16: The Desired Future
The woman got into the bus strapping a baby to her back. As she wobbled in, she also led in front of her a little girl of about two years. I was seated at the back seat and watched her maneuver her way in
She sat down and made the little girl sit down beside her. I watched with keen interest the exchange I sensed was soon to follow. Seated on the seat beside the lady with the child was another woman. Motherly and probably in her 30’s, she immediately put on a scowl as she watched the woman with the two children. What was the reason for her annoyance?
The lady with the children was clearly Hausa. She had the tribal marks and smelt of ‘turare’, the distinctive perfume synonymous with the Hausa peoples of Nigeria . She looked frail physically and weak financially.
The other lady was Yoruba and looked physically and financially stable. She expected the Hausa lady to carry her daughter on her lap so she asked ‘Is she going to sit down?’ with enough sarcasm to drown a whale, implying her doubts on the woman’s ability to pay for two seats.
‘I go carry my pikin’ came the confident response from the Hausa woman as she immediately lifted her daughter onto her lap. There was something about the way she replied; it was so dignified and inconsistent with her fragile and helpless frame.
I noticed a change in the Yoruba woman’s countenance; she immediately offered to help carry the daughter and the mother agreed. I just sat in that bus astounded by that brief yet powerful exchange.
How one woman rose above her lowly status to defend her right to be treated with respect. How another woman tapped into her motherly instinct and forgot her prejudices. Yet it was that initial stand taken by the Hausa woman that opened this flood gate
Prejudice walks around on two legs and has two arms. If you look closely through a mirror you just might see yourself. It is the way people think, act and speak with petty prejudices about certain ethnic groups that especially rankles. ‘Ibos are so XXX’, ‘Hausas can be so XXX’, ‘Tivs are so XXX’ and on and on we go, reducing whole peoples to half formed stereotypes that are too general to be accurate.
Prejudices may not seem very significant but when left unchecked, they can form the ingredients of a deadly cocktail reminiscent of Rwanda . Anyone who has watched the movie ‘Sometimes in April’ will easily understand this train of thought.
For 100 or so days, men slaughtered their fellow citizens because of the continuous propaganda on the radio describing another ethnic group as cockroaches for whom using a bullet to kill would be a waste of resources, ‘Use the machete and save your bullets’ was the message.
Those who spread these prejudices would quickly describe Hitler as a devil but would not acknowledge their similar ancestry with him because they lack the power to enforce their prejudices the way he had and did.
When I confront people with their prejudices, they downplay it and think I am just exaggerating. I have seen otherwise sane students begin to molest a fellow student all because he was wearing a jellabia on the night of M.K.O Abiola’s death. The conclusion was that ‘they’ had killed him. ‘They’ there being Hausas, my colleagues were resolved to kill anything that so much as looked or dressed Hausa. It turned out the young man was actually Ibo and this was what saved his life that day.
I stood there that cold, wet night in University of Ibadan stupefied by what I had nearly just witnessed. How is it that we so quickly forget the things that make us similar and grab the things that separate us? Why do we act like our differences matter more than the common humanity which we all so generously share as a gift from God?
Like the woman on the bus was so sharply reminded, she had more in common with the Hausa lady than she realized. They were both mothers, though from different ethnic groups. The issues they faced on a daily basis were not too different.
My challenge to you is to stand on the side of those who will see similarities more than differences especially as it relates to social interaction amongst ethnic nationalities. Will you be one of those parents who reject a young man or woman from another tribe as a bride or groom for your child not on the grounds of character but on mere tribe? Will you be one of those who vote for a politician because of where he is from? Will you be the one who casts the first stone when someone is about to be lynched just because he is from a ‘troublesome’ tribe?
The future we all dream of requires a sharp ‘no’ to these questions. It is the smallest price we can pay to move forward. Let us all be counted on the right side. The future is counting on you.
6 Comments:
Oh so true! How easy it is for us to reduce one another to "tribes" and "religious beliefs", and forget that we are more than our skin colour, birth places or worship centres. We all need to understand that life is beautiful in diversity, and that's what makes the world go round!
The Desired Future.....
What an apt lesson at this junction within the Nigerian Political Landscape. How much of a unity would we be forming when we obviously cannot begin to empathise with the other man.
What would it take for us all to look at working together to making this nation work?
Why the predujices? Why the name calling?
I believe it is only in our weakness and the lack of an ability to acknowledge where we are wrong and what we have done wrong that makes us look around for the fall guy.
I found that the people in developed countries, when asked where they come from, tell you where they were born. For some reason they have no "tribal" mentality in the way that we do in Nigeria. Of course you hear them castigate people from other countries from time to time.
Every human being is valuable and variety is a good thing.
May your message be heard by all Nigerians and induce a change of heart for the better.
This makes a whole lot of sense! What ensued between the two women,though brief is a true reflection of what is happening in the larger society.
In a subtle way it permeates minds, homes and systems.
This article has made me take a reflective look at my words, beliefs and actions that are rooted in prejudice.
Voices in the Deep
In response to your latest post I'll like to question the basic rationale behind our perception of ourselves and indeed others today. I’ll dare here to introduce a tripartite view that encompasses our opinion of ourselves (‘My me’ if your like), the opinions of others (‘their me’) and our basic and politically motivated projection of ourselves (‘pseudo me’)-a dynamic front that we desire that others see, which might not necessarily be who we are. I’ll like to state that whilst the former two bear on some form of reality, viz a series of ideas formed based on actual responses of the said person(s) to environmental stimulus, ‘pseudo me’ remains ludicrously unique in its inability to hinge on anything realistic save for ideas formed by self on self.
Our views of ourselves whilst shaped by our experiences and conscious responses to external stimuli-and here I stress the importance of conscious decisions and choices, is very often mirrored in the perception of others about us. As a consequence ‘their me’ inevitably becomes a sum total of ‘my me’. The natural assumption here that the equation excludes the presence of ‘pseudo me’ cannot be further from the truth.
The overt _expression of disdain expressed in the ‘Yoruba’ woman’s speech and manner are reminiscent of a flawed idea of self characteristic of the society in which we reside today. With the dawn of each morning, my heart constantly weeps as it considers the yardstick by which we define our sense of identity-‘My me’.
From a young and tender age the slates of our mind become rapidly filled with the inscriptions of jaded humanity gone before us, defining the thresholds of what we consider valid with respect to our identity and sense of worth. Regardless of our location, the strength of the inscriptions remains the same. In the face of extreme diversity and cultural dynamism the drums echo the same beats. We all hear the message of ‘me’ and its several definitions on the basis of material acquisition, ethnic symbolism, race, status and the like. There appears to be a need to define ourselves on the basis of these external criteria when in fact it ought to be the other way around. We should define these factors by the character and inherent values of the people or individuals that they belong to.
With the drive to define ourselves and a misplaced focus with respect to the criteria that constitute the basis for this definition comes a desire to enforce a bogus definition of ‘me’ on others-not unlike the woman from the story. The trouble with such a definition is that it shifts with the trends of the whims of common humanity so that it is a constant struggle to update this definition. Needless to say the strain of the mental work that goes into the creation and maintenance of this façade soon becomes apparent in other areas such as our relationships, sense of self esteem, creativity and health.
‘My me’ can only be true when it is based on real values. It is unchanging because it fails to respond to the bait that dangles from the line of ‘pseudo me’. It is proactive, and steadily affirms the worth of the one it defines from within regardless of the trend of common humanity.
seriously?
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