Because you enjoyed my, I am Not Looking For Love, I am Going to Work, post, and because guys aren’t hitting on me everyday (it’s true!), I know you’ll enjoy eurekanaija!’s post as much as I did. We’re doing life together, so I couldn’t bear to laugh alone…
relationships
I am Not Looking For Love, I am Going to Work
It began yesterday at the government office, which was saturated with immigrants whose anxious stares alternated between the digital display boards and their tickets, a square piece of paper with a number printed on it. At the sound of the beep, everyone looked at their ticket, and then the display boards. Some sighed. Some continued talking. Others continued sleeping. One person rose to meet an official walled in by glass on the other side of the counter.
My wait was shortened by an acquaintance with whom I chatted until our conversation lulled to a comfortable stop.
“Excuse me, it seems you are from Nigeria.” A tall man sitting a few spaces away from my acquaintance smiled at her.
“No, I am not.”
“Ah, but I thought—”
“I am from Democratic Republic of Congo.”
With her thick Igbo accent, she delivered her last words with a finality that inspired no argument from the man. He fanned himself, and then pretended to read his letter from the belastingdienst.
Because I am slow to change the expression on my face, she saw it. The disbelief. The wonder. The perplexity.
“Don’t mind the idiot. If not for dis yeye tax people, where e for come see me? See as e dey talk as if e be my mate. E nor see im type?” she whispered for my benefit and his.
I nodded like her co-conspirator, as though I had been dissing guys for the last ten years. What else could I do?
Determined to be a better person, this incident is hovering at the back of my mind when a young man approaches me today as I wait for my tram.
“Hello, are you from Nigeria?”
Surely there must be a better opening line? I give nothing away as I nod and he introduces himself. I tell him my name.
“Ah, Timi. Timilehin? You are Yoruba?”
“I am Nigerian.”
“I know, from whose part?”
“We have left Nigeria. Let’s pretend ethnicity does not matter. I am a Nigerian; that is enough.”
He looks at me as though the sky has descended on my head and I am unaware. Undeterred, he forges on in pidgin English. I respond in proper English.
He ditches Pidgin in favour of a kind of English that is interspersed with incorrect tenses and Dutch words. This is a cross some of us bear. The effect of speaking Dutch with non-native proficiency is the tendency to forget English words and to adjust our tenses automatically to match the wrong grammar of English-speaking Dutch people.
I am aware of every mistake he makes. Like the freckles on my neighbour’s face, they are many.
“I saw you at this tramhalte iedere dag, I mean, every day. Are you going to work?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I tell him. And then I help him because he seems lost, “I haven’t seen you before?”
“I know, but I am seeing you. You are very mooi, beautiful.”
I take in his overalls. He does not look like Idris Elba in Tyler Perry’s Daddy Loves His Girls, but this is real life.
“Thank you, where do you work?”
He talks about his work, links that conversation to how long he has been in The Netherlands—fifteen years, and then ties it to his goals and dreams like a neat bow at the end of a string.
My eyes do not wander from his face while he speaks. But my mind does. I wonder if he can read, understand, discuss, and comment on my blog intelligently.
Then there is silence. The wind dies. The leaves sleep. The seagulls take their leave. It is just me and him. And the silence. Without my help, he stews in it for a while—scratching his chin, brushing dirt from his overalls, staring at something behind me—before he says, “I must goes to my work place. Can I have your number?”
“For what?” Honest words spill out before I can reel them in. What else do we have to say to each other?
“I wan know you.”
I do not know why I did what I did next. Guilt—over what? My resolution to be a better person? Pity? Maybe, my thoughts had roamed to how he must have been eyeing me, calculating his approach. Religious fervour? Hardly.
“I would like to invite you to my church.” I fumble in my bag for the flyers the preacher says we should carry around for opportune moments, moments like this one I suppose.
He looks at me as though The Rapture has occurred and I am unaware.
“Ah, ah! Won’t you know me first before inviting me to your church? I already goes to church.”
It is as if he knows. That I am not very good at this. That church is a cop-out. That it is too late to tell him I am from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That I do not have the heart to tell him he will not understand my blog, and therefore not understand me. He pounces on me like a wounded lion, as if to say, “This is for every man you ever dissed!”
“That’s the problem with you Nigerian girls! Church, church, church! Your mates don marry, you still dey here! Oya go and marry your God!”
He jumps on his bicycle in one swift motion and pedals away.
It is rare that I cannot express myself with words. But I am not writing a dissertation. This is life. This does not call for intellectual prowess.
I imagine that in a few moments, his bicycle chain would jam, forcing him to stop. I imagine him kneeling on the earth, humiliated, rattling the chains, while I watch from the elevated platform of my tram stop. Then the words that abandoned me would force their way out of my mouth, “I am not looking for love, I am going to work!”’
Nothing I imagine happens. He continues to ride and does not look back. But a curious thing happens. As I look, it is not him getting smaller in the distance, it is me!
© Timi Yeseibo 2013
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Timi Yeseibo and livelytwist.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My Best Friend and I
I sit down to listen as she talks. Expounding, avoiding the point, a rigmarole that I could tapdance to. Her words come out this way and then that way, like a rolling boulder, gathering sympathy on the way to… to… to a grand destination! She is a conductor who hopes to finish on a high note and with a flourish.
I bury my tired sighs in empathy-filled coos—ah, eh, oh, ewo, nawa, kpele, and if her pause is long enough, I fill it with phrases—you don’t say! It’s a lie! What in the world? My inflections are on point.
I had come home from my eight-hour stint in front of a glass-box. Hands flying over the keyboard, I have made others rich, but it is an honest day’s job. I would have loved to zone out for thirty minutes, but she was already waiting. Although dinner is late, it would be taboo to multitask. Opening cupboards, lifting pots, chopping onions, and letting the tomato sauce simmer while she talks would steal from her moment. Her troubles occupy centre-stage.
Her narrative is a complex equation. It is like her, she is a woman after all. My forty-hour work week is spent making complex things simple. I sift through her words eliminating redundancies, shortening super-long sentences, and knocking out nominalisations. I simplify the equation, I solve the problem, I know the answer, but I listen for another ten minutes. I know the folly of being the child that interrupts the teacher’s question to shout out the answer.
I know she is done, talking that is, because she sighs and leans back in her chair, inviting me to pick the microphone. I know the danger of ignoring reflective listening, so I say the things she has already said in my crisp, brief manner, and then I dangle an option here and another there. After she nods a couple of times, I drop the life-line. I itemise the solution. Her eyes light up as if she is a child who was offered a second round of candy. But like a sugar high, her joy does not last long.
“Who will help me do it?”
“I will.”
Her delight is my reward.
I rise to embrace routine, the mindless things I do when I return home from work. Kicking my shoes off, sifting through mail, I hum a tune, a song from the radio that I didn’t know I knew.
“It is getting late, are you not going to do it?”
Preoccupied, I almost miss her question. I toss my answer carelessly as though sprinkling salt in stew.
“I will do it.”
I open the fridge and stare. It is a game I sometimes play, what will I eat for dinner?
“I thought you said you’d help me.”
“I will.”
My movements are slow. Something is brewing in the air. I lose focus. I forget why I am in the kitchen. I remember and bring out some minced meat.
“When are you going?”
“I’m not sure. But don’t worry, I will sort it out.”
There is a moment, when we are angry, or afraid, or hurt, that rational thinking peeks through the adrenaline rush, a small window of opportunity that lasts maybe thirty seconds. Sometimes I think its sole purpose is to fill us with regret later as we shake our heads, “If only—.”
“If they close before you get there, it will be your fault, and you will have to pay with your money.”
I marvel. I do not respond. Is this why her ex-husband left her—the nagging and the threats? It is a cruel thing for me to think. That is not why he left her, but it is what she has become, beneath the nagging, beneath her threat, she is clingy, fearful, unsure, and unable to trust.
“I said I will do it.”
She is still speaking, making simple things complex.
I will not be bullied with words and won over with guilt. I will not succumb to pity and say yes to desperation.
She is still speaking, making simple things complex.
I stand in front of her, catching her eye. There are many things there—fear, anger, anxiety—things that I did not put there.
“I said I will take care of it. Leave it to me.”
I head for my room, dinner forgotten. When I open the door, the wind rushes in through the window to embrace me. Its force would separate me from the door if I let go of the handle, slamming it. And she’ll think I am angry, but I am not. I only want to regain my sanity and remember why she is my best friend and why I care so much. So I hold the handle and let the door click gently in place.
© Timi Yeseibo 2013
Photo credit: ©Alexandre Vanier/www.pixabay.com
http://pixabay.com/en/friendship-hands-friends-love-63743/
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Timi Yeseibo and livelytwist.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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