Seven times out of Ten!

Good week everyone! It’s a beautiful day I see outside my window, the morning sun peeping through my dark blinds and even the melodious sound of a (I-don’t know-what) bird trills above my neighbour’s noisy generator. Yes my friends, I’m sorry I have to drag you into my now cantankerous and no-electricity morning but as they say, there’s love in sharing. Ah bless! The power just came back. I tend not to praise my local power company when they give us the power we actually pay them for, it being their job but the main reason I never praise them is I found that any time I praised them for a job well done, a range of two to twenty hours of power in a few days, I’d end up not having any at all for the next four days, and this has happened seven times out of ten. I now see the genesis of superstition, tradition and culture. I actually like this topic – I was going to talk about my misadventure at my friend’s dad’s funeral in Ebutte Metta, Lagos but I suddenly want to try making some sense of this in my head and throw it out to you my folks.

The majority of us, if not all, tend to follow tried and tested, sometimes handed down formulas that lead to successes ranging from immediate gratification to reaping profits from long term investments, personnel and material.. Once these endeavours succeed seven times out of ten, they are likely to be adopted as a winning formula and then a tradition and consequently culture. A man driven to distraction by hunger and seeing no other way out of his predicament than to burgle a house for the first time in his life weighs the cost of his intentions. He prays to God to understand his predicament and to shield him from discovery and shame, to understand that he only need fill his belly and nothing else. He embarks upon his desperate act and ends up not getting caught. The euphoria of his success drives him to try another venture, and then another with resounding success; a winning formula is born – until he is eventually nabbed.

Take my new found ‘superstition’ as an example. When I praise the power company for transmitting uninterrupted power for a whole day – a rarity in these parts and find that seven times out of the ten I praise them for their services, I suffer blackouts for an unusually extended period of time, I would subconsciously or otherwise, sense that some indescribable force is against me praising the company for its services and doing so would be to my detriment. I would therefore, from then on, refrain from praising any improvement on services provided by the company lest some dark force comes along to snatch away what little service I have hitherto enjoyed and plunge me into its fraternal darkness. I ‘learn’ not to acknowledge any strides the company makes to improve upon its services, however phenomenal, for fear of being let down, and I subsequently compel my family to adopt this ‘secure’ and ‘proven’ tradition. We thus learn a culture of criticism and cynicism through our ‘tried and tested’ tradition of non gratitude and non encouragement; and if some bemused outsider, perplexed by our culture of negativity, asks us why we never acknowledge the laudable efforts of our service providers, we smugly reply that it is to ensure the status quo remains the same so that we never regress; and argue further that the culture of criticism is actually a form of reverse encouragement to our service providers. If then this tradition works out for us better services, or at worst keeps us in status quo, what is to stop us from applying it to other aspects of our lives. A dear friend travels through the treacherous roads from Benin to Lagos upon hearing of your hospitalization bearing the Benin fruits and Auchi groundnuts you love so much, huffs and puffs his/her way round to your bedside to give you a hug to which you, with ‘good’ intentions, ask what took them so long without so much as a word of thanks because you know you’re encouraging them to do better – seven times out of ten.

One of the greatest gifts we have as human beings is the power of individual thought even though most of us rarely utilize it for fear of drawing the ire of, or standing apart from others. Almost as crippling is our unwillingness to ask ourselves the plain truth no matter how painful it may be. Hence we sometimes go through life holding tenaciously onto outmoded beliefs and traditions of yore handed down to us by our forefathers or parents or even by our own hand. I think one should assess and evaluate whether their tradition is taking them to the destination they are going or drawing them back. If it is then all well and good, and if not, then they should know it is in their power to either amend it to suit their purpose or jettison it outrightly. We oftentimes abuse much of the power we have by being too afraid to exercise it to our hurt. Tradition and culture were made for man and not the other way round. Have a great week everyone!

Sarah

Hello and a wonderful good week to everybody. I’m seated at my desk listening to my favourite music for the mood I’m in at the moment, Look and Laugh by Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His instrumentals are simply amazing. They carry with them this sort of laid back yet purposeful beat to them with the keyboard weaving intricate patterns in and out of the soul like little ribbons wrapping themselves round several little packages and stringing them together in the most complex and comprehensive beauty. I listen to him when I’m in the mood for melancholy which has the habit of evoking the fondest of memories from me. This time it makes me long for a good holiday, like the last one I shared with my friend JB a short while ago.

Our usual haunt to go to, my friends and I, when we want to take a break from it all, especially when we are on a tight budget, is to go to the neighbouring country, Benin republic, to Cotonou in particular, the commercial centre. It is such a different environment from ours here in Nigeria where the hustle and bustle is eternally at an annoyingly feverish pitch. Everyone everywhere is in a constant state of stress trying to eke out a living to find where the next meal is coming from. The rich try to grab as much as they can to shore up as much as they can for fear of reverting to the poverty they once knew while the poor in desperation, claw their way towards finding their lone meal for the day, day by day; no contentment anywhere. In Cotonou one can just sit back in an outdoor bar with a cool beer and watch the world go by at a leisurely pace. One could sense contentment in the air even amongst the poor. It is wonderful to see locals and tourists milling about together or zipping about on the local motorbike taxis – the tourists standing out because of the constant swiveling of their heads from side to side drinking in the sights, sounds and smells new to them. I am one of them and more so because I can’t speak the language, French and/or Fon – not that I am particularly bothered about my impediment. I had since learnt in Poland that one of the best ways to learn a new language in adulthood is to try chatting up a pretty lady who’s a local or do so while buying something at her shop or stall. It helps a lot if you have an open smile or a charming disposition though, if you, like me, are not particularly rich. There was one of these occasions however, that I did not bother practicing my pitiful French; when I was confronted with true beauty, however superficial.

JB and I had finished for the day. We had had lunch at our hosts’ in the country, shopped for artifacts – I’d come away with a lovely stringed drum, a leather portrait depicting a fishing village and a lovely wooden female mask – and stashed them at the hotel. For supper we went to the local Lebanese grill to grab a kebab while planning our next modus operandi. It was as we were leaving that we happed upon a nondescript bar close to our hotel. JB my friend has an uncanny knack for sniffing out joints wherever he is and naturally, it was he who spotted this one. We went in, and were pleasantly astounded. The interior looked nothing like the exterior. It looked more like a Middle Eastern sultan’s harem than a bar. It was a fair sized room, about the size of two large sitting rooms. It also had a low ceiling that was rounded off by sloping arcs at the corners, giving it a softer more intimate look. The lights were different shades of red and blue lending the room a softer rather than garish look, discreet rather than furtive. Low soft couches, cushions and pillows were strewn about the place without cluttering the room or making one stumble over them. The atmosphere was pleasantly scented with incense wafting from braziers in the corners of the room, unseen odours and colours of strange petals transporting one to exotic gardens unknown. I half expected to see hookahs or water smoking pipes beside the cushions and couches but there were none. We stood there drinking in the atmosphere, not believing our find, wondering what else our night had in store for us and contemplating where to sit when Sarah our hostess floated up to us.

Here I will have to do the unthinkable and beg to be let off as yet again my pen threatens to do a runaway again and make this post unpalatably long. But I assure you that I will complete the story of our fleeting encounter with our lovely hostess Sarah. I ask you my dear readers to please bear with me with your infinite patience until we see once again next week. Until then, do have a wonderful week everyone.