Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 3: Almost Ready to Say I Do

I was amused. That was not the reaction he was going for, but there it was: amusement. The pastor stood at the front of the church admonishing the bride and groom. "What time did I say to be at the church?" "And what time is it now? All heads turned to look at the clock. "He has got to be kidding," I thought. But he wasn't. Stern and lecturing, he went on. And I was so, so very amused. The wedding had started ten minutes late. Ten minutes! This was Nigeria. In any other context, probably even any other wedding, ten minutes late would be early. But Kyura and Innocent are polite, good natured people and were so happy just to be there at the altar, they let him lecture, nodded some conciliatory yes, sir's and waited patiently for him to finish so they could get on with the wedding.

It wasn't really Kyura's fault we'd arrived late anyway; we'd set off from the assistant pastor's guest house in due time, but friends and family needed more pictures, and then a series of transit vans bringing guests from town had blocked the way from the pastors' yards to the church yard, so we couldn't get to the church.



Day 3: The morning had begun like any wedding morning. The bride woke early and the requisite flock descended on her with all the plumes of fancy necessary to transform her and themselves into momentary oddities of perfection: the hair stylist, the make-up artist, the maid of honor, the photographer, and all the helper-friends. We burst into the serene morning and bustled about the room and yard helping, getting out of the way, getting in the way, getting beautiful, getting excited. The hairdresser started her work first, finger-rolling Kyura's long extensions and pinning them into tight pin curls.



Hairdresser finger-curling and twisting the hair for pinning
 

Adding the finishing touches

The make-up artist wasn't far behind, and once the hair was finished, the make-up could begin. No electricity, so Kyura sat near the window for the best light. Contouring is very in in Nigeria right now, so even though Kyura's not much of a heavy make-up wearer generally, for her wedding, she was getting the full contouring treatment. Her Maid of Honor was getting the same make-up treatment outside. For someone who doesn't do contouring make-up or watch YouTube instructional videos on it, this was quite a scene to behold. Sometimes their faces were green, sometimes yellow. Frequently, there were harsh lines and strange spots. But as the artists worked their magic and their spongy blenders, faces reappeared from the wavy lines and strange colors; slightly altered faces, but still pretty. The room didn't have a mirror. The make-up artist had brought a small one of her own for Kyura, and someone had fetched a large mirror shard from the house for others. Someone turned to me, "Are you going to put on make-up, too?" "I already did mine." Like I said, I don't contour, and it was unlikely anyone here was going to know the right combinations of colors, or even have the right colors, for my face. I was satisfied with my usual powder, eyebrow pencil and mascara.



Contouring the bride's cheeks



Maid of Honor getting her makeup done outside

All of this doing-up took several hours. In the meantime, the photographer and videographer slid in and out of the commotion, capturing moments for posterity and designing beautiful settings to showcase important elements of the day. I trailed the photographer and tried to make myself useful, carrying things for her, holding things, and for a bit, using all my weight to pull a plastic-twine clothesline taut so she could get photos of the wedding dress hanging in the breeze without the dress's train dangling in the dirt of the dusty courtyard.



Photographer setting up a shot with the dress and bouquet

The church does not allow women to enter without their heads covered. Kyura, of course, had her veil. The guests would all have elaborate hair wraps. Kyura had someone collect a red-orange shawl from her old closet at her parents' house for me. One of her other friends wrapped it tight around my head for me, despite others' arguing that the church wouldn't turn me away if my head were bare. I had no desire to offend anyone or play my oyibo card like that. The Maid of Honor had a special hair piece with a little mini veil of its own. The silver tones in the white lace went perfectly with the silver beading on her long pink dress.

The Maid of Honor looks in the mirror while her hairpiece is adjusted

All of us friends, aside from the Maid of Honor, wore outfits out of the same matching fabrics as is the custom in Nigeria. The tailor made mine in advance, a fun 1960s-style tent dress that was nice and cool. Even while we were getting the bride and ourselves ready, the tailor was back at the house finishing dresses for wedding guests, whirling away on the treadle machine in a room next to the one that had been Kyura's up until last night.

Soon, we were all ready.

The bride.

Kyura ready for her wedding

And her friends.

(I particularly love this photo because the brilliant photographer turned the camera at such an angle that I don't look like a giant freak.  Notice the window in the background; imagine if the picture were turned so that the window frame were level...)

It was time to go to the church!

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 2: Good-bye Home

There comes a point in most people's lives when their home becomes their parent's home. Growing up, it is collective, my home, meaning mine and my parents and my siblings and whoever else lives there with us, it's ours. But at some point, that group doesn't include you anymore, and your home is no longer yours; your home is some other place where you stay without all those other folks. For myself, and I think for a lot of us in the U.S. who first leave home for college, that transition happens sort of gradually. You have a dorm or maybe even an apartment where you stay at school, but home is still your home. Maybe you have still have a room there, or at least most of your stuff accumulated during your first 18 years, possibly even still being added to with new accumulations that you just don't really need in your dorm. Eventually, you go, move to another place, take a few more things. At some point, your parents turn your room into a guest room, or an excessively gigantic sewing room bursting with fabric, patterns and sewing machines. You start confusing your friends by calling that place, where you used to have a space, and wherever you stay now "home," meaning it equally for both. And someday, you find yourself saying to your sisters, "are you going to Mommy and Daddy's today?" and you realize you're quite dispossessed of your home and you aren't even really sure how it happened. For Kyura, however, that transition was a big bright line that she could mark almost down to the minute.

Day 2: Good-bye Home

Good Friday had been a strange mix of lackadaisy and bustle during the day. Kyura's family's home in Jos was as full of people as the house in the village had been, perhaps even more so.

Friends bustling and chillin

All the female friends were posted up in the room Kyura and her sister had shared growing up. Lounging on the beds; taking tea from trays, sipping sweet gulps of Milo and chewing soft white bread; taking turns disappearing to bathe with buckets of water scooped from the large plastic cans stored in the corner of the large bathroom, plastic cans restocked throughout the day with fresh water drawn by two young men hauling rubber bag-full after rubber-bag full of cool refreshment from the well in the side yard; helping Kyura style her hair, iron her dress---when the power was compliant enough to course through the padded copper wires and into the iron---, and prepare for the day.

Drawing water

The rest of the house was alive with it's own activity. Kitchen staff prepared a constant stream of food for family and guests. The seamstress for the wedding whirled away on a treadle machine in the next room, producing and altering dress after matching orange and yellow dress in an array of styles. 

Like any other bride the day before her wedding, Kyura needed to get her nails done. And like so many other brides, she'd been talked into fake nails that were so very un-Kyura but manageable enough to last through the wedding. We trooped along with her, to the side porch where the manicurist pulled up a stool to do her work in the natural light of the sun. The tube of Chinese nail glue the manicurist bought turned out to be empty, so she ran out to a small shop and quickly returned with a new, and better stocked, package. Relatives came out to the porch to say hello as they passed through the house, aunties and young cousins. A few of us sat on chairs brought out from the sitting room or leaned against the porch rail, chatting while the manicurist did her craft and the boys in the yard hauled up water. Kyura fielded phone call after phone, mini-crisis after mini-crisis: calls from friends looking for places to stay for the wedding, the printers not having the programs ready for Inno to collect, the reception decorators not seeing the transferred funds in their bank accounts due to the Easter banking holidays. Kyura handled it all calmly from her porch throne.

Later in the afternoon, the groom's family would be coming to ask for Kyura. Inno's uncles would apply to Kyura's uncles for their niece to leave her home and come to theirs. If there was a set time for this, I have no idea when it was, but being Nigeria, if there was a set time for this, it's unlikely the uncles came anytime near that time. The sitting room filled with family elders from both sides, arranged on the thick sofas and chairs in a large circle. Kyura's sister brought out snacks and beverages and served each person. home, no longer her home.

Dancers

Outside, male elders with jingly metal bands fastened around their ankles sang and danced in a circle. Others joined, from the house? from the town? There were so many people everywhere I wasn't sure where most had come from. I joined, we danced until the group suddenly fell quiet.  Discussions began. I snuck in the back with the seamstress, hiding rather conspicuously on a tall bar stool behind a pushed-aside dining table, watching, not really understanding much more than that this was important and solemn and emotional. Kyura was called in and kneeled before her parents. Before long, she was being led out of the house, shrouded in a veil, another

Procession (to the car) to the church

procession of singing and dancing, another car ride away from home to a new place. Away from

At the request of the groom's family, Kyura's family had given her over to the custody of the church until the wedding morning. She, her maid of honor and her eldest aunt would stay at the church, in the care of the best man and the groom's family, until the morn. We followed on foot. The church where the wedding was to take place was separated from Kyura's parents' house only by a lane, and a very large cement wall on the edge of that lane. For tonight, Kyura had no home; her parent's house was no longer hers, and her husband's house was not yet hers. For tonight, she was to make do in the guest house of the assistant pastor. And make do it would certainly be.

The assistant pastor's guest house, or perhaps it was to be a servant's house, was a small one-room cement building out back of his home on the church property. It had an en-suite restroom divided from the room by a curtain. Kyura's wedding dress was hung from the curtain rod, tulle and beads pressing against the protective coating of the clear garment bag, saving the pure white dress from the dust of the walls. There was no furniture, just two old mattresses, one on the floor and one against the wall, the one against the wall in far worse condition. Kyura's aunt took one look at it and sent someone for a mat from the family home. A mosquito net hung matted in a twisted ball and low above the laid-out mattress. Agreement was quickly made not to let the net free for fear of what might fall, or crawl, out of it. Another runner was dispatched to the home for bug spray. The room had a single window next to the door. An electric fan was courried from the house. There was one outlet. Even when the power was on, it didn't work.

Best man trying to make the fan work

The best man arrived with a screwdriver, removed the outlet and attempted to wire the fan's plug directly to the wall. It still didn't work; probably a blessing that these wires were lifeless! A solution was concocted in the form of multiple power strips and strings of wire run in a line over from the assistant pastor's house, a plastic bag wrapped around the part where bare wires were twisted together on the ground outside. It worked, at least when there was electricity in general. A battery lantern was fetched from the house.

The groom's family brought dinner. Rice and some sort of soup or stew, tea. Dishes were fetched from the house. We sat on plastic lawn chairs that had been brought in. Kyura and the maid of honor sat tepidly on the floor mattress. We chatted and laughed and amused ourselves with the ridiculousness of this place as a bride-to-be suite. We laughed at the Nigerianess of everything about the room and the on-and-off electricity and the broken outlet and the creepy mosquito net and the scary mattress against the wall and the huge number of friends and family helping with everything and the perfect-despite-it-all haze that surrounded every piece of the events leading up to the big day. And we bid goodnight to Kyura, her aunt, and the maid of honor, to sleep as best they good, as we retired to our own lodgings until the morn. Sheets and blankets were fetched from Kyura's parents' house.

Congratulations Kyura and Inno Part 1: A Proper Village Send-Off

Back in April, I went to my friend Kyura's wedding. We hadn't seen each other since attending a conference together in Uganda in 2010, so when she invited me to her wedding, I just had to go, even though it meant postponing an already long-overdue visit back to Zambia. But I have found that attending friends' weddings is really important to me. Even if I hardly get to see them during the festivities, just showing up often means so much. This one was extra special because I actually got to spend a ton of time with the bride.

The wedding festivities took place over four days, beginning with a send-off ceremony and celebration for the bride, culminating with the wedding itself, and ending with a special thanksgiving for all their blessings.

Day 1: The Send-Off

I arrived in the village with one of Kyura's friends, shuttled there by a trusted driver who was willing to take us hours down the road from Kaduna and off the paved highways to the family's village. Looking around, I could see how much wealthier Nigeria is than Zambia. I'd never been in a Nigerian village before. There were powerlines running through the sky, nevermind that they probably were lifeless more often than live; metal roofs on every house I could see; everyone had shoes, even the children; and the roads, though dirt, were in decent condition. The family house was large and cement, with elegant columns lining the porch, like a plantation home, or a country estate for old British landed gentry. Of course, either of those would have been lacking the corridors full of stored water in 50-gallon drums and 20-liter gerry cans, the rumbling of the generator whirling electricity to cell phone chargers and lightbulbs, and the plastic patio chairs on which village women sat pouring local maize drink into empty plastic bottles. Nonetheless, I was impressed.

Kyura and her friends were inside. The house was full of people, many of them bustling, preparing food and drink and clothes. Others, like myself, lost in the action, sitting on plush sofas in the dim parlor, chatting tentatively to strangers who would be good friends in a few days, eating lunch? dinner? a snack? something anyway, from plastic plates on our laps. A giant bowl of cooked cucumber and tomato salad(?) makes for an interesting whatever that insert-appropriate-eating-session-here was. I eventually found my way to the real action, where Kyura's closest friends, and the day's chiefmate, were helping her get ready for the send-off celebration. This would be the day for her family's village to officially say good-bye to her, to send her from her home to the home of her husband. It was like a giant wedding reception for just the bride. There was even a cake cutting.

Kyura wore a long green skirt decorated with lace and beads, an intricately beaded ivory top and a head wrap bordering between yellow and ivory dotted with green rhinestones. A group of elder village women arrived at the family house dancing and singing, yellow wrappers with orange stripes and white shirts a unifying dress code, corn-husk-and-seed rattles tied around their ankles provided percussion to accompany their voices as they stepped forward and back, holding long sticks in as they sang. They led the procession from the family house to the school grounds where the send off would be. As they danced, Kyura rode behind in a car, saving her long dress and new shoes from the mud of the morning's rains.

Dancing at the Send-Off

The school grounds were decorated with canopies and bunting in white, seafoam and evergreen. Guests of honor---family, friends, local dignitaries---sat under the canopies. Rows of villagers lined the edges of the school yard. Kyura's close friends who were accompanying her sat under a white canopy, surrounding the satin covered sofa where she and her chiefmate sat. An MC in the center of the yard led the celebration: dancing and prayers, one group then another, dignitaries, father's family, mother's family, friends of the bride, the groom's family, etc. Each was called up in their turn to dance with the bride-to-be, to shower her in cash, everything from 10 naira notes to 1000s, none of which the bride deigned to pick up. There was a special cadre of pre-teen girls for that. Dressed in black and white, they would swoop into the dancing masses and scoop the bills into cardboard box lids, taking their full lids to a special side place where they'd empty them into bigger boxes and return to the dancing for refills.



Prayers are offered for the bride

Village leaders, politicians, religious leaders and family members came forward to say a few words. I couldn't understand all the words as much of it was in the local language and some in Hausa, but the happy and joyful sentiments were obvious no matter the language. Kyura's parents told her how very proud they were of their dutiful daughter. She wasn't the only one crying.

Dinner under the canopies

While the dancing continued, plates of jollof rice, chicken, moin moin, salad, and I-don't-even-know-what-else-cuz-it-all-has-meat were passed around to those under the canopies. As the festivities wound down, brightly-colored styrofoam take-away containers of food were passed out to the villagers. Notebooks, buckets, plastic basins, and other keepsakes we would refer to here as swag were passed out to attendees on behalf of the bride's family, the groom's family, friends of the bride, aunties, etc. Guests were also giving presents, bringing them to the white canopy with the satin couch, wrapped packages in all kinds of shiny paper, and even a bright pink potty-chair---can't beat planning ahead.

As the celebration at the school grounds ended, the festivities continued back at the family house for those who weren't exhausted. The rest of us, including the bride and most of us friends, hit the hay, or foam rather, for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we would travel into Jos.

I Guess I Need a Book Club

If I am ever going to have any hope of reading another book again, I must write about this one.  The characters have moved into my head.  Brought their knapsacks and their dishes.  Heck, brought their own futons and set up house in that crowded, cobwebed maze that calls itself my brain.  They throw house parties.  Invite their friends, strangers, other characters.  I won’t be surprised to find Lizzie Bennet throwing a glassful of water in Furo Wariboko’s face.  They have infested my being and will not let me be.  So I must write about this book.

Blackass---I can hear my mother’s “ahem,” with its pushed-out air emphasizing the m.  It’s the opposite of what I imagine that African term “sucked his teeth” to be.  I could try to call it Blackvampire, but that hardly works.  It is in fact Furo Wariboko’s bum that is black.  His other ass-ness however, the part that could be described as vapmire-ness, is all white.  Oyibo white.

Furo Wariboko is the main character in this Kafka allusion.  I guess it’s not really an allusion as the author, A. Ignoni Barrett, acknowledges Gregor before we meet Furo, acknowledges his tribute to Metamorphosis.

Like many American high school students, I endured Metamorphosis.  Endured is the right word.  I did not endure Blackass; I devoured it.  And then it devoured me.

Furo Wariboko awakes to find himself transformed---expressed far more eloquently than that---into a white man.  An oyibo man in Lagos, Nigeria, in not-so-well-off, Nigerian’s Lagos, Nigeria.  And his adventures begin.

In an inverting of my Americanah experience, I struggled to picture Furo as a white man.  His physical appearance was described frequently as he discovered and rediscovered and was reminded of himself.  Yet I kept picturing a Nigerian man.  Until Furo’s insides began to match his outside.  As Furo accepted his whiteness, as he adapted to, embraced and abused the privileges suddenly in his possession, the Furo Wariboko in my head more and more matched the description in the book.  As Furo’s soul became oybio, so did the vision of him.

One of the reviews on the back of the book says “it will scorch your fingers and singe your eyelashes.”  The reviewer is not lying.  There is so much more I want to say about this book, but I cannot without leaving hoards of spoilers armed with pitchforks.  I need more people to read this book so I can talk about it!  Be one of those people? Pretty please, with sugar on top, and a black ass?

 

P.S. The use of Twitter in this book is amazingly delightful.  I tried to follow one of the character’s handles from my phone and was surprised to receive their last tweet, a tweet saying goodbye to the author.

Revisiting the tear-stained sun

“Her books are very emotionally difficult to read.”  It’s a phrase I say nearly every time I’m recommending one of Chimamanda Adichie’s books, most often for Half of a Yellow Sun or Americannah.  I know it to be true.  I spend a great deal of the time with my head buried in her books also with tears streaming down my face, an angry growl churning in my stomach, my face glowing beet red.  I always assumed it was the subject matter.  Her works contain a lot of violence, sexual abuse, domestic abuse; I mean, it’s war, and difficult relationships, and oppression and such.  It’s not supposed to be easy.  But that’s not the reason.

The subject matter isn’t what makes Adichie emotionally difficult to read.  What makes Adichie emotionally difficult to read is her writing.  She cruelly uses our humanity against us, her readers, plays with and preys upon our propensity to hope.  She presents something to us, makes it familiar, comfortable, happy even-- A calabash providing solid comfort to a terror-stricken young woman on a dilapidated train overcrowded with fleeing refugees; a bouncy baby girl that arrives into our view only a few pages after the characters who have become endeared to us decide together that they want to have a child; the expectant young relative whose joy and excitement is brought to us through seemingly excessive side-jaunts to her far-off village.  But the calabash holds a young girl’s head; the baby is only one of theirs; and the pregnant women are raped and sliced open before they are killed.

Adichie uses our innate hope for the good and beautiful, presenting a world to us that we do not even know is veiled, until we love what we think is there; and she pulls off the veil, daring us simultaneously to love the hideous reality and to hate the beauty we’ve already internalized.

And I simultaneously hate and love, her.  As I turn another page with tears streaming down my face, wishing the book were over, wishing it would never end.

The skinny white fat Nigerian in my head

Note: I usually do a book review post when I finish a book.  But I decided to do something different with Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah and instead share thoughts and comments in a pseudo-real time.

The protagonist is a fat Nigerian.  We know this within the first page or two of the novel.  But the image in my head is a faceless slender white woman.  The same image I’d have for Elizabeth Bennet.  I realize this.  I try to change it.  I try to think of one of my larger Nigerian friends, a well-off woman who I can’t call fat because she’s lived abroad enough to consider it an insult coming from an American.  It doesn’t work.

I keep reading; the image changes.  As Ifemelu grows, the image in my head flushes itself out.  It begins with Ifemelu’s flashback to her school days in Lagos.  The image begins to take the form of a slender African teenager, drawing on any number of the girls in my Zam-fam, my village, or around the neighborhood in Abuja.

When Ifemelu immigrates to America, when she’s new and lost and navigating the strange straddling world of her aunt who has already been in America for some time, the image grows.  It becomes easy to fit each new bit of her into the image in my head.  Her clothes change.  Her attitude changes.  Her hair changes.  She relaxes her hair; she practically shaves her head; she grows and afro.  These changes manage to stick -  although for some reason she has a blonde afro – not white girl blonde, dyed honey blonde.  This protruding of my subconscious strikes me as odd again.

As the scenes pop back to the present, the Ifemelu in the hairdresser’s chair becomes a large, Nigerian woman with black hair being put into braids, puffs of unbraided hair sticking up in front.  An Americanized Nigerian woman who’s become bitter and condescending in ways that would probably surprise her young self (but fit perfectly into the developing image in my head). 

It takes at least half the book before this Ifemelu, the one described on page two, can finally take shape in my mind.

It bothers me a bit, that I cannot take a written description and make an image of it; that my defaults are so ingrained that it takes 200 pages, 200 pages of slow growth and character shaping, to get to something close to the written description.

 

… For some reason, I did not have the same trouble with the male lead character, Obinze.  Perhaps because my first introduction to him was as a school boy.  By the time he showed up as an adult, he’d morphed into a melding of Kevin Hart and Idris Elba.  I’m guessing the combo is because Obinze is described as not tall.

 

Apparently Lupita Nyong’o is going to play Ifemelu in the film.  I’m having a really hard time picturing that.  She’s so tiny and doesn’t look at all Nigerian.  At least the actor they have for Obinze, David Oyelowo,  is Nigerian, even if not Igbo like the characters.  Of course, they’re both such stellar actors, they’ll probably pull if off splendidly.

9ja in Mill-town

Thanks to huge heads from my buddy, Midwestphoto, I learned that Milwaukee has a Nigerian culture festival.  Woo hoo!  Now how could I miss out on that?  It was held at the Nigerian Community Center up on Appleton Ave at W. Hampton.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was sure it would be an adventure.

I had to laugh as I pulled up to the building.  The parking lot was being used for the festival, so attendees had to park on the street.  Except the street was under construction.  The far left lane was torn up, a lane of gravel about 4” lower than the street itself, marked off by orange construction barrels.  So where had the Nigerian’s parked?  In the under-construction lane.  They’d just driven between the barrels, gone down the lip and parked on the gravel.  I went the extra 20ft to the end of the block, turned onto the cross street and parked on the empty street.

At the festival, people were milling around inside and out.  Lots of bright colors and a mix of Western and Nigerian clothes, just like in Abuja.  The inside of the community center had something going on in nearly every room.  Outside, a stage area was set up and a row of booths ran down the parking lot from the stage to a giant bouncy castle.

The festival booths reminded me a lot of the booths at the Nigerian Bar Association Meeting I attended several years ago, except without the magical potions.  There were clothing booths with both traditional and club wear, and lots of food vendors.  All of the food vendors were local catering companies.  I talked to a couple of them.  They make the food in their homes and then take it to whatever function has hired them.  As most Nigerian food is not vegetarian-friendly, I had only a couple of fried plantains off my friend’s plate.

We watched two fashion shows: a club wear show and a traditional wear show.  Both shows featured local designers.  The club wear  show models were all grown-ups (thank goodness!), and many of the outfits were rather risque.  There was one white model and in one of the outfits, you could see her lower back tattoo through the dress fabric.  None of the club wear left much to the imagination.

Outfit at the club fashion show

The traditional fashion show models were area students.  They looked awesome.  Some of them were a little shy and it was adorable.  The designer had tried to feature outfits from multiple tribes.  The models had to change very quickly and there weren’t a lot of them, so there was often a lull.  But, the show overall was very nice and well done.  Plus, the soundtrack for this fashion show was all Nigerian music. :)

Outfits at Traditional fashion show

Other performances on the stage area included a gentleman playing the talking drum and cultural dancers.  The event was running about 2 hours behind the program schedule (I wouldn’t have expected anything else), so we didn’t stick around for the cultural dancers.

We did, however, check out the story time inside.  That was very interesting.  Gentlemen from different tribes took turns presenting traditional stories from their particular tribes.  Mostly.  There was a great rendition of the story about why the tortoise's shell is cracked.  But there was one guy who got up and instead of telling a story – maybe he did eventually – he went on a 10 minute rant – at least - about how his tribe was the best tribe in Nigeria.  Sadly, this was less surprising than it ought to be.  I don’t know if he ever got to a story because we, like many others in the room, left.

Overall, it was a very fun afternoon.  I felt a bit like I was back in 9ja.  The Nigerian Community Center is having an Independence Day Celebration on Oct. 4th.  Maybe I’ll go check it out.  Maybe I’ll even be gutsy enough to wear one of my traditional outfits.

After enjoying enough Nigerian fun for an afternoon, I went for absolute culture-shift shock and headed to Cudahy for Sweet Applewood Fest. Twenty minutes and a world away.

Adventures with Ivory: Back in the Ville

The Annual Returned Peace Corps Volunteer meeting was going to be held at Vanderbilt.  How could I not go?!

So I called up my friend MattE who had been asking me to come visit him in Nashville.  (He’s currently working on his 3rd Vanderbilt degree, a PhD in Political Science to go with his Masters of Divinity and his law degree.)  It was the perfect trio – MattE, Peace Corps, Vandy.

So I got in Betty and we headed down, and down, and down, until we arrived late Wednesday night, hot, sticky and smiling at Cafe Cocoa where MattE and his friends were gathered.

During the day, I went to the Peace Corps events and got to meet up with some people at the law school that I like to say hi to when I’m in town.  MattE and I were able to hang out in the afternoons and evenings.  He showed me all the changes that have happened in East Nashville – it’s going from ghetto to Hipster-ville a block or so at a time.  We went to a number of restaurants, ones I’d been to when I lived there and ones that were knew to me.  And he introduced me to the girl he liked, who was his girlfriend by the time I left. ;)

MattE just bought a house a few weeks before I came down.  It’s super cute, and he has it really well setup.  It doesn’t look like a bachelor’s pad at all.  It even has a library with patio doors that go out onto a deck, and a very nice guest room with an antique bed he and friend assembled.

The Peace Corps events were fun, too.  I found a friend from Cali, the president of the NorCal RPCV group, and we were able to hang out a bit.  He introduced me to some other RPCVs he knows, one runs a chocolate company based in Madagascar.  Neat.  I met lots of other RPCVs over the weekend, including some that served in Nigeria.  It was interesting to talk with them because they served in the 60s.  The city I lived in in Nigeria wasn’t even built until the 90s.

I also met some recently returned volunteers from Zambia!  I know Zambia’s changed a lot in the past ten years; that much I can tell from Twitter.  It sounds like the program I was part of in the Peace Corps has also changed a lot.

Overall, Nashville was a great trip.  I had a lot of fun, enjoyed beautiful weather, saw old friends from different areas of life and picked up a present for Mzzzz Jones’ expected little one.  I also found out about some opportunities to go back to Africa in an IP context…

Tears of 9ja

I am sad today.  I am sad for Nigeria.  It is a beautiful country full of sparkling people.  Sure, they do yell a bit – watch any Nollywood film, they really do talk like that – but every Nigerian I’ve met has been super generous.  From the colleagues at the office to the people who opened their homes to me and the strangers on the street who welcomed me to their country, Nigerians love to share, their world, themselves.

The country has had a rough history.  It’s known the world over for corruption and scams.  Internet scams are so highly associated with Nigeria that their name even comes from the Nigerian criminal code, 419.  They’re civil war, only 50 years ago, is still fairly palatable.  - Half of  a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adiche gives a superb insight into this part of history.  -   There’s been military coups and a stream of changing governments.  So many hardships it’s almost easy to shrug off new difficulties.

Yet this past month, the craziness Nigeria is facing seem to be too much.  Is it because of the sheer number of people kidnapped in the school girls’ kidnapping?  Is it because the bomb blasts are now just outside the capital instead of in some far off corner of the north?  Is it because there’s so much happening at the same time?  Is it because all this horribleness comes in the middle of and over shrouds the great news of Nigeria becoming Africa’s largest economy, of Abuja hosting the World Economic Forum on Africa, of Dangote cement expanding into other countries?  Is it because the death, destruction and fear are finally making US news?

I don’t know.  All I know is, my heart is hurting and I feel as powerless as the mothers crying out for President Goodluck’s help.   Albeit with far less pain because no stranger can ever feel their pain.  I worry about my friends, as selfish as it is to care more for them than their country-mates.  I worry about Nigeria as an economy and a country.  I worry what such violence and instability means for the region and the continent. 

I even worry for my own country – what will we be pulled into when the harm is so high we can no longer stay away.  There is talk that America is going to help look for the missing girls.  I have no idea what this help will look like.  Will it turn into another war on extremist Muslims?  A new excuse for groups like Boko Haram to attack the West in the West?  I do not know.

There is a lot I don’t know.  Only that I am sad.  How wonderful a walk down Abuja’s sunny streets would feel right now.

Ndili Mukuwa, and It’s Ok

I’ve always been acutely aware of my “whiteness.”  In kindergarten, it was benign, meaning only that I couldn’t do as much fun stuff with my hair as some of the other girls.  By first grade, it was that other people’s not having as much or being downtrodden was my fault as on Martin Luther King Jr. Day we were taught “white guilt.”  By fourth grade, I was evil, inhumane, cruel, for beating all those slaves before the Civil War. 

In high school, added to all this was that I simply wasn’t cool enough to talk to the groups of black students.  By college, all the guilt and meanness and cruelty and uncoolness, added to the fact that I’d never be able to dance or jump, had me paralyzed with fear.  “I can’t talk to you.”  “I don’t know how to talk to you.”  “I’m not good enough.”  “I’m not cool enough.”  “Everything bad that’s ever happened to you is my fault.”

So I did what anyone does when they’re totally afraid.  I ran away.
To Africa.

Here, it was different.  I was different.  New stereotypes were flung at me, but I didn’t buy into them.  Maybe it was because they were delivered to me by individuals instead of society as a whole.  Maybe it was because I knew them to not be true with respect to myself.  How come I always accepted that the stereotypes back home were true?  Indoctrination at a young age?  Societal reinforcement?  Not grown up enough to know myself?  I started to realize that things I’d believed about myself weren’t true.  I was me. Me. Alone. Me. Not the billions of other people in the world who had come before me and happened to have something in common with me.  Me.

I had been taught that “racist” was the worst thing you could ever be called.  My fear came from fear of that word.  In Africa, the worst thing I was ever called was Mukuwa/Muzungu/Onyibo and that isn’t that bad.

Now I understood.  Just because someone calls you something, doesn’t mean you are such.  I was, am and always will be Mukuwa.  But in some ways, I was also correct when I’d yell back to those “Mukuwa!” screaming kids, “Tandili mukuwa, ndili Ba Tonga.”  I am not a foreigner; I am one of you.

There may be times when I am racist, but it’s because of me, my thoughts, my experiences, not because of all those people I never knew in all those places I’ve never been.  I’m me. 

Sometimes I’m good; sometimes I’m bad.  Sometimes I’m right; sometimes I’m wrong.  Sometimes I’m cruel and unfair; sometimes I’m compassionate and generous.  But I am not afraid of what I am anymore.  Africa gave me that.  That, and some of those hairstyles I’d been wishing for since I was a little girl.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Squirrel, It’s Goldenrail in a Tree!

“Ba Nchimunya, mulaputa,” it was a common refrain on my family’s compound, about as common as my mother saying, “get out of that tree, you have a dress on.”  But I love climbing trees, and so puta-ing* or not, up I go.

Heels or bare footed, dress or trousers, those branches call my name.  Long arms and long legs make for great climbing.  Don’t worry, I have pantaloons to wear when climbing trees in dresses.

When I was growing up, we had an excellent climbing tree in front of the house, on the strip between the sidewalk and the street.  Lightning hit one of the lower branches one year, and Daddy had to remove the branch.  That made the tree a little harder to climb, but I still managed.  Luckily, I was tall enough by then to reach other branches.

In Zambia, there was an excellent mulberry tree right outside my first hut.  My climbing that tree led to the mulaputa accusations.  It’s branches were small but sturdy.  And climbing it meant access to mulberries that the children hadn’t been able to get.  

The family I stayed with in Nigeria had a beautiful lemon tree directly outside their kitchen window.  I startled the maid one day by suddenly peeking in the second-story window from the tree.  The family’s young daughters decided I had a great idea in getting into the tree and learned to climb it themselves.

Africa seems to be fully of great climbing trees.  At a party for some of the girls’ friends, I found the perfect photographing spot high in the branches of a nearby tree.

That particular climb was extra great because I had on one of my favorite pairs of shoes for climbing.   5” wedges with a very flat ball and toe area.  The small wedge was great for, well, wedging into branch joints, and the flat front flexed with my foot and allowed for good traction on the tree bark.

I’ve climbed trees in other heels, too.  On my first trip to Mr. Trizzle’s home, I attended one of his friend’s birthday parties.  It was in a park with a great climbing tree.  So up I went.  One of the party guests was so impressed that I was in a tree in heels, he kept taking pictures.  Sadly, I don’t have any of his pictures.  But there are plenty of other great climbing trees in the Bay Area, like this beauty at Cordornices Park in Berkeley.  It provides a great view of the basketball courts.

 

Maybe someday I’ll stop climbing trees, but I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.

*kuputa roughly translates as to be playing with something you’re not supposed to be playing with

Moral Dilemmas

“You see the moral dilemmas we have to face….” There are those moments, hopefully in all of our lives, when the world stops suddenly and for a moment you are acutely aware of just how small our bubbles are.  Sometimes it’s your own bubble, when you briefly encounter something that had previously only existed on the other side of your thin protective soap skin.  Sometimes it’s someone else’s bubble, as you see them looking out through their glistening, rainbowed film.  This time, it was the later.

She was talking about palmetto bugs, American cockroaches that aren’t afraid of the light; rather large compared to bitty Nashville cockroaches, but not very big compared to what lived in my host mother’s latrine in Zambia.  Apparently, every home in Georgia has them. They’re part of life there, and so is dealing with them.

And that was her moral dilemma.  “You see the moral dilemmas we have to face in Georgia,” she said as though it was so obviously exactly what she was dealing with.  “Do we serve guests dishes that these bugs have crawled over, or do we live in a house with poison in it.” Buggy dishes, or bug poison; to have live bugs or to have dead bugs.

For her, this may truly have been a moral dilemma. Despite her having lived in Georgia for several years now, her bubble world is still very California.  Natural this, organic that, boo large corporations, yay free range farms, etc.  But I couldn’t see this from my bubble.  All I could see was her pressed up against the very edge of her bubble, a wavy line of soap drifting across her face, and between us a gulf filled with all my thoughts.

“The moral dilemmas we have to face…”  I thought of my friends living in Jos who have to decided whether or not to go to church on Sunday mornings for fear they might be blown up by Boko Haram extremists.  I thought of the Sudanese man I knew at the refugee center in Nashville who described his life before coming to the US as very similar to What is the What and would say no more about it.  I thought of my many colleagues and friends in Uganda where the government and society are daily struggling with if and how to integrate former child soldiers of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army back into mainstream society.  I thought of the jury panel on the death penalty trial last week in Martinez.  I thought of our soldiers, and our doctors and our leaders.  And, I just couldn’t see poisoning cockroaches as a moral dilemma.

We should all wish for such to be our moral dilemma.

Book Review: A Man of the People

I’ve read Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart.  I’ve even seen it performed live, in Nigeria, with people who actually know how to pronounce the Igbo.  I understand why it’s a classic-  I’m a bit annoyed that it’s the main example of Africa Literature taught in US Universities (why does everything have to focus on Westerners?) – but I never really enjoyed it.  A Man of the People was different.

A Nigerian gentleman I met in Mountain View highly recommended the book.  Written in the early days of Nigerian’s independence, A Man of the People perfectly predicted Nigeria’s political future, or so this gentleman claimed.  I have to say, I agree.

The book is marvelous in its perception, Delphic novel with an engaging story.  Of course, I know little of the Nigerian politics of 1967, so perhaps the novel is less prediction than observation, but it certainly seems to match the current times.

It’s sometimes hard to figure out which characters to like, if you’re supposed to like any of them.  They’re very real in this way.  There are few obvious villains and few obvious heroes.  Situations and circumstances play the biggest role.  Who you are is where you are and who’s around you. The book’s biggest impact is the probing questions it discretely sends to the reader, “what would you do in this situation? How can you judge; wouldn’t you do the same?”

I’d recommend this book, except for one minor detail.  If you’re going to read it, make sure you have a Nigerian friend within reach for translations.  I muddled through fairly well thanks to having spent a very short time in Nigeria, but I still had to send out the occasional “what does x mean” tweet.

Usually, when I’m reading a book that has people speaking in a different language than the one in which the book is written, there’s some built-in guide to help you out with the translations, footnotes, immediate translation, italics to at least alert you of the other language, something.  Not in A Man of the People.  At least, not in my edition.  It is called Pidgin English, so I suppose some might assume it’s close enough.  Sometimes it is; sometimes it’s not.  Taking an example from a random page, “Abi my head no correct?”  I’ll let you decide.

Smiling from Ear to Ear

Long time readers may remember a post from over a year ago featuring a silly picture of me … hold on, I know that doesn’t narrow it down, let me finish …  of me in a pirate hat and a princess dress. 

That day I announced my new Fellowship at Creative Commons.   And on that post I said, “It couldn't get more perfect.  Yet, somehow, I think it'll still only go up from here.”  I had no idea how right I would be.

For the past bunch of months, since my first day, I’ve been working pretty steadily with CC in various forms and incarnations.  First as a Google Policy Fellow, then as an intern supported by Vanderbilt’s Public Interest Stipend – then I disappeared to take the Bar – then back as a volunteer intern.  It’s been fabulous.  I absolutely love what I’ve been doing there:  spending my days working with people in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and even Zambia!  Never thought I’d get to sign a work email “Ndalumba,”!

Well, this week, all this fabulousness got even more fabulous.  I signed on as an independent contract, part time, until after Bar results come out.  Not only do I get to keep doing the work I enjoy so I much, I get paid!

Every day, there’s a new adventure and new excitement.  My dreams are coming true and things are coming full circle.  But maybe I’ll write about that another time….

For now, Yippie!!!!!!!!!  (and I hope this good luck sticks around until results come out.)

Hallo Weeeeeeee Een

I wasn’t expecting to have a very fun or exciting Halloween.  After all, Mr. Trizzle was moving away that weekend, and there’s nothing fun about that.  But life is always full of surprises, and Halloween weekend turned out to be pretty great. …even with the depressing move.

Mr. Trizzle’s friend, The L E G E N ol (who, for sake of typing ease I’m just calling The Legend) needed help with his Halloween costume.  At the suggestion of Mr. Trizzle (who’s too good/lazy/busy for Halloween costumes), The Legend was dressing up as Rick Ross.

This is Rick Ross –> 

He’s a rapper from Miami. 

As you can see, The Legend needed a giant chain of his/Rick Ross’s face.  Enter goldenrail and a trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics.  (You know I’m always looking for excuses to go there.)

Several days and two bags of rhinestones later, Rick Ross appeared in our apartment.

As it turned out, Mr. Trizzle and I got to be Rick  Ross’s entourage for an exclusive party Friday night.  Neither of us had costumes, but that didn’t matter.  Mr. Trizzle just claimed Recession Halloween and my cute owls were festive enough.

But Halloween weekend didn’t just involve parties and moving boxes; it also included that staple of all Halloweens: pumpkin carving!!!!

On Saturday afternoon, my new friend came over to carve pumpkins.  He’s from Nigeria, so he’d never carved a pumpkin before.  (Pumpkins are food over there, not decorations.  Interestingly enough, that’s two years in a row I’ve had a Nigerian pumpkin carving day.)

He did one, and I did two, one for me and one for Daddy Bunny.  Daddy Bunny’s Grandma suggested he join in, but then remembered pumpkin carving is very messy and he doesn’t bath well.  So, Daddy Bunny designed his vampire bunny pumpkin, and I helped him out by carving it for him.  Here are our finished pumpkins.  (Unfortunately, since it was day time, you can’t tell they’re lit up.)

Sunday was moving day all day.  That wasn’t bad.  Though it was sad to say goodbye to Mr. Trizzle, I got to drive his car (with his awesome stereo) the two hours to Merced while he drove the moving truck.  Woo hoo for subwoofers!  Mr. Trizzle’s getting settled in now and we’re all excited for him and his new job.

 

 

photo credits: Rick Ross cc-by adroed availble at:  http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/g4Pn-KiGXT8h_0rxmZ47Kg)

The Legend as Rick Ross and Carved Pumpkins cc-by goldenrail

Group picture courtesy of The Legend’s facebook.

 

Thank You

Well, right now I should be somewhere over the Atlantic.  I want to give a special thank you shout out to everyone that made me feel at home and made my stay in Nigeria very memorable.

Thank you to the Apampas, Dr. Y, Mr. Embassy-Man, Kyura, Ashley, Prof. Asein and everyone else at work, and to all the wonderful people on both sides of the ocean who kept me motivated and excited about being in Nigeria.  Also, thank you to Kunle, Professors Helfer, Newton and Hetcher, and the wonderful people in the clinic office who helped me get here.  And to Dr. Ojo in SF, who made sure I had a place to stay and someone to meet me when I arrived.

And I'm Out...

Things I'll Miss

1. The weather!
2. Being in Africa
3. The many friends I have made here, especially Kyura and Mr. Embassy-Man
4. Being able to (but not having to) walk anywhere I need to go
5. Not buying gas
6. No bills
7. Yam on Sundays
8. Getting my hair braided for super cheap
9. The time zone difference that made it so my friends back home were always awake when I wanted to talk to them (they were sleeping when I was at work)
10. Being able to hang the laundry outside
11. Plantain chips and drinkable yogurt
12. Random chickens on the side of the road
13. Mr. Trizzle being nice because he's forgotten how annoying I am when I'm actually around ;)
14. Work, most of it, at least sometimes
15. Being able to be there for my friends when they need to talk in the middle of the night (cuz it's my day time!)
16. The 9-4, doesn't matter if you're late, workday (even though I was usually there around 8 and stayed 'til nearly 5; it was nice to know I didn't have to be there)
17. Kim the tailor and his amazing work
18. Yummy ice cream that comes in a plastic bag and tastes like cake batter
19. Palm trees
20. Never having to wear or carry a jacket
21. The smell of fresh flowers along the roadside and the gentle scent of burnt grass in the air
22. Moin moin, Milo, roasted maize on the roadside, purple Ibo fruits, and other foods I can't get at home

Things I Won't Miss

1. Random people I don't know coming up to me and telling me they want to be my friend or that they love me
2. The tribalism
3. The driving
4. The bathrooms at work
5. The constant condescension
6. Only having one pair of shoes and enough outfits to get through one week
7. Power surges and outages (that destroy my computer)
8. Having to haggle or bargain before buying anything or going anywhere
9. Having walls and gates and guards around every building
10. Having to buy an expensive and only so-so meal in order to get an internet connection good enough to download a pdf file
11. Smashing cockroaches at work and shaking off ants at home
12. Those creepy lizards that seem to be everywhere
13. The hypocrisy
14. Unfitted sheets
15. Having to iron everything
16. Having to count in hundreds and thousands
17. West-African men
18. Watching people eat goo with their hands
19. Having a maid (I like her, as a person; I just don't like having a maid as a concept)
20. Being called "whitey" or "white" as if that's my name
21. People hissing like snakes

The Move

We spent most of Saturday packing up the house, washing and ironing curtains, and maneuvering around stacks of boxes.  The movers left around 4, while Auntie was out.  She was not pleased when she returned home and found they had left without finishing.  Then the guys removing the air conditioners asked for some money or something.  Auntie, who always sounds like she's yelling whenever she talks, and Dr. Y, who has a short fuse, gave the air conditioning guys a piece of their mind.

I packed up most of my room, tried to help keep the girls out of the movers way and helped the maid iron the curtains.  Luckily, the door to the study (where the wireless router is kept) is blocked by a big pile of boxes.  That gives me a chance to schedule-post some pictures of our move!

outdoor parts of air conditioners gathered together

 

the back porch

 

front hall

Maid ironing curtains

  

the girl's bedroom

 

kitchen

 

living room

 

pantry

upstairs sitting room

 

study (see the internet in the upper right-hand corner?)

'Tis the Season to be Jolly

I saw my first Christmas lights of the season this past week at work.  There are several banks located inside the Federal Secretariat, and one of them had hung garland and lights outside its door and window.  It nearly made me cry.  It really is Christmas time!  Another bank had put a Christmas tree in front of its door, complete with ornaments and lights.  It was very pretty.

I really do love Christmas time, even though Christmas is only my fifth favorite holiday.  There are so many Christmas things to do at home that I can hardly wait to get there.  I have to attempt to hide the sandwich cookies that Mommy better make, so that no one else can eat them.  I said attempt, because it will not work.  Mommy will catch me and make me put them back.  But, I have to try, all the same.

Katrina and I are already conspiring about where to hide the plastic Abominable Snowman, and Wendy's already trying to guess where it'll be so she can get it and put it back where it belongs.  (Where does it belong?)

The plastic canvas snowman and snowlady have to take the plastic canvas choo choo from their plastic canvas gingerbread house to the stable to see baby Jesus.

A few various Santa Clauses, elves, and little musicians need to form a train behind the three wise-men, on their way to visit baby Jesus.

We have to turn on all of Mommy's sound and motion activated fiber optic toys, dancing reindeer and singing what-nots at the same time and then wait for Daddy to enter the room.

I'll hang my pretty silver ballerina ornament on the tree by a blue light.  (Or move it, if Mommy already has the tree decorated before I get home.)

Katrina and I must whine about how the Christmas tree is fake and it's no fun that the tree doesn't rain.  Hopefully Mommy will have that Christmas-tree scented room spray again, so it'll at least smell like Christmas.

Wendy, Katrina and Nathan and I have to build a snowman, if there's snow.  It won't have to look like Wendy this year, because she'll be home!  We also need to go to the Museum and see the Streets of Old Milwaukee and the European Village all decorated for Christmas.  I love the upside-down Christmas tree in the Polish house!

I have to drink off-white egg nog and eat red cake.  And make my Christmas dress!  (Unless I decide to wear my new natives; they're green.)

We have to spend the whole day, every day, listening to wonderful Christmas music!  "And a beer... in a tree."  Mommy has to watch White Christmas with us.

Daddy Bunny will help me open my presents on Christmas morning.

But most important of all, we get to spend time together, the whole family.  The big, big group on Christmas Eve, and the little group on Christmas Day (and the surrounding weekends).  I love Christmas; I love spending time with my family.

It's a Miracle, I Can See!

My screen worked all day Friday.  Wow!  I was so excited, I immediately started working on a post for my ip blog - finally, the ability to do research!

I had configured my computer fairly well for working without a screen.  I got so used to it, I forgot I could actually see.  Several times I would think to myself, "Oh, I need to find..., but it'll be difficult because I can't see.  Oh, wait, it's in the bathroom, or it's in my suitcase, not on my computer; I'll be able to see it."  Oops.

Friday was also my last day of work.  Hooray!  All done with my internship.  All done with my paper.  And NO finals.  Yippie skippy dum dippy doo!  Can you tell I'm excited?

Auntie says we're moving Sunday morning.  I'll believe it when we're there.  That's how I handle things in Africa.  Once we move, well, once the internet's packed, I don't know when I'll have internet access again.  This is just a heads up to everyone in case I disappear from the blogosphere for a week. ;)