Brown Sugar

My friend in Mumbai, (she’s also Nigerian) sent her Indian driver to buy her some brown sugar (she had just returned from shopping for groceries and realized she forgot to buy some).

Pradeep, looking very uncomfortable said,

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t know where to get brown sugar from”.


“Just go to ‘____’ (name of neighborhood shop), and get me some”

“Noooo Ma’am, they don’t have brown sugar there, they don’t sell brown sugar”.

Feeling quite irritated knowing she had bought some from the shop in the past, she insisted he should go and get some immediately since she wanted to use it.

“Em, Ma’am, I am very, very sure they wont have brown sugar, do you really need some?” He said peering closely at my friend’s face as if studying her expression.

“See me see wahala and this man o, I send you on an errand and you are asking ‘are you sure?’ You get luck say no be naija I dey, abeg go and get the sugar joo”. Of course Pradeep understood Pidgin English having been around my friend for about a year.

I was particularly curious since he was normally quite helpful and liked to show off as he was from, maybe, a good caste?

“Pradeep”, I entered the conversation, “just go and if you don’t find it in ‘___’ go to other shops and ask”.

“Okay, okay” he said leaving, very reluctantly.

My friend and I were surprised when he came back about thirty minutes later and said that they didn’t have it in the said shop and no-one else around had any. He then said something very weird, “Em, Ma’am, are you testing me?” See me see Indian wahala, we were both very curious now.

Apparently, Brown Sugar is the name of some hard drug; don’t know which and the poor man, having been with her for a while knew there was no such thing going on with my friend. Ha ha ha, it would have been a good mind your language episode! Je pense que oui?!

Reminiscing

Reminiscing,
Over days long gone
The memories, bittersweet
Like an invisible hand
Tugging at the strings of your heart
A harp
The notes linger
Sending ripples of nostalgia

Is it a face, a smile or a song?
Or that feeling of something missing
Something there
And yet
Not

When tomorrow looms
Large and mysterious
The past seems to draw you into its bosom
Like a mother
Achingly familiar
But the umbilical cord is gone
A separation forever

For a moment
The pain is so real
You are transported
Hurtling
Back in time

No
Tomorrow can’t be as good
Nothing can compare
To that sweet past

Scripta Manet

This is the Latin for 'written things remain'. How does one strike the balance between the need to inscribe ones thoughts as though cast in stone, and the reality of it never going away? Enjoying the anonymity one has on the web can fool one into thinking that when possible, one can dissociate oneself for the writing. Not so. In today's technologically advanced world, if the need arises, your words on your blog can become as attached to you as liability on the negligent party in a tortuous proceeding.

You must cloak yourself with the awareness that this is George Orwell's fictional world in '1984', Big Brother 'watcheth' or can and will if need be!

But the phrase also bodes well for posterity. Civilisations, maybe hundreds of generations from now, have a wealth of documentary evidence to give them an insight into our world. More than we have of the past. Which is why, each one of us in our diverse ways, hold the key to how our time will be viewed. Slowly and surely, there is an awakening for one to leave an imprint, no matter the degree of indelibility. Africa is catching on. The import of the need, to have the tools of Communication in the hands of the masses, has never been stronger. Baby steps in terms of the number of bloggers from Africa but a giant leap in terms of its impact on the long run.

In America, the sitting president owes much of his success in the last election to bloggers. The buzz on the internet regarding the Nigerian President's bid for the third term enabled a strong wall to be erected against it. Much of the success of blogging as a tool for revolution depends on education. The degree of influence one has over another, in persuading them into your line of thought, rises or falls, more often than not, on the knowledge you have, in the particular field of reference. When we think of charitable ways of giving back to our societies, whether in the west or back in Africa, the importance of education should not be underestimated.

My Heritage

I come from a tribe in Nigeria that takes its oral history very seriously, almost cultic. The holders of the ancient traditions actually belong to the cult that has preserved our ancestral lineage; the names of our forefathers, the stories that surround each one and the context in which they performed acts that made them worthy of note or not as the case may be. I can tell my ancestry to the twelfth generation. Twelve 'grandfathers' that is. I can, of my 'grandmothers', but the stories get more complex so I stop at the fifth.

I was probably about four and this is indelible in my minds eye, when I noticed that whenever I greeted my mother as good kids are wont to, in naija, she would respond and add a greeting that I did not understand. It sounded like the word, glass, in our dialect and so I asked her why she would call me 'glass'. She laughed and explained that, in our culture, each clan? had a special name used to greet them. She had a different one and she told me hers.

Growing up, we were never sat down and told of this important part of our history but it kept cropping up in conversations and ceremonies were held to remember it; the 'war of horses'. My younger brother who loves history asked our grandfather and he explained what happened, which forefather's time and why they had to move en-mass a few hundred years ago to where we now call home. And so each clan would hold extensive ceremonies to remember and would subsequently have added to their special greetings, something in the line of 'warrior, in the war of horses'.

I can imagine a whole tribe, weary of war, packing their lives and heading away from danger. This was a conscious and carefully planned decision because; each clan had a 'totem' to identify them and to help with administration wherever they would subsequently settle. I intend to write their story one day, maybe in book form.

When I look at wars around the world and other goings-on, especially currently in the Sudan, I look at the wonder of what is the European Union and can't help but appreciate their success in ensuring no wars have been fought in Western Europe in over fifty years. Because of leaders with foresight and vision, a forum was created that has led to one of the supranational wonders of our time. We can bicker about all that's not right or whether the UK should be a part of it or not, but to rest easy in our beds at night and not have to face the chaos of war; Priceless.

I am in Jakarta. I love the city. Chaotic traffic, kind of like Lagos, with all the selling going on at traffic jams, road side food sellers, you see the odd man in a sarong style wrapper( although on Fridays, they are out in the hundreds) and lovely ladies going along minding their business. There's even 'okada' (motorbike public transport system),the only difference here is that the ladies cling to the biker! I can imagine an okada man in naija going 'oh to be a Jakartan'! Don't be fooled by the 'chaos', this is a thriving tourist economy so there are about twenty two five star hotels resplendent their beauty and welcoming in their south east Asian courtesy.

I'm off to church with my family and being the 'multitasker' that I am, I decide to start cooking the lunch as we were to leave for church at 8.20am. I turn of the beef I'm boiling at 8.10am and my husband decides to change his shirt. Why waste the next fifteen minutes I know it will take when the meat could get a little bit softer? So I turn it on and increase the heat a little while I play the role of mummy soothing a now forgotten need that was of utmost importance then.

In church, feeling very pretty and much loved by God, I enjoy the service and dance and sing my appreciation. After church, 'should we go home', hubby wants to know, but I want to visit my friend, so we pile into the car, buy some MacDonalds lunch we know her children will love and invade her house.

I have such a lovely time coz she has some other girl friends visiting; hubby leaves to sort some things out in another part of town. In the middle of a very riveting gist I was giving ( I was really feeling like a star) I said something about beef and paused, mid sentence. My friends were just watching while I stood transfixed. I was frozen, my heart literally with the knowing that I had no recollection of turning off the heat on the then important but quickly abandoned lunch. Ye paa!

In another man's land. Five bedroom, marble infested, expensive furniture, all not mine, crisp and toast because of moi! I could not pray. My legs turned to jelly, while my friends tried to soothe me. Call your neighbours, call your husband etc.

In the end, my husband got there first, twenty minutes later; this was way after four pm. The pot had been on fire and the lid had sealed. The smoke was everywhere, the fire alarm got tired I'm sure but the only thing we lost that day was the pot and clean air? for the next couple of days. !!!!

The relief and my joy cannot be explained. That night, I went to bed and if you were a child raised in naija and ever got a spanking or ever cried your heart out for a long period of time, then you'll understand this bit. I slept like a child who having cried and cried sleeps like a log with its breathing punctuated by heaving and sighing.

Now, I am ever so careful.

(The story in this post happened four years ago)

Independence Day

Oh, to be a child again. One of my early memories of our great country's independence day was the cloak of great anticipation that surrounded it. As primary schoolers, we'd have practiced marching and dancing to compete on that day for prizes. I think the anticipation was overrated but we weren't particularly concerned about that. We just wanted to make the team. It was also a day of eating 'ice-cream' buying puff-puff, ground-nuts and other what nots that our mum would otherwise not let us. We spent too long in the field with all the ceremonies that I guess all the eating helped pass the time.

And then the mad chaos of finding our siblings and getting home.

Fast forward to adulthood and the knowing that things aren't as they should be, cloud one's emotions. But in spite of it all, home (Nigeria) is where my memories were birthed and there are a lot of good ones. More good than bad and in that I am one of the blessed ones.

My List of the good that's Naija

1. Village life. Maybe because we spent only a few days at a time when visiting, I felt surrounded by kindness especially in my mum's village where she comes from a family of 'comedians'. No, not literally, but they had this way of finding humour in life. There was good natured yabis and a lot of laughter. Was there plenty in terms of material things? Certainly not, but someone somewhere in their heritage most have bequeathed this gift to them and I'm glad I'm a part of it.

2. Rags to Riches. Yeah right, I wish the riches part could fill my pocket, but seriously, my parents are like millions of Nigerians who a couple of generations ago were not educated and were agrarian of the very simple kind. Fortune smiled on my family in the person of a kindly catholic priest (this seems to be the story of many in Africa; of 'angelic' missionaries). He rode on his bicycle, miles, we were told to speak to my grandfather, to allow his firstborn to continue on after primary school because he believed he was gifted. Somehow with sheer perseverence, tons of will power and hard work ( of course baptised with school fees from the odd aunty here and a long forgotten cousin there) my father studied in England and enjoyed a lucrative legal career until his death.

Once the wand of education touched my family, there was no looking back and who knows that class in Nigeria can be tied to 'whether you go school or you be person wey no go school'.

3. Food to die for. From the North to the South, we have dishes which we prepare from ingredients mostly fresh and free from additives. The trouble our mothers go through can only be appreciated when one comes to live abroad.

4. Rites of passage. Marriages, the effizie, births, naming ceremonies, birthdays some funerals; There's always an excuse to party.

5. Unique clothing. Our decking, no get pair. In fact, as they say in Port Harcourt, e no get part two.

6. Communal living. There is still some sense of community with most of us knowing and interacting with some cousins, aunties, uncles and grand parents. It's not always good but where in the world is it a cup of tea? There's always a listening ear - careful, make dem no carry your tory waka.

There's a lot more I appreciate about naija but I'll stop here. As for Naija: e go better. May we all, strong in our various ways, gird our loins. Tara