Another love story taken off the chart

Another broken heart transformed to art

With hopes that with time, it will mend

But when does it ever end?

When will this heart learn

That love is a prize it will never earn?

Would it take another hit

Before it realises it doesn’t deserve love?

Probably doesn’t even need it

When will it learn that it will never be enough

It can act all nonchalant and tough

But every blow, every hit, leaves it broken and rough

Leaves it doubting and hating on love and that kind of stuff

Calling every promise and love-offer a bluff

Building nests of solitude and loneliness

And making jests of love declaration and pledges.

Cause broken hearts don’t leave pieces

They leave jagged edges

Edges used as wedges

To split apart another’s heart.

And the scream from a bleeding soul never ceases

It keeps going on and on, for as long as it pleases.

Until pieces of me handed over to different people over the years

Come back to haunt me

And tears from my heart but not my eyes

Wash up memories long forgotten to taunt me

While fears of failures stunt my quest for true love

As the realities of what such love could mean, daunt me.

Bleeding hearts are home to dread

Starving spirits don’t care about bread

A hungry stomach isn’t interested in the number of books read.

And famished souls won’t rest until they’re fed

Or so it is said.

To heal what can’t be seen,

You mustn’t follow your head

But by the unseen you must be led

Until you approach the riverbed

Where tears were once shed

But now the water runs red.

For there lies a heart that once bled

A heart that is now dead

This heart might never again learn to trust

Or maybe it will, but only at a great cost.

And so it is

Another love story lost to the sand of time

Another heartbreak tale forced to rhyme

How do they say it?

oh, ‘another one bites the dust.’

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Let me start by stating that I do not support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in any way, shape or form. Nobody in my family supports President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nobody in my family has ever supported him, and nobody can ever support him. In fact the pigeons that live in our ceilings and the roaches that hide in our cupboard scatter when they hear his name. And the last time we mentioned him to the hearing of rats, one died.

Furthermore, I would like to emphasize that in my politics, criticism of one doesn’t mean an absolute rejection of their policies and it definitely does not connote an acceptance of the other, so what I am about to say next is not indicative of political affinity to anyone other than the non-saviour this post alludes to.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s get into it, shall we?

The Cost of Reliance on a Non-Saviour

It’s 2030, the economy is better. Peter Obi is president, gas prices are low, fuel prices are low, transportation is cheaper, jobs are available. The police are no longer harassing men on the streets. The military is no longer shooting our youths at will. There is a good road network and there is light. This is the reality we have always prayed for.

Then there is you, a twenty-two year old who is for the very first time being threatened with an F by a lecturer. You would have told your friend, Amaka—she always knows what to do—but you haven’t heard from her since she went to visit her boyfriend last week. Her number is unreachable, she has been off her socials. It’s so unlike her but everybody swears she is be fine: It’s Amaka naa, she knows how to handle herself.

Your younger brother is twenty and gay. Well, not gay gay. But he talks like a girl, so the kids make fun of him and shout HOMO whenever he passes. He is often depressed. Last week he asked if you’ll miss him when he’s gone. You laughed. You didn’t know what to say.

Papa still comes home late smelling of alcohol, Mama still shouts at him. You still wake up the next morning to bruises on her face.

Your younger sister still hides whenever she sees Uncle Richy. She swears he touches her, but Mama can not afford to believe her, she can not afford to question your rich landlord. So she asks your sister to shut up, to not never mention it again. If nobody talks about it, then it never happened. Meanwhile your lecturer is still pestering you.

The news of Amaka’s death reaches you two days after you finally give into your lecturer’s demands, the same day your brother is beaten to an inch of life by area boys.

Her boyfriend was found trying to flee town with body parts stuffed into the legendary Ghana-must-go, body parts belonging to none other than Amaka. The internet explodes.

Advice reigns supreme: Girls of nowadays, what they will not do for money.

This is why women need to be careful.

No one blames the man. No one ever blames the man. Amaka is a prostitute. She was a prostitute—because she’s no more. The internet insists she had to be.

What kind of woman visits a man in his house? Truly, what kind? Not a lover, not a friend, only a prostitute. She, and not the man who killed her, is the problem.

The few women who try to stand up for Amaka and fiercely demand justice are accused of propagating gender wars.

It’s not all men, the internet cries.

Slowly the news fizzles down as though it never happened, as though Amaka never existed.

Your sister makes the mistake of confiding in someone that is not your mother about Uncle Richy. The person tells another person who tells another person. It eventually makes it to the internet where your sister, and not her rich abuser, is interrogated, tried and found guilty.

She’s a liar. She is the villain. Poor Uncle Richy, how she lied against him.

Your brother is still in the hospital. Mama’s eyes are still swollen every morning. Amaka is still dead. Your lecturer is still panting loudly into your ears. Peter Obi could not save you, Peter Obi could not save them. You vote finally counted but you still do not count.

Police may never stop you on the road again but men will still whistle when you pass. You may never again be scared of bandits while travelling but you will still fear a man’s presence while walking at night.

School fees are less expensive but lecturers still molest students and teachers still assault pupils. Jobs are available but the gender pay gap is still alive and active and your place remains in the kitchen.

Igbo people finally taste the presidential seat but queer people are still getting lynched. There is no more hunger in the land but victims are still being silenced. No more “Tinubu must go” protest but wives are still beaten to death. Kidnapping is gone but victims of gender based violence are still sluts.

From Nelson Mandela to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and down to our very own Fela Kuti, history is littered with stories of men who were activists yet still saw women as less. Because even in the most beautiful climate, men still thrive as beasts.

So as you prepare to vote in 2027, I want to remember that Obi is not your Messiah, just another politician benefiting off the incompetence of those before him. I’m not saying he’s bad, I’m just saying he’s not a Messiah. Tinubu is definitely worse, but Peter Obi is not a saint. And he is not running for government because he loves Nigerian women too much to see them suffer. He is a politician, he is politicking. He promises to be better than Tinubu but he is not coming to save you.

The only person that can save you is you, your activism, a community of women invested in a similar cause. The only thing that can save you is feminism in action.

FEMINISM IN ACTION

The average Nigerian is a philosopher and if allowed will continue to propound theories for hours without stopping to make any concrete effort towards change. And while it is cool to identify and address the problem, it gets to a point where it becomes over-flogging a dead horse. The horse is already dead, can we move on? Maybe plan a burial or find a way to resurrect it? Cause why are we flogging a dead horse? It’s already dead, why are we still flogging it to the point of over-flogging? Matter of fact, why were we flogging the horse, living or dead, in the first place? Isn’t that animal cruelty?

Nigeria feminists keep talking about how we are not asking men to give us rights, we are taking the rights by force. But we are not. We are in fact sitting down on our phones and explaining to ourselves and the world why we deserve rights. And although that might get some things done, it is not going to take us through the finish line. I’m not saying that we should not talk or theorize, I believe we should. But I know that while theorizing might effect some change, it is never enough.

Currently women occupy only sixty-four (64) in one thousand, four hundred and sixty (1460) seats in the Nigerian parliament1. And a staggering majority of those women are neither practising nor even theorizing feminists. No wonder abortion is still illegal in Nigeria, no wonder there is no subsidy on women’s menstrual health products, no wonder rape cases are given little to no attention. This is not me trying to blame anyone. I am just saying that Nigerian women need more representation in the Local, State and National levels of government. We need feminist and feminocentric lawmakers to aid in this fight, and Senator Natasha is only one person, she cannot do it all.

No matter how much we talk on social media and sign petitions, a lot is not going to happen until we take to the field. Taking to the field does not exclusively mean rioting, protesting, strikes, marches and sit-at-homes, although those are part of it. Taking to the field means matching our words with actions. It means dropping the phone for a few hours every week and becoming involved in practical feminism.

Picture this: you make a post about rape but you do not add a link to a help-centre or a phone number that victims can call or any other resources that can help them. Why? Because you know very well that information can be sourced online. And even when you do, you just do it to fulfill all righteousness.

The question is: what about the millions girls who have no access to the internet, those who can neither see your posts nor check online for helplines and ‘Now, you’ve been raped, what next?’ tips? Who teaches them what to do in cases of rape and sexual harassment?

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need to take to the streets: to educate, to enlighten, to debate. We are angry, I know, and anger is good but anger is only going to solve so much before it fizzles down or turns into limiting frustration. What we need is strategy. We need to keep the conversation going but we need to be intentional about it. We need to be intentional and strategic about our anger, about our violence, about the change we want.

Most importantly we need community, both online and offline, and we cannot get that when we are constantly fighting ourselves and turning our online base against itself. We can disagree without calling each other names or dragging ourselves on social media.

I have never been a strict believer in the sisterhood of all women, because nobody is asking all men to be friends, however I do believe that we need to create safe spaces where women (including pick-mes, yes) can fuck up and still exist.

No, it is not a flex that you cut your friend off after you found out she wouldn’t leave her abusive husband. Your cutting her off might be valid—because yes you have the right to be selfish and choose yourself—but why are you bragging about it? What your friend needs is serious help, not online shaming.

I understand the irony of typing and posting this online, instead of grabbing a megaphone and screaming it on the streets. But the reality is that it is those of us on the internet who perform feminism the most yet somehow manage to get the most minimal of results, so it is those of us on the internet that need to hear this. Because it is beginning to look like we are recycling the same information amongst ourselves, while those outside social media are wallowing in deadly ignorance.

I hate to say this but your radical feminism is not radical enough if all you do is upset men on the internet. Your misandry is not hateful enough if all you do is rage-bait men on tiktok. Because as much as we need your twitter banter and tiktok story times, as much as we need your substack think-pieces and Instagram thought-daughter reels, what we need the most is for teenagers living on the street to have access to sexual assault helplines, for elderly market women to know there is nothing wrong with a woman ruling Nigeria, for your male-centred neighbour to think twice before asking ‘what was she wearing’. And you can help us achieve all that without spending a single dime.

How you, as an individual, can contribute to Feminism in Action

The first six do not cost a dime

1. Volunteer for and actively participate in women-led/women-centric NGOs

2. Discuss feminism with women outside social media: Talk to traders, to teachers, to vendors. You do not have to call it feminism because apparently that word is demonic and upsets a good number of them. Just talk to them about women’s rights and women’s involvement in government. They will annoy you oo, but be careful to not take out your anger on them. You are canvassing, not debating. Always remember that they are victims too.

3. Visit schools and talk to pupils and students:

   a. Talk to them about sexual harassment, talk to boys, talk to girls. Talk about Child On Child Sexual Assault (COCSA) Talk about teacher-student sexual harassment. Promise them a safe space and make them memorize one or two helplines before you leave.

   b. Talk to them about Fundamental Human Rights with a strong focus on children’s rights and women’s rights. Teach them to say something when they see something.

4. Engage child-hawkers in feminist conversations: Again, you do not have to mention feminism. Keep it lively, keep it fun—those children have other things to do and other places to be. Build a rapport with them and establish yourself as a safe space. Make them memorize helplines and implore them to teach their friends. Please expect dependency from them, humans are dependent creatures and children are the most vulnerable of our specie.

5. Engage your neighbours in feminist conversation: This includes your neighbours in church, at home, in school, in the market. Tread cautiously. Start small. Be nice. Play it smart. You are taking up their time and they do not owe you anything, so expect anything and be ready to not run when they ask ‘what was she wearing’

6. Educate your family and friends: Don’t shy away from the topic or leave when it gets too hot. If e reach to shout, shout. Scream! But get the message across.

7. Share pads to girls and women on this street, in schools, in the market-place: I know we think this is overdone, but trust me it is not. Period poverty is a monster eating into the very fabric of our society. Please help in whatever way you can.

8. Buy feminist books and share to primary and secondary schools: You can give to the schools to put in their library or you can give to the students. I recommend Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele and We Should all be Feminists, both cost between 2,500 and 3,000 naira per copy.

9. Donate to women-centric NGOs

10. Send a girl child to school or skill-centers if you can afford to.

11. Support female owned businesses, especially offline: Patronize female realtors, female marketers, female vendors, even POS girls and female butchers.

Note that these are not the only ways you can help, there are other ways and we might talk about them later. You can even come up with some yourself, and share with us.

Even more important to note is that there is a lot of nuance to this conversation that was not to covered here, like how you need an overabundance of grace for some of these feminist actions, but you do not have to wound your spirit or go against your personality in order to perform them. You can, if you want to, but you don’t have to. You do not have to tolerate disrespect just because you want to convert your neighbour to a feminist. Some people might be able to, but it is okay if you can not, or if you just do not want to. That is why we need both rebels and negotiators but that is a topic for another day. Just pick another feminist action that better suits your personality, and you will be fine.

Please do not endanger yourself. Arm yourself with the phone number of feminist centers and even the police. Know when to leave people alone and when to leave. I am rooting for you.

P.S. I am open to collaborating with individuals and brands interested in carrying out any of these actions. Send a DM. I will be happy to help with organizing, financing, project managing, field work, whatever I can help with.

Cheers to practising what we preach and putting our time and money where our mouths are.

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Tell me what language you speak

So I can communicate with you before my emotions start to leak

Teach me the dialect you understand

And I’ll speak it better than even sons of the land

I just want to be able to talk to you without disguises, that’s the deal

I don’t mind speaking through art, if that will best explain how I feel

Speaking without tongues and still managing to be real

Pouring out my heart until I’ve let out everything I want to reveal,

Everything the heart has kept hidden and locked behind steel

My friend said all artistes are broken

So show me where the others gave you scars and I’ll help you heal.

Take you to the stars

Drive pass Mars

Speeding faster than race cars

We’ll watch minutes fly into hours

It’ll be a love story that is solely ours

So just tell that girl, you’ll never be hers

I promise we’ll only ever speak through arts

I gift you poems in parts

You paint me an alignment of hearts

So here it starts

I write you as poetry

One, two or maybe three

I’ll let my words run free

Put you on paper, carve your name into a tree

And while I go on a creative spree

You paint me like one of your pieces.

Taint me with the colours and shades of your imaginations.

I promise I’m no saint,

So you can stain me with the juices from your Uli pod

Black, blue, whatever it chooses, I’ll let you play god.

I know my requests seem odd

But colour me like a blank canvas.

Splashing me in multiple shades of grey

You could do worse than Christian Grey.

All your colours, on me, I’ll let you spray

I’ll be the Art piece, anytime any day

You’ll be the moulder, I’ll be the clay

I’ll hold your hands while you paint

Ensure they never stray

Keep my words out of the way

And my body on full display

With music that makes us sway.

When we’re done, we’ll find a game that we can play

Maybe cat and mouse, you’ll be the predator, I’ll be the prey.

And if ever our words start to fade away.

We can always rely on Art to stay.

Even when we forget the words to say

Our Art will keep our emotions on replay

See, Art is the temple, we’ll always come to pray

It is that fashion that never goes out of season, it will always slay.

It is a dialect that is understood by all, even the angels above

Art is the true Language of Love

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A well-read woman is a dangerous creature

~ Lisa Kleypas

FEMINISM

A few months ago, a man came online to tell Nigerian feminists that they do not know what they are doing because they do not read. A lot of feminists attacked him saying as long as one is a woman, one can be feminist because what is written in those books is just a bit of what women live through every day.

They were right, you don’t have to read to be a feminist. As a woman, with or without reading, you are already positioned by your personal experiences to be a feminist. And no matter how much a man reads, his knowledge of feminism will always be limited because no amount of reading can replace or replicate experience.

But as much as I hate to say this, the man was almost right. As a woman, especially a feminist woman, you SHOULD read. You need to read. It is a necessity, one that is unfortunately unaffordable and inaccessible to lots of women, as many women can neither read nor afford books, and a surprisingly greater number do not have the time to read.

And since we do not practice exclusionary feminism—feminism must be intersectional for it to work—reading cannot be a requirement in feminism. It just CANNOT!

However—and I say this at the risk of being accused of policing the movement—if you are a woman and you can read, you have access to books whether in a local library, your phone— pirated books, public domain books, via reading websites—or you can afford to buy them, and you have enough time to scroll social media or gist with your friends, but you refuse to read, you are missing the whole point of feminism. Yes, experience matters but education matters too.

You cannot be a feminist fighting for the rights of women and your only frame of reference is your personal life and what you heard from people, when you can have access to a wealth of knowledge outside yourself and your community.

No matter what you have gone through, no matter how hard your life has been as a woman, feminism remains a social, economic and political movement, not your personal project. And you cannot claim to be part of a movement you refuse to read about. Imagine a Marxist that has never read a single text on Marxism, or an environmentalist that refuses to engage with books and texts on environmentalism. What?

That is why it is so easy for them to deceive you, to repackage very damaging opinions as choice feminism and sell them to you. They tell you it’s okay because some other popular woman or feminist did it.

“Look at Megan Thee Stallion cooking for her boyfriend’s entire family”

“Look at Otedola’s daughter taking her husband’s last name.”

“There, look at Ifedayo saying that her own feminism is different because some feminists are rude.”

“If Otedola’s daughter could do it, who are you to say no?”

“Are you better than those women who are very rich and popular?”

“Are you more feminist than Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”

They tell you that a poor woman cannot be a feminist, and you have no rebuttal because you cannot properly identify the ties between capitalism, classism, racism and misogyny and so cannot explain how black women from lower income backgrounds are at the bottom of the food chain and thus more susceptible to misogyny, which means they more than any other group need feminism.

They sell you the idea that feminism and queerness were brought to Africa by the white man and you agree, because you cannot tell the intersection between religion, homophobia (queerphobia) colonialism and the patriarchy.

You still hate Queer people, and you believe Elon Musk became a trillionaire just by hard work and sheer determination. Systems and institutions look isolated to you, instead of intertwined because you do not read.

I am not saying this to shame anyone but rather to implore you: please read.

One of my favourite things to do is to argue both for and against certain topics: I have arguments against and for the place of religion in feminism, I still have feminist arguments against and for surrogacy, arguments against and for marriage. Even the matriarchy receives an argument, both against and for, from me. And I am only able to do that because I read.

The reason so many of our favourite feminists argue and gun for each other’s necks every day is because a good number of them cannot have nuanced conversations, and the reason they cannot do so is because they do not read. Because the best way to develop nuance and a nuanced approach to things is by READING!

Reading will teach you that while male-centredness is dangerous, male-centredness in women is often a survival mechanism (Think Fawn in Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn1)

Reading will teach you to hold space for other women no matter how much you hate them or disagree with their views.

Reading will teach you that it is okay to not know everything and to be quiet when you do not have enough information on the subject matter

Reading will take you from being either a rebel or a negotiator to being both.

Please read.

ANTI-FEMINISM

But I don’t have time

You watch at least twenty short videos everyday. You read five substack articles on: The Problem of Nigeria, Why Yoruba Men are Demons, Nigerian Churches are Cults, The Double T problem of the world: Tinubu and Trump, and The Diary of a Lagos University Babe (all great reads, mind you.) But you will not take out time to read a single feminist text. And no I don’t mean the think-pieces published on substack and other social media platforms—those are good, and you should definitely read them—but beyond them you should read LITERATURE published by feminists.

You can take out at least 30 minutes a day to read a feminist novel, by the end of the month, you would have spent 15 hours reading and that is enough time to finish a novel. And by the end of the year, you would have read 12 feminist literature. But it is still okay if you only read 6 or 4 or even 3. That is better than not reading at all.

Ohhh, but books are so expensive

Virginia Wolfe is available on the internet, as are: Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, the Bronte sisters, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Harper Lee, Sylvia Plath, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison and a host of others.

Adichie’s books all cost less than 20,000 naira (less than 15,000 if I’m being honest) Margaret Artwood is there. Michelle Obama is there. Catherine Obianuju Acholonu is there.

Read fiction, read essays, read articles, read poems, read memoirs. Please read.

Things are hard, yes! But you can still afford to buy three books every year. If not three, then two; if not two, then one. Buy a book. Own a book! Put your money where your mouth is.

Your mother’s story is important to the feminist discourse but how will you know how to present it without reading the experience of other women?

“But I don’t like reading”

Too bad! I don’t like being marginalized, yet here we are. Women do not like being denied education, yet here we are! It doesn’t matter what you like. Feminism does NOT exist to cater to YOUR personal desires. Feminism is not here to make you feel good about your anti-feminist choices or to confine you to the things you love doing. So get over yourself, get out of your comfort zone and read.

Of course, you don’t have to be able to define Marxist Feminism or list the 700 waves of feminism (Just kidding, google says there were four of those) but you must be curious to learn about the experiences of other women, and that curiosity is what will turn you towards books and reading.

There are feminist choices (choices that align with and advance the feminist movement,) non-feminist choices (the ones that do not really matter in the feminist conversation, although I doubt there is any choice that does not matter here) and then we have anti-feminist choices (choices that actively go against and set back the movement)

Choosing to not read when you can afford to is a very anti-feminist choice, choosing to not inconvenience yourself and learn more about a movement you champion is the the closest thing to madness.

In fact, to me, not reading is the most anti-feminist thing you can do. (The second on the list would be washing the duvet in your situationship’s house in hopes that he finally chooses you. Spoiler: He won’t! Get up and go home.)

How can you decide on your own to be uninformed, like you choose deliberately to be ignorant? You wake up every morning and say to yourself: Even though I have the option of learning more about this topic, I will not! I simply choose to not do so. I choose to not grow. I choose to contribute as little as possible to the conversation. I choose to be blindsided. I choose to not learn about what feminism means to anyone other than myself and the few people around me.

INTERSECTIONALITY

When was the last time you took out time to go out of your carefully curated algorithm in search of feminist writings that you disagree with or the ones that clash with your views—not to argue or debate, not to disagree, just to learn, to observe?

Reading is supposed to question your beliefs, among other things, and that is not going to happen if you keep reading only the things you agree with.

When was the last time you, a body-positivity feminist, took out time to read a piece written by a Muslim feminist on why Muslim women should be allowed to veil?

When was the last time you, an anti-50/50 feminist, found and read a piece on why and how 50/50 works best?

When was the last time you, a Christian feminist, went in search of a piece about how Christianity is the bane of feminism?

When was the last time you, a ‘I’m not transphobic, I just don’t want men in women’s bathroom’ feminist, tried to read a piece from a trans-woman or a trans-ally?

When was the last time you, a ‘We should all be feminists’ feminist, read something from a ‘Men can be allies, not feminists’ feminist?

When was the last time you, a rich feminist, read something written by a low income feminist?

When was the last time you listened to or read about feminism from the viewpoint of women living with disabilities?

How can you claim to practice intersectional feminism when you do not read about the experiences of other women and feminists?

How do you know what feminism means to a Muslim woman in Afghanistan, what it means to the Black woman in the United States, what it means to the immigrant mother in Europe, the war-torn girls in Gaza?

How do you know what feminism is to Mexican daughters? to the queer people in America? to the Christian women in Nigeria? to the Fula girls in Guinea?

It is very self-absorbed and incredibly selfish to believe that your experience of feminism and womanhood is all that is needed, that it is enough. To so that is to think that your experience is universal, that you are the blueprint, that your struggles are all that matter or that they matter more than that of other women. And that is not feminism, that is self preservation and ambition disguised as equality. The kind that makes you become a president and not appoint a single female minister. The kind that keeps you hoping that no one else breaks the glass ceiling, so that you will become ‘The first woman to …’ ‘The only woman to ...’

Feminism fights for ALL women, not just white women, not just Nigerian women, not just Christian women, not just straight women, not just cis women, not just able-bodies women, not just rich women, not just feminist women, ALL WOMEN!

And you can never know that feminism until you read.

As Lisa Kleypas said “A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”

Reading is an act of rebellion.

So drop the damn phone and read. Or read on the phone. Either way, just READ!

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I cleaned my room the night you left

Packed your clothes in unflattering nylon bags

Combed through my wardrobe until nothing of yours was left

Didn’t want to return everything but had to

Still managed to hold on to your track suit

I took out the trash the night you left

Used condoms hiding beneath the bed stand

Memories of you and I, wondering how we got here

We swore we’d take it slow

Mama probably thinks I’m still a virgin

I rearranged my room the night you left

Books I said we’d read, poetry and prose

Movies we never got around to watching

Songs I’ll never hear you sing again

How did I let myself fall for you?

I cleared my room the night you left

Told myself it was for the best

What decent lady keeps a man in her nest

But you’re no man and I’m not a lady

Just two kids figuring out life and hoping to not have a baby

I did some long-overdue laundry the night you left

But nothing can erase your scent from the pillowcase.

Your cigarette burns on my reading desk

The brown stains from the coffee you spilled on my sheets

All linger, as though awaiting your return

I scrubbed my bathroom the night you left

Washed the mirror and cried when your favourite song came on

Tried to rinse away the idea of us in my head

Still the hand prints on the wall refuse to wash away

Why is it so hard to let you go?

I cleaned out my room the night you left

I say it again as though it matters

But it doesn’t and it probably never will

‘Cause you’ll be back tomorrow

And you’ll find my door wide open

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The gender pay-gap is still alive and well. And while I would be elated to talk about it, what it means in theory, and the ways it manifests blatantly; today I am more interested in the rare cases where it is not as it seems—cases where it appears on paper that all genders are paid equally, where two people of different sexes working in the same establishment pick up the same cheque at the end of the same shift after carrying out what seems to be the same responsibility and an equal amount of workload. Because even in those cases, there are still factors that prevent women from furtherance in the workplace, thus limiting their future pay and ensuring that they remain stuck within a particular pay grade, while their male colleagues advance.

Riddle me these:

How many women have been overlooked during promotions and have had their male counterparts chosen over them, simply because they are women; or because the company fears that one day they will get married and their husbands would stop them from working—leaving a gap in the company’s structure, or that they will have children and start slacking because of maternity, child-care and/or family problems?

How many women have been denied promotions or even sacked on the basis of meanness, rudeness, aggressiveness or bossiness—attributes that exist solely to demonize powerful women and women in the workforce, attributes which when exhibited by men are rebranded as assertiveness, positive audacity, business acumen, single-mindedness and of course strong-will?

How many women have been accused by colleagues, subordinates and bosses—both male and female alike—of not being motherly, especially in spaces that do not require or call for any form of familial ties or sentimental bonds?

How many times have you heard a man be accused of not being fatherly or of not caring enough for his coworkers to buy bread and milk for them when coming to work?

How many women are applauded and credited for their input in the workplace?

How many women are even allowed to speak without interruption or interjection from their male colleagues?

How many are allowed to play their official roles with ease, without any form of workplace harassment and/or both blatant and subtle misogyny?

How many women are employed or even considered employable?

We applaud the women who make it to the top, we celebrate them and use them in motivational speeches. We copy their words while advising younger ones. But we forget to ask why there are so few of them. We forget that those women are the exceptions. We forget that the same road that made them, has chewed and swallowed more women than we can count.

We forget to ask: what are the hurdles women have been made to pass through to become celebrated bosses in their fields, and why do those hurdles even exist in the first place?

Why do women have to work twice as hard just to hold less than 1% of the power available?

We have normalized exclusivity when it comes to female excellence. “First woman to ...” “Only woman to ...” We celebrate what is clearly still exclusion, rebranding it as “inclusion” “progress” and “shattering of glass ceilings.” But of what use is a shattered ceiling when only one person can climb or even peep through it?

When we talk about gender pay gaps, we are not just talking about who goes home with what figure at the end of the month; we’re also talking about the factors that influence that figure—the promotions that were never given, extra workloads that are never acknowledged, accolades never received, opinions neither sort nor taken which create a lack of visibility, curiosity disregarded as incompetence, positive audacity dismissed as aggression, then sexual harassment that creates an unsafe work environment and dismissal that ultimately kills productivity.

50/50

With that in mind, when we want to talk about who pays for what in the home, we must talk about who earns what outside the home and why. We must discuss the sacrifices made: the overtime declined time and time again because of family emergencies until bosses learn to expect “No” as an answer, and stop asking, leading to a decrease in workplace visibility, which takes down with it chances of promotion.

We must also talk about the promotions rejected because they mean extra work and between child care and emotional support, there is no time for self care, talk more of additional workload.

Then there are the movies, the annoyingly long and falsely didactic films specially made for the sole purpose of indoctrination and guilt-tripping. We all know them, the ones that teach women the consequence of taking on an extra workload instead of picking up their children from schools, the ones that show the workaholic wife ending up alone and abandoned because men can get away with being workaholics but God forbid a woman prioritizes her career.

There is always a choice to be made, a choice that no man has ever had to make: Family alone or Career, Financial stability, Economic independence, Recognition, Advancement, Connection, possible Global visibility and what have you.

It’s a package deal but we are taught that at the end of the day a good woman, a true woman, must always choose family, because family trumps all.

The home, the workplace, the society, all run on a toxic culture of assumed female softness or should I say “femininity,” designed to turn women away from money and financial goals, and face them towards nurturing and homemaking. Yet somehow we turn around and question their inability to provide and to advance financially.

As a feminist, I have nothing against women who do 50/50 or even provide 100%, but there is something especially sinister and cruel about a system that not only tries to dictates how women live their lives but also queries their ability to bend and blend into the exact roles it actively discourages them from.

At the end of the day, the reality is that we, as a society, do not want independent women or women with any form of financial autonomy. No! We just want women with a false sense of economic agency, women with just the right amount of financial empowerment—disguised as liberation—to pick up the bill whenever we need them to, but also they must also have an overabundance of humility and indoctrinated softness to make the payments in our names and drop the bills when we decide they are done.

I do believe that all genders should be financially responsible, but you cannot ask for consequence without action.

If you want women to contribute equally in the home, you must let them reap the overripe fruits of their overlooked and downplayed labour in the workplace. You must let them fly, without the unnatural tethers formed by the chains of familial bonds. And for gods sake, men MUST do house chores, and participate WHOLLY in childcare, while also giving as equal an amount of respect, submission and consideration as they expect and receive. Only then can we even begin to interrogate the inability of women to provide whether 50/50 or 100/100

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There is a woman kissing you—a woman you like but a woman nonetheless. You kiss her back, surprised by the depth of your feelings with her, appalled by your want for her touch. You run your palm over her face, half-happy, half-scared that a time would come when you would be disallowed from doing so.

She is beautiful in the way most people haven’t yet learnt to be; you don’t tell her this. A lot is said between you two, like how much she loves you; but a lot more remains unsaid, like how every crazy thought she vocalizes unlocks another compartment of your tightly locked heart and how you fear you are becoming an addict.

Slowly you withdraw, preparing yourself mentally for when she leaves and the true withdrawal hits. But she kisses you again. Her lips taste like nothing, but feel like everything. You want to bite into them. You read somewhere that kissing is the lowest form of cannibalism, you understand it now.

You kiss her back, nibbling softly on her lips. She pauses, you know she is about to say something crazy. She does.

“A hụrụm gị na anya.”

Your breathing stops—you stare at her, you don’t know what to say. You wonder if you will die—but then it restarts with a force that almost knocks you out.

All this happens in a second, maybe two. Your eyes are still on her, you still don’t know what to say.

It’s not uncommon to be loved by her. You’re used to her hands holding onto you, touching you, stroking you. But it’s not her love that silences you now, it’s the language of it.

A hụrụm gị na anya.

You saw a piece on love some months ago: a piece on loving in your native language, a second part to the one about moaning in your native language, the one you joke about often.

Now she says to you, “A hụrụm gị na anya.”

But you have no words.

You’ve once told her that love sounds heavier in your native language. So you say to her: “I love you too.” But you know you don’t just love her.

She’s still looking at you, still expecting of you in a way no woman has ever been, so you ramble.

“My people don’t say Ahụrụm gị na anya. We say: Afụlụm gị na anya.” You make sure to stress every sound, every syllable. She is Igbo, she understands. Yet you explain the things you’re sure she has heard before, things you’ve explained a thousand times, as though what you are saying will make up for what you are too scared to say. But she says nothing, just stares.

Finally you whisper, “A fụm gị na anya.” The words come out in a rush and you wonder how you managed to get them out without biting your tongue. She smiles.

She kisses you again.

You’re home now, back to the zone where you pause your wandering and wonder about life, about love. You think of her fingers beside you, on you, in you. You think of her lips and you wonder why you forgot to trace them with your tongue. You think of her smile and you know, you just know you’re in too deep. But you’re not scared anymore.

Why are you not scared?

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It amazes me the ease with which men—even the most intelligent of them—reach for stereotypes whenever it comes to women.

Last night, a ‘friend’ asked if I think I would ever change my mind and consider marriage. I have always been vocal about not wanting the entrapment that comes with the legal commitment and performative soul-tie marketed as companionship, but in that moment I tried to be diplomatic, to lay out my points in a way that would not come off as aggressive or brash, or as a condemnation or critique of men and the society; because even though there was every reason for me to lean towards the latter as I often do, in that moment, I was more interested in offering personal reasons than I was in discussing anything socio-political or economic.

When I was done with my semi-well crafted speech, he paused for a second and asked, ‘So side-chick?’

What?

I was quiet for a while, shocked at how quickly what could have easily been an intellectual conversation or debate turned into an assumption or rather an accusation of my sexuality. I couldn’t place my hands on what exactly had given this ‘friend of mine’ the hint that I have it in me to become a side chick. And I could not for the life of me fathom when the opposite of wife and marriage became side-chick and potential home-wrecker.

Probably noting the error of his ways, he offered up an alternative: Friends with benefits. As though that was better. As though any woman who refused to be trapped in the institution of marriage is either destined to become a home-wrecker or forever doomed to wallow in loveless situationships with nonchalant men who seem to be in a competition over whose cold and lethargic approach towards love and dating is more repulsive and trauma-inducing.

I argued for a minute that there exists the option of dating for women who do not want to get married. There are tons of unmarried men who will gladly date those women. But he didn’t think about that because in his world a woman who rejects wifehood is unworthy of girlfriendship.

My argument was halfhearted though because I am quite disinterested in love, dating and sex, both within and outside the confines of marriage, and in my rejection of marital ties, I had given very little thought to what romantic opportunities await the perpetually unmarried woman.

Furthermore, my problem with him was not exactly centered on his implicit assumption that women who reject marriage are incapable of finding, experiencing and sustaining romantic love or relationships. It was centered on the fact that a very broad conversation about my aversion towards marriage, one that could have gone anywhere, suddenly turned into this dysfunctional vehicle speeding down a one-way traffic, heading towards my sexuality? How did we get there? How was it that every option he had as an alternative for marriage was hinged on my sexual desirability?

The conversation could have turned financial—which would have also been insulting, mind you—or it could have been maternal and natalist, which might have been way less insulting; he could have even raised an argument on loneliness and companionship. But he did not, instead he chose to base his entire perception of me as an unmarried woman on my ability to procure sexual pleasure. There is a psychological phenomenon for why this might be and it is found in the MWC

The Madonna/Whore Complex1

Simply put, the Madonna/Whore Complex is all about the male belief that a woman is either a Madonna or a Whore. No in betweens, no mixtures, no exceptions. She is either a baddie or a church girl. And the definition and descriptions of these terms are not as rigid as you would assume them to be.

MADONNA (a.k.a. mother, a.k.a. good girl, a.k.a. church girl, a.k.a. wife, a.k.a. wifey material)

The Madonna is saintly, she is virtuous, she is submissive, she is nurturing and motherly. The kind of woman we all want to take home to Mama, the one the men like to announce as the mother of their unborn children. (Think Proverbs 31 woman.)

She conforms and in return she is promised respect, family and fulfillment as a reward. And in the very common event that the reward is not later given, she sits up at night wondering where she went wrong, bemoaning how good girl no dey pay again, not realizing that there has never been a point in time when being any type of girl really paid on a personal level.

She is the kind of girl you will find lamenting how bad girls are winning, using her coursemates as an example and wishing them ill because she thinks she is less promiscuous than they are.

You might know her by her more common name: Our wife; or the one the whores of this world like to call her: pick-me.

WHORE (a.k.a. baddie, a.k.a. ashawo, a.k.a. small girl, big god, a.k.a. side chick, a.k.a. nwaoma osiso)

The Whore is promiscuous, she is manipulative, she is overly sexual. She lives alone in Lekki and we do not know how she can afford the bills, she goes clubbing and smokes everything from cigarette to shisha.

She is a girl in charge of her sexuality. She owns it, she flaunts it, she gives, she takes, she withholds. She has full knowledge of herself. She probably even masturbates. (Think Jezebel, Delilah)

And according to the Patriarchy handbook, she deserves to be debased, to be used and dumped. She is not good for marriage, the mothers do not love her. She, herself, will not make a good mother. But the men, ohh they want her, although they swear they can never marry her. She is only good for sex, never for marriage. She is all of us and she is none of us.

I must add that in addition to these definitions not being rigid, the expectations heaped on them are ever-changing. Sometimes a Madonna becomes a whore, sometimes a whore is exalted to a Madonna. Take feminists for example, the average feminist is a whore: abrasive, hateful, rude, loud, uncaring for male opinion. (Think your average Twitter or Tiktok feminist)

But every now and again, one or two feminists get elevated into Madonna, and this is usually earned by their perceived intellect, tact or diplomacy. (Think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) This elevation however is only for a while, until they say or do something and remind the patriarchy that they are still whores.

And no, before you ask, these same categories or their equivalence do not exist for men. Men are fully functional human beings who are capable of being anything, everything and/or nothing, sometimes all at the same time. Women on the other hand, not so much.

This morning, I saw a video of everyone’s (including feminists’) favourite misogynistic cross-dresser calling out a woman who is to run against Alex Otti for governorship of Abia State—Doris Ogala—singing for her, calling her ọṅụ amụ (penis sicker or in literal terms: penis drinker) and mocking her for an illicit affair with a pastor, saying that Abia state governorship is not what they use to suck/drink penis.

Now while I can concede that Alex Otti is doing a beautiful job with Abia State and should be voted to continue his good work, I am more than disgusted by this line of attack. What has her gubernatorial aspirations got to do with her ability to give a proper blowjob?

Why is society’s first ammunition against a woman her sexuality?

We see it online: the whole fuss about digital footprints, “what will your future children say?” “How could a mother do this?” “So person go later marry this one.”

We have lots of memes about it. I wish I took screenshots but one of them paraphrased reads: Omo, if you see how feminist dey ride dick, tears go comot from your eyes. And I wonder: What has feminism got to do with the cowgirl or its reverse?

Men sleep with people they hate all the time. Why then is it a crime when a woman who opposes the patriarchy finds pleasure in men’s bodies?

Can a woman not be both sexual and defiant? Can she not be both sexual and intellectual?

A while ago, I posed a question here: Intellectualism is not the Nigerian approach to sexuality, vulgarity is. But can a thing not be both intellectual and vulgar? And I will rephrase it now: Can a person not be both vulgar and intellectual?

Can a woman not be both vulgar and intellectual?

Why do these boxes exist strictly for women?

A feminist must not be good in bed. A feminist must not get married. A woman who doesn’t aspire for motherhood must a whore. An unmarried woman enjoying singleness must be a whore. A young single woman that has money and can afford to live alone, whore! A woman in her twenties who buys a car, whore! A teenager reading romance, whore! Even a prepubescent girl who is just wearing a dress is still a whore.

A man on the other hand, oh he can be everything. A man can be a rapist and a president, a pedophile and a pastor, a sex addict and a Catholic priest, a dunce and a teacher, a fool and a podcaster, a good father and a cheat, a great writer and a wife beater, a freedom fighting musician and a chronic AIDS distributor. Seriously, there is no limit to what a man can be.

But the second a woman expresses herself, she is immediately labelled Whore or Madonna. Never both, never neither, always one or the other. And there will be consequences the day she dares step out of those labels. (Think Obidi’s pregnancy)

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Back to my friend, ‘he was just joking.’ I know and I intend to laugh later in the day when I get my funny bone reinstalled.

But now I am over my initial shock and I wonder why I was ever shocked. The Madonna-Whore complex was proposed as an explanation for men’s inability to indulge in certain kinds of bedroom activities within a committed and loving relationship. So it adds up that a romantic interest would, in a bid to make sense of my non-conformity to social norms, reach for those stereotypes. Because in the very logical male brain, if I am unwilling to perform Madonna for him, then I must be a whore.

And maybe I am because if there is anything I know for a fact, it is that I am no Madonna.

Or maybe I’m neither and I just want to travel the world alone, unencumbered and untethered to marriage, love, romance and/or sex.

What irks me the most, however, is how very accepting of this nonchalance and incompetence Nigerians are.

On Saturday, a media house that claims to represent the Igbo people made a Biafra day post talking about how the war ended on 30th May 1970 and it has been 59 years after the war.

The post sent me running to google. I am 100 percent sure that the war began on 6th July and ended on 15th January, and that what people celebrate on 30th May is the secession of the Biafran state from the Nigerian Republic not the end of the war. But the post still made me doubt myself because it was coming from a big and popular media house of Igbo people, and especially because there were lots of comments under the post and I didn’t see any correcting the mistake.

I talk a lot about Biafra and I always bring up the secession of May 30th 1967, so I was very scared that I have for years now been spreading misinformation. Only for me to check google and discover that I was right all along.

In that moment I had a new problem: my eyes, my brain. I thought I had misread the post, maybe my eyes were acting up again, maybe I should have taken my eye drops and glass prescription seriously, maybe my brain processed the information wrongly.

So I ran back to their Instagram check because clearly it had to be a me problem, right?

Wrong! It was not my eyes, it was not my brain, it was not me. It was them! This media house that has for so long been applauded as champions of the East could not correctly identify major dates in Nigerian history.

I took time to read and not only had they boldly affirmed that the Biafran war ended on 30th May 1970 and it has been 59 years after the war, they had also given an estimated death toll of 3 million for Igbo people during the war. Igbo people, not Biafran, not members of the Eastern region, just Igbo people. There was no mention of minority ethnic groups or the fact that the estimated death toll was strictly civilian.

At this point, I just had to take screenshots to prevent myself from spiralling into doubts again the second I left their page.

I took a stroll to the comments and it was all about Ozoemena and how sad everybody was and how everybody's grandfather and their first son had fought in the war. The comment section was really giving Inshaalla and vibes.

I was so angry at both the posters and the commenters and I left a comment that is still unanswered, and might remain so.

My plan was to then leave Instagram and go about my day, but I just couldn't and I still can't.

I can’t shake off this feeling of AI interference and incompetence, because surely AI must have prepared the writeup.

I wonder: how much would it have cost them to do research, a quick google search, a peep through a book—any book—about the war, even the one written by Gowon?

This is a media house for gods sake. Did the post not go through anybody before it was uploaded? What is the job of their editor and most importantly, why is nobody in the comment section saying anything?

Surely we can't all possibly be that ignorant.

In case you're wondering: why does this even matter?

It matters because a media house should know the date of the significant happenings in a country they are part of.

A media house that represents a particular people and even has the people’s name etched into their brand, claiming to be their voice should know the date of the most significant event in those people's history.

The Biafran war is arguably the most significant event in Nigeria, second only to independence

It is for a fact the most significant for Igbo people and other ex-Biafran ethnicities, bar none. And I would hope that a media house that claims an affinity to Igbo people would know that, talk more of the one that parades itself as their voice. How are you the voice of a people whose history you are unaware of? Make it make sense.

This gross mishandling of information and total disregard for public trust should not be normalized. People should not turn blind eyes when blogs and media houses try to rewrite known and accessible history before their eyes.

This post got over 4000 likes, 300 comments, 500 reposts and 800 shares, and nobody, not even one person, thought to correct them

The war started roughly 59 years ago, lasted for almost three years and it is now 56 years after the war. Saturday marked 59 years since secession of Biafra, not the end of the war.

Thank you and god be with you.

Men are so unashamed of their bodies—so unapologetic in the way they parade themselves. Right in front of me, there is one walking around topless. His protruding belly bulges out by the sides, giving him a waistline bigger than the rest of his body, yet his confidence is unrivaled. He sashays like a model on the runway, eager to show off his folds to the world—so at home in his voluminous skin.

Then there is me, standing before the mirror for the hundredth time today, checking and rechecking to make sure my tommy is still flat, my waist still slim.

A friend laughs when I tell her I fear I’m fat, as though to say, “you have no right to that.”

She says I have pretty-body privilege. “Why else do men listen when you speak—even when you spew nonsense?”

I want to tell her that she is wrong, that they listen for other reasons, for better reasons. Then I want to tell her that this privilege comes with a ritual, a noose tied around my neck, a fear for the future. How long before I lose this appeal, before they poke holes in my words?

But I say nothing. She’s bigger than me, her fears more valid than mine.

There is me, panicking because a pair of trousers I was gifted in 2022 and another in 2023 barely make it past my hips. The bum-shorts I stole in 2025 no longer close around my waist. My friend says the extra weight is a gift.

Yesterday, I cleared out the wardrobe, finally stopped hoping that one day I’ll be slim enough to fit into those clothes again.

I developed an eating disorder late last year, and these days, I only eat once a day. But so far, that has solved nothing. My waist is still the same, my hips are a little wider, my ass a little bigger. I don’t want this gift. But sometimes I think I do. Sometimes I want to be like those girls whose corsets sit tightly above their ass. The ones who look snatched to every occasion, who have something to snatch.

There is me, wondering if these are rolls I feel on my back when I bend backwards, wondering if they have always been there or I just got them. I stay up all night googling the weight of different actresses. They say I’m shaped like Bimbo, I’ve heard it a dozen times. I search her weight over and over again. The internet knows nothing about her.

I used to love her build, the way it curves into an art piece, used to love the way she carries herself. In my eyes, there was none finer. Until I entered Uni. and someone said to me on the first day, “You have Bimbo’s shape; I’ll call you Bimbo.”

For a minute I was proud, wore the name like a crown I had earned through series of battles with myself. Then I began to search for me in her. I notice the way her legs carry, the dips on her hips—faults reflected off me. If I’m like her, she must be flawed like me. Since nothing beautiful can come from what is mine, all that remains are the scars we share.

Last month a boutique attendant said, “There is this actress you remind me of. What is that her name sef?” and I prayed she would not remember.

But her colleague asked, “Bimbo?”

And she shouted, “Eh he! Bimbo. Your shape reminds me of Bimbo.”

The feeling that sat in my chest that moment was far from pride.

There is me, scared of getting my weight checked, then wondering if the scale is broken or I really weigh that much.

“Am I really that big?” I ask my mirror. “Are you lying to me?”

I want to be like a man, to be as shameless in my exhibition of my body as they are. But I’m a woman, and shame is at home in me.

“I hate my body,” I whisper to the mirror. That is a lie. I like my body, adore the way it flexes into positions others struggle to get into. It serves its purpose.

“I love my body.” Another lie—I must be the devil’s daughter. But maybe if I say it well enough, I’ll finally believe it.

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I think I’m in love. Not with the topless man, never! But with someone less obnoxious, more self aware. Someone who holds my fears and asks, “what can I do to make it better?”

Here, I laugh louder, I dream wider, I forget to breathe. With them, there are no ceilings, I only see stars.

I should sit back and enjoy it—revel in this strange thing that feels like home. But here I am, sieving their words for lies they probably never told, clenching my teeth when they tell me they love my body, hoping we never make it to that point where I am fully naked—all kinds of naked.

They say I’m beautiful. I think so too.

Yet here I am, wondering if it’s true or they’re just another descendant of my lowly father.

22/2/2025

On the bed,

In an old dress,

Blasting Beyonce,

Somewhere in Nigeria.

It’s incredible, this thing called Faith.

On nights like this, I think about it, just as much as I think about death. I think about my writing too, think about the words spilling from my pen onto paper, the worlds leaking from my mind into yours. I wonder how much longer before I bind them, wonder when I’ll be able to hand them out with a smile on my face and slight pain in my heart, knowing they will never again be exclusively mine.

I want to leave a legacy, something I will be remembered for, something good, something kind. But I don’t just want to be remembered, I want to be felt. I don’t just want to leave a conviction, I want to make a change, a physical change—one that can be seen, felt, examined. Something tangible. I want to make the world a better place, want to change systems and overthrow governments.

I’m childfree but my brothers, my sister, my cousins, they’re going to have kids someday—my sister might have one tomorrow—I do not want their children to grow up in a world with so many -isms and phobias—sexism, racism, classism, capitalism, tribalism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia. I want better for them, for their friends, for the random stranger on the street. I want a better world, a better us.

As Beyonce sings in her ever iconic song: I wanna leave my footprints on the sands of time, know there was something that meant something that I left behind. When I leave this world, I’ll leave no regret, leave something to remember, so they won’t forget I was here … I just want them to know that I gave my all, did my best, brought someone some happiness, left this world a little better just because I was here.

I know I won’t live forever—nobody can, but I know I won’t live as long as many people do. It’s not a fear I have, just a thing I know, just like I know what a person’s reaction will be to a news I am yet to give them, like I knew death was coming right before it claimed Sister, or like I always know when I lose money, even before I open the bag to check. It’s a feeling, one that I cannot shake off.

I fear, however, for my future. I fear that when death comes I would not be ready, would not have done all I need to do, would not have written the pages I want so badly to read or led the changes I want to see. So, on nights like this, I get up and write even when I don’t feel like it.

In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton musical, Burr asks Alexander, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” I ask myself the same question.

Hamilton dies young. I know I will too. I wonder if I have up to 20 years ahead of me. I can tell I don’t have up to forty, not even up to thirty.

A friend of mine swears I will not die until I’ve had sex with him. I have a habit of cutting off male friends who stick around in hopes that I’ll bed them one day. Yet I do not cut off this friend, do not do to him as I do to most men. Instead I borrow from his belief even though mine battles it every night. I’ll never sleep with him—even if I wanted to—and as long as I don’t do so, as long as I keep him around, I get to live forever.

It’s incredible, this thing called Faith.

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SOLDIER

My father was a soldier. Light skinned with afro hair and a tall build, he was only twenty-seven when the war started. But he was a teacher first. He had been one since he was sixteen, since he climbed a chair to reach the top of a board in the class filled with adults who were all of course older than him. He loved to teach, that much was clear. But when the war came calling, he dropped his chalk and picked up a gun.

I grew up to tales of the war, glimpses of invasions and brutality, testimonies of death and near-death experiences, yet of all the stories my father told, he never relived how young he was when the war started, never told how he had barely stepped into manhood when he was plucked from the classroom and transformed into a killing machine.

I was fifteen when I truly understood the import of the war, fifteen when I glanced through the pages of a book and saw, not a man, not a soldier, but a child, one much younger than my father when the war started. I was fifteen when I first did the math, when I subtracted and realized that my father, born in 1939, had just turned twenty-seven the December before the Ojukwu declared secession.

Two years before, I had read There Was A Country, sped through the book with tears in my eyes, moved by the depth of the war I had grown to know, but never truly grasped its reality.

It was Baby’s voice, soft and gentle, yet filled with suspicion that whispered the horrors of the war to me. “Why is Aunty Kainene still at afia attack?”1

It was Ugwu, young vibrant Ugwu, another teacher forced into conscription—so close to my age yet childlike in his innocence—that yelled to me the words I had for so long refused to hear.

I cried when I finished the book, those tears different, more understanding than the ones I had shed before. I sought out my father that night, I had questions, questions he was unsure of how to answer. For the first time, I saw in his eyes the horrors of the war and I wondered how many he had to bury, how many he had to kill.

My father who hugged me every night before I slept, and anointed my forehead when I woke up screaming—the retired Headmaster whom the community called honest—was not just a survivor, he was a killer.

That was the reality of the war: it made soldiers out of boys and killers out of men.

SHAME

My mother was also a teacher, an Igbo woman who never got to be Biafran. I didn’t understand it then—how one could have an Igbo tongue, answer to an Igbo name, hail from an Igbo town and still never truly be Igbo. How Chinyelu from Ogwashi-uku, who spoke Igbo more often than I did, was any less Igbo than I am.

I argued with my teachers often, then fought with my peers. My mother is Igbo, I swore. But it made no difference.

I once knew a lady, Rosemary from Nwaajala in Kogi—a town that means child of the soil of the earth—but she was not Igbo. I know another, Onyinyechi from Cross River, whose father bears a variation of the name Ezege and her grandfather, Nkanu. She too is not Igbo.

I understand it better now, I see it for what it is. We had lost a war and the government had carved us up into bits and pieces. Those who were once with us—who were us—now distance themselves. And those who were just like us but were never with us, who might have become us if we won the war, swear we are nothing alike

Even we distance ourselves from us. We strip away the parts of us that make us us, we twist and turn our tongues until our dialects blend into the versions that betray nothing about who we are.

We lose touch with Ala, the soil that feeds our soul. We run from mmili, the water that cleanses our soul. We bleach, we harmonize, we unionize, not to resist but to ensure our survival through conformity, through erasure.

It is the shame of the defeated. I recognize it in myself. I carry it in me, in the parts my father’s cane did not reach when he taught me ABDỊ na edemede Igbo, the places his words did not touch when he instilled in me the pride that comes with my Igboness.

It is also fear—fear of death, fear of repetition, fear of retaining the parts of us that act as signals to our destruction and harbingers to our doom. We have become so afraid that we aid in our own destruction. It is suicide disguised as self preservation.

What happened to the once brave people of the Eastern Niger region?

I watched the news on 15th January 2020, kept my eyes on the television and listened when the question was asked: 50 years after the war, how far have we come?

I listen to people—mostly Igbo people—speak about the inadequacies of the Igbo ethnic group, the shortcomings of the now south eastern region of Nigeria. We blame ourselves for not catching up with the rest of the nation, we beat our chest in agony and wonder how we can make our way out, but no one stops to ask, what has been done for us?

REPARATIONS

I have forgotten where I first heard the word. I think it was in an American movie, the kind my parents forced us to watch, the ones that showcased the sufferings of the African-Americans in a post slavery era, a time I have now learnt is called the Jim Crow era; or maybe it was in a documentary, a chronicle that spoke about the exploitations of Africa: the conquest, the pillaging and the post-colonial effect. Or it could be in one of the books I read, books that feel so real I sometimes wonder if they were movies and not just books.

But I remember the word came back to me a few years ago when I watched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, through my phone screen, demand reparations for the countries of Africa: for Congo for the atrocities committed by King Leopold II of Belgium, for Namibia for the colonial history of Germany, for Africa as a whole.2

It struck me then that I have only ever heard reparations used in respect to slavery and colonialism and I wondered, I still do, where the reparation of the people of the Eastern Niger Region is. Or are a people only entitled to reparations when their oppressors are white and foreign?

Merriam Webster defines reparations as the act of making amends, offering expiation, or giving satisfaction for a wrong or injury.3 Expiation on its own refers to the act of extinguishing the guilt incurred by something.4

The United Nations calls it (reparation) the measures (taken) to redress violations of human rights by providing a range of material and symbolic benefits to victims or their families as well as affected communities.5

According to the International Centre For Transitional Justice, they (reparations) are meant to acknowledge and repair the causes and consequences of human rights violations and inequality in countries emerging from dictatorship, armed conflict, and political violence, as well as in societies dealing with racial injustice and legacies of colonization.6

The International Centre goes further to state that all victims of human rights violations have a right to reparation.7

The indigenous people who occupied the land we now know as America, before Columbus stumbled upon it with his team of amateur sailors, deserve reparation for the injustice meted on them by the Europeans, an injustice that continues to this day.

The descendants of the slaves taken from Africa deserve to rage in demand for the reparations they are owed.

Africans themselves, including Nigeria, deserve reparations for the exploitation of both human and mineral resources, an exploitation that remains ongoing.

And as minute as our pain may look in the face of these aforementioned, the Igbo people and the minority tribes that made up the Republic of Biafra deserve reparations for the wrongs they suffered at the hands of the Nigerian government.

Except we choose to remain illusioned to the fact that what occurred in the Eastern region of Nigeria in the years 1967–1970 and the years before—the rape, the displacement, the massacre which would in any other case be referred to as a genocide8—were a violation of human rights, we must begin to inquire what measures have been taken to redress the injustice committed against the former people of Biafra.

We must begin to ask: 56 years after the war, what has been done to assuage the fears and lift the shame of those who suffered grievously in the Nigerian Civil war?

Often, reparation is mistaken for restitution or compensation. And while it is sometimes the same, reparation is not always money or resources. At its very core, it is accountability.

In her Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, through the character Omelogor, confronts the American idea that justice can be substituted with money: “I hate how Americans think money is justice … Everybody in America has lost their bravery”9

I feel the same, but I have learnt and I am still learning that different victims have different needs.10 The grieving people must be allowed to define what reparation looks like for them.

To some people, it would look like giving back what has been stolen or at least a quarter of it. To some it is being allowed the ability and dignity to remember and grieve what has been lost. And to another or maybe even all, it is receiving the encouragement and power to rebuild what once was and to forge ahead.

To the black American, reparation can look like forty acres and a mule11 as was promised upon liberation—not because it is the totality of what was lost or even comes close to being so, but because it is a symbol of remorse. It is a recognition of wrong doing and an attempt at expiation.

To the native American, it may be the return of stolen lands, or at least some of it.

To Africa, reparations can take the form of restoration: restoration of indigenous arts, gold, metals and minerals.

What, I wonder, would reparations look like for the once Eastern region?

REMEMBRANCE

Often Igbo people are advised to forgive and forget, to move on as though nothing happened, but something happened. Lives were lost in their millions—civilian lives.12 How do we move on from that? How does one forget an event with one of the highest death-toll in African conflicts?

I ran into a woman years ago, an old trader who was pleasantly surprised by my knowledge of the war. She hugged me continuously and when she finally let go, she let out a wail. Beating her chest with one hand, the other on her breast in a manner that is peculiar to her generation—my father’s generation—she said, “Ụmụanyị amalọ ife emelụ anyị na agha.” Our children do not know what was done to us in the war.

I often think of her, she reminds me of him—my father—of his face frozen in grief on the night I swore I would defy him and attend a church program on Biafra day, a day most sacred to him. This was of course before I read Half Of A Yellow Sun, before I understood why my disregard for what I thought to be another Igbo propaganda brought tears to my father’s eyes.

She also reminds me of Uncle Elo, a man totally unrelated to me, but still my uncle in the way all the daughters of my father’s friends are my aunts. His father was my father’s friend and one of the first casualties in the Biafran war.

He was just a toddler when it happened, now he is grown and has a thriving business in Lagos. I know he wonders how different life would have been if the war had not claimed his father.

He sits at home on 30th May, crosses his legs and gazes into the trees with empty eyes. He remembers. And even though he is an Igbo man, known for his entrepreneurial spirit, no amount of calls will get him to open his shop on that sacred day. His dignity lies in what can be remembered. Because he knows that in a world that seeks to make us forget, remembrance is rebellion.

We cannot possibly forgive and forget. We might forgive, but we must remember because only in remembering can we forge ahead, only in the oppressor’s remembrance can we be assured of remorse.

The Igbo man in Nigeria is not asking the government to give back to him what his fathers lost during the war. He is not asking to be compensated for his mother’s death. Reparation to him is not resources or money. It is freedom: freedom to remember. Freedom that manifests as the power to retain the stories that shaped our reality.

He asks: 56 years after the war, where are we? What can our children remember? What have we been allowed to remember?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her speech in Germany said: We cannot change the past but we can change our blindness to the past.

It is true that the Nigerian government cannot change what was done during the war but they can change their approach towards the war. They can remember—not in defense or in justification, but in acceptance of wrongdoing, as a step towards rebuilding.

REMNANT

My father always had so much to say about the war, I wish I had made time to listen.

I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun again. Multiple times I read and reread the book, searching for meaning between its pages, for the words my father forgot to teach me. I scan the pages of Elechi Amadi’s Sunset in Biafra, hoping to learn more about this land that would have been mine.

Buchi Emencheta’s Destination Biafra has a special place on my reading table, right next to Sunset at Dawn by Chukwuemeka Ike.

Finally, I return to Achebe’s There Was a Country, with eyes that see—an enlightenment that was missing before. I throw myself into its pages, devouring his words.

I wish to learn. I want to know more. I have to remember.

DREAM

A few minutes ago, I was sleeping and a girl in my dream kept asking me to let her into my house very late at night—a small girl wearing a blue and white check uniform, mind you.

Of course, I did not let her in. What am I? Stupid?

But my sister probably is. She tried to convince me to let the child into the house, even struggling with me for a while. And when she could not prevail, she went outside and stayed with the girl.

Stupid, stupid Chidera. Has she not watched Sinner? Well, I have not but I hear the plot is just like this.

Anyway, the day finally broke in my dream. Turns out the entire community would have let the girl in if she had stayed at their doors and cried all night, so they claim. Bloody liars!

I actually had no regrets, would have continued to have none at all, if the little bitch did not look me in the eye and say "Now I will curse you."

Curse me as how? Bitch, I thought you claim not to be a witch. The fuck are you on about?

What in the name of Beauty and the Beast fairy godmother abi Nigerian witch daughter is going on here?

But in standard dream manner, nobody remembered the plot. Nobody remembered that her wanting to curse me for not helping her—a weird crying child at my window in the middle of the night—is exactly the reason we do not help weird crying children in the middle of the night

I didn't point this out as she stood there with my sister, looking all proud and haughty.

Shouldn't my sister have tried to beg on my behalf? you ask.

Well, it's the dream state. Apparently Dream Chidera couldn't care less. Not that real life Chidera would, I have been told several times to be nicer, but I never listen.

The girl must have started saying the curse words, before I lowered myself to the ground, not in apology but to be on the same level with her.

"You too would have done the same," I said and she paused. Check mate! I woke up.

REALITY

It's raining and something strange is in the air. There is another presence here with me. I can feel it in my gut.

I check the time and it's 00:04. I should get up and go write. But I don't feel like it. I am a little scared—a lot scared. What if the crazy girl is hanging around the walls?

This is when NEPA decides to take their light. I guess they don’t care about my Annabelle-themed problem.

There in the dark, I have time to sit with my thoughts. I find strength to sit with my fears. I am still scared but I think about my fears.

Why in God's name is a spirit child trying to terrorize me? Am I that unkind?

The curse feels so real, has it taken effect? What did she even curse me with?

Whom do I have to appease to make the curse go away?

For the first time in a long time, I don't combat my bad dreams with prayers, at least not the christian way.

"You too would have done the same if you were in my shoes." I whisper to the shadows. Of that, I am sure. Who but my very-spiritual sister and the mythical people in my dream land will let a child into their house at night, a child that was so clearly an evil spirit?

Ohh well, I too am Nwammuo. I whisper this into the air and will sleep to take me. I am also a spirit child

NOW

Still semi-naked on the bed, the NEPA light has been off for a few minutes and sleep is nowhere to be found, I place a call to the security asking them to turn on the generator.

The one that answers sounds shocked, as though he expects us to sleep in darkness. Oh well. I find my way to whatsapp, it will help distract me from my thoughts of the devil child.

The generator finally comes on.

I am no longer scared but my thoughts are jumbled up.

How could I forget the most important part of me?

How did I allow a spirit that manifested as a primary school student to terrorize my dreams?

I have this overwhelming urge to strangle the mini spirit, but it's too late.

NEPA brings back the light.

I can hear the security cursing me in their mind. Don't I have more than enough of those to deal with in 15 lifetimes? Don't I have enough curses hanging around my poor tired neck?

Sunlight is the enemy. It shines its light on our weaknesses. Illuminating our path, it exalts our flaws and casts a shadow on our deepest desires. But the moon, the moon is every woman’s best friend.

I go to him at night, afraid of what the world would say if they saw me walk through that door. Willing my knuckles to be less loud, I touch them on the wood. Can he hear me? Will he open up?

The door swings open and light touches my face for the first time in hours, the once-sweet caress of its rays now burning against my skin. But it’s not sunlight, just a bulb.

While the bright light reminds me why I’m here, the sound of the generator drowns out my thoughts.

‘Hurry in,’ he almost screams, his voice rising against the generator’s rumble, ‘mosquitoes are on the hunt tonight.’ My feet complies, my head wonders how stupid I could possibly be.

Inside, he works his magic, unaware of the fear in my heart. I know I’m next but I’m all covered up and I’m too scared to let her out.

‘What do you want? It's unusual to see a woman like you here.’ He doesn’t say so, but I hear him nonetheless. A woman like me doesn’t belong in this place.

I ask if we can have privacy. Let your homeboys step out for a while. He kind of wonders, he kind of complies. Tomorrow I’ll wonder, tomorrow I’ll ask why he has no questions but tonight, tonight I open up.

I take off my covering and unwrap my pride. Words finally tumble out of my lips, and he, as though in awe, drapes a cloth over me.

There on the floor, he drops my dignity—his instrument stripping me of my pride as his skilled hands coerce me to let go.

Through the mirror I watch him step all over my womanhood. Each step a bullet lodged in my heart. I cannot cry. Even though tears sting my eyes, I cannot show weakness—not tonight.

Apostle Paul would roll in his grave if he had one. What has Abba’s dearest child done?

My mother will fume for a while. How dare a woman let go of that which separates her from a man? What type of woman toys with her dignity? What well-meaning man will ever get involved with a woman with no regard for her womanhood?

Hair holds memories. Mine held pain, now it holds nothing; for there on the floor, in the barber's shop, lies my glory.

My mother? She’ll get over it someday, but only when she sees tendrils of hair shooting out of my scalp again, only when a man ignores my broken state and leads me to the altar. After all, a woman’s hair, they say, is her glory.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

It’s scary, this new age, alien and subtly painful like a new shoe that doesn’t quite fit. Another digit swapped with one of the two in my age. My heart beats as I approach it, threatening to tear itself out of my chest in order to make room for the rigmarole of emotions slamming against my ribs.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

Just yesterday, I was hidden away in a distant relative’s house, so I wouldn’t see the corpse enter Father’s compound.

Then I was sleeping in the tenant room while my brother danced with my cousin in celebration of Mother’s death. I still remember waking up wondering how her demise will affect our lives.

I was barely 5 when she died, yet I remember her, I still feel my nails digging through her flesh aggressively when she asked that I scratch her back.

I remember being too scared to say certain words, words that attracted her wrath, words I have now learned to throw around with reckless abandon.

An hour later and I was 6 going on 7, knowing in my guts that my other mother was dead but having no way to confirm it. Then eating tear soaked bread and tea while trying to hold back the tears the elders swore would block her path to heaven.

Before I could blink, I was dancing in a red judge carrying eggs around for a future mother’s wedding.

A few more hours and I was 11, forcing myself to cry loud enough to garner sympathy from the wellwishers who came to mourn yet another mother, sympathy that would so easily be converted to money.

‘Look at the little girl she left behind,’ many whispered and I found myself lost in my head, wondering again how the loss of a mother could affect a daughter.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

Just a few seconds ago, I was 19, sitting on my bed crying as I approached the threshold of 20. I wanted to reach out, to make that call every girl makes at least once, to ask, ‘how exactly does 20 feel?’

I never planned to live beyond 18. It was a conversation no one liked to have—Mother had screamed, ‘Tufiakwa!’ when I first told her this—but it was not something bad.

I never wanted to get old. Old age seemed like a bore. It still does and some days I still don't. I had it all planned out before I turned 10. I would get rich before 18 and enjoy life for at least 2 years before I died. Marriage and children never factored into my dreams so what exactly was I supposed to spend the rest of my life doing?

The adults swear I don’t understand life. ‘You're just a child, when you’re older, you’ll get it.’

Yet they scream when I run around barefooted or try to play in the sand. ‘Do you think you’re still a child?’

I don’t understand, it seems I’m too young to be an adult, yet too old to be a child.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

Every birthday comes with its own package locked into new experiences. But most times I don’t have the passkey.

I am realizing I don’t spend enough time in the age I turn. I am so immersed in the upcoming age that I forget to live in the now. Too quick to say, ‘I’m turning …’ instead of saying, ‘I am …’

These days I feel ancient, too old for my age, too wise for my peers, too sensitive, too knowledgeable, too woke. An old soul in a still developing body, as though I was born with my eyes open.

Maybe COVID stole my childhood. Maybe it was the months spent confined indoors by a mysterious virus many swore was a myth. Or maybe it was the days spent in emotional solitude, waiting, hoping for UNIZIK to confirm my admission.

Either way, I think it’s the waits, the seemingly inevitable pause in time, that stole my childhood and tried to squash my brightness.

My brother asks why it seems the world has lost its colour. He’s older but I’m wiser. I fear to tell him our eyes are forgetting how to see beauty. We talk about how kids nowadays have no celebrities. We ask our younger cousins what shows kids enjoy these days.

We want to be kids again. We’re both speeding towards 25. He’ll get there before I do, but neither of us have any idea what to do when we’re there.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

I’m in my early twenties now, soon I will be in the middle. Is there less I should be doing? Is there more I should be feeling? Should I be in love? Is there anything I should be doing that I haven’t yet done?

I’m turning 25 soon and I haven’t yet been held, haven’t yet been loved in the way a woman should be? Is that normal?

How do I say, ‘I love you,’ without stumbling on the words and cutting my tongue, without bleeding out in pain?

I met a boy last night, he claimed he loves me—made me feel all kinds of ways. Yet he rose before the sun did and fled before the morning came.

Tell me Mother, is this normal or is that how Father played you? Has love always been this detached, this cruel? Is this blood in my mouth what love tastes like?

You had your first child at 24 then your last at 30, should I do the same or learn from your mistakes?

Should I have travelled out—fed turtles in Zanzibar, danced naked in the beaches of Maldives, gone wine tasting in the Philippines, enjoyed Korean food and Chinese ramen?

Do I get a job or serve my fatherland? Give me a checklist so I can tick off the chores as I approach 25.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

Most days, I feel trapped in my childishness, cloaked in a sort of ignorance that belittles my age. I fight constantly to shrug it off.

Time is running out, every day I get closer to 25. The world is changing, yet I have so much time, what do I do with all this time?

I read often, hoping for a clue in the books. I keep older friends and everyday I ask, ‘what do people do in their 20s?’ I want to know. I have to know. How do I transition from being a child into becoming a woman?

My body keeps changing in ways I cannot control, my desires evolving in phases I cannot contain. Today I feel warm, tomorrow I’ll blow cold.

The men stare when I walk, their eyes violate me in ways I pray their hands never get the courage to try. The boys in my class called me a lesbian because I wouldn’t go out with them and now I wonder if it’s true.

Is it okay for me to love a girl—to find comfort in her arms and heaven in her kisses, to look at her and understand nature better? Can I find God in her temple too or does She only live in the churches built by men?

I stay at home on Sundays. Everyone says I should run into God, that I will need him later, that old age will humble me if I leave him. But God is not my best friend. He is so far away, so unrelatable, his reality so different from mine. I prefer to keep away from him. But sometimes I break through the halo and spare Her a word or two. Most times She smiles in response.

Teach Me, Mother, How To Be 25

I am a flower blooming in the dark without sunlight, without a guide. Teach me, mother, how to be 25.

This, I whisper into Her ears as my birthday approaches. This is my request to the woman who no longer walks with us, a supplication to the one I know who has gone beyond 25.

In my last post— ỊFỤNANAYA- The Lost Art of Seeing (Part 1)—I focused on the colonizer’s views of love and how they are impractical to the average Igbo person and Africans in general. Today I want to look at what the precolonial Igbo view on love is.

Thanks to colonialism and neo-colonialism, we all have a template of what the western and religious concept of love is. We carry it in our hands all day as the books we read, we see it every day blasting off our screens, embedded in songs and movies. Yet we do not have an understanding of our own indigenous views on love.

A lot has been said about our lack of proper documentation and how it is a major contributor to our problem. Though I have a thing or two to add to that discourse, I will shelve it for the future; because while it is important to mourn what we have lost, it is even more important to see what we can save.

With that in mind, we must sift through the rubbles of our past, not in search of what was destroyed but in search of what remains. We must look, not at what was lost, but at that which can still be salvaged. We must restructure our gaze and shift our focus to language.

LANGUAGE

Although a lot of precolonial African nations were unable to preserve their stories through writing, many were able to ensure their longevity in bits and pieces through language. This is one of the many reasons we push back against linguistic shame, because the presence of shame and other forms of restriction on our indigenous languages have caused a colossal loss of not only our culture but also our identity and our indigenous understanding of concepts.

Therefore, in times like this, when we need a clearer view of certain ideologies, we turn back to language as a guide, and explore the words and phrases preserved in it

In Igbo, we say “Ịfụnanya” and “afụ(lụm) gị na anya.” These phrases have for centuries been paraded as the Igbo equivalents of “Love” and “I love you,” even though it is clearly a case of false equivalence.

Love is love, easy to understand, simple to digest, a single word with an instruction manual on how to execute it. But Ịfụnanya is much deeper. It is a phrase ỊFỤ NA ANYA which literally means to see with the eyes.

Ịfụnanya is the act and the art of seeing—not seeing like “afụm gi,” I see you, which is used to depict physical sight—but seeing with eyes, through eyes and in eyes.

The Igbo language is a very contextual language, so this emphasis on eyes lends a deeper meaning to the kind of beholding that occurs in Ịfụnanya.

One of my favorite authors, Rosemary Okafor, describes Ịfụnanya as the act of looking into a person’s eyes and seeing depth. I particularly love this definition because it makes space for uniqueness and eccentricities. It speaks to an understanding and acceptance of personality.

It doesn’t just see what is before it, it digs beneath the surface.

This Ịfụnanya knows where to look. It peers into the soul and sees it all, even the parts the loved cannot see and it says: To yourself, you’re ordinary but to me, you are more!

In another interpretation offered by one of my artist friends, Ịfụnanya means to see in the eye. He (the artist) believes there is an eye in the heart, and Ịfụnanya is the art of seeing through that eye, seeing through the eye of the heart.

In Igbo language, to carry a person in your heart means to make them dear to you, to always think about them, to consider them, to be mindful of them. I imagine that seeing someone through your heart won’t be any different from that.

Ịfụnanya has also been said to mean seeing in the eyes of others, in the eyes of the world—afụm gị na anya ọra, na anya ụwa—becoming so intoxicated by a person’s essence that you begin to see them in everything, to feel them everywhere. Everything reminds you of them, and you make space for them in every room, every relationship.

This version of Ịfụnanya says, “When I gaze into the soul of the world, you are all I see. In the crowd, in the noise, in the silence, the dark solitude of the abyss, It is you I hear. In the abundance of the fields, the emptiness of the desert, I feel you. Every road leads to you.”

Ịfụnanya might also mean seeing the world through another’s eyes. It is borrowing a person’s lens and experiencing the world through their perspective. In this love you see the things, not as you often do, but as they would.

Here Ịfụnanya whispers: I carry a reflection of you in my eyes as a filter, a mirror through which I view the world and experience your reality.

Ịfụnanya could still mean seeing a person through their own eyes—afụm gị na anya gị—in a way that only they have ever seen themselves, in the manner that only they can ever see themselves. To behold them not in the way the world views them or the manner others define them.

This Ịfụnanya is quite similar to R.O's definition because it argues: I see your actions, but more than that, I see your intentions. I see your anger but I see the sadness beneath it. I see your choices but I see the struggles it takes to make those decisions. I see the parts of you, you hide away.

Ịfụnanya also means seeing another in your eyes—afụm gị na anyam—having your sight always on them, not physically of course but emotionally, psychologically, like they are the joy set before you, the reason for your existence. This definition highlights the artist's explanation of seeing with the eyes of the heart and reconciles it with the notion of seeing in the eyes of the world.

Even though all these explanations seem different, they are very similar in the way they speak to a seeing, a beholding, an understanding.

The Igbo concept of love—or at least its definition and the way it exalts sight is a particularity that leaves no room for ambiguity. It speaks to a love that doesn't necessarily act but instead sees, understands, remembers, knows.

CRUEL LOVE

Recently there has been a glorification of a certain kind of love, the kind that is rooted deeply in service and deeds, a love that focuses on duty. This love is defined by its ability to do, because "love is a verb." It exalts sacrifices and places actions on a pedestal.

There are many cases, both online and offline, of people giving their partners gifts that they (the recipients) do not like, gifts that they (the givers) were supposed to know that their recipients would not like. Some people have even been gifted things they are allergic to: a tiktok lady who only wears gold and is allergic to silver was recently gifted a silver ring by her boyfriend.

This is the kind of love we have normalized: a love that cares more about giving than it does about understanding, a love that has so glorified deeds that it has become devoid of understanding and has inevitably turned cruel.

And when you point out how the gift is not your preference, you are labelled ungrateful.

“At least he tried.”

“At least she gave.”

“She spent a lot of money”

“He sacrificed so much”

“It is the thought that counts”

A thought that is based on virtue signaling and martyrdom complex instead of seeing and understanding can never count.

Love is not a class in trial and error. It is not a sacrifice. It is an understanding and the first understanding in love is the understanding of difference. No matter how much I love you, you are not me and I am not you. We are two different people with different wants and needs, who might have different desires on how we want to be loved. It is this understanding of difference that fuels the hunger to see more, to know more, to understand deeper.

Ịfụnanya is not submission, it is intimacy.

It is not provision, it is consideration.

Ịfụnanya is not about you, it is about the one you see.

Ịfụnanya is silent, it is loud.

Ịfụnanya is wild, it is tame.

Sometimes Ịfụnanya is a period care package, other times it is not.

Sometimes it is washing your partner's hair because you can see they are stressed and you know hair care helps relieve their stress.

Ịfụnanya is however the loved needs it to be, it is the lover's sight on how his beloved wants to be loved at any given time.

Some people don’t want anyone to kill for them, they just want someone to help with the dishes. They don’t want anyone to die for them, they just want someone to sit in silence with. I personally don’t want blood on my tiles, I’d rather parallel play.

The traditional Igbo love is not rooted in grand gestures, (At least its definition is not.) It is rooted in seeing, in understanding, in learning.

Kindness is a human trait. Being kind does not automatically imply love, but love inspires kindness. Being gentle with you doesn't mean I love you, but loving you means I am always gentle with you.

This indigenous concept of love, ịfụ mmadụ na anya, means seeing, understanding, and if ever the need arises, making sacrifices based on that deep knowing.

ỊFỤNANYA

Ịfụnanya is intimacy. It is a sustained beholding. It is the ability to keep seeing even when the tingling feeling fades. Ịfunanya centers knowledge, and in Ịfụnanya, understanding is primary. But sometimes we won’t understand, because no matter how much we peer we can’t see all.

Luckily, the acknowledgement of this lack of complete seeing births a hunger to see more, which leads to further seeing and new levels of understanding. And with each new level of understanding, a deeper level of intimacy is unlocked because we can only love to the capacity at which we understand.

Ịfụnanya sees, Ịfụnanya asks, Ịfụnanya learns. In Ịfụnanya, there is no complete knowing. Every day is an exercise in seeing, in learning, because angles change, perspectives change, people change, desires evolve; and where the mind stops seeing, the heart stops loving.

With all these in mind, if you are like Anubis Igwe and me, and you are wondering how to love in your native language. Take the cue from Ịfụnanya: open your eyes and see.

See your language, fụ ya na anya, see your culture, truly see it in your eyes, see depth in your language, see layers in your mother tongue, see it in the eyes of your heart, see it through the eyes of your culture, see it in the eyes of the world, and most importantly see the world through your language.

Remember, only in loving our language, can we learn to love in our language!

Photo credit: Pin by Kendall ✝️

This got me thinking about Black Love, about how we don't really know much about it, especially Nigerian love, Igbo love. Yes, we watch the cute patriarchal movies where the man provides and the lady submits, the ones where Achalaugo’s beauty and feminine grace charm Odogwu and he proceeds to mismanage his funds on her, causing her to fall for him, which makes him fall deeper for her, which makes her love him more, and the fictitious cycle continues. But that cannot be all there is to love, that can’t be all there is to Igbo love.

I have inherited Anubis Igwe’s fear. Now I fear that I may never be able to love in my language and I don't just mean the kind of love that requires moaning, I mean filial love, platonic love. While I have never been a lover girl, never been the type to say I LOVE YOU, now I fear I am also never going to be nwaada na afụ na anya, the type to say AFỤM GỊ NA ANYA. I fear that as heavy as “I love you” sounds against my tongue, “A fụm gị na anya” sounds even heavier.

While I can blame my—and our collective inability—to love in our language on colonialism and a number of external factors beyond our control, I have chosen to take another route today.

MARRIAGE

Firstly, it is very important to note that Love hasn’t always been an integral part of societies. Yes, marriage and family has always been the bedrock of community, the number 1 agent of socialization and the smallest unity of society, but love hasn't always been a factor in marriage, family or society at large.

Back in the days, marriage was about interests. It was mostly transactional. People got married because they needed to, because there was some sort of gain in it for them—connection, expansion, power, a treaty, even children and lineage preservation.

So a man meets a woman, observes her good character and morals, finds her fitting to be the mother of his children, then proposes to marry her. A woman accesses a man, discovers that his barn is full of yams and his pen full of goats, finds him fitting as a provider, then agrees to marry him. A trader notes a prominent man in a clan where his business has not yet entered, discovers the man has a daughter, and proposes marriage to the girl as a means of business expansion. It was all a transaction, one that was often presented as mutually beneficial.

In those days, marrying for love was not common practice, some would argue that it was so rare, it was considered weird.

The popularization of love as a reason for marriage, especially in the West, began after women gained the rights to work and earn money—a development that threatened the then model of marriage which hinged on provision, an act that was once exclusive to men, but was quickly becoming an accessible option for women, because if provision was no longer a male thing, if women could go out, work and earn their own money, if women could speak for themselves, what then was the use of marriage? So it became important to invent a new reason for marriage—Love!

This however is not the same story with Africa, especially Ala Igbo, because not only have we not caught on with the shift in the idea of marriage, from transactional to love centered—which is why many of us still form relationships based on money, beauty, and whatever interests us—the idea of love, especially the western portrayal of what it should be is still alien to us.

It is important to note that I do not make the assumption that love did not exist in precolonial Africa. It is even more important to note that the economics of Africa was not the same as that of the West. Precolonial African women not only worked, they also earned money and had a semblance of financial freedom, even though they still, in most cases, deferred to men. So while marriage was founded on interest, marriage in precolonial Africa was not based solely on women’s lack of autonomy.

In addition to that, while love could not possibly be traditional, its effects were still felt in those very traditional times: a woman running away to a distant town to marry a pauper whom her father did not approve of, the son of a prominent man insisting on marrying an osu and becoming an osu with her.

Of course eloping was not purely an African thing, it cut across borders and continents. And regardless of tribe and continent, most, if not all elopement, were inspired by love. Although what this love looked like might differ across oceans, because love is a concept and concepts are experienced differently across civilizations.

WHAT IS LOVE?

There are a thousand and one western definitions of love, ranging from desire to devotion; most of them disputed, but all of them based on one thing—Feelings. The western concept of love is a range of feelings, a sort of emotional connection, and when you consistently experience this around a person, you know you’re in love.

This idea of love might seem simple and easy to grasp but a love like this will not make sense in a civilization where feelings are not highly regarded. It is often seen as fickle and unreliable, because feelings are fleeting, feelings are unstable, feelings cannot be trusted. The tingling sensation you felt for one person today can be felt for another tomorrow. Because of this, the western definitions of love as a feeling is often disputed, especially by religious bodies who claim that love is service—a sacrifice, one made regardless of feelings, not because of it.

According to them: love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

This version of love relies heavily, not on emotions, but on duty. This is the kind of love that is often advertised to couples in church marriage counselling. It is a love that chooses to be good, one that does good, not because it wants to, but because it has to.

This concept of love might seem infallible but when faced with a working society that has a sort of moral compass, it begins to look less like love and more like a behavioural guideline for badly behaved children who refuse to get along.

How do you tell an eighteenth century African man, whose life is based on communal living, that love is love because it gives?

How does one explain to the average Igbo woman from the 1800s that love is kind when she has lived all her life in a society where she is expected to offer food to her neighbours’ children if she notices hunger in their eyes, irrespective of her relationship with their parents?

How does not delighting in evil become an attribute exclusively attributed to love and not a marker of humanity in general?

What sets this idea of love apart from communal living and the universal idea of humanity?

Most importantly, how does this aid the Igbo person in their quest for romantic love?

How does it teach them to express their love to one person without dehumanizing others?

WHAT DOES IGBO LOVE LOOK LIKE?

What does love look like when both lovers are black, Nigerian, Igbo and from the same tribe, when there is nothing to explain, when perspectives deeply align?

Ifemelu in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah touches on this during reunion/fling with the very married Obinze.

“Once she had told him, ‘The thing about cross-cultural relationships is that you spend so much time explaining. My ex-boyfriends and I spent a lot of time explaining. I sometimes wondered whether we would even have anything at all to say to each other if we were from the same place,’ and it pleased him to hear that, because it gave his relationship with her a depth, a lack of trifling novelty. They were from the same place and they still had a lot to say to each other.”

This relationship between Ceiling and Ifem might have been a perfect example if Obinze’s marriage had not cast a shadow on their relationship. And that begs the question, what does Nigerian love look like when it is not cheating, when forgiveness is not needed from it?

What does black love look like when it is not giving?

What is Igbo love when help is not required from it, when submission is not the prerequisite?

What does love look like when it is not fighting, when it is not second guessing itself?

What does it sound like when it has nothing to say?

What is love when it is an action that does not need to act?

When I was reading the book I was really cringed out by certain parts—i.e the bedroom scenes. Not because I was a naive ten year old who was just discovering her first sex scene—far from that—but because whenever Akwaugo and Tobe got together in the bedroom—or elsewhere for that matter—Akwaugo always moaned in Igbo language.

This might not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, especially non-native speakers of Igbo language—because after all she's Igbo, which other language do we expect her to moan in? But you have to understand that this book was written in English—the scenes, the conversations, everything except the characters’ names, occasional sprinkling of popular Igbo words and of course the sex scenes—so the use of Igbo in the bedroom was very intentional. And I am from a generation that conducts every interaction in English. EVERY INTERACTION!

While I was grossed out, I tried to keep my reservation about those scenes to myself. But one of my friends—who was reading the book at the same time as me—refused to. She took to her Whatsapp status to express how it just didn't sit right with her, how it felt too vulgar, too uncouth.

For a moment I agreed with her. It was not right to abuse our Igbo language like that. To take that which is meant for kings and hand it over to dogs.

Mind you, we did not have an issue with the act itself, we did not have a problem with the wanton sexuality of it all. We had read a lot of romance novels with different languages of moaning—English, Latin, French, Spanish, Russian, you name it. But there was something particularly wrong with the use of Igbo language to express bedroom pleasure. There was something shameful in saying, “mebe m ya oo!” instead of “harder! harder!”

We spent close to an hour criticizing the brazenness of the novel. Then it hit me in the face like a brick flying off a moving train—the hypocrisy of my anger and disgust—and my sleeping brain cells awakened with thoughts.

“What exactly is the point of our anger?”

“Why are we so worked up by an act as simple as moaning in Igbo language?”

“Are we pissed by the particular set of words she used or by her use of Igbo language in general?”

“If those words were translated to foreign languages—If ‘bikonu’ turns to ‘please’ and ‘Omalicham’ is replaced with ‘ma belle.’ If ‘isogbugom’ becomes ‘sei troppo dolce’ and ‘mebem ya’ becomes ‘plus forte’—would we still look at them with the same judgmental disgust or would we view them as normal or even sexy?”

“Are we arguing the morality of women as a whole or defending the perceived morality of our ethnicity?”

“Are we mad that an Igbo woman was presented in a sexual manner? And if yes, is it such a bad thing for Igbo women to have desires?”

REVERENTIAL SHAME!

I have come to the conclusion that part of our anger and disgust was caused by reverential shame.

What is reverential shame?

Quite like reverential fear, it is a kind of shame that is born, not out of scorn, contempt or disdain, but out of respect, out of adoration. It is when a thing is so glorified that we subconsciously begin to shun it, not because it's not pure enough but because it is too pure—too sacred for common use.

An example of this is the shame associated with women's bodies. In Christianity, we hear statements like, “your body is the temple of the holy spirit” “you were made in God's image,” “you are wonderfully and beautifully made,” statements that speak to the glory and beauty in our bodies. Yet when a woman comes out looking a certain way, it is deemed shameful, unholy, immoral.

Reverential shame says: This is holy and so should be kept away, hidden, covered, concealed, unused.

It says: Because this is sacred, here is a small list of things you can use it for, anything contrary will be met with shame.

This is how we (my friend and I) viewed our language. It is a sacred thing and so can only be used for certain things.

How do I use the same language my mother used to nurse me to moan in bed?

A lot of Igbo people find it easier to say “penis” than to say “amụ” even though essentially they are the same thing. And this is because the perceived sacredness of Igbo language lends weight to words that would have otherwise weighed less.

COLONIALISM

Beyond reverential fear, our hesitation to accept the use of our language in certain contexts is also rooted in colonialism.

I don't think much needs to be said here. We were born in a time when everybody spoke English and when speaking your native language was considered archaic and trashy, so of course, we would find poetry in western expressions while viewing ours as backward and unappealing.

Sex and sexuality is supposed to be this sophisticated dance between lovers, and what better way to make it sound beautiful than with sounds handed over to us by our colonisers. Anything contrary would make it dirty and shameful, as dirty and as shameful as the primitive Africans whom the colonisers in their infinite mercy came to save.

In addition to colonialism, there is the shame of the defeated. During the Nigerian civil war, one of the tools used to pick out the Igbos living in other parts of the country was diction. Our fathers were hunted for sport, and how they spoke was a major marker that set them apart and made them easier to be found. Now this wouldn't have had much of an effect if they won the war but they did not. They lost and for the years following that loss, their language remained a signpost hung on their neck, reminding everyone that they were the defeated. As a precautionary defense, a lot of Igbo people had to make conscious efforts to not teach their children their language. Just in case something like that happens again.

So here we are, decades after the war and that shame of the defeated still hangs over that language like a rain cloud. Although sometimes we can not see it, it's still there in our subconscious, embedded into our heritage by our fathers who learnt it from their fathers whose brothers were killed in the pogroms.

BILINGUALISM

As a bilingual person who has two first languages, one who thinks, speaks and expresses herself in both languages, I like to think that no language takes precedence over the other. But now I wonder, if I view one language as shameful when it is used to express pleasure and the other as just normal or even sexy, can I still claim that both languages hold the same value to me? Do I still have the right to pose as someone who has two first languages? Or has one language taken precedence over the other?

What are the possibilities that my friend and I felt the way we did because of the presence of another language in the book? Are our inhibitions against the Igbo language tied to our use of the English language? Would we still find the use of Igbo language in the bedroom wanting if we had nothing to weigh it against? Would we have found moaning in Igbo language shameful if our first introduction to moaning was not the English language?

WHAT LANGUAGE DID PRE-COLONIAL IGBO WOMEN USE IN THE BEDROOM?

Last night I got into a conversation about the book with another friend of mine and I asked him the above question.

He was of the opinion that back in those days, women did not moan. He painted the picture of sexual activity that did not require the permission or enjoyment of women, only their compliance—a picture in which the women ceased to be willing participants in the pleasure and rather became victims of a violence they could not escape.

Of course my friend was not trying to be misogynistic, but his argument was deeply rooted in a patriarchal system that seeks to deny women's eagerness and enthusiasm in issues concerning their sexuality, while ignoring the historical evidence that women in Igbo land were as sexually active and enjoyed sex just as much as—if not more than—the men of those times. So I asked him to talk to his grandmother who was about a hundred years old, and pose the question to her. She will know better. He asked how he was going to start the conversation and I gave him a few pointers.

I think we should all ask this same question to our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, or any older Igbo person we know.

If you're like my friend and you want to ask but you don't know how to broach the subject, show them this post. Let me do the asking for you.

And just in case you are not curious enough to want to know, let me lend you my curiosity. Ask for my sake.

While we wait for our grandparents’ response, we should do something more practical—maybe write about it, talk about it, sing about it, discuss it with friends. You might not have any bedroom activities going on in your life right now but one of your friends sure does and who knows, you might be able to influence one person into risking it all and moaning in Igbo language.

Although my suggestions might seem immoral to some of you, I need you to remember that this goes beyond sex and sexuality.

Why is it okay to express pain with our language but not pleasure? How is Igbo the language we switch to when we want to lash out but not the one we switch to when we want to moan? How is our language that of anger but not that of sweet indulgence?

The erasure of Igbo language from the bedroom activities is not just an erasure from sexual pleasure and all that is unholy. It is an erasure from enjoyment and pleasure as a whole and from all things sacred and beautiful. It is an exclusion of pleasure and fulfilment from the Igbo experience, a reiteration and reinforcement of the lie that sophistication and beauty is far from us and that all there is to us is brutal violence.

The erasure of Igbo language from bedroom activities is a surefire road to linguistic extinction because it is rooted in shame—whether reverential, war induced or neocolonialist, shame is shame. And shame is one of the most effective tools for cultural erasure and ethnocide.

The only way we can ensure the longevity of our language and ultimately cultural preservation is by infusing elements of our culture into our everyday life, including the bedroom.

So, be like Rosemary Okafor and her Akwaugo—speak Igbo, write Igbo and moan in Igbo today.

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