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!

9ja Woman

She looked more like a beauty queen for a movie scene…. I look at her with anger flashing in my eyes, frustrated because I don’t know what to do while she, she just stands there aloof, not caring a hoot what I think. I, at the same time, know she’s keenly listening to my thoughts even though I refuse to express them in my anger. I can tell this from the stillness of her posture as she cocks her head slightly to one side, facing away from me, eyes cast downwards and slightly to the left. I know it is slowly turning to a battle of who will be the first to say “I’m sorry”. I walk out, partly because I don’t want to say anything that will cause a huge fight and eventual irreparable damage, partly to make her stew in it and let her see the error of her ways so that if (God forbid) I venture to apologise, she in her eagerness for peace, and with the least of shakara, does not let me beg for too long. The naija woman. Good week everybody!

She is beautiful, whether light or dark in complexion, small or big breasted. Her gentle undulating hips she carries with the gentle sway of a breeze through trees on a hot summer’s day. Her bottom, if spare, when she walks, swishes gracefully with the slight wave of a fish’s tail in water and if generous, with the gentle roll of a distant thunder. She is aware of the magnetic effect she has on men around her as she walks down the road or into the office. She understands now the warnings of yesteryears from her mother of how so pregnant she will be should she sit beside a man. Her father and brothers are fiercely protective of her as they remember their own relentless pursuits of her in other bodies from other homes, lands and climes. When she ‘winds’ her waist to her man on the dance floor, she does so with abandon or with measured modesty, ‘unaware’ of what she’s doing, her hips dipping and jerking at various angles, her bottom jutting out provocatively as they quiver with the nervousness of jelly on a spinning washing machine. Her man, if she has one, smiles confidently in the knowledge that he is the sole proprietor of those hips and that she mischievously teases all and sundry to show them a taste of what they can never have.

At home, she’s a different being altogether; focusing her attention on matters at hand worrying about the future of all her loved ones. She is a deep well of different and very complex emotions and thoughts that are always running through her mind. She defers to her man recognising him as the head of the home but also in the knowledge that she is the engine without which nothing can run. She smiles at the initial stage of the relationship when her man lays down the rules dictating what goes and what doesn’t. She smiles because she sees much further than he can and wisely dedicates her time to studying him so she knows how to get the best of him. Even in their initial lovemaking, she ‘tires’ easily, with a view to gauge his strength, and by the third or fourth time has already known his capabilities and begins to push for what she wants, gently stroking his ego as she advances steadily towards her crescendo. She knows how vulnerable he is to the wiles of her competitors outside and jealously guards her territory, juggling work at the office with cooking the meals he loves the most at home. It is hard to discern to whom her breasts belong; her man or her children – they serve either master with equal vigour. She looks so gorgeous when she goes off to work, a small smile playing on her lips in the awareness that her man watches her warily in the knowledge that she will be hit upon by many in the course of the day. She knows this will keep him in check knowing that many want to take his place. She knows he knows she will not go astray but also knows not to take her for granted.

She is not always sweet – and we like it that way. When she is on the war path she is unstoppable. Her emotions when they rise to the surface are a volcano and we match her, fire for fire. Actually, we choose our battles with her, knowing when to shut up and when to face her. Her hormones, when they begin to rage, cower all before her – no exception. The deference mostly due to remembrance of the times she has accommodated our tantrums and also images of what she went through bearing our children. That is how we like love our 9ja woman, like our meals; with lots of red hot chilli pepper and spice otherwise we’d throw up at its blandness! I know this not a befitting tribute but it is a tribute all the same – in honour of the naija woman. God bless you; we love you. Have a great week everyone.