S.A. David's Blog, page 9

Manifesto By S. A. David

I want to be your president
I kneel and plead your votes
I’m destined to be the number one man
Can’t you read it in my palm lines?

I shall build bridges
Where there are no rivers
I shall plant food crops on rock soils
I shall light a candle under a table

I shall loot and give you your share
You shall eat while I eat
Your children don’t need examinations
I shall certify all of them

I want to be your governor
Why should I beg for your votes?
I have a PhD in leading
You have no choice but me

It’s my turn to eat oil-money
It’s my turn to puppet the force
It’s my turn to drive in convoys
It’s my turn to inhabit Aso Rock’s prototype

Whether  you vote or not, I’ll win
Tribunal or not, I’ll continue
Protest or not, you’re on your own
Strike or not, you will get fatigue

You can’t beat me
Join me
You can’t conquer me
Like me

I will be senator
Whether you like it or not
I shall blindfold you with legal tender
And you shall mortgage me your future

I am already Honorable
To hell with your votes
I have a powerful godfather
To him I’m responsible.

He knows how to manipulate the commission
The people are no match for him
My godfather
To him I’m responsible

I will be like the mayor
I’m sexy and beautiful
Your votes don’t count
Because you won’t count them

My lips are florid
My hips are rigid
I shall give him from my honey pot
He shall make me like the mayor

You shall give us your votes
Because we are powers that be
Our manifesto shall manifest
We promise you the impossible

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: "Hiding From Our Past."

On the margins of my happy childhood, there was a shadow: the Biafran war. I was born seven years after it ended, and did not experience any material deprivations—I had a bicycle, dolls, books—but my family was scarred by it. In 1967, after massacres in northern Nigeria that targeted southeastern Igbo people, the southeast seceded and formed an independent nation called Biafra. Nigeria went to war to prevent the secession. By the time that Biafra was defeated, in 1970, at least a million people were dead, including my grandfathers—proud, titled Igbo men who were buried in the unmarked graves of refugee camps. My parents lost other relatives, and everything they owned. A generation was robbed of its innocence. The war was the seminal event in Nigeria’s modern history, but I learned little about it in school. “Biafra” was wrapped in mystery. At home, my parents spoke of it rarely and obliquely; I heard many stories about my grandfathers’ wisdom and humor, but few stories about how they had died.
I became haunted by history. I spent years researching and writing “Half of a Yellow Sun,” a novel about human relationships during the war, centered on a young, privileged woman and her professor lover. It was a deeply personal project based on interviews with family members who were generous enough to mine their pain, yet I knew that it would, for many Nigerians of my generation, be as much history as literature. In 2006, my publisher and I were braced for the Nigerian publication, unsure of how it would be received. We were pleasantly surprised: “Half of a Yellow Sun” became one of the best-selling Nigerian novels published in the past fifty years. It cut across different ethnic groups, started conversations, served as a catalyst for previously untold stories. I was heartened to hear from readers whose families had survived Biafra and those whose families had been on the Nigerian side.
But the Biafran war is still wrapped in a formal silence. There are no major memorials, and it is hardly taught in schools. This week, Nigerian government censors delayed the release of the film adaptation of “Half of a Yellow Sun” because, according to them, it might incite violence in the country; at issue in particular is a scene based on a historically documented massacre at a northern Nigerian airport. It is now up to the State Security Service to make a decision. The distributors, keen to release the film before it is engulfed in piracy, are hoping that the final arbiters of Nigerian security will approve its release. I find this absurd—security operatives, uniformed and alert, gathered in a room watching a romantic film—but the censors’ action is more disappointing than surprising, because it is part of a larger Nigerian political culture that is steeped in denial, in looking away.
Partly the result of an unexamined past and partly of the trauma of years of military dictatorship, a sustained and often unnecessary sense of secrecy is the norm in Nigerian public life. We talk often of the “sensitivity” of issues as a justification for a lack of transparency. Conspiracy theories thrive. Soldiers are hostile to video cameras in public. Officials who were yesterday known as thieves are widely celebrated today. It is not unusual to hear Nigerians speak of “moving forward,” as though it might be possible merely to wish away the unpleasant past.
The censors’ action is a knee-jerk political response, yet there is a sense in which it is not entirely unreasonable. Nigeria is on edge, with upcoming elections that will be fiercely contested, religion and ethnicity increasingly politicized, and Boko Haram committing mass murders and abductions. In a political culture already averse to openness, this might seem a particularly appropriate time for censorship.
But we cannot hide from our history. Many of Nigeria’s present problems are, arguably, consequences of an ahistorical culture. As a child, I sometimes found rusted bullets in our garden, reminders of how recent the war had been. My parents are still unable to talk in detail about certain war experiences. The past is present, and we are better off acknowledging it and, hopefully, learning from it.
It is sadly easy, in light of the censors’ action, to overlook the aesthetic success of the film. Its real triumph is not in its politics but in its art. The war is the background to the complicated romance of characters played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton, both of whom give the most complex performances of their careers. As a flawed professor, Ejiofor is finally freed from the nobility that was central, and limiting, to his past major roles. Here, his range is breathtaking. Newton brings a nuanced blend of strength and vulnerability to a character for whom she eschews the vanity of a beautiful movie star. On the screen, their chemistry breathes. Cinema, Susan Sontag once wrote, began in wonder, the wonder that reality can be transcribed with such immediacy. Director Biyi Bandele’s eye is awash with magic, but also with a kind of nostalgia, a muted love, a looking back at a country to which this film is both a love letter and a rebuke.
Nigerians are sophisticated consumers of culture and, had the censorship board not politicized the film by delaying its release, I suspect that few people would have objected to it at all.

S. A. David: "We Should Not Be Feminists."

I do not like the f-word- feminism. It harbours a lot of nonsense, negative nonsense, even though countless well-meaning intellectuals are trying every humanly-possible approach to debunk the negative notion it already carries.
I wish the word “equality” would become old-fashioned, go in to extinction and then be deleted from every dictionary on earth, and perhaps in heaven. It robs us of our innocence and purity. It rubbishes that clean white slate in every soul, that spotless lamb in every human.
I am looking forward to the future when we will stop the usage of the word “sexuality”. It reduces us to sexual beings. It is better we are human beings, or better still, angelic beings. Angels are sexless. Infact, they do not have sexuality or related words in their lexicon.
I seriously anticipate that day when lexicographers of all tongue and tribe would convene at a global conference to erase the word “gender” from every dictionary- Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hausa, Igala, Igbo, Italian, Urhobo, Yoruba and all languages. It takes us to the state of nature where chaos is orderliness.And just after then, I would entreat all “men and women of God” to ask God to not recognize these words in heaven, to order his angels to cease the usage if they use it, to delete them from glossolalia, and any person who employs usage of these words- whether Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or Satanist- such person’s prayers should not go beyond the shortest shrub.
I do not like so many words. Perhaps, a third of the dictionary’s words. But I am not going to expend my energies on all but feminism and a very minuscule amount on equality.
Feminism is enmeshed in idealism. It prospers very well in the great land of “Utopia”. It is very real in fiction, in books, in movies and in our thoughts. We enjoy movies that empower women to send their cheating husbands packing from their matrimonial homes. We enjoy movies where a woman becomes pope or, even better or worse still, a twenty-nine year old lady emerges United States’ president. Perhaps, we also like it when a woman is the head of the home- she goes to work and leaves housekeeping and children in the hands of her house husband. (Tufiakwa!)
Very funny, because in real life it is the other way round. There has never been a female priest even though some women now call themselves priest. What are we going to call them? Reverend Father Mary? As if the office of the nun where we call them sister or mother is not enough for them.
Movies and books try to sell so many things into our subconscious , into our minds which we are suppose to guard with all diligence. A woman-cop knocks down a man-criminal. Or a woman-lawyer defeats a man-opponent. Or a woman-brigadier commands a men-brigade. This is what every woman or some women actually want and it is not a bad thing.
I would belabour the fact that I do not like the f-word “feminism”. The word first appeared in France and the Netherlands in 1872 as ‘les feministes’. It showed up in Great Britain in the early 1890s and in 1910, it entered the United States. Since it entered the world, it had birthed over-abundant literature- fiction and non-fiction- with diverse views that gets one confused and convinced simultaneously.
From Jeremy Bentham to Jane Austen, feminism has flourished. It was all about the rights of women. They needed to vote and be voted for. They needed to go to school and get education as the men did. They needed to have a role in the decision-making process of the suitor who had come to seek their hands in marriage. They needed to begin 'enjoying' what the men 'seemed' to 'enjoy'.
Now, I begin to wonder, “Is it women’s rights or human rights?" I think the women-feminists had become selfish, fighting only for their rights. What about the “weak” men who suffered oppression from a ‘husband-beater’?
Who is a feminist? It is a question with an obvious answer capable of generating unending threads. Yes, many threads because feminism has been reduced to “subjectivism”. How Ms Jane sees it is not how Mrs. Vivian appraises it.
What does the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary have to say?
The OALD puts it this way- “a feminist is a person who supports the belief that women should have equal rights and opportunities as men”.
Here, I think, lexicographers have contributed immensely to the problems of the world. Reason for this thought: it takes just words to just create just anything; and it has done so for “feminism” by tricking us to believe that women at one time, and even now, are still being oppressed in archaic and contemporary forms. And yes it is true that women have faced varying forms of oppression that called for somebody to be the voice of the ‘oppressed woman’ in a world spanning out of control. But this does not justify this “ancient-segregation”.
Yes, ancient segregation. These feminists have made it look like only women were and are being bedevilled by the predicament (the f-predicament). And I am not taking sides with what the “voices” spoke against. In traditional Africa, culture and tradition have deprived the woman of her future and education respectively. The woman has been dehumanized and perceived as a slave. She has been subjected to circumcision, forced into an under-age marriage and precluded from fulfilling her dreams which would have alleviated a predicament of her generation. And worse is the “curse of widowhood” as if being a widow is a crime and status that the woman enjoys.
I do not yield my fist of support to these inhumanities which were, and perhaps still done, to women; and neither do I endorse feminism. Why? Feminism dwells and will continue to inhabit the realm of controversy.
More "dangerous" is the new phase of feminism having survived and outgrown its previous evolution stages of just “speaking” against female circumcision, denial of girl-child education and the deliberate affliction of the travails of widowhood on the woman. It has entered its “superiority stage”. Women-feminists are not just seeking freedom from oppression because they are no longer oppressed. They want superiority. They are of the opinion that “they can do it”. And yes they can but they should not. Take a look at one woman-feminist's lines: "If I were a boy, I'll put my self first, And make the rules as I go..."
They should not seek equality- they should be careful what they wish for. They should be responsible- respond to their abilities. They are blessed with the ability of supporting the human race which consists of the man and the woman. They are responsible for sustaining their hour-glass shape as the men are responsible for maintaining their broad chests.
The human race- the man and the woman- should take into cognizance one thing and that is human rights which are inherent to all humans irrespective of nationality, place of residence, sex, religion, colour, ethnicity or any other status of which the lexicographers deceive us about.
We should not be feminists. We should not be “masculinists”. We should just be humans who understand the abilities given to us and seek to respond to these unique abilities in a manner that God himself would not hesitate to relocate his throne to earth.
I love to belabour: There is only one race which is the human race, so we should just be humans; women should not seek to have penises, and the men should be contented with their unleavened breasts.

Sleep By S. A. David

“Daylight, in it you are smart
Agile, like you are a god
Feeling like you own your lair
Acting like you know your end

Eating and guzzling all
Like you didn’t come from dust
Bossing your subordinates around
Like you won’t have same end

Looking at some with derision
In your limo you laugh at the cyclists
Like a spirit didn’t crack
Your kernel for you, benevolently

In your minds you are gods
From seven to two
From eight to four
From nine to five

And you come back home
Fix dustlings in your stomach
See an Oprah Winfrey
Or read a Patricia Cornwell

Then night deals a blow to your eyes
You struggle and fight and fight
You screw the Winfrey
You mark the page of Patrick

Then you marry your sleeping place
And become lost in dreamland
Sometimes, nightmarish
Sometimes, lullabish

Then the cock crows
The alarm rings
Mummy wakes you
Dracula chases you

You wake
You yawn
You smile
You get up

But some just can’t wake
I, the angel, came for them
Every night you die
Every day you die

You doubt
Every sleep is death
A temporary death
Many don’t wake from

A temporary death
Metas into a permanent sleep
Loved ones cry
Bereaved, lament, gnash and grind

You think waking up is easy
You think it’s breathing
You think it’s a right
You think it’s a privilege

Because the world obeys you
You think it’s your playground
You think you’ll escape mortis.
All will sleep!”

Death says.

WEEP WITH WE NO MORE By S. A. David

Category: ode, free verse

Have you seen them?
My distant uncle?
My distant aunt?
Two crowns on their head,
Revered by the Germanics
And more.

Adorned, beautifully
By the star sprangled
Banner.
Their journey began
Two thousand score
Ago.

Born by Vespucci.
Nurtured by Columbus.
Explored and exploited,
By the lionic lambs.
Just as Darwin
Gave the forecast.

They became slaves,
In their very own heaven.
Dressing the garden
Of their slavers.
Growing the plantation
For a little pence.

Yet, they tolerated,
Looking for a safety,
And smiling still,
With the lions.
But lifting their eyes
To the very hills

Jefferson came an answer
On the fourth of the
Seventh.
Not without haemoglobin
Were they made freeborn.
Gettysburg followed suit.

The street of the wall.
The huge depression.
The women’s fight.
The winter war.
The nine,
Of the eleventh.

Yet, she produces
More calcium,
In the face of Panarin’s forecast
Of the star sprangled
Banner
Into six shreds

Now we cry
For our parents to
Divorce.
For the reason
Of haram’s threat
We accelerate Lysosome

No more divorce,
Contested or uncontested.
Daddy and mummy, you
Need each other.
You will do this
For the sake of your children.

You faced the inferno
Of the ninety and,
Sixty six;
And you scaled
The hurdle;
Unsinged.

You have seen worse,
Than the inferno.
Yet, Jesus, and,
Kudirat
Have been faithful;
To a fault.

They said we have
Reached the finish line.
But your children
Have just begun.
Though we fall and stumble,
It won’t get to us.

You have built us
A home.
Not perfect but respectable.
We have nowhere to go;
For our home and hope
Belongs with you.

Ebiem had designed
A new cartograph;
A post nup.
But mummy, daddy,
Your divorce will fling
Your children into penury.

But Ebiem we tell you,
Hilary believes in our
Future.
Clinton says our
Future
Is limitless.

Mummy, daddy, we arise,
We obey your call,
To a fault.
Your past labour
Won’t come to
Nought.

We are one big family.
A threat to the enemies.
A refuge to the oppressed.
Like the broom bunch,
We can’t be broken.
So weep with we no more!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: "We Should All Be Feminists."

"So I would like to start by telling you about one of my greatest friends, Okolona. Okolona lived on my street and looked after me like a big brother. If I liked a boy, I would ask Okolona’s opinion. Okolona died in the notorious Soso Liso plane crash in Nigeria in December of 2005, almost exactly 7 years ago. Okolona was a person I could argue with, laugh with and truly talk to. He was also the first person to call me a feminist. I was about 14, we were in his house, arguing, both of us bristling with half-bit knowledge from books that we had read. I don’t remember what this particular argument was about, but I remember that as I argued and argued, Okolona looked at me and said, “You know, you’re a feminist.” It was not a compliment. I could tell from his tone, the same tone that you would use to say something like, “You’re a supporter of terrorism.” I did not know exactly what this word “feminist” meant and I did not want Okolona to know that I did not know. So I brushed it aside and continued to argue. And the first thing that I planned to do when I got home was to look up “feminist” in the dictionary.


"Now, fast-forward to some years later. I wrote a novel about a man who, among other things beats his wife and whose story doesn’t end very well. When I was promoting the novel in Nigeria, a journalist, a nice well-meaning man told me he wanted to advise me. And to the Nigerians here, I’m sure we’re all familiar with how quick are people to give unsolicited advice. He told me that people were saying that my novel was feminist and his advice to me — and he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke — was that I should never call myself a feminist because feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I decided to call myself a “happy feminist.” Then, an academic, a Nigerian woman told me that feminism was not our culture, that feminism wasn’t Africa, and that I was calling myself a feminist because I had been corrupted by “Western” books, which amused me because a lot of my early reading was decidedly un-feminist. I think I must have read every single [feminism-book] published before I was 16. And each time I try to read those books called the “feminists classics” I get bored, and I really struggle to finish them. But anyway, since feminism was un-African, I decided I would now call myself a happy African feminist. At some point I was a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes lip gloss and who wears high heels for herself but not for men. Of course a lot of this was tongue-in-cheek, but that word “feminist” is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage. You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, that sort of thing.


"Now, here’s a story from my childhood. When I was in primary school, my teacher said at the beginning of term that she would give the class a test, and whoever got the highest code would be the class monitor. Now, class monitor was a big deal. If you were a class monitor, you got to write down the names of noise-makers, which was heady enough power in its own. But my teacher would also give you a cane to hold in your hand while you walked around and patrolled the class for noise-makers. Now, of course you were not actually allowed to use the cane, but it was an exciting prospect for the 9-year-old me. I very much wanted to be the class monitor, and I got the highest score on the test. Then to my surprise my teacher said that the monitor had to be a boy. She had forgotten to make that clear earlier because she assumed it was obvious. A boy had the second highest score on the test and he would be monitor. Now what was even more interesting about this is that the boy was a sweet gentle soul who had no interest in patrolling the class with a cane. While I was full of ambition to do so. But I was female and he was male, and so he became the class monitor. And I’ve never forgotten that incident.


"I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else. Now take my dear friend Louis, for example. Louis is a brilliant progressive man and we would have conversations and he would tell me, “I don’t know what you mean by things being different or harder for women. Maybe in thepast, but not now.” And I didn’t understand how Louis could not see what seemed so self-evident. Then one evening in Lagos, Louis and I went out with friends. And for people here who are familiar with Lagos, there’s that wonderful Lagos fixture, the sprinkling of energetic men who hang around outside establishments and very dramatically help you park your car. I was impressed with the particular theatrics of the man who found us a parking spot that evening. And so as we were leaving, I decided to leave him a tip. I opened my bag, put my hand inside my bag, brought out my money that I had earned from doing my work, and I gave it to the man. And he, this man who was very grateful and happy, took the money from me, looked across at Louis, and said, “Thank you, sir!” Louis looked at me surprised, and asked, “Why is he thanking me? I didn’t give him the money.” Then I saw realization dawn on Louis’s face. The man believed that whatever money I had had ultimately come from Louis, because Louis is a man.


"Now, men and women are different. We have different hormones, we have different sexual organs, we have different biological abilities; women can have babies, men can’t, at least not yet. Men have testosterone, and are in general physically stronger than women. There are slightly more women than men in the world, about 52% of the world’s population is female. But most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan, Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai, put it simply and well when she said, “The higher you go the fewer women there are.”


"In the recent US elections we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter Law. And if we go beyond the nicely alliterative name of that law, it was really about a man and a woman doing the same job, being equally qualified and the man being paid more because he is a man. So, in a literal way, men rule the world. And this made sense a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival. The physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger; of course, there are many exceptions. But today we live in a vastly different world. The person more likely to lead is not the physically stronger person, it is the more creative person, the more intelligent person, the more innovative person, and there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, to be creative, to be innovative. We have evolved, but it seems to me that our ideas of gender have not evolved.


"Some weeks ago I walked into the lobby of one of the best Nigerian hotels. And a guy at the entrance stopped me and asked me annoying questions. Because the automatic assumption is that a Nigerian female walking into a hotel alone is a sex worker. And, by the way, why do these hotels focus on the ostensible supply rather than the demand for sex workers. In Lagos, I cannot go alone into many reputable bars and clubs. They just don’t let you in if you are a woman alone. You have to be accompanied by a man. Each time I walk into a Nigerian restaurant with a man, the waiter greets the man and ignores me. The waiters are products of a society that has taught them that men are more important than women. And I know the waiters don’t intend any harm, but it is one thing to know intellectually, and quite another to feel it emotionally. Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, that I am just as worthy of acknowledgement. These are little things but sometimes it’s the little things that sting the most.


"Now, not long ago I wrote an article about what it means to be young a female in Lagos and an acquaintance told me it was so angry. Of course it was angry. I am angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change, but in addition to being angry, I’m also hopeful because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to make and remake themselves for the better.Gender matters everywhere in the world, but I want to focus on Nigeria, and on Africa in general, because it is where I know and because it is where my heart is. And I would like today to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start. We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently. We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves because they have to be, in Nigeria speak, “hard man.”


"In secondary school, a boy and a girl, both of them teenagers, both of them with the same amount of pocket money would go out and the boy would be expected always to pay, to prove his masculinity. And yet we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money from their parents. What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity with money? What if the attitude was not, “The boy has to pay,” but rather, “Whoever has more, should pay.” Now, of course because of the historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred  years, boys will no longer have the pressure of having to prove this masculinity.


"But by far the worst thing we do to males, by making them feel that they have to be hard, is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The more “hard man” a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls because we raise them to cater to fragile egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, “You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man. If you are the bread winner in your relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not. Especially in public. Otherwise you will emasculate him.” But what if we question the premise itself? Why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man. What if we decide to simply dispose of that word, and I don’t think there is an English word I dislike more than, “emasculation.”


"A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me if I was worried that men would be intimidated by me. I was not worried at all. In fact it had not occurred to me to be worried because a man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in. But still I was really struck by this. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now, marriage can be a good thing. It can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?


"I know a woman who decided to sell her house because she didn’t want to intimidate a man who might marry her. I know an unmarried woman in Nigeria who, when she goes to conferences, wears a wedding ring, because according to her, she wants all the participants in the conference to give her respect. I know young women who are under so much pressure from family, from friends, even from work to get married, and they’re pushed to make terrible choices. A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.


"It’s easy for us to say, “Oh, but women can just say ‘no’ to all of this.” But the reality is more difficult and more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. Even the language we use in talking about marriage and relationships illustrates this. The language of marriage is often the language of ownership, rather than the language of partnership. We use the word “respect” to mean something a woman shows a man, but not often something a man shows a woman.


"Both men and women in Nigeria will say — and this is an expression I am very amused by — “I did it for peace in my marriage.” Now, when men say it, it is usually about something that they should not be doing anyway. Sometimes it is something they say to their friends in a kind of [fondly] exasperated way. You know, something that ultimately proves how masculine they are, how needed, how loved. “Oh, my wife said I can’t go to the club every night, so for peace in my marriage I do it only on weekends.” Now, when a woman says, “I did it for peace in my marriage,” she is usually talking about having given up a job, a dream, and a career. We teach females, that in relationships; ‘compromise’ is what women do. We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs, or for accomplishments — which I think can be a good thing — but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our sons’ girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends, God forbid. But of course, when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husbands. We police girls. We praise girls for virginity, but we don’t praise boys for virginity. And it’s always made me wonder how exactly this is all suppose to work out,… I mean, the loss of virginity is usually a process that involves two people.


"Recently a young woman was gang raped in a university in Nigeria. And the response of many young Nigerians, both male and female, was something along the lines of this: “Yes, rape is wrong. But what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?” Now, if we can forget the horrible inhumanity of that response, these Nigerians have been raised to think of women as inherently guilty. And they’ve been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings without any control is somehow acceptable. We teach girls shame. “Close your legs. Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.


"I know a woman who hates domestic work. She just hates it. But she pretends that she likes it because she has been taught that to be good wife material she has to be — to use that Nigerian word — very “homely.” And then she got married, and after a while her husband’s family began to complain that she had changed. Actually, she had not changed. She just had gotten tired of pretending.


"The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.
Now, imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations. Boys and girls are undeniably different, biologically. But socialization exaggerates the differences, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling process.

"Now take cooking for example. Today, women in general are more likely to do the housework than men, the cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene? Or because over the years they have been socialized to see cooking as their role? Actually, I was going to say that maybe women are born with a cooking gene until I remembered that the majority of the famous cooks in the world who we give the fancy title of “chefs,” are men.


"I used to look at my grandmother who was a brilliant, brilliant woman and wonder how she would have been if she had the same opportunities as men when she was growing up. Now today, there are many more opportunities for women than there were during my grandmother’s time because of changes in policy, changes in law, all of which are very important. But what matters even more is our attitude, our mindset, what we believe and what we value about gender.


"What if, in raising children, we focus on ability, instead of gender? What if, in raising children, we focus on interest, instead of gender? I know a family who has a son and a daughter, both of whom are brilliant at school, who are wonderful, lovely children. When the boy is hungry, the parents say to the girl, “Go and cook [noodles] for your brother.” Now, the girl doesn’t particularly like to cook [noodles], but she’s a girl, and so she has to. Now, what if the parents, from the beginning, taught both the boy and the girl to cook [noodles]? Cooking, by the way is a very useful skill for a boy to have. I’ve never thought it made sense to leave such a crucial thing, the ability to nourish one’s self, in the hands of others. 


"I know a woman who was the same degree and the same job as her husband. When they get back from work, she does most of the house work, which I think is true for many marriages. But what struck me about them is that whenever her husband changed the baby’s diaper, she said, “Thank you” to him. Now, what if, she saw this as perfectly normal and natural that he should in fact care for his child?


"I’m trying to unlearn many of the lessons of gender that I internalized when I was growing up. But I sometimes still feel very vulnerable in the face of gender expectations. The first time I taught a writing class in graduate school, I was worried. I wasn’t worried about the material I would teach, because I was well prepared and I was going to teach what I enjoyed teaching. Instead, I was worried about what I was going to wear. I wanted to be taken seriously. I knew that because I was female, I would automatically have to prove my worth, and I was worried that if I looked too feminine, I would not be taken seriously. I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt, but I decided not to. Instead, I wore a very serious, very manly, and very ugly suit. Because the sad truth is that when it comes to appearance, we start off with men as the standard, as the norm. If a man is getting ready for a business meeting, he doesn’t worry about looking too masculine and therefore not being taken [for granted] [seriously?]. If a woman is getting ready for a business meeting, she has to worry about looking too feminine, and what it says, and whether or not she will be taken seriously. I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. I’ve actually banished it from my closet, by the way. Had I then, the confidence that I have now, to be myself, my students would have benefited even more from my teaching because I would have been more comfortable, and more truly myself.


"I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.


"Gender is not an easy conversation to have for both men and women. To bring up gender is sometimes to encounter an almost immediate resistance. I can imagine some people here actually thinking, “Women?” Some of the men here might be thinking, “Okay, all of this is interesting, but I don’t think like that.” And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender is part of the problem of gender. That many men say, like my friend Louis, “But everything is fine now.” And that many men do nothing to change it. If you are a man and you walk into a restaurant with a woman and the waiter greets only you, does it occur to you to ask the waiter, “Why haven’t you greeted her?”


"Because gender can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, there are very easy ways to close it, to close the conversation. So, some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow down to male apes and that sort of thing. But the point is, we’re not apes. Apes also live on trees, and have earthworms for breakfast, and we don’t. Some people will say, “Well, poor men also have a hard time.” And this is true. But this is not what this conversation is about. Gender and class are different forms of oppression. I actually learned quite a bit about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking to a black man about gender and he said to me, “Why do you have to say ‘my experience as a woman’? Why can’t it be ‘my experience as a human being’?” Now, this is the same man who would often talk about his experience as a black man.


"Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colors the way we experience the world. But we can change that. Some people will say, “Oh, but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for non-Nigerians, “bottom power” is an expression in which I suppose means something like a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But “bottom power” is not power at all. Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, somebody else’s power. And then of course we have to wonder when that somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick or sick or impotent.


"Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is our culture. But culture is constantly changing. I have beautiful twin nieces who are 15 who live in Lagos. If they had been born 100 years ago, they would have been taken away and killed because it was our culture; it was our culture, the Ibo/Igbo culture to kill twins. So, what is the point of culture? I mean, there is the decorative — the dancing — but also culture is really about the preservation and continuity of a people. In my family, I am the child who is most interested in the story of who we are in our traditions and the knowledge of ancestral lands. My brothers are not as interested as I am, but I cannot participate. I cannot go to a [village] meetings, I cannot have a say, because I am female.


"Culture does not make people. People make culture.


"So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture.
I think very often of my dear friend Okolona. May he and others who passed away in that Soso Liso crash continue to rest in peace. He will always be remembered by those of us who loved him. And he was right, that day many years ago, when he called me a feminist. I am a feminist. And when I looked up that word in the dictionary that day, this is what it said: Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

"My great-grandmother, from the stories I’ve heard, was a feminist. She ran away from the house of a man she did not to marry and ended up marrying the man of her choice. She refused, she protested, she spoke up, whenever she felt she was being deprived of access of land, that sort of thing. My great-grandmother did not know that word, “feminist.” But it doesn’t mean that she wasn’t one. More of us should reclaim that word.


"My own definition of feminist is: Feminist: a man or a woman who says, “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.”


"The best feminist I know is my brother. He is also a kind, good-looking, lovely man, and he is very masculine.


"Thank you."

They Versus We By S. A. David

They rub shit in our face
They put us on a long thing
They lie through the green teeth
They tell us plenty flash fictions

We believe
We’re gullible
We’re resilient
We’re children

They say aye
They shout nay
They bang the wood
They collect fat sums

We work the plantations
We till the soil
We move the tractors
We collect the shillings

They throw parties, hourly.
They eat elephants, daily.
They wear clothings, secondsly
They drive Royces, weekly.

We wait for Xmas
We buy fish, it’s a miracle
We’re proud of the fairly used Hugo
We take pride on our side-walks

We dare not fight
We dare not protest
We dare not strike
Because blood wasn’t shed

Freedom was handed us on a plate.

WEEP WITH WE by S. A. David

Category: ode, free verse

Have you seen my mother?
I weep; they laugh; you
Will weep  and pity, perhaps.
A blue blooded damsel,
Loved and respected by
The Germanics

To a fault, hospitable
Til her guests bounded her;
With strong, strong strings.
Tears embraced her
Beautiful face. Her
Big bold body bounded; beaten

I weep as her pains
I feel.
Her wealth looted
By the lionic lambs.
Helpless she was
Just as Darwin predicted

Her eden plundered
Her parents pulled
Off the ground.
Like a scorpion
She was.
Tears inevitable, I weep.

Forced to marry this man
That now is my father
A strange man from
Parched lands.
A gold digger,
Grateful to these lambs

Weep with we; she became
A slave
In her very own palace.
Washing the feet
Of her erstwhile
Subjects

She invoked Jesus
To rescue her bosom
Her bosom which
I sucked.
How nutritious it was.
Her warmth inviting

Daddy befriended Kudirat
The mother of his god
To consolidate his
Dug up fortunes.
Happiness, since then
Eluded mama; weep with we.

Mummy crafted many epistles
To the lionic lambs
Please in peace, exeunt
My palace.
Daddy entreated them;
Ignore her rants, stay.

Weep with we you all
Father is traitor
Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! But
Jesus granted mummy’s novena;
Mummy was returned her palace.
Dad, happy, unhappy and scheming.

Papa usurped mama’s
Inheritance.
Imposed his laws on
Mummy’s kingdom.
Confiscated many of her
Hard earn’d monies

Dad’s extended family
Gave in to
Cliques and divisions.
Mom’s followed suit
And for years we drank
Mary’s water.

Boom boom boom
Kingdom torn apart
Jostling, everyone,
For a portion.
My cousins were
Wounded.

Thorns stuck into their
Failing flesh.
Powders pushed into
Their private parts,
Just to consolidate the
Control of their tributes

These lionic lambs
Aside, sat.
Watched. Indifferent.
Interested.
In adultery alone.
My mother’s bosom they lust

Have you seen my father?
I hate him not
I love him not
Neither indifferent
He loves no Jesus
And I have no faith in Kudirat

Once in every gregory
We gather for their
Marital anniversary
And many my brothers
Eat oxygen only
And my sisters; sleep in funny farms

Many my siblings,
We sing bollywood hymns
And simultaneously play in Chinese
Yet they sacrifice
Us
To the goddess of blood

Mama cries every
Dawn
Father Chris gives us
Hope
And Jesus stares us in the
Face

Father and his favorites
Say we must emulate.
Mother carefully crafts;
Lifting the olive stick.
Yet, undecided.
Deal, broken.

God weeps
Mummy bankrupts
By the day.
Once a Forbes woman;
Borrowing
Tender from babies

Weep weep weep
Weep up floods
Mama is frail
And weak
Bishop Chris’ divisions
Numbering and dividing

Mummy will never
Be happy
Whitney told her
Houston epistled me
Divorce is the key.
Serve him the papers.

Have you seen my mother?
Preach it to her. Sing it to her.
Divorce.
Rather be alone than unhappy
Divorce.
Divorce?

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Can a début be so almost perfect? Or was it just a potpourri of plots that got lucky to garner some critical acclaim? Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in my opinion, is a Problem Prose. It brings up questions about love, affection, religious tolerance, social injustice and domestic violence and leaves them vaguely answered.
A wealthy perfectionist Catholic Christian man confiscates his wife and children's freedom by making them do things his own way; and view the world via his perspective. He overprotects his daughter to the extent he beats her until she enters point of death. He domestically abuses his wife until she loses their third child yet to be born. He cuts his son's finger because he cannot answer a catechism question right. He refuses to help his ailing father, until he eventually dies, because he refuses to convert to Christianity.
However, in church, he is a delectable man who does not suffer the work of the house of God to suffer, a religious devout who never misses communion. He is loved by the priest and parishioners for his modesty. Also, he is commended by a few citizenries because he owns a newspaper that criticizes the corrupt dictatorship government of his time. In the course of time, ill luck visits his household and being. His editor is killed and his newspaper outfit shut down. And then he dies from a slow poison regularly emptied into his food by a member of his family; and that is when a “wahala” begins.
The story is narrated by the heroine of the novel who happens to be the daughter of the said prfectionist man. She is a shy child who finally becomes a breadwinner which explains the subtle theme of feminism embedded in Purple Hibiscus.
I recommend this Problem Prose.

A Paperless World: The Inevitable Revolution

The world had changed and we are changing with it whether we are responsive to it or not. When something happens around us, it impacts on us and most times subtly that we do not even detect it until the clouds are pregnant with rain. In as much as every human is timorous of change, they have only one option and that is to accept it and learn to co-exist with it. Fredriech Wilhelm Nietzsche was correct when he asserted that"that which does not kill us makes us stronger." Change does not kill us. It comes only to make us strong. Whatever kills is not change.
It all started with having to store information in our brains and then carving inscriptions on stones before we took to wounding birds so we could make do with their quills for communication and writing. Change was rapid as graphite replaced the quill, and then the Biro followed. Change was yet to be satisfied until it ensured that we no longer wound 'any member of the animal class of Aves,' endanger our children's health with "lead" pencils or waste petrochemicals in manufacturing a ballpoint pen all because we want to communicate and/or store information. Change was on a journey to making us stronger, to make us use our hands and it succeeded. Today, we use our hands for our ten fingers have become the quill, the pencil and the Biro. The QWERTY came in handy.
Change is still purging the earth and earthlings. We do not need to kill innocent trees any more. We do not need to read that newspaper and relocate it to the trash bin. We need not overstock the library with voluminous pages of a baggage of papers. We do not need to flip any more. We need to start scrolling and many earthlings are already responsive to that revolution. It is grieving enough to see humans throw the hard work of journalists into the waste-paper basket. If they had paid for an e-copy and had it delivered to their e-devices, it would take a crazy man to put his iPad in the garbage.
Authors and readers are in great benediction as this inevitable revolution is a blessing in disguise and not in disguise simultaneously. Gone the days when authors are constant sufferers of rejection letters. Gone the days when publishers decide the fate of authors and their books. Gone the days when traditional publishing houses determined what the readers read. It is a new dawn and the powerful sun still moves; it is yet to be bright.
Publishing houses should begin to gradually break their colossal structures of mortar and assemble materials for an e-publishing house. Are they wondering how they are going to survive? They will, the Interpol is a paperless organization. E-libraries are springing up every 24 hours! People carry the Library of Congress with them everyday and on the go!
The world had changed because some people are crazy enough to change the world and they are no smarter.
Contribute in your own way to making the world paperless, not paper-free, and save the planet.