no oxygen, or from an asthma attack because the nurse won't listen when you mention she is overdosing you, or from an asthma attack when your inhaler turns out to be fake. You can die by falling from an old crane with maintenance issues on a construction site, or a truck driving into your shop when its brakes fail on a bad road. You can be T-boned by a speeding trailer on your way to NYSC camp, or in a plane crash along with all your classmates because there is no water for the Fire Service to save you with. 

You can die when the power goes out while you're in surgery, or when your doctor lies about your child being breech so he can charge you extra for a (subsequently botched) Caesarean section. You can die when a plane falls out of the sky into your house on a quiet Sunday, or when long-forgotten bombs go off in a military cantonment kilometers away, or for maybe being gay. You can die when a building collapses or when your pastor sets you on fire. You can die when your aunty decides you're a witch, when your husband stabs you 76 times, or when you are forced to marry your rapist. 

You can die for some obscure reason, when terrorists come to visit, or at national job interviews.

And you will be forgotten, eventually, by everyone but those who loved you before you died. No one will care enough about how you died to make sure nobody else dies that way, because this is Nigeria after all; people die all the time.