Nigerian Patriarchy, American Patriarchy

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - 

America (read: The US) is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

America strongly discourages polygamy, domestic violence, spousal rape and other acts which denigrate the self-worth of the female person.

Beyond a sociological aversion for all these, America creates and maintains institutional agencies to push her cultural preferences, so that even though she remains a patriarchy, the birth of a female child is not as tantamount to a mild tragedy which must be endured and borne stoically at best, as most in Nigeria have been forced over time to see it as in our enclave.

America is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

The American legal system won't let anyone on their soil withdraw their underaged daughter and go marry her off to a man because she is a girl.

In patriarchal America.

No cultural paradigm can be foolproof as they are results and by-processes of conscious evolution of a developing species.

Responsibility to Family--Extended

(By Okey Ndibe) - “The first time we sat down to talk, my parents remarked on the jumbo salary I was going to earn in America. I was not to become spendthrift, they cautioned. Instead, I was to cultivate a frugality dictated by an established practice within our extended family. That practice imposed an obligation on members of the family with the financial means t help pay school fees of those coming behind. It was a formula for lifting up everybody in the wider extended family. In that spirit, my parents said I was to take up responsibility for paying the school fees of my youngest brother, Oguejiofor, and two male cousins, Emeka and Ndubuisi. Once pronounced, the matter was settled; I proudly accepted the responsibility.

            My parents must have expected that I would regularly send money to support them. Parents made sacrifices to put their children through schools or into some profession. In return, once established in a job, trade, or profession, children were expected to cater to some of their parents’ needs in old age or after retirement. I recognized the sacredness of that obligation. My parents didn’t raise it explicitly because they knew that I knew my duty by them; it went without saying. . . .

"Don't Bring Us A White Woman for a Wife"

“At the farewell feast, my parents and other relatives piled me with advice, instructions on what to do, what not to do.

            ‘Make sure you don’t bring us a white woman for a wife,’ Auntie Eteti said. Her face bore a mischievous expression, a look that implied I was the sort of rebel to surprise her and other relatives by taking a Caucasian bride. Everybody fixed yes on me, reading my reaction.

            ‘What have white women ever done to you?’ I asked my aunt, laughing.

            ‘Did you hear me say they did anything to me?’ she said.

‘Don’t you think there are good white women?’

‘I am sure they are,’ she answered. ‘Every people have good and bad women. But we want a wife whose tongue we can understand.’

Eleti was the only one of my father’s siblings without a scintilla of formal education. She spoke no English, even though—like most Nigerians—she understood a few basic words of the language. I sensed that her stipulation that I not marry a woman with a foreign tongue was not exclusively—or even primarily—about language. Her concern was much deeper: she didn’t want me to have a wife who would disdain or reject the bonds of kinship she and other kinsfolk considered sacrosanct.

I promised not to bring home a wife she would not approve of.

‘Ehen!’ she exclaimed, relieved.”

Okey Ndibe

Never Look An American in the Eye, 2016, p. 33.

Nigerian Harmattan Vs. American Winter

(By Okey Ndibe) - "I was not altogether ignorant about winter. . . . I had always thought that winter was the American version of what the Igbo call ugulu, otherwise more widely known across West Africa as harmattan. Harmattan is a dry cold wind that emanates from the Sahara Desert and sweeps through much of West Africa from the latter part of the -ember month through to March.

            Growing up in Nigeria, I had witnessed many harmattan seasons. The harmattan brings fine granules of dust that cause coughs, redden the eye, color the skin ashy, and lend the atmosphere a patina of grey. It also gives the air a tinge—a mere tinge—of cold. At the height of the harmattan season, the temperature drops in the mornings, hovering around fifty-five degrees fahrenheits. In tropical Nigeria, that’s what we call cold.

            Whenever I had come across the word ‘winter’ in print, I mentally transposed ‘harmattan’ in its place. Why would I pack a special winter jacket for my trip to New York City when my people had never needed to invent harmattan jacket? The entire arsenal of our combat against ugulu-grade cold consisted of Vaseline (to sheen up dry, scaly skin), a sweater (usually worn by the very elderly and children), a handkerchief (to ward off dust), and a pair of sunglasses (to protect the eyes from airborne sand).

Of Nigerians, Languages, and Accents

(By Uzoamaka Doris Aniunoh) - Two things I'm interested in discussing today: language and accent.

I am guilty of some problems I want to point out, but I'll talk about them regardless.

So back in Birmingham, I dated a Spanish man who was Spanish in every sense of it. Like, his English was Spanish English. His accent was Spanish. His style of cooking was Spanish. He had absolutely no problems telling me he didn't know the meaning of a very basic English word. He would use a translator to find the meaning of the word in Spanish and only then would he know what it actually means and the context it was used.

I liked his accent and even found his not-so-vast knowledge of basic English, cute.

Now, when I served in Abeokuta, it was different. I dated a Yoruba guy whose English was kinda like that of four year old, and I had no atom of patience for his nonsense.

Would it be because Nigeria is an English speaking country, and considering that the latter was my colleague at work, I expected more from him? Did I tolerate my Spanish man because, well, Spain is a Spanish speaking country? Or was there something else?

Being A Woman Is Tiring

(By Kate Halim) - Truly, being a woman is tiring...

A woman shouldn't talk about sex openly, it is not right.

A woman shouldn't tell a man what turns her on, he might think she's a whore.

A woman shouldn't ask a man she's tripping over out, he will think she's loose.

A woman shouldn't scream during sex, her man might think she lacks morals.

A woman shouldn't talk back at a man, even the ones who disrespect her on the road, or she might lose a husband material.

A woman shouldn't eat gizzard, it is against the tradition.

A woman shouldn't say no to her man's request for sex even if she just delivered a baby, she might push him outside.

A woman shouldn't wear tight dresses so that she won't be raped.

A woman shouldn't own properties even if she has money to do so, she must buy them in her husband's name.

A woman must not question her husband's decision even if it is destroying her family.

Marry ya Level, Marry ya Kind

(By Aishatu Ella John)

Marry ya level!

Marry ya kind!

But mba! You will not hear!!!!

You dated lady/ladies that you did acrobatic moves on bed with.

Time to marry, you go and look for "angel Mary" and want her to do what "devil Mercy" used to do with you.

Na craze dey worry you!

Why didn't you marry "devil Mercy" so that you can get all the acrobatics that you want?

Now you want "angel Mary" who does not know anything other than missionary to start "new class".

Mind yasef and carry ya cross!!!

"His Truth, Her Truth :

His Truth: My wife is frigid, she sticks to boring sex and doesn't want to explore and try new things.

I thought she would learn when we go married but she has closed her mind.

I am getting frustrated, I am tempted to cheat.

Her Truth: My husband married me a Virgin, he wasn't one.

Ifunanya

". . .'Ifunanya.' They're ancient words. They don't exist among any other group of people. There is no direct tranlation in Nuru, English, Sipo, or Vah. This word only has meaning when spoken by a man to the one he loves. A woman can't use the word unless she is barren. It is not juju. Not in the way that I know it. But the word has strength. It's wholly binding if it is true and the emotion reciprocated. This is not like the word 'love.' A man can tell a woman he loves her every day. Ifunanya is spoken only once in a man's life. Ifu means to 'look into,' 'n' means 'the,' and anya means 'eyes'. The eyes are the window to the soul."

Nnedi Okorafor

Who Fears Death, 2010, pp. 221.

Christianity: Between Belief and Lived Experience

"Religious history has often tended to exaggerate the question of belief  at the expense of the question
of lived social experience. Orthodox Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, maintained a belief in the hypostatic union (the doctrine that Jesus Christ was both true man and true God). Surely few ideas are more theoretical or coolly intellectual. Yet commitment to a belief in the hypostatic union had been arrived at in the early Church only at the considerable cost of bitter and sometimes bloody debates, schisms, persecutions, and the shaking of the foundation of the civil society. Nobody could say the hypostatic union was not important. Still, it is difficult to conceive that the felt experience of Old World Christians had much or anything to do with their shared 'belief' in a theological conundrum. The essence of their experience was in shared liturgy and shared sacraments, and yet more perhaps in those deeply social pleasures of shared human community that one would instinctively label 'secular' did they not happen to take place in or around a church building or at a 'religious' festival or pilgrimage."

John V. Fleming

The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, 2013, p. 141.

Of "Very Traditional Nigerian" Husbands

(By Ireh Noh Sehn) - These oyibo people play too much. Small argument like this and the woman would say "Sleep on the couch, move out" if the man is in the wrong. If the woman is in the wrong kpakpa it's still the same thing ni o.. The man will just say "I'm moving out or I'm sleeping on the couch tonight".

So the woman spreads her legs wide on the comfy bed while the man tries to fit into the couch and if he has long legs he kukuma goes to the ground where he belongs.

In Nigeria you tell a man to go sleep on the couch while you lie on the bed yakata, or you tell him to move out of the house he built with his own money. That night you'll tell him whether you put money on his head or it was the other way round. I can actually see the Christian mama of the woman's church telling her " Do you know by pushing him to the couch he will look for another woman's bed to stretch his back in the afternoons before coming home? (Because bed is his problem na, he'll leave work and hook up with another woman because bed.. hotel has finished) The spiritual mama will complete it with "Oya run to the office now and apologise, don't you know you have no right over the bed?"

There is no Deity like the Mother

(By Funmi Iyanda) - There is no deity like the mother. Orishas are not long suffering doormats or self flattening emotional martyrs. They are deities. Full of power, subservient to no one, knowing that only in her own fullness can she bestow gifts of life, love, energy and power to others. Only the most deserving man gets to be with her as long as he recognises his role is to embellish her. In doing this he finds fuel to be a man of true strength and beauty. She doesn't need completeness, she's whole. In ancient Yoruba land, the woman's worth is closely tied to motherhood but this is however not some simplistic, self congratulatory child birthing which lesser animal are capable of without fan fare. 

Of A Pastor, Prayer Session, and An Angry Woman

(By Wanja Kavengi) - During a fellowship in Pastor's house, where Pastor could be heard emotionally leading a worship song, a woman angrily banged on the door, loudly demanding that Pastor come out and pay her. Pastor's wife got out. The angry woman ordered her to go back inside and ask her husband to pay her.

"We are in the middle of a fellowship," Pastor's wife tried to reason with her.

"I don't care! Tell him to come out and pay for fucking me!" the woman shouted.

She then said that she was a prostitute and that she had given Pastor a prostitutey service one early morning two weeks ago. He had promised to pay her through MPESA the same day, but he never kept his promise. She knew his ka church, where she had gone to look for him, and someone whom she found there directed her to his house.

The Meaning and End of Religion

"Any adequate interpretation of a Christina's faith . . . must make room for the fact that other
intelligent, devout, and moral men [and women], including perhaps his [or her] own friends, are Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims. . . . One has not understood religion if one's interpretation is applicable to only one of its forms. On the other hand, neither has one understood religion if one's interpretation does justice only to some abstraction of religiousness in general but not to the fact that for most men [and women] of faith, loyalty and concern are not for any such abstraction but quite specifically and perhaps even exclusively for their own unique tradition--or even for one section within that. The Christian and the Muslim must be seen, certainly, in a world in which other men [and women] are Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews."

William Cantwell Smith

The Meaning and End of Religion, 1991, pp. 2, 3.

African Churches and Their Hunt for Witches

(By Leo Igwe)--It cannot be overemphasized that churches in Africa are instrumental to the witch craze in the region. Programs and activities of faith organizations continue to fuel witchcraft suspicions with sometimes horrific consequences on alleged witches. There is an urgent need to counteract this dark and destructive process. We must call witch-finding churches to order or rue it!

The main issue remains: How do we put this vicious campaign to an end? How do we restrain witch-imputing churches that exist and operate across Africa? Getting African churches to join the campaign against witchcraft accusation is important because if this horrific trend must stop, the process will start in the churches, from the churches, with the churches, and by the churches. Christian groups must lead the way. They must champion the cause of making witch-hunting history in the region.

Unfortunately, this is not yet the case. Pentecostal churches are still in the business of hunting witches. They invoke and exorcise witches and wizards. Witchcraft evangelism is still the ‘religious order’ of the day in the region.

Farewell, Buchi Emecheta