Hardwired For Sorry [4]

September 20, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 46 Comments

If I Hear Another Sorry, I Will Scream!

I was confused after listening to the high-achieving female innovators in Amy Schumer’s video string a melody with the word sorry. What did their sorry mean? In my part of the world, sorry is usually used to convey pity and sympathy. It is a word I am intimately familiar with.

I remember being a rambunctious kid, playful and energetic. Then my world flipped and went in a direction my young mind could never have imagined. At age seven, I contracted polio and had to learn to walk again, albeit with a limp. Then, just before my sixteenth birthday, I had a freak accident and sustained a fracture to my left femur. After a couple of surgeries, I was confined to a pair of crutches. I have used them for twenty-eight years. People say sorry to me all the time even though I’m not in any kind of pain.

Because my physical disability attracted pitiful stares and sorrys, I became obsessed with trying to prove that I wasn’t as helpless and disabled as I looked. I focused my energies on education and worked hard to find a footing where the brilliant students stood. Intellectual development became my foremost life goal: if you can’t walk or run, by all means think.

My worldview changed after I read about Helen Keller’s achievements despite contracting an illness in childhood, which left her blind and mute. I also read about Franklin Roosevelt, who contracted polio at thirty-nine, but went on to become president of the United States and was re-elected three times. I believed America was the only place for my dream of a normal life. I dreamed about studying and possibly living in The States. When I finally had the opportunity to pursue an MBA in America, I was refused a study visa twice.

I was crushed by disappointment but by this time, had become a possibility thinker. I ended up in England, where I received my MBA and DBA degrees. Seven years in England, and I never heard the kind of sorry or endured the stares that made me want to hide back home.

I returned to my country after my studies hoping that because I now had Dr. before my name, sympathy would morph to admiration and sorry would drown in the applause of praise. Not so. People still stared with pitiful eyes and they still tell me sorry.

However, pity that makes me feel inadequate isn’t the only narrative. Once as I stood at Port Harcourt International Airport waiting for my luggage, a porter walked up to assist me. As we made our way out of the airport, he looked at me again and exclaimed, “Kai, fine girl like you; wetin happen to ya leg?” I was speechless for a second. Then I asked him if bad things were the preserve of ugly girls. He laughed out loud, and I joined him. Often wit is the bridge through an awkward situation.

In addition to the old mind-sets I contend with daily, I try not to sound too intelligent on purpose. I even overthink the act of posting my thoughts on social networks. I used to be disability conscious, now I am overly conscious about my intellectual achievements. After striving to be extraordinary and do extraordinarily well in my endeavours, I find myself trying to be ordinary to make everyone around me comfortable.

I have spent a good chunk of my life trying to prove a point and trying to change perceptions. So, maybe a part of me understands why the four leading female innovators in Schumer’s video are chorusing sorry. They seem to be apologising for being women at the top of their game.

We have no control over our gender. I had no control over my physical challenges. I controlled what I could. I overcame the limitations of my disability and developed myself in the ways that mattered most.

I am a woman. I have a physical disability. But then, I also have a doctorate degree. There is nothing to be sorry about. If I hear another sorry, I will scream!

Ekpos Waritimi is a management consultant, researcher, and speaker. She currently lives in Port Harcourt.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

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Hardwired For Sorry [3]

September 13, 2015September 13, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 62 Comments

An Apology For Womanhood

I posted quotes by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, on my Facebook Timeline earlier today. All day, the quotes rolled through my mind like a refrain to a sad love song. And as I navigated thick traffic in Abuja, Nigeria’s equivalent of Washington, it hung like a wet blanket alongside my cranky baby’s cries. Hunger and exhaustion made me extra tense. I turned the radio on just in time to hear the anchor dispense advice to a caller who was seeking help for a floundering marriage and periodic punches from her husband.

“You know men have egos. You just have to stoop to conquer. Avoid behaviours that anger him. If he tells you to stop serving dinner late, you too, get home earlier!”

‘Softening,’ he concluded by recommending she watch her tone and find opportune moments to discuss issues with her husband.

We raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men.

Seconds later, my car rocked from the impact of a danfo bus running into the passenger-side door where my baby was seated. The driver had been trying to shunt the traffic queue. Rage propelled me out of my car. He sauntered out of his bus muttering, “Na woman sef.”

My fury grew as he unrepentantly argued with me and as he spat, “Hey! Mistake na mistake. I get your type for house! Don’t talk to me anyhow! Na so you dey talk to your husband for house?”

Bystanders advised me to calm down. “Shebi you know he is a man,” one of them counseled.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.

When we finally made it home, the water heater failed. I needed the electrician, Mr. Kehinde, to repair it. However, I couldn’t call him because he has issues taking instructions from women. So I rang my husband who was 800km away to call the electrician who was 4km away, and tell him to fix the heater.

Later, a friend called me to lament her experience at the police station where she had gone to bail a neighbour. The officer in charge had laughed in her face and told her that because she is a woman, she was not qualified to bail anyone. My friend, a medical doctor, then had to get her driver who has a secondary school-leaving certificate, to post bail. She was bitter and vented for a long time.

Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, that I am just as worthy of acknowledgement. These are little things but sometimes it’s the little things that sting the most.

Earlier in the evening, I listened to my aunt counsel my cousin whose husband is cheating on her and doling money he wouldn’t spend on his family, on his mistress.

“Just keep your home. That’s what I know. You will not be the first woman. Men stray, they return. Just ensure he continues to eat your food and don’t deny him sex. Don’t let silly girls who have not suffered with him snatch him from you.”

We teach females, that in relationships, ‘compromise’ is what women do. We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs, or for accomplishments — which I think can be a good thing — but for the attention of men.

And then she turned to me, “I hear you are applying for PhD again. . . come, what are you looking for? You just want to compete with your husband ehn! The poor man does not have a Masters, now you are ready to lord PhD over him abi? Continue! That’s your cousin struggling right there. You don’t have problems; you want to create some for yourself with your own hands. Already, don’t you earn more than him? My dear . . . ”

We say to girls, “You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you would threaten the man.

Just before I turned in for the night, I visited Facebook. Four angry rants filled the comment section under my post. Their lowest common denominator? Women were marginalized in Nigerian society but that narrative has since changed. Citing a few trailblazers, they maintained that today’s women are just as empowered as men are. So quotes like Adichie’s only promote mischief.

I shook my head sadly. I didn’t respond. No. I shut down and kept my angst to myself. As I drifted off, I wondered why my society would showcase exceptions as the norm while women remain second-class citizens in the pecking order. Why, in spite of clear opportunities to change the status quo, do we continue to look the other way? A society that is blind to the lived experience of roughly half its population is a sorry excuse, an apology for woman empowerment.

We’ve got a long way to go baby. But maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will bring us a new song if we open our eyes.

Abiodun Baiyewu is a lawyer, human rights activist, and feminist with a strong interest in medical jurisprudence and reproductive health.

Watch Amy Schumer’s video which inspired the series.

Photo credit: Unsplash/ https://pixabay.com/en/girl-sad-crying-raining-rain-drops-690327/

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Hardwired For Sorry [2]

September 6, 2015September 6, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 47 Comments

Permission to Stand

I still remember my first board meeting. It was three weeks after my promotion took effect. After only one year in middle management, I had been promoted to executive board level in the publishing company where I worked.

For sure, I had done very well. My promotion was speedy, and, many people agreed, extremely well deserved. In addition, it was the first time in the history of the company that a foreigner (and a woman, at that), had been appointed to the board. My co-directors and their predecessors were all cut from the same cloth: Dutch men in their fifties, same lifestyle, same background, same jokes.

And so I was the proverbial breath of fresh air. Or so the CEO said as I took my seat at the table. I wasn’t quite sure what they were expecting from me. They looked kind enough, they asked my opinion, and they deferred to me on matters within my area of expertise.

Yet, I was largely quiet. For the first few months or so, I said very little. That could of course be due mainly to my introverted nature—scanning the world, observing life and its interactions, and formulating my views before expressing them.

I would never have dared utter a word unless I was sure of my premise, my arguments, and, vitally, my conclusion. I watched in admiration as my co-directors did the opposite. Especially Max, the commercial director. He would begin with a statement, firm, emphatic, sure. He would wind down various alleys of logic and counter logic, never once wavering in his sense of conviction, and then he would end his monologue, having arrived at a conclusion antithetical to the premise with which he had opened.

I would have been mortified had my thought processes been so exposed to the world, but by his manner (born of an assurance that I never before knew existed), I knew he had no such reservations.

However, my introversion was not the only reason for my reserve. In fact, it was a convenient label I put on myself, a comfort blanket which, protected me from the sharp gusts of truth: that, in a world seemingly governed by others, I was unsure of myself, earnestly seeking permission to stand.

I could not fathom why I felt that way. My technical experience and leadership skills had carried me to the place that I now occupied. Having accepted my appointment, I had every right to play my role. Everyone treated me as my new role demanded. Every voice spoke to me with much respect, save for the voice in my head.

I remember now with mirth a business trip I took to New York during those days. As I stood waiting for a taxi at JFK airport, I saw one of our most influential shareholders at the airport. He was carrying his bags and looking for a taxi. I had this crazy impulse to dash up to him and offer to carry his bags. Now I can only thank God for the steadfastness wherewith He glued my feet to the hot tarmac.

It took me a while before I realised my self-doubt was from within. That, somehow, it was bound up with being a woman. I don’t know when I came to that realization. Maybe it was when I discovered that some of the men around me were brimful with confidence but with not much ability. Maybe it was when I saw junior male employees swaggering around with an arrogance that could be explained not by talent, and certainly not by achievement. Maybe it was when I noticed that the same self-doubt that tortured me was also present in the minds of some very fine, intelligent women in our company.

Fortified with this knowledge, I set out to change my story. No, not the perception of me that others might have had, but rather the story of me that I told myself. However, in order to do that, I had first to look at myself, come to terms with what I saw, and then begin purposefully to change that vision.

And so I did that. I have begun to tell myself, first, that I am bigger on the inside than I am on the outside. It is true that I am slightly built, soft spoken, and often given to quiet introspection. However, these are all remarkable qualities, and they add something special to whatever table I may grace. They are not weaknesses to be excused away. They are strengths, because they bring empathy and perspicacity to those with whom I have to do. I also know that I am bold, principled, and strong.

I was all the while seeking permission to stand. Now I have granted myself that precious right.

Bel Andrew-Amies makes her home in Amsterdam. When she’s not immersed in the world of international business law, she works on her short story collection.

Watch Amy Schumer’s video which inspired the series.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Hardwired For Sorry [1]

August 30, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 49 Comments

I throw sorry around a lot but many times, I do not mean it as an apology for an infraction. It is my all-purpose verbal salve to lather concern, nurture, and meaningful meaninglessness to friends and strangers alike. But what lurks beneath my sorry?

Diahann Reyes writes in her post, Amy Schumer and The Art of Taking Up Space:

One of the many facets that I appreciate about comedian Amy Schumer’s work is that she shines a light not only on the cultural conditioning that keeps women in restricted place, but also she exposes the misogyny that many of us have internalized from living in a patriarchal society. As some of her sketches intimate—women and girls have been known to do as good a job as anyone of objectifying, suppressing, or disempowering themselves.

In my view, Schumer’s video is exaggerated to jolt us out of complacency and take stock. To appreciate this series, please watch Schumer’s three-minute sketch: I’m Sorry.

I’m serious, watch the video first.

Unshrinking Myself

After sharing the video with a friend, we decided to observe how much we use the word sorry. She called me one evening. Thirteen seconds into our conversation, she said, “Gotcha! You’ve said ‘sorry’ three times already.”

I had begun our conversation by apologizing for not hearing her clearly, “Hello? Sorry, I can’t hear you properly.” Then I reeled off another apology for making her wait while I put on my earphones, “Sorry, let me just use my earphones.” My third apology was for speaking out of turn, “No, sorry, you go first; you were saying?”

We both had a good laugh, especially when she used sorry twice within the next ten seconds.

On the surface there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with our sorrys. Sorry aka pardon, excuse me, kpele, etc, depending on culture and context, is the grease that facilitates polite conversation. It is sympathy, empathy, and everything else in between. However, the video made me wonder if there isn’t an unhealthy self-effacement leaning towards unworthiness in a woman’s verbal and non-verbal sorry. To my mind, the women in the video were shrinking themselves. I am yet to meet a man I admire who does this.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My parents raised me to ignore gender in striving for my goals. There were no limits to where I could go; not even the sky could hold me back. However, they could not cocoon me from the realities of socialization—an aggressive, assertive, and assured woman is a no-no. How many bold moves have been paralyzed by these words, but you’re a woman?

Over the years, some of my mentors have given me different advice on how to “shrink” myself. In a man’s world, it’s expedient to be the neck that turns the head than to be another head, complete with brains, that complements the man’s head. My mentors are successful women in their own right. Who am I to argue? But, I struggle with this concept.

As I learn to assert myself, I’ve been called a strong woman. It was always by women. It was never meant as a compliment. I catch myself shrinking my abilities, achievements, voice, again and again. Habits are hard to unlearn. Still, I have not yet turned pretence into an art form.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Photo credit: cocoparisienne/ https://pixabay.com/en/woman-woman-portrait-head-mourning-850330/

For The Love of Poetry

August 22, 2015August 23, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 47 Comments

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone. – Thomas Hardy

My English literature teacher confused me, but my sister taught me to appreciate poetry. She explained symbolism, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, and the difference between metaphor and simile. I got it but I did not get it. I mean what kind of person writes:

Hirsute hell chimney-spouts, black thunderthroes
Confluence of coarse cloudfleeces—my head sir!—scourbrush
In bitumen, past fossil beyond fingers of light—until . . .!

Sudden sprung as corn stalk after rain, watered milk weak;
As lightning shrunk to ant’s antenna, shrivelled
Off the febrile sight of crickets in the sun—

THREE WHITE HAIRS! frail invaders of the undergrowth
Interpret time. I view them, wired wisps, vibrant coiled
Beneath a magnifying glass, milk-thread presages ¹

Say what? Who in their right mind reads and understands this stuff? And yet, not comprehending, I fell in love with the cadence of the words of poets.

My first recall of writing poetry was in my late teens, when I was angry at the world. I acted out behind demure verses like the girl who leaves home wearing a knee-length skirt only to fold the waistband and transform it to a mini skirt once out of sight. I flirted with nuance, condensing meaning into short lines. Ambiguity meant I could write about everything and nothing. I created word puzzles in which every interpretation fit. Words like:

His silence reverberated with rage from now to eternity

I learnt the economy of language. Still, I wasn’t very good. The story I wanted to tell balked at stanzas and writing in free verse was caged freedom. Prose enabled me to soar. My sentences rambled beyond set margins instead of stopping around the middle of the page and I welcomed breaking them up into paragraphs.

Prose is my husband ‘til death do us part, but my affair with poetry continues. When sentences come to me, they bounce with the cadence of the words of poets.

Timi @livelytwist
© Timi Yeseibo 2015

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. – Wallace Stevens

My first poem was a disaster. It is only a disaster now after enough years have passed for me to look back on it. I forgive myself for it because my sister liked it. And since it was the poem I wrote in a blank card meant to wish her success in her final exams, I breathe easy.

“Why would anybody prefer poetry to prose?” my study group mate once asked me.

“Because that’s where murderers go to hide dead bodies.” I answered.

We laughed together for a bit and then he stopped midway, leaving me to see the laughter to the end of a minute.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

I expected him to get it. We were returning from a study group meeting of chemical engineers who had to fulfill a one-credit literature course. As the one who knew a thing or two about poems, I had spent the entire afternoon explaining a brilliant poem about a contract worker in colonial southern Africa.

To the rest of the world, poets go to poetry to hide things. To my cousin, every poet is a fussy genie, hiding plain language in plain sight with difficult words, like magic. Maybe it is true. After my first poem, I spent years playing detective, investigating hidden meanings in all manner of poetry.

Poetry is sensual word craft, as painting is to photography or music is to speech. A word, a sound, a sight, a smell, a breeze, the rain, any of these can trigger a poem. If a poet catches that trigger, the poem will lead them to a place where its gems are found and where everyone else will need to be a detective if they will find the poet again.

I wrote poetry long after I had written much prose. When I write poetry, I do not write with the intention to mystify. To me, writing is as much an attempt to discover a theme as I hope reading the poem will be for my readers. I stack a word after a word, speaking not to the entire poem, but speaking in that instance to the next word, the next line, and maybe eventually to the entire poem.

For example, I fell in love with Somali poetry in 2013. Due to the country’s difficult history, Somali writing is in a phase that births literature with heart. Triggered by romance and tempered by distance, the product of that literary love was poem after poem after poem. One day I shall sit on the shores of Mogadishu. We will forget all that has been. There, we shall talk about love.

I think about you, Mogadishu

You star in my nightmares
You seduce in my temple
You challenge my sleep.

You keep me up till 11:30
Then you wake me at midnight
You should leave in the morning
You should leave in the afternoon
But by evening you’re still here
Strange damsel of my dreams
I think about you.

You hide many secrets in your hijab
I cannot unravel nor understand
Your smile is brighter, embarrasses the sun
You frown darker than night.
When you turn and walk away, I know you want me to follow
You tell me nothing; only in your eyes I see everything
Strange damsel of my dreams
I think about you.

Read the rest of the poem

Dela @ African Soulja
© Delalorm Semabia 2015

Soyinka, Wole, To My First White Hairs, Poems of Black Africa, ed. Soyinka Wole (London: Heinemann/AWS, 1975), 282.

Photo credit: JovanaP/ https://pixabay.com/en/reading-old-newspapers-dusty-888864/

Small Spaces

August 16, 2015August 16, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 31 Comments

You pointed at the students outside the library and complained their chatter rose and filled the apartment like steam. I said the apartment had charm but did not say what we knew; you would not be around to hear the noise during the day. I swept my arm at the blue wall-to-wall carpet that flowed like an endless sea and goaded you to take in the view of the lake.

“It’s doable,” I whispered.

“But you don’t have a job . . .”

Those six words imprisoned my mouth.

Therefore, we rented the other apartment. The front door opened into the living area, which opened into the kitchen, which opened into the sleeping area. The bathroom was an afterthought of clever masonry, tacked to the right wall of the sleeping area and cordoned off with a curtain that reminded you of Joseph’s coat of many colours.

We squashed our belongings into the interstices the landlord called rooms, but we could not squeeze our personalities past each other. When I turned, I bumped into you. When you turned, you bumped into me. And so a hurricane brewed.

The problem with your invitation to that argument was not our disparate points of view, but my overwhelming desire to win at something, anything, and the knowledge that I could. You bade me sit, so that neither of us had comparative height advantage.

We had agreed that we would always start with bad news and end on a high note by delivering good news last. But you reversed the order. I hardly heard your praise because it was as short as a one-minute foreplay. Your accusations were long and resembled the leading questions attorneys ask in American soaps, stunning the defendant and then finishing with, no further questions, Your Honour.

I adjusted my frame on the narrow bed, one of two pushed together. Small spaces should have sparked chemistry not tension between us. Was it too late? I rehearsed my new strategy: be quiet, don’t try to win, acquiesce, and retreat. No matter what happens, do not win this argument.

“On the charge of not rinsing my teacup and plate after coffee and donut, I plead guilty Your Honour.” I smiled, “I am very sorry.”

I saw the dilemma in your eyes. You had not expected to win in this manner, closing arguments defused. So, I pled with you, “Let it go.”

Instead, you looked at the window, which we opened with fear because the broken glass mocked the sellotape that held it in place. You stood and stabbed me in the thighs and buttocks but excess flesh dulled your blade. Then you selected a garasuki knife, those six words, which imprisoned my mouth, and plunged it into my heart, twisting for good measure.

I reacted from the gut. My words were like arrows with poisoned tips. They were so many your shield gradually slipped. Then weak and bleeding, we both staggered to the ground.

“Words matter. You should know,” you coughed and spat.

I knew. My six hundred unpublished pages lay on the table.

“Bloody hell! No one should attend an argument after only three hours of sleep, two coffees, and paracetamol,” I gasped.

You laughed and I laughed.

But that summer, for the first time, you only paid your share of the rent. Then you moved to the first-floor apartment opposite the library. The one you said we could not afford.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Photo credit: Unsplash/ https://pixabay.com/en/alley-pavement-houses-narrow-urban-336539/

An Unwanted Miracle

August 9, 2015August 9, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 52 Comments

After she heard the prognosis, Mirembe obsessed over death, kindling a comfortable friendship. Each day, life bled out of her and the sterile white room adorned with monitors, pumps, and tubes became her new home. The secret she had kept for twenty-five years bounced in her chest and flirted with her tongue like fireflies in flight.

Mirembe wanted to share her secret before her speech slurred and she no longer recognized the people who came and went, like the nurse who lifted her and turned her from side to side. Tattoos of hideous things peeked from underneath his short sleeve, but she was too tired to care. Another nurse scurried around the room, busy with everything but eye contact as if she was afraid of catching death.

One afternoon Mirembe looked at the nurse and opened her mouth. She searched her head for his name while her heart worked twice as hard to quiet her panic. He quizzed his brow when she clutched his arm with weak strength.

“Dementia,” she blurted.

He nodded, but she knew he did not understand. It was time. “Any day now,” the doctor had said.

That evening, Ntare took her hand, smoothing his thumb over her veins. His touch was gentle for one so big. Husband and only child hushed her when she coughed and tried to begin.

Mugisha said, “Easy mum. Easy.”

When Mirembe looked at her son, her resolve fled. Would she not break his heart? Was the secret not the reason success had eluded him, causing him to flit from thing to thing like one who had no centre? His parent’s money meant he could continue to search for himself ad infinitum. Yes, it was her duty to bring closure.

And Ntare, her partner, lover, companion, and friend, what would it do to him? Ntare who had never doubted his place in the world, carved on the globe with his sure hands. No, she had forgiven him for past indiscretions. She was not seeking revenge.

Mirembe had read that when people are dying, dying being a present continuous activity, they have a compulsion to tell all. She concluded that in death, absolution is final; secrets lie stripped of power. Secrets are useless in the place where the dead go. They only retain value on earth.

“Ntare, you know that I love you?”

He answered with his eyes, his thumb still caressing her veins.

“Mugisha—”

“Easy mum, easy.”

Although Mirembe had acted this script out before, she could not find her voice. She flitted from topic to topic like fireflies in flight—morality, justice, forgiveness, impulses, wrong decisions, redemption. Dying conferred privileges. They let her hold the mic without betraying their impatience. When she could not arrive at her centre in spite of her rigmarole, she let the words escape in a whisper.

“Ntare, Mugisha is not your son. Mugisha, Ntare is not your father.”

What followed transpired quickly. Mirembe watched them, Ntare, Mugisha, and herself with detachment. Mugisha’s insistent, “Then who? Who mum?” brought her back. But her answer seemed to come from a distant place.

“Didn’t really know him . . . Germany. One evening . . . long a . . .”

Frustration, anger, disbelief, and hate, bristled and circled the room like aeroplanes stacked in a holding pattern. However, dying put her in cruise control shielding her from all of them. Her eyelids began to close and she refused to fight.

Mirembe awoke with life creeping in her bones and looked around. “Am I in Heaven?”

The white wall, monitors, pumps, and tubes replied.

“It’s a miracle!” the doctor later proclaimed.

One by one, sometimes in twos, and other times in threes, doctors came to examine her. Once a large sea of white came. One peered over her charts, while the others took notes.

She tried to make the days go slowly by calling attention to pain in different parts of her body.

“Psychosomatic,” the doctor waved away her concerns as he surveyed another batch of test results.

The days kept racing. The nurse now wanted to hold her gaze, but Mirembe had forgotten her name and the nurse with tattooed arms had stopped coming. Maybe the novelty of her miracle wore off or they needed the room, one morning too soon, they shooed her warmly into the angry arms of Ntare and Mugisha.

Mirembe sat in the living room in the home they had built, kneading her fingers in her palm. Could one secret mixed into the foundation fracture concrete? Oh, death was so far away.

“Mum, I can’t believe you lied to me. You’re just a bloody hypocrite!”

“Where are you going?” Mirembe asked.

“I don’t know!” Mugisha brushed past Ntare to the front door and then out into the hot afternoon, leaving the door wide open.

“Ntare . . . Ntare, please go after him. Don’t let him go.”

Ntare did not move. “You should have left things the way they were.” His eyes were cold.

Then Ntare turned and was gone. He did not hear Mirembe say, “Wait.” He did not hear her say, “I love you.”

She picked up her phone.

“Dr Phil? Yes—yes, it’s me. Please tell me, I mean explain it to me again, why did I not die?”

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Time to Read

August 2, 2015August 2, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 33 Comments

Blog articles on my WordPress Reader started appearing with an estimated reading time (ERT) tucked at the bottom left-hand corner, about two weeks ago. So, for example, my blog posts looked like this.

Many writers I know, including myself, lean towards verbosity. We are in love with our words. When you are in love, words are harder to kill. A blog post may therefore take hours to complete. As Samuel Jackson notes, “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” At first, it was jarring to see work that took me seventy-two hours to produce reduced to a three-minute read, word count notwithstanding. But this is the reality of life online; writers have much to share, readers have little attention to spare. Erik Qualman caps the average person’s attention span at seven seconds, one second less than a goldfish’s eight seconds.

If the first three sentences of an article is followed by: read 1827 more words, only several things make me continue reading—familiarity with the author, curiosity occasioned by a superb opening line, the title, prior knowledge or interest in the subject, or a referral.

Time is like a loaf of bread, there are only so many slices I can cut. My life is characterized by acute time rationing—ever heard that time waits for no man? It is as if the world is spinning faster and faster on its axis and I am getting dizzier and dizzier from information pollution. How long, thus becomes a valid question.

I mean, if completion is my goal, then time is often the decider between a three-course meal and a sandwich-to-go at lunch break or between a 500-page novel and a collection of short stories on a one-hour flight. Would you watch a YouTube video without checking its length?

I find myself liking ERT appended to blog articles. ERT on platforms like Longreads and Medium helps me narrow my plethora of reading options. ERT even trumps word count in my view because it makes mathematics unnecessary i.e. dividing total number of words by average reading speed.

Similarly, in making a case for why we find listicles appealing, Maria Konnikova notes that an article written as a numbered list, “. . . promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront. Together, these create an easy reading experience, in which the mental heavy lifting of conceptualization, categorization, and analysis is completed well in advance of actual consumption—. . . And there’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data.”

She writes, “The more we know about something—including precisely how much time it will consume—the greater the chance we will commit to it. The process is self-reinforcing: we recall with pleasure that we were able to complete the task (of reading the article) instead of leaving it undone and that satisfaction, in turn, makes us more likely to click on lists again—even ones we hate-read. The social psychologist Robert Zajonc, who made his name studying the connection between emotion and cognition, argued that the positive feeling of completion in and of itself is enough to inform future decisions. Preferences, goes his famous coinage, need no inferences.”

I cannot help but draw parallels, unscientific they may be, between these observations about listicles and the value of knowing ERT upfront. Hampered by time, ERT helps me choose what to read now and what to save for later.

When Slate introduced ERT, this 3.5-minute video mocked Millennials’ propensity to want to know everything now.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ppx1hm/slate-s–minu tes-to-read–feature

Two years on, and I think Slate was on to something. Do you think blog articles should display estimated reading time?

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

We The People

July 26, 2015July 27, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 51 Comments

Imagine a school playground thirty years ago. A girl in a white blouse tucked into a maroon skirt, shares an opinion with four others dressed like her. One of them starts to make fun of her accent, mimicking her speech. The others laugh and join in. The girl soon realizes that raising her voice to defend herself prolongs the caricature. She stomps off to a corner. When they walk down the corridor to class, she lingers a few paces behind. Her classmates are still giggling and acting as they enter the classroom. They incite the whole class to uproarious laughter.

Fast-forward to today. Same incident, only that one kid would have recorded it with her smart phone and then shared it on social media. This time, as the girl walks down the corridor, there’s more laughter and pointing as students look down at their phones and up at her. She would eventually watch the video and her sympathisers would assure her it isn’t that bad. Compelled by curiosity, she would read comment after comment and die a second death.

Humans are the common denominator in both stories. In a previous post, I suggested that maybe technology is neutral; it just amplifies who we already are. There are humans behind the inanimate internet. Give a fool money and you magnify his ability to do foolish things, but money isn’t the real problem. The internet can provide a breeding ground for our worst impulses to flourish.

In his 2015 TED Talk, Jon Ronson begins by pointing out, “In the early days of Twitter . . . voiceless people realized that they had a voice, and it was powerful and eloquent.” He then tells how people used their power to effect change, saying, “This was like the democratization of justice. Hierarchies were being leveled out. We were going to do things better.”

However, the major part of his talk centres on our own misuse of privilege, the opposite of democracy. He traces how one ill-advised tweet by Justine Sacco, a former New York PR officer with 170 Twitter followers, incited a Twitter storm that not only made her the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter, but also cost her, her job. His talk is titled, How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life.

Sacco’s story isn’t new to me. But, Ronson’s story telling made me uncomfortably aware of how gleefully we applaud another’s fall. According to Ronson, our desire to be seen to be compassionate is what led us to commit this profoundly un-compassionate act. Although I did not participate in the Sacco mob action, there was no moral pump fisting from me. I could picture myself in another time and setting, in a white blouse and maroon skirt.

Social media is now and the future. It is the platform where I share my thoughts with the world and interact with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Because the rules of engagement continue to evolve, talks like Jon Ronson’s hold my interest. Kudos to those raising their voices against social media shaming and calling for better internet policing. But who is going to police the place where it all begins, that is, the human heart?

I share details about Ronson’s talk and other innocuous social media faux pas with a friend. She says, “You see, that’s why I’m not on Twitter and hardly do Facebook.” I nod but after she leaves, I think about how Ronson concludes his talk, “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.”

Surely, abandoning social media isn’t the answer?

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Jon Ronson’s TED talk is shy of 18 minutes. If you’re reading this, you do social media and listening to it is worth your time.

Sustaining Momentum

July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 66 Comments

It seems fitting that I write about enthusiasm at this mid-way-into-the-year point, because I have nearly lost mine on several occasions and maybe I’m not alone. I tell you, listlessness caught me by surprise. Me, who began the year wishing all Happy New Momentum, why would I not want to show up in my life?

I read interviews of smiling photoshopped people, who say because they are doing what they love and are paid for it, they bounce like springs and chuckle like old couples in love. Meaning that if a square peg found a square hole, he would have discovered the centre that defies gravity. Hmmm, I want to ask them, what happens on days when they wake up but do not want to get up? Or are they from Mars?

When I meet people who have arrived at the place where I am going, my question will not be, how did you get here? It will be, now that you are here, how do you intend to stay here?

I’ve been digging in my childhood memories for a time when I did not feel like going to school or playing. Here is one—my mother would wake me up at an ungodly hour to get ready for school and I would pull my wrapa over my head, pretending to pray. But ten annoying minutes between sleep and wakefulness was just a blip on my bright day. Of course, memories lie. Nevertheless, they are proof that I can craft stories from sketches of the lacklustre days I have endured this year.

Still, I wish that three-year old who leaps out of bed and heads for his toys, putting one Lego brick on top another, could articulate the reason for his energy. Has he learnt to expect pleasures scheduled into his day by his parents? There was that awful year in which I looked backwards for so long I turned into a pillar of salt. To the degree that salt has value, I was a valuable monument but I did not think I had anything to look forward to, rooted as I was to one spot.

Was it not the other day that an eight-year old came up to me and declared, “I’m bored,” as if I am a boredom-reliever? My first instinct was to suggest things she could do. But I caught myself.

“What can you do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

I continued reading while she shuffled her feet and then kicked at nothing.

“I’m bored,” she said, tugging my sleeve.

“What can you do about it?” I asked, softening my voice.

She began to list the things she could do, like play with her brother. She calculated the constraints she faced; he didn’t want to play. Then she examined her other options. I thought, good girl! It’s never too early to learn to take responsibility for your own enthusiasm.

If you think starting is hard, try finishing. Vision leaks and passion wanes due to disappointments and even successes. I am responsible for my enthusiasm—finding it, understanding it, jumpstarting it, feeding it, and protecting it. It’s really up to me.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Has your enthusiasm taken a dip? How did you recover it?
Share a quote that fires you up if you have one. Here’s one that makes me laugh and then move…

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
– Vince Lombardi

Photo Credit: Wokandapix/ https://pixabay.com/en/run-running-sport-fitness-healthy-750466/

Heat

July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 24 Comments

He stared at it for a long time. But when he looked up at the huge round clock, incongruous analogue, mocking the digital revolution below, only seven minutes had elapsed.

Now that the man had finished reading the label on it and his son had stopped pushing his face, chin first towards it, his daughter refused to go. The girl stood in front of it, revelling in the way it made her t-shirt crease and lean into her chest, her short sleeves shaking and sharing her delight.

“Mieke! Kom op!”

She ignored her father and spoke into it. The sound of her voice breaking and quivering cajoled her brother to let go of his father’s hand and join shoulders with his sister. Their voices trembled together, gibberish to others but holding meaning for them both.

And he remembered what it felt like to have someone whose voice rose and fell in cadence with his. He should not have let her go.

“Dani!” their father called, securing the box in a tighter embrace before turning and walking away.

He measured the angle formed by tracing the son’s head up to the father’s and down to the daughter’s. An obtuse angle, the geometry of his life. He must have looked at their backs for too long, because when he turned around to move closer to it, two girls were already there. Their legs, as yet, insufficiently kissed by the sun, stretched long from the edge of their bum shorts to their ankles. They wore black flip-flops decorated with neon flowers, which would glow in the dark.

The first girl raised her arms and let her mid-riff enjoy it and although it teased her crop top, it could not lift the blouse higher. The second girl used one hand to plunge her neckline so that it could find more places to affect. They giggled. Then they were gone, as quickly as his youth, hobbling as they shared the weight of the box.

The whirring noise coming from it reminded him why he had come.

“Pardon. Meneer?”

The boy who addressed him wore a red shirt with a name pin on the front pocket. The boy was leading a man with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves to it. He wanted to say he was not done yet, but moved aside instead.

He watched the boy, nineteen perhaps, summer job maybe, gesturing with his hands as he explained what it could do. The man nodded and rubbed his neck. He imagined that this man wearing a striped shirt sat in an office from nine until five, getting up for coffee every hour, and sending emails every other hour. The man’s torso had made peace with that kind of life.

The man must have asked how much and then asked for a discount because the boy told him 50 Euros. The boy said it was the last one but since it had been on display, the man could have it for 45. The man shook his head as if he could bargain on a day like today. The boy suddenly seemed older as he explained capitalism to the man.

“Tomorrow, we will get more stock and sell them for 70 Euros and people will still buy. We could have sold this one, but we needed a demo.”

He saw an opportunity he had not known existed and fingered the money in his pocket. But the man nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. Then the boy bent down and got to work.

He watched the boy break it in parts and steady the blades before pushing its head into a rectangular carton. He folded the cord in 4 cm strips, securing it with a string. Then the boy hoisted the box and walked to the counter where the man was taking out his credit card.

He swallowed his anger like saliva that gathers in one’s mouth from inactivity. He recalled his last night with her. She had asked him what his plans were, if he was going to drift forever. Her parting words, the patient dog never eats the fattest bone; can’t you be crazy for once, galvanized him to action now.

He dashed to the counter and snatched the box. He made for the door, pushing languid bodies with the box. The alarm sounded but the heat had humbled the security guard in a navy blazer who possessed neither baton nor gun.

Only when he reached his apartment door did he stop looking back. Inside, the open windows yawned and wished for something to do. Sweat gathered around his neck then slithered to his chest. He opened the box and put the parts together, steadying the blades as he had seen the boy with the red shirt do.

Finished, he admired his work and waited for it. After two minutes, he rechecked the parts and fumbled with the cord. He searched the box, moving his hand from side to side. He let out a deep sigh and banged the wall. Then he dropped on his bed and cursed the heat while his sweat seeped into the hot sheet.

The infrared sensor on its sleek black panel glowed and turned to an eye that grew and grew. Then the boy with the red shirt emerged from the eye. The boy shrugged and gestured with the remote in his hand, “It is the heat; it makes people crazy.”

He blinked and looked away, fear creating tremors in his heart. When he dared to look again, the glow and the boy were gone. He groaned. Was there no more room for analogue in a digital world?

Tomorrow he would return to the shop wearing a baseball cap. Tonight he would wrestle the heat. He picked her wedding invitation from the bed and began to move his hand from side to side, rewarding himself with hot air. He imagined the card was made from steel and black plastic, like the fan on display in the shop.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

The Conversation

July 5, 2015July 5, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 41 Comments

“Stop! Wait, wait. Na wa. Which conversation are we having? This one or the one we had a few days ago?”

“This one!”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean are you sure? Am I a child? I hate it when you patronize me!”

“Sorry o . . . that was not my intention—”

“As I was saying, so what did you mean when you said what you said about Jimi’s—”

“Ahn ahn, which conversation are we having now?”

“We’re having this one, the one we had a few days ago, and every single one we’ve ever had!”

“Wahala dey—”

“What did you say?”

“I’m listening . . .”

“So what did you mean?”

“I . . . I meant what I said . . .”

“Meaning?”

“Ha, what I said na?”

“Please humour me, elaborate . . .”

“Mehn, okay, I can’t remember what I said.”

“You said that what a woman brings to the table increases her value. That the assets Jimi’s wife brought to the table had diminished comparatively in the last several years. That for women, love and attractiveness were neither here nor there as they placed a higher premium on the combo—love and security but for men an inverse relationship holds—”

“Wow! I said all that?”

“Yes. I mean no . . . the magazine article put it that way, but yeah, in essence, it’s the same sentiment you shared, I guess . . .”

“Which magazine? I can’t remember saying—”

“How can you forget? That night we returned—”

“Okay, okay, if you say so.”

“So what did you mean?”

“Hmmm. Jimi loves his wife and he’s chosen to see other assets beyond what she first had to offer.”

“But she’s . . . she just . . . she doesn’t really take care. . .”

“She’s fat.”

“That’s not politically correct! She’s just on the big side!”

“Okay.”

“You were saying?”

“No, no. . . I’m done. Political correctness stifles conversation, don’t you think?”

“Just say what’s on your mind. It’s not as if you’re giving a TED Talk!”

“So, obviously, a man of his influence and means would be spoilt for options. Though people who’ve done business with him vouch for his integrity as well.”

“You didn’t say this part that day.”

“I’m not a parrot. These are just my thoughts—”

“But you said one of the things that put men off is unattractiveness. That after hooking the guy, some women just stop trying . . .”

“I did?”

“Yes! Remember? When we were dating?”

“That was like what? Years ago?”

“Three and two months to be precise.”

“Elephant mem— hey, where are you going? Why did you put on the light? Turn it off please!”

“I want you to see—”

“See what? Geez—”

“I knew it!”

“What?”

“You think my butt is too flabby!”

“But I didn’t say so!”

“You said geez!”

“Because of the light!”

“But when Patrick said that if he were married to Jimi’s wife, he would’ve taken off, you laughed.”

“Seriously? That’s just a guy thing. He didn’t mean it and we were joking.”

“A very mean joke about a woman who’s had kids. Do you know what having kids does to a woman’s body?”

“Em . . . em, which conversation are we having now?”

“What do you mean? We are just talking! Why do you keep saying, ‘which conversation are we having’?”

“Because—”

“Some women just manage to look great no matter what . . . like Angela. Four kids and she’s still tight. What do you think of Angela?”

“I haven’t thought of her. I have eyes for only you.”

“And Jimi’s wife obviously, since you noticed she’s fat! Are. . . are you listening?”

“Uhuh.”

“You’re sleeping?”

“No.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“That’s fantastic! We are pregnant! Come here!”

“Not sure . . . I’m late. I’ll buy a kit tomorrow . . .”

“We’ll do it together.”

“Okay, I’d like that.

“Good. Come to bed—”

“See? See? When I walk it just kinda wiggles all over the place!”

“Mmmm hmmm.”

“What?”

“Are you wearing anything under? Turn . . . walk again let me see . . .nice . . .very nice.”

“Gosh! Are you even looking?

“Oh yes! And even if your butt is as wide as Texas and lumpy like dough, I would still love you.”

“Lumpy like dough—”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Oya, please turn off the light and come back to bed.”

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Skype Dad

June 28, 2015July 4, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 53 Comments

He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay.
That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.
– Jonathan Safran Foer –

I was raised in a time when being a man included protecting and providing for one’s family as the primary breadwinner. This drive, not my alarm clock, is the reason I am out of the house before 8 a.m. Due to the changing economic landscape, I can no longer marry one job for life. My friends and I have changed jobs at least thrice, foraging for choice assignments on different continents.

I work 6000km away from where my family resides. Every other fortnight, at the end of a six-hour flight and one-hour cab ride, I turn my key in the lock of our home. Depending on the time of the day, the sound of “Daddy! Daddy’s home!” fills the hallway extinguishing any trace of weariness. Some months I spend more time with them because of national holidays or meetings, which are scheduled near the city where they live.

One evening, exasperated that my eight-year old wasn’t concentrating on his homework, I let out, “I’ll soon knock some sense into your head!” I didn’t mean it of course. He must have thought I did, because he replied, “No, you can’t,” and laughed while throwing his pencil in the air.

He was right. I could not have. We were on Skype.

Skype gives me the illusion that I am there for breakfast on weekends and dinner and bedtime on some weeknights. I am sometimes forgotten on the kitchen table, left staring at the white ceiling, when TV or something else captures my children’s imagination. Their vocabulary includes poor connection and weak signal and we have learnt to decipher the ‘omens’ of the Wi-Fi signal bars on our devices like fortune-tellers predicting the future.

This present-absence weighs on my heart. Am I a good dad? Am I missing my children’s growing years? Will they grow up resenting me? Have I exhausted the options for securing a job closer home? Beyond financial security for my family, what about my self-actualization and professional growth?

There are stretches of time when my colleagues, men and women who live with their families in the city where I work, hunch over spreadsheets and reports, late into the night. As I leave them behind and head to my small apartment, I contemplate the difference between 11km and 6000km. Is it the weekends?

Absence can make the heart fonder or ponder. If I am fully present when I am with my children, the memories we create as I drop them off at school or play with them in the park, might put paid to questions my absence creates. Nevertheless, their mum’s constant sacrificial presence, for which I am tirelessly thankful, reinforces the answers they seek.

One night after I read my daughter a bedtime story and kiss her goodnight, my lips leave a tiny film of moisture on my iPad screen. The sensation is cool, but my heart remains warm for a long time afterwards.

Skype Dad travels round the globe on business assignments, but is home at every opportunity. He shared his story with me in reaction to the post, A Man Just Like You and Me.

©Timi Yeseibo 2015

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ https://pixabay.com/en/leather-shoes-boots-tie-laces-691609/

A Man Like You and Me

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 23 Comments

It’s only when you grow up and step back from him–or leave him for your own home–it’s only then that you can measure his greatness and fully appreciate it.
– Margaret Truman –

Becoming Dad

“Ha, mo de ma’ngbe e jo gan o . . .” my father replied, after some silence; his voice strained with regret.

His eyes were misty and distant as the words fell from his mouth a second time, “Ha and I used to dance with you in my arms a lot.”

I had just asked my father why he never played with me when I was growing up. It was a warm Tuesday morning and the sun’s glow outlined the Welsh mountains. We scoffed a lovely breakfast at The Melting Pot, my wife’s café. While resting our food, we talked about the meaningfulness of things done and left undone. The mood felt safe enough for me to explore territory I should have outgrown but which sometimes dragged me back to youthful despair, hence my question.

You see, he was visiting my family again after several years. We spent more time together during this visit than we’d ever done before. In recent years, we’d begun to discuss matters, from the deep and trivial to personal and philosophical. Each subsequent discussion stretched us, not apart, but closer, as we better understood one another’s worlds.

He leaned forward in his seat and explained that he had no such upbringing or peer influence. Moreover, he was usually away because of work. He reassured me that he loved me, but given his background, he’d only danced and played with me in my very early years. We were both sad that he had neither seen nor met what had been a big need for me.

I am now a proud father of two wonderful children. Ours is a joyful story of love and affection expressed through banter, wrestling, singing, cuddling, debates, work, travel, and discipline.

However, as a young married man I had angst about having children though I relished the prospect. I wanted to be the beautiful father I had carefully conceived, but there was no one to walk me down that road. Because I’d heard that hurt people hurt people and you can become the worst of what you hate, I feared that I would wreck my children.

I studied and I prayed. A major answer came through friendship with our pastors Rob and Sue. The intimacy they shared with their kids freaked me out at first, but I soon realised it was what I longed for. My wounds began to heal as they mentored my wife and me.

I believe every man has a wound or two that may hamper his display of love or calcify his heart towards his children. I also believe each man has enough desire, courage, and capacity to love his children and show it in edifying ways that buoy them into robust futures.

I’m still on the road to becoming a beautiful dad. However, I’m confident that my children are not archiving questions they plan to ask me when they are forty-four and I’m visiting!

Later that evening, my father watched me battle my children on the carpet for what seemed an eternity to him. He exclaimed with delight, “Ha, joo, ma se awon omo yen l’ese o! Please, don’t injure those children o!”

My children and I are enjoying the life my father couldn’t have with me. He treasures our lives because he is part of the reason I found a happy intervention and started a different story.

OluFemi Ogunbanwo lives in North Wales with his wife Margaret and 2 kids aged 21 and 15. He is a Pastor, Family Mediator, and Parenting Coach.

Seeing Dad Through Daddy Eyes

My best time with my dad was when I was about eight or nine. Dad was always the disciplinarian. He gets a bad rap in my memory, which is unfairly coloured by that one attribute, except when I focus on this period of my life.

Several defining incidents jump to mind. First was when I told Dad that our dog, Ricky, was run over by a car. My strong, Nigerian, macho dad turned to mush. He was visibly upset and I thought he would cry. I witnessed a sensitivity that I had never seen before.

My fascination with science started early. Dad got me a chemistry set and I had fun with it. I also spent many hours shoving dad’s tester into live sockets for the fun of seeing the light come on. I tried to create my own lamp once; armed with bulb, bulb holder, electric cable, and plug obtained from Dad’s supplies drawer. I put it all together but since I hadn’t learnt about proper wiring, I ended up with a mini explosion rather than a lit bulb when I plugged in my contraption. My ingenuity was rewarded with a tanned bottom.

I remember riding my Chopper bicycle with stabilizers down our crescent-shaped driveway, which ran for about 100 metres linking the entry and exit gates of our house. One day, Dad decided the stabilizers were coming off. He came close, real close, supporting my bike and me, running down the driveway with me, and then suddenly letting go. I went through a mixture of emotions: enjoying his tenderness yet embarrassed at being the focus of attention. I was afraid of disappointing him if I fell, but I relished the adrenaline-fuelled exhilaration of riding unsupported with the wind in my face. I was riding! I was riding!

As I grew older, I felt Dad should have done more, been more loving, paid more attention to me, disciplined me less, and better prepared me for life ahead. So I withdrew from him and moved forward, leaning on myself.

I realise now that even though he looked so big and mature then, he was younger than I am now. A man with five kids in his early forties, he held a mid-management government job. He clawed his way out of poverty with a technical school qualification to insulate his own family from every trace of his earlier life in a polygamous home. He never experienced the love of a father yet he displayed more than he’d ever received.

Have I done better with my son and daughters even though I started out with much more? Would I have done half as much as Dad did if life served me with what he was given?

Faced with my own pressures, my son is being relegated in my thoughts, more often than I’d like to admit, to a day in future when I will have time to be the dad I swore I would be. Remembering my youth brings home the truth that life is only lived in the present.

Dad, I have come to appreciate you more than I did back then. Thank you for giving me more love than you ever received. I hope I honour your legacy by doing the same with my kids.

Carlton Williams lives in Lagos with his wife Anita and has four children. His life mission, expressed in Christian ministry and business, is to help people discover and demonstrate their God-given magnificence.

Photo Credit: Wokandapix/ https://pixabay.com/en/dad-father-tie-father-s-day-798086/

Forging Connections through the Internet

June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 64 Comments

A friend shares a story about a CSI-style drug bust sans gunfire in her apartment building. When the police question her about her neighbours who are involved in the crime, they are surprised that she knows so little about them. I am not. Once, I saw a man fitting a key into the lock of a front door two houses from mine. He waved as I walked past and I nodded in response. I hadn’t seen him before. Maybe he is a neighbour. Maybe he is a thief. This is city life.

It is against this backdrop that I wonder if the internet and social media and the technology behind them are responsible for the distance and disconnect among people living in the same physical space. Before cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter, we insulated ourselves from each other with newspapers and earplugs on the bus or train. Maybe technology is neutral; it just amplifies who we already are.

In his 2011 TEDx Talk, Simon Sinek argues that nothing replaces human contact. He says, “. . . technology is absolutely fantastic for the exchange of information and the exchange of ideas. Technology is absolutely wonderful for speeding transactions. It’s wonderful for resourcing and finding people, but it is terrible for creating human connections. You cannot form trust through the internet.”

Since that talk, human interaction via the internet has been steadily rising as evidenced by increase in social media use. When I emailed people whom I had only ‘met’ on the internet and asked them to each write a 300-word piece on some aspect of motherhood for my blog, I was asking them to trust me with their stories. How could they be sure I would treat their stories with integrity? How could I be sure that they would deliver the stories they said they would?

For me, transactional trust began by examining their digital footprint—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or blog profiles, and the writing on their blogs. I suspect the converse is true for them too and that having mutual digital friends played a part. Working together to polish stories necessitated questions about word choice and sentence structure, which fostered meaningful connection. It was humbling to hear their backstories.

In the end, you read the finished story, and all our worlds became smaller because story mirrors life and life mirrors story. Every story on your phone or tablet or laptop was an invitation to trust and an opportunity to forge connection.

Writing can create empathy and establish credibility. If trust is a function of the part of the brain that has no capacity for language, causing people to look at empirical evidence and still say, “Something doesn’t feel right,” then some kind of digital intuition is vital to navigate the future because we are using technology to form human connection after all.

I agree that nothing replaces human contact; nothing should. However, until I meet you in person, I hope technology continues to connect us through words.

I cannot thank you enough for knitting your heart with ours as we shared what motherhood has meant to us this past six weeks.

p.s. Thank you Ozoz, Afi, Eileen, Elaine, Taye, Yvonne, Joxy, Brina, Unathi, and Tamkara!

Photo Credit: Kaboompics/ http://pixabay.com/en/technology-laptop-keyboard-computer-791029/

Rethinking Motherhood

June 7, 2015June 7, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 22 Comments

I

She volunteered at an orphanage in Lagos, driven by her need for a baby. It was symbiotic; the babies also needed a mother. She changed diapers, fed, and held them. She sang quietly to them, tears welling up in her eyes as it receded from theirs. The way they hungered for her touch and cocked their heads to make eye contact with her legitimized her hunger for a child. Her time with them pacified but did not satisfy her hunger. She wanted her own child.

As a single woman in her thirties, legal adoption isn’t an option for her. According to the Family Law code in Lagos State, women below forty-five years don’t meet the criteria for adoption. The law is not her only constraint: culture frowns on single motherhood and her religion is negatively silent about it.

She gave up volunteering after a few visits because a couple adopted the child of her heart. Although she knew they would do well by the girl, she was heartbroken and reported ill at work the next Monday. She spent the day wetting her pillows, stung by the loneliness that comes with being single and the childlessness that compounds it.

She is not alone. There is a growing demography of single women in their forties and fifties who may never marry or may be past their reproductive years before they get a chance at motherhood. Should marriage or a steady male presence always be the precursor to motherhood without exception?

The absence of marriage does not take away the longing for motherhood. Ask the forty-five-year-old woman who never married and woke up to the onset of menopause or the thirty-eight year old who found out she has endometriosis. Ask your friend who was married for fifteen years and lost her husband three weeks to their IVF procedure. Ask your grand-aunt who is divorced from a childless marriage and never remarried.

While adoption laws tend to restrict eligibility for single women, assisted reproductive options are more open towards them. For instance, a woman in her thirties can elect to have a child through ICSI or IVF. But often she won’t. Culture and religion make this taboo for her. Should they?

If we dare think beyond what we have always known, even within the confines of religion and culture, we may find space in our hearts for the unconventional mother.

Ideally, children need a mother and father figure to strengthen their socialization, but our world is far from ideal. We wouldn’t think of taking away a widow’s children because they would grow up without a father figure. We applaud the man who raises his child alone because his wife left him. We recognize that their children brighten their worlds.

Why then do we think less of a mature single woman who chooses to be a mother on her terms? Will motherhood through assisted reproductive options make single women lesser mothers or does it challenge our thinking about motherhood and families?

Step back and look a little closer.

Perhaps if these women were to choose between marriage and motherhood, motherhood would trump.

Abiodun Baiyewu is a lawyer and a human rights activist with a strong interest in medical jurisprudence and reproductive health. She is married and the mother of rambunctious toddler.

II

From childhood, many girls are programmed for nurture and they role-play motherhood with their dolls and toys. Their maternal instinct heightens as they grow older and wish to have families. Having children is a dream realized which brings them happiness. Anguished longing therefore afflicts the woman whose dream hasn’t come true as the end of her best reproductive years come into view.

But, is the purpose of having children to quiet the legitimate cry of a woman’s womb? Is it to assuage the loneliness that accompanies being a single woman? Then married or single women who have children would have ceased to grapple with loneliness and be living in contentment utopia by now.

In ‘rethinking motherhood’, two words raise concerns: longing and choice. Longing as a precursor to choice can be a shaky foundation. Longing is usually sustained by focus. If focus changes, what then? If we exercise our choice to satiate every longing, where would that leave us? Which yardstick do we validate or invalidate longing by?

Longing ebbs and flows. Longing that gathers momentum and threatens to overflow its banks one day, is the calm river that grants many boats safe passage the next. Like you, I have longed for something or someone until I thought my heart would burst. And like you, I have learnt to live and thrive with longing unmet.

Some have called ours, the ME generation. My life; my choice, are four words, which can be reduced to one: selfie, because the underlying assumption is that I am the only one in the picture. But choice reverberates like ripples. Our decisions have consequences we may not perceive because the time differential between choice and outcome prevents us from connecting the dots.

For example, can we rethink motherhood without rethinking fatherhood? What about the forty-year-old man who wants to adopt a twelve-year-old girl because he could not find a woman to marry and build a family with? Or the older man who wants a surrogate womb to carry his own child? Does maternal instinct trump paternal instinct? Society is evolving and choice experiments, driven by longing are giving birth to what was once considered unconventional families around the world.

Law, culture, and religion have been put forward as impediments to being a single mother by choice in the Nigerian context. Nigerian culture, steeped in patriarchy and communal living, seems to be antithetical to what at first glance appears like an independent and individualistic lifestyle for a woman.

Religion may pose the question: what is the optimal order for family regardless of the conditions that exist in an imperfect world like sickness, spousal death, or abandoned children? It may argue that it is one thing to accommodate a less than ideal situation; it is another to create one deliberately through choice.

In democratic societies, the law of the land is the will of the majority. In a sense, democratic institutions are custodians of choice. Democracy necessitates an educated citizenry for informed choice. This means asking even more questions and researching answers.

Should we rethink motherhood?

Photo Credit: gilprata/ http://pixabay.com/en/baby-shoe-maternity-girl-child-666355/

Portraits of Motherhood [5]

May 31, 2015May 31, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 26 Comments

Kinky and Coily

Twice a term my daughter and I go through the drill—at the start of the term and just before the half-term break ends. She sits on a stool and we unravel unwilling braids. They tangle at every turn resulting in tugs and pulls. She scrunches her brows and lets out a yelp.

“Mummmyyyy! Not so hard! It really really hurts.”

I sigh and relax my hands taking some pressure off. We finally loosen the braids and then wash, condition, oil, and plait her hair in fat clumps, ready for the new braids or cornrows she will sport.

She touches her hair and asks, “My hair is long enough, why can’t I leave it to just flow down . . . all the way down to my back?”

“You know why.” I respond gently.

“Why?”

“Your hair is kinky and coily. If you leave it to air-dry without a plait, it will coil and shrink into an afro-ey puff that will tangle and be difficult to comb.”

As her brown eyes look into mine, I continue, “This is your hair, it is my hair too. It’s the beautiful and versatile hair that God gave us, and we will rock it and love it and share it with the world.”

About four years ago, I decided to wear my hair in its natural state instead of straightening it with relaxers because I wanted my afro to reflect who I am. I made the decision for my seven-year-old daughter also.

As she grows older, I want her to be proud of her hair and to experiment with different styles, textures, and colours and discover what works for her. So, I tell her about my days of perms, red hair, and many hair extensions. She laughs.

“What about you? Would you like a perm . . . so your hair can fall to your back and it doesn’t hurt so much to comb?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods and I sigh in relief.

I like that she owns her hair and approves of my choice for her. When she is older, whatever she does with her hair is fine as far as she understands that externals do not define her.

Tamkara Adun@ naijaexpatinholland
Tamkara rocks her clogs expat style in the book, Dutched Up! with 27 other expats who share their perspectives on life in The Netherlands.

The Art of Pee

We were at the mall, and my daughter needed to pee. I took her to the public toilet, which was reasonably decent. I’d read that the risk of picking up germs from sitting on public toilet seats was low. I’d read that there are more bacteria on office keyboards than on public toilet seats. That dodgy information resides somewhere in my intellect, meanwhile, my heart moves me to act differently.

I lifted the toilet seat cover and tried to get her to squat. She pointed at the seat. I gave her a brief lecture on the dangers of actually sitting.

“Mummy, I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can’t.”

“Just bend . . . like this . . .”

I squatted over the toilet to ensure a healthy distance between my thighs and the edge of the bowl, feeling and I suppose looking undignified, while my daughter watched and doubled over with laughter.

“Your turn!”

“Mmmmm—”

“What?”

“I don’t want to pee anymore.”

“You what!”

“I can hold it.”

I took a deep breath. When I opened the door, I was relieved to find that no one had been eavesdropping on our mother-daughter rite of passage.

Just as we were about to leave the mall, my daughter had the burning urge to pee again. Immediately, two damp circles stained the armpits of my blouse. To my chagrin, our training session ended with an empty bladder, a wet mother and a wet daughter.

At home, I tried to teach her the art of peeing in public toilets with marginal success. My instruction to pee before an outing was laced with undercurrents of meaning that her father and brother could not understand. For insurance, I carried paper toilet seat covers and antibacterial wipes. I learnt to defuse world war four by letting her innocent suggestion, “Why don’t you just clean the seat?” prevail.

When I was a child, I played house and fed my children okro soup made by crushing hibiscus leaves and petals in an empty derica tin. I wanted to be a mom. Judging from appearances, my daughter also wants to be a mom. She bathes and dresses her dolls with patience that she does not reserve for herself. She dishes plastic eggs, bacon, and bread made in her Fisher Price deluxe kitchen, for them. Oh, the joys of motherhood await her!

Portraits of Motherhood [4]

May 24, 2015May 24, 2015 ~ livelytwist ~ 63 Comments

A Question From My Daughter

After a day that threatened to break my distress-tolerance scale, I could not refrain from disintegrating in front of my five-year-old daughter. We were sitting in our kitchen and I was looking at her through eyes red and swollen, from crying.

“Mama who is your mommy?” she asked while typing gibberish comprising emoticons, punctuation marks, and jumbled-up letters on my phone. “I want to tell her you are sad.”

I giggled as though she had just pounced on me with one of her random tickles. I was pleased that she was brave enough to ask things I never dared to ask when I was a child.

“Your grandmother . . . the one we visited recently . . . where we slept over, is my mother,” I stuttered.

“Oh,” she replied.

I expected more questions but she seemed satisfied with my answer. I, however, felt discontented. My answer contained only one half of the truth. How could I explain that I have two mothers or that it was possible to have two mothers?

Would she understand if I told her that I had been brought up as my grandmother’s sister’s child because my grandmother’s daughter, my mother, had given birth to me at a young age? And that the woman she called grandmother was really my mother’s maternal aunt?

In 1981, if you were twenty, schooling, and living with your parents or grandparents, as was the case in many black homes in South Africa, you were a child. Children did not raise children. They went to school. How could I tell her the truth—that sometimes mommies gave their babies away through a process called adoption? Would she not think that perhaps I too might give her to another mommy forever?

I decided to keep the answers in my things-to-tell-my-daughter-in-future file. I remembered that I was once a child who needed answers about the people who made up my family.

Unathi Kapa shares her thoughts on identity, culture, belonging, and purpose on unathikay

An Extra Mouth to Feed

In the shower, steam shrouds me but does not insulate me. I am thinking about money. I worry about my lack of it.

Once, when I manufactured a few minutes to play with him in the park, he threw the ball to me, an easy pass that I should not have missed.

“Mom you’re not looking!”

He was right, again. I am rarely present; I am in our future worrying.

“I’m sorry. Let’s play again.”

I threw the ball so it spun in an arc that began its descent farther away from where he stood. He was already moving back, calculating the trajectory of the ball. Before delight widened his eyes, weariness had narrowed them. How easily children forgive and forget.

Kalanne said that ever since she got a nanny, she was a better mother. By way of illustration, she said when Sowari spilled his milk, instead of screaming, “What’s wrong with you! Why are you so clumsy?” she now said, “Aw, darling be careful. Don’t worry Tari will clean up.”

I think that if I had money, I would be a better mother. I would not shout as I had done over the loss of his monthly bus pass, berating him with words from a tornado inside me.

I sigh and adjust the shower settings so hot water stings me like needles. When I leave my frugal pleasure-penance behind and open the door, he is there.

Steam rushes to embrace him, but it does not insulate him either.

“Mom, I’m sorry. Don’t send me to my dad. When I grow up I will buy you a car.”

Dangerous thoughts had been circling my mind. How wonderful to be free again. How much easier life without an extra mouth to feed.

I pull him close and wrap him in a fierce hug. My tears mingle with water droplets and disappear into his hair.

If the love of money is the main root of all evil, the lack of it is the secondary root.

The Empty Crib

We do not interrupt the drive home from the hospital with small talk. When we pull up in front of our house, the neighbours spring out from theirs. Their merriment uncoils in laughing smiles, waving arms, and dancing legs.

The confusion begins the moment I step out of the car. Their eyes travel from my empty arms to my ‘flat’ stomach and from my flat stomach to my empty arms, until someone blurts, “Where is the baby?”

We had not discussed how we would answer their questions. I go inside, while he stays behind to explain.

Death is a thief. It also stole my sleep. The sedatives they force me to drink, freeze in my digestive tract. I walk from room to room weeping for a daughter I never held. It is a long time before my legs give way and I lie on the carpet in the room with yellow walls and the empty white crib.

In the days following, they tell me I am lucky to be alive. I do not feel lucky; I feel empty. They tell me I am young; I can have other children. But, I wanted this one. Oh God, how I wanted this one.

In the beginning, I held a vigil for her every year, so she would know that even if everyone else forgot, I would not. Then one year I looked at the calendar and realized that while I was driving my son to football practice and watching my daughter pirouette in ballet class, her birthday had passed. I had not known that pain could fade into oblivion.

Now I understand what they told me many years ago: I will go to her, but she will not return to me.

Can a woman forget her baby?
Can she forget the child who came from her body?
Even if she can forget her children, I cannot forget you.
I drew a picture of you on my hand. You are always before my eyes.
Isaiah 49:15-16