What's in Your Glass?

lol! I guess we now agree that everything can be argued about!

What is perfection?

What is perfection?
I may not be certain of what it is,
but i'm quite sure of what it isn't.
It is not like every concept
subjected to multiplicity in meaning.
It is not relative
and does not mean different things to different people.
Perfection is not living in peace, if it was we would not understand the meaning of war.
Perfection is not love, if it was we would know no hate.
Perfection is not beautiful people, if it was then we'd all be beautiful.
Perfection is not good morals, if it was then we'd have neither sin nor sinners.
Perfection is not beautiful horizons and breathtaking landscapes, if it was then there'd be no earthquakes, floods or hurricanes.
Perfection is not a boyant economy, if it was them we would never go into recession.
Perfection is not long fruitful years, if it was then why do we sometimes live short wasted ones?
Perfection is not life, if it was then we'd never die.
Perfection is in not structures we build, if it was then we would not have them burn.
Perfection is not wealth, if it was then we'd all be rich.
Perfection is not even in creation, if it was then there'd be no destruction.
Perfection is an illusion, like the one created by religion,
designed to commit man to a lifetime of searching for what is already him.
Perfection is a coin, which without both complete sides is rendered 'imperfect'.
Perfection is love and hate, joy and sadness, pain and pleasure, hurt and healing, building and burning, rejection and acceptance, fruitfulness and fruitlessness, beauty and not-so-beautiful, peace and war, poverty and wealth, life and death, heaven and hell...
Perfection is a combination of the two ends of human existence-the good and the not-so-good.
Man is perfect and perfection is man.

http://salvationpress.net

http://salvationpress.net

Sometime in February.

The following events take place between 4:45am and 4:45pm on the day of the National Assembly elections for the 2011 General elections….

Somewhere in North East Nigeria….

4:45am…
My phone’s alarm rings, buzzing me into consciousness. I am already agitated, but I become calm when I see my girlfriend sleeping sweetly beside me. She’s so cute when she’s asleep! I close my eyes again waiting for the next alarm in five minutes. See, I don’t like to get up on the first call – a very bad habit I don’t want to drop. Five minutes later, the alarm rings. I slip quietly out of bed to avoid waking her up. She stirs, and then she turns her back, still asleep. I take off my clothes while saying a quick prayer – another bad habit. I make for the bathroom to get a quick shower. By the time I’m done, it’s 4:49am. I rush to the kitchen and find it exactly how I left it – empty. I put on my N.Y.S.C. crested vest and my khaki pants. I also put on my leather slippers, but for some reason I felt it would not make me mobile enough. So I put on my black sneakers instead. My favourites, they are. By the time I’m done dressing up, my baby’s already awake.
“Are you up?” she asks in her sleepy voice.
“No, I’m still sleeping” I want to reply, but I feel it’s too early for sarcasm.
“Yes dear, I am” I say instead.
“Did you have anything to eat?” she asks.
“No, don’t worry. I’ll probably get some snacks at the polling station” I reply, lacing my sneakers.
“Oh! O.k.” she says laying back.
“I’m good to go” I say. I plant a soft kiss on her lips and tell her I love her, she smiles back and tell me to be safe.
I leave our apartment. It’s still early, but not too early for the “achaba” riders. Within minutes I’m en route the I.N.E.C. (Independent National Electoral Commission) state headquarters, our rendezvous point...

5:32am...
I arrive at the INEC state office, settle the achaba man and make straight for my superior’s office. I meet the other officials attached to my ward there. The polling officer for my unit has not arrived. As the polling clerk and next in command, I begin the process of collecting and taking stock of the election materials. The polling officer eventually arrives and I hand over to him. He continues while I chat with the other officials. It had been a short night and everybody wants to complain. The polling officer (P.O.) for my unit calls me over to assist him. Collecting the materials is taking longer than necessary. We learn that we have to move into the adjacent building to collect the remaining materials. We get there and meet a crowd of officials waiting to be attended to. The officer in charge is saying his prayers and we all have to wait. He finishes and strolls into his office like we are invisible. Typical! He starts attending to the officials...

6:57am...
It’s finally our turn after what seemed like three years! We collect the voting cubicle, ballot boxes, the tamper proof envelopes and other documents. The checklist however, isn’t complete. We wait a little longer, keeping ourselves busy by exchanging rumours about the size of the pay package. Thirty minutes roll by; still nothing. Eventually, the officer in charge shows up and says we are going to have to leave for our respective stations and await the remaining materials. We naively agree, totally oblivious of how the system operates. We spend some more time packing up and sorting out transportation...

8:05am...
We are still having problems with transportation. The driver is yet to be paid and is insisting on full payment upfront. These things should have been taken care of since yesterday. The accreditation process should have started five minutes ago! Talk about African time! The bus is a six-seater and is assigned to a ward of 18 officials. Figuring this out is pointless and frustrating. We manage to squeeze 12 officials and 2 unarmed policemen with tons of election materials into the bus. We finally get moving...

9:30am...
We are off road. All I see is dry land on both sides. The sandy path is barely visible. I wonder how the driver manages to manoeuvre through. As usual I’m plugged into my music player, enjoying my favourite playlist of gospel songs. We stop to drop off some officials at their units. There are 6 officials (for 2 units) left with the policemen in the bus. We arrive at the last village. This village has three units. The last unit did not follow us as extra transport had to be organised for them. We enter the village into the furious glare of anxious villagers already growing restless and impatient from the long wait. My team and I are dropped off at our unit. We immediately begin the process. We arrange the venue to suit the accreditation and voting process, setting up the necessary furniture, ballot boxes and voting cubicle. Luckily, the supervisor for the ward decides to stay at our unit. The accreditation process begins. We divide the voters among ourselves to make the process faster. As expected, it’s a rowdy session with everybody trying to jump to the front of the queue. We are however making progress...

10:50am...
The accreditation continues. The crowd is reducing considerably. The midday heat is creeping in as the temperature gently increases. I can already feel small beads of sweat trickle down the side of my face. I’m beginning to feel a little fatigued.
“You should have had something to eat for breakfast”, my stomach seemed to be telling me.
I glance quickly at my colleagues working beside me, both engrossed with the crowd around them. Their faces also look tired and stressed. To think we are still a few hours from midday! This INEC work no easy o!
Suddenly, we hear from a distance, shouting and yelling in Hausa. I don’t understand what is being said. I turn to one of my colleagues, who does, for interpretation. He tells me they are chanting a particular party’s slogan: let’s make progress! The crowd moves closer to our unit, disrupting the queue in the process. They make straight for us the officials. They number about 20 to 30 angry looking youths; their faces toughened and blackened by the hot Northern sun. I take a dive as they grab the table we are using and break it to pieces. They continue chanting but it’s something else this time. I don’t wait for an interpretation. I take to my heels, my colleagues following closely behind me with some of the security men. There is chaos...

11:30am...
We are inside a hut. It’s cool inside, but it does not stop me from sweating profusely. The pandemonium continues outside. The policemen can’t do anything. They are unarmed and outnumbered – federal government policy! I check my phone again, still no network coverage. One of the policemen rushes in and tells us it’s not safe here. “Sitting ducks” is the exact word he called us. He tells us the supervisor has been taken by the mob and taken to the village chief’s house. We argue that we can’t leave. He says the mob’s back will be towards us when we come out, and that we can sneak by unnoticed. There is a police outpost not very far from here, we also learn. We can make it there if we are fast. We step out cautiously. Wrong move: very wrong move! The mob was already waiting for us. We just walk into their waiting arms. They keep shouting, “Let’s make progress!” I wonder how very ironic this is. How much progress can be achieved by disrupting election? We are dragged to meet our supervisor who is currently receiving the beating of his life. He manages to grab the legs of the village chief, begging to be heard. Most of the conversation is in Hausa. It’s clearly not the time to bug anyone for interpretation. One of my colleagues is given a hard slap in the face. I decide to prepare myself. I take off my glasses to prevent broken glass from entering my eyes as I await seemingly inevitable beating. There is more chaos...

12:28pm...
My heart is still beating – three beats in one. My supervisor eventually manages to explain the situation to the village chief. The chief has ordered no one to lay a finger on us. I still don’t understand what the whole commotion is about. They still speak Hausa. The remaining policemen eventually find their way through the crowd and join in the argument. The chief seems to be conceding. It seems they have come to a conclusion. The policemen tell us to follow them. The supervisor stays back. I check my phone for the umpteenth time, still no network coverage. We are totally isolated we are heading towards the police outpost. I quickly ask for explanation from one of the policemen. It would seem that the last unit in the village is yet to be settled. The officials have not arrived and are taking longer than expected. The people from that unit immediately assumed that the opposition party had something to do with the missing officials and ballot boxes. They felt we had been paid to conduct elections in one unit and leave the others. Hence they decided that elections will not hold in any unit of the ward altogether, and that they officials should be made to pay. I’m sure they don’t mean to commit murder(s), but they were well on their way! Not after brazing those shiny knives and machetes! I also ask about the ladies assigned to the unit not so far from ours. No one knows. We decide to make a detour. We move in a tight formation. They officials stay in the centre surrounded by the policemen and NSCDC officers. It’s supposed to be comforting, but it only increases my agitation. We arrive at the other unit. It has received the same treatment as ours. Pieces of broken furniture and torn posters litter the floor, everywhere. I quickly scan the area for any traces of blood. I find none and I’m quite relieved. Some men hanging around there tell us the girls have been taken into one of the huts for their protection. However, only two persons at a time would be allowed to enter the compound – cultural reasons. One of the policemen and the presiding officer for my unit go inside. They come out after a few minutes, with the girls. They are visibly shaken. They relax a little when they see us. We suggest that they come with us but the policemen suggest we stay. It seems safer here. We agree...

2:30pm...
The sun is screaming down on us. The tree we sit under does little to protect us from it. My stomach is very empty. My head feels light. I’m dizzy, but I don’t feel sleepy. I don’t want to feel sleepy, or dizzy or any of these; at least not here. We have been waiting for a long time. Nobody knows the fate of our supervisor. I’m not sure if any of us will make it through the day. The villagers seem to give us “the look”. The one you give someone lost, helpless and hopeless. My colleagues mumble under their breath that they’ll never come back here again. I’m supposed to feel his way too, but I don’t. I still have hopes for peaceful elections. I remember the remaining officials we left at the INEC office. What could have kept them up until now? Someone begins to share pure water. It’s very hot. I gulp down two sachets. My stomach makes funny noises. I put my hand on it. I hate being hungry. My presiding officer comes with a report he just wrote for me to append my signature. I read through. It’s filled with unthinkable grammatical errors! I point them out to him and tell him to make another report. He does, very glad he showed me first. I sign the corrected copy. I ask one of the policemen when he thinks the remaining officials would arrive. He has no idea. Nobody does. We wait, and wait some more...

3:01pm...
A car speeds towards us from a distance. We become agitated again. We relax, however, when we see that the occupants are uniformed men. They alight and inform us that the elections had been cancelled since morning and that they had tried unsuccessfully to reach us. They also tell us that they’ve been to the chief’s house and talked with him. Apparently, our supervisor had to be locked in a mosque for his safety. He was later smuggled out through the back door and driven out of the village. At least there are still well meaning people in this village. We call the girls out. The policemen manage to find us vehicles to carry us and our materials back to town. I’m so relieved. They arrange our materials hurriedly in the trunk. We get in. It’s very cramped but nobody complains. The new policemen proceeded to tell us about the missing unit and the treatment they received when they entered the village. Their bus was attacked. All the windows were broken with heavy sticks. The driver sustained minor cuts. They only stopped when they saw the election materials and ballot boxes for their unit. They now believed all their explanations. They quietly dispersed, obviously embarrassed. To think they almost maimed innocent people for nothing. The policemen assured us that the INEC officials were safe and were well on their way to town.
It’s another long drive through the dry lands. This time it’s hotter. I’m very tired. I fall asleep listening to music from my music player. It just dawns on me that I have just had a near death experience. It’s not as fun as I always imagined it would be. I open my eyes to find that we are on the highway. We enter the town and head straight for the INEC office. There’s definitely going to be a lot of complaining to be done, but I had the funny feeling nobody would listen. We arrive and find it almost deserted, save for a handful of heavily armed mobile policemen. I alight from the car. It feels good to be in familiar territory once again. I’m home. I look at my wristwatch. The time is 4:45pm...

rEtrOSpeCtiONs

It was probably sometime late in November the year I was born that a young beautiful woman brought me into this world; at least, the certificates say so! They say you are either born with a silver spoon in your mouth or you are born with nothing in it. Well, I was born with a wooden spoon. I did not have the luxury of the silver spooned kid, neither did I lack the necessities of life. I had everything I needed-food, clothing, shelter and free quality education.

Before I was born, my father had started a school and by the time I was born, the school was big enough to shut out all competition within the local community. Having a father who owned a school (and a big one for that matter) was somewhat prestigious-at least to those whose fathers didn't. it was all just another form of imprisonment in our lives. Apart from living in a house that bore little difference from a 16^th century English fortress with everything you needed, my father also decided to build a church. See, we were of Islamic backgrounds, and when we got converted I guess he never recovered from the initial orgasm of new found knowledge. We lived a kind of "triangulated" life: house to school, to church and back to house again!

Because I came from a polygamous family, this lifestyle was not quite as bad as it should have been. I have 11 brothers and 14 sisters, making a total of 26 children born to my father from 9 wives. My mother was the eight and probably the most hardworking. This is however, an opinion I like to keep to myself. My mother had five children for my father. I am the second from my mother and the twenty-first from my father! Nevertheless, all my father's children, despite our number, received quality education up to University level.

My father was a wealthy man who had his priorities right. He believed in education and he invested greatly in us. He was also very strict. Sometimes, I'd think he wanted to kill some of us to reduce the crowd in his house! There's this incident I that always comes to my head when I remember how strict he was….

I was about eleven years old. I had just come back from summer classes. It was a very hot afternoon, I remember. I had, just a few days back, heard a story about some kind of lizard that turns to a snake when it feels threatened. Now, if there was anything I feared as a child, it was snakes! Damn bloody snakes! They still give me the creeps! Eeeeesh! I wasn't sure which kind of lizard it actually was, so I dreaded them all. Well, on this fateful day, I was to face my worst fear. My mother asked me to empty the already overflowing dustbin. The dustbin was actually a make-shift sack which had to be dragged, creating a path-like track in your wake. We usually emptied the dustbins into the canal just behind the school. My father had bought two opposite lands on which he built the family house and the school, respectively. All we had to do was just to come out of the house, cross the street, and we were within the school premises. So I dragged the dustbin into the school half-heartedly. I headed straight to the back of the compound where the canal sat still, stagnant, and stinking. I was just a few feet from the canal when I saw what I thought was a funny looking lizard.

"Oh my God!" I managed to gasp out.

I was so terrified that for a moment it seemed my heart stopped beating! I thought I counted about four missed heartbeats! Everything sort of came to a screeching halt. As soon as I got back to earth, I took to my heels, my burden dragging haphazardly behind me. I made for the nearest classroom I finally started to breathe.

"Whew!" I thought, "That was a close one!"

To me I felt like I had just saved my life, but that was only one part. I still had to empty the dustbin. From that day, I realized that to think in fear is the worst mistake any person could possibly make. It's even worse than Adam's! I thought in fear, and I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I did not go near the canal altogether, at least for the rest of that day. But I still had to empty the dustbin. My eyes fell on the corner of the classroom, just behind the door and I thought, of all the possible ideas I could come up with, that that would do better than a canal.

I went home feeling quite smart with myself; I just thought outside the box, and it felt good! About three hours later, ii heard my father in a serious argument with the school cleaners and gatemen. I did not really put much thought to it. I was too engrossed in that particular episode of Voltron, my favourite cartoon. Suddenly, my father stepped into the children living room. His eyes were glittering with frustrated fury.

"No!" I shouted before he even asked any question. He looked at me, surprised but still furious.

"Who emptied the dustbin this afternoon?" he barked at me.

"I did, sir" I managed to say after about an eternity of shock. Having our father call your name was generally regarded as a bad omen. We were usually only called upon to answer some query or serve a punishment. It wasn't something anybody looked forward to. We even felt pity for whoever was called.

"Then why did you empty it into a classroom?" he asked.

"I did not!" I blurted out obviously still in shock. To my surprise, he turned away. But it was only for a moment. Unfortunately, that moment was not long enough for me to realize what ii had just said.

"WHAM!" a slap landed on my left cheek. I felt the fury of my father's right hand. What I still do not understand is the reason why I maintained that I did not empty the dustbin into the classroom; whether it was out of fear or out of hope that he'd just forget and not probe the issue further, I did not know.

"It wasn't me, it wasn't me! I cried.

"You are still telling me lies?" he asked, very surprised.

"No, I'm telling the truth. It wasn't me!" I cried out, still too afraid to think.

"What!" he managed to say before he stormed out.

A few minutes later, he came back with my mother behind him. I was still sobbing. I still hoped he would just forget about the whole incident and warn me not to do it again. But, alas! I had committed a serious one this time and I had to face the music.

"Mary! What is wrong with you!" my mother shouted at me.

Yes, I know, I bear the most feminine of names. Fortunately, however, I have overcome the shame. But it still sad, really sad, that of all the names available for males, none seemed appropriate for me. No, I just had to be named after the mother of Jesus! Not even his brother, or his father, or even his betrayer. No, after his mother!

"It wasn't me, it wasn't me!" I kept reciting.

And that did it. The next thing I heard was my father, under his breath, said he was going to flog out every lying spirit in me. At this point, I realized that there was no going back. I was done for. My father went into his room and came out with three belts. He tied my hands with one, my legs with another, and made to flog me with the third. As I was him raise that right hand of fury, I screamed so loud I couldn't even hear myself. My father beat me silly, very silly. The kind of beating where you don't struggle. I just laid down there and promised between sobs that I'll never tell a lie again. Several years after that incident, I was always too scared to tell a lie. I had to put a conscious effort in suppressing that fear each time I needed to tell a lie. We all have to tell lies at one point of our lives. It is part of living.

Well, that was my father. Hard as nail; never tolerated the smallest rubbish or indiscipline from anybody; barely listened to advice from people but barely getting into trouble. I thought he had one weakness though-women. He never had enough. Nevertheless, he still did not lose himself to these women, had and always had a mind of his own. I probably learned this from him.

"Think for yourself; make a decision and stick to it. This is what makes you a man" he would tell me.

"Do not let anyone tell you what is best for you; you know what is best for yourself".

That was him, always emphasizing independence. Everybody should have a mind of their own. He was a strong advocate for living your life like my wanted to; and he did live his life like he wanted to.

That was a very long time ago. It is sad to say that this man I considered very great when he was alive is only but a few traces of memory in my mind. Today I still try to live like he's still with me, watching me, ridiculing me, and praising me. It made me grow faster and think more independently, and in some weird way, made me quite attractive to the ladies. J But I always promised myself not to get too carried away. Once I get married, it is my wife, I and us alone! But before then….God help me!

I am therefore going to live not only like him but also better than him.

The Danger of a Single Story.

This piece is actually a speech by Chimamnda Adichie (author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus) converted to text. It has really changed my perception of life in a very eye opening way. I hope it has the same effect and more on you. Enjoy.... :)

 **********************************************************************************

I am a storyteller and i will like to tell you a few personal stories about what I call 'The Danger of a Single Story. I grew up in a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says i started reading at the age of two, although i think four is probably closer to the truth. So i was an early reader and what i read were British and American books. I was also an early writer and when i began to write at the age of seven, stories in pencil and crayons which my poor mother was obligated to read, i wrote exactly the kind of stories i was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in h snow, they ate apples, and talked a lot about the weather-how lovely that the sun had come out J Now this despite the fact that i lived in Nigeria. We ate mangoes, and we didn’t talk about the weather because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer because the characters in the British books i read drank ginger bee. Never mind that i had no idea what ginger beer was and for many years afterwards, I would have the desperate to taste ginger beer. :)

 But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how IMPRESSIONABLE and VULNERABLE we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which all the characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them, and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now things changed when I discovered African books. They weren’t many available and they weren’t as easy to find as the foreign books, but because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Kamara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that girls like me, with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. Now I loved the American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination and opened up new world for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know people could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: it saved me from having a single story of what books are.

I come from a conventional middle class family. My father was a professor and my mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, living domestic help who would often come from nearby rural villages. So the year I turned eight, we got a new houseboy, his name was Fidel. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams rice and our old clothes to his family; and when I didn’t finish my food, my mother would say, “finish your food, don’t you know that people like Fidel’s family have nothing?” So I felt enormous pity for Fidel’s family. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit. His mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually MAKE something. All I heard about them was how poor they were, that it had become impossible to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.

Years later I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to the United States. I was eighteen. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music” and was consequently disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove! What struck me the most was this: she had felt sorry for me even before she met me. Her default position towards me as an African was a kind of patronizing well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa, a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity., no possibility of a connection as human equals. I must say that before I went to the U.S., I didn’t consciously identify with Africa. But in the U.S., when Africa came up, people turned to me not knowing I knew nothing about places like Namibia. But I did come to embrace this new identity and in many ways now I come to think of myself as African; although I still get a little irritable when Africa is referred to as a country, the most example being my otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about their charity work in “India, Africa and other countries”

So after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate’s response to me. If I had not grown up n Nigeria and all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa is a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I as a child saw Fidel’s family.

This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western Literature. Now, here’s a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Locke who sailed to West Africa in 1561. He kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black African as beasts that had no houses, he writes, “they are also people without heads, having their mouths and eyes in their breasts” now I’ve laughed every time I’ve read this and one must admire the imagination of John Locke. But what is important about his writing is that it represented the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West, a tradition of sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people in the words or the wonderful poet, Roger Kipling, are “half devil, half child”. And so I began to realize that my American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story.

I once had a professor who told me that my novel was not authentically African. Now I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with my novel that it had failed in a number of areas. But I had not quite imagined that it had failed in achieving what I called “African authenticity”. In fact I did not know what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters ere too much like him-an educated middle class man. My characters drove cars, they were not starving, and therefore they were not authentically African.

 But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty of the single story. A few years ago,  visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at that time was tense and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happened in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work, rolling up to tea as in the market place, smoking, laughing. I remember feeling slight surprise and then I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind-the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.

So that is how to create a single story. Show a people as only one thing over and over again and that is what they become.

It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word that I think of when I remember the power structures of the world and it is “Nkali”. It is a noun that loosely translates to “to be greater than another”. Like our economic and our political world, stories too are defined by the principle of Nkali; hoe they are told, who tell them, where they are told, how many stores are old are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet, writes, “…The simplest way to dispossess a people is to tell their story by starting with ‘secondly’…” start the story with the arrows of the native Americans and not with the arrival of the British; start the story with the failure of the African states and not the colonial creation of the Africa states and you will have an entirely different story.

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me how it as such a shame that Nigerian men were such abusers as was the male character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called “American Psycho” and it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers! :) Now, obviously, I said this in a fit of mild irritation. But it would never have occurred to me that just because I read a novel in which a character was a serial killer, that it was somehow representative of all-Americans. This was not because I’m a better person than that student, but because of America’s cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read several books. I did not have a single story of America.

When I learned some years ago that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhood to be successful, I began to think of how I could invent horrible things that my parents had done to me. But the truth is I had a very happy childhood, full of laughter and love in a close knit family. But I also ad grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin, Paully, died because he did not get adequate healthcare. One of my closest friends, Uloma, died in a plane crash because our fire trucks did not have water. I grew up under repressive military government that devalued education so that sometimes my parents were not paid their salaries. And so as a child saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, then margarine disappeared, then bread became too expensive, then milk became rationed. Most of all, a kind of normalized political fear invaded our lives. All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten mu experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story,

 Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes; immense ones such as the horrific events in Congo and depressing ones such as the fact that five thousand people will apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe. It is just as important to talk about them. I‘ve always felt it is impossible to engage properly with a person or a place without engaging properly with all of the stories of that person or place. The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of their dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. So what if, before my Mexican trip, I had followed the debate from both sides-U.S. and Mexico? What if my mother had told us that Fidel’s family was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African Television Network that broadcast diverse African Stories all over the world? (What the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, calls “a balance of stories”) What if my roommate knew about Mukhta Bakare, a remarkable man who left his job in a bank to follow his dream and start a publishing house? The conventional wisdom then was that Nigerian didn’t read literature. He disagreed; he felt people who wanted to read would read if he made literature available and affordable to them.

Shortly after I published my first novel, I went to a T.V. station to do an interview and a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said: “I really liked your book, but I did not like the ending. Now you should write a sequel and this is what will happen…” And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel. I was not only charmed, I was much moved. Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigeria, who are not supposed to be readers. She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it and felt justified to tell me what to write in the sequel. Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend, Funmi Yonda, a fearless woman who hosts a T.V. show in Lagos and is determined to tell those stories that we prefer to forget? What if my friend knew about the heart procedure that was performed in Lagos last week? What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music? Talented people singing in pidgin in Yoruba and in Ijaw, mixing influences from Jay Z to Fela and Bob Marley to their grandfathers. What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer who personally went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous law that required women to get their husbands consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds (films so popular that they are really the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce)? What if my roommate knew about my talented hair braider who just started her own business selling hair extensions? Or about the millions of Nigerian who start businesses and sometimes fail but continue to nurse ambition? Every time I’m home, I’m confronted with the same usual irritation for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government. But also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government rather than because of it.

I teach writing workshop every summer in Lagos, and it is amazing how many people apply, how many people are eager to write, to tell stories. My Nigerian publisher and I have just started an non-profit we call PARAFINA TRUST and we have big dreams of building libraries and refurbishing libraries that already exist and providing books for state schools that don’t have anything in their libraries and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops of reading and writing for people for people who are eager to tell our many stories.

Stories matter, many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people but stories can also repair that broken dignity. The American writer, Alice Walker, wrote this about her southern relatives that moved to the north. She introduced them to a book on their southern lifestyle: “they sat around reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book and a sort of paradise was regained”. I would like to end with this thought that when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise. Thank you….

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Every time I listen to this speech, I get something new. It fascinates me how uncommon common sense actually is. The truth is often in the place we least expect. The truth is often the last thing we would expect to hear. I would also want to add that I’ve been guilty of this single story a lot of times, especially in my interactions with people from other tribes. I bought into the single story that the Ibo man is synonymous with shrewd business sense (often with an intention to cheat). I bought into the single story that the Hausa man does not possess equal mental dexterity as the Yoruba man. I bought into a lot of single stories, and I’m sure I’m not alone in thisJ. But I’ve realized that one single story should not be sufficient to form my opinion on any person, any place or anything.

What’s your story?: Brittany Atchison ’10

What’s your story?: Brittany Atchison ’10

Objects or People

I am thrilled to start blogging with this piece a whole lot has termed "insightful". I once worked as the Head of Department in a school, and as expected i had quite a number of people working under me. I'm a person who does most things by the book. I also treated my subordinates by the book, maintainig a strictly professional relationship with them. I did not SEE a problem with this, because afterall we were in an organisation that emphasised prefessionalism. But i noticed no matter how hard i tried i did not inspire the kind of motivation i needed from my people. Still i saw no problem with me. I worked and acted strictly by the book, how can i be the problem then? I felt the people i was working with had the problem.
I was at home one day, when a little niece of mine, just learning to crawl, fumbled about the living room floor. Without paying much attention to her i watched as she got stuck under a chair. She struggled frantically to free herself, but the more she struggled, the worse the situation became. She blamed the chair for her present situation. Afterall, she's doing everything she possibly could to get out, she could not be the problem, the chair HAD to be the problem. the actual problem, however, was not the chair, but the fact that she could not see how she was the problem.
I would say she was IN THE BOX concerning that situation. i will explain the theory of being in the box in my subsequent blogs. Something also struck me, our situations were not so different, what if i was also in the box concerning my workers? after all i also did not see how the problem could be mine. maybe that was actually the problem.
What i'm trying to get out of this is that people ultimately respond (unconsciously) to our feelings towards them and not our actions. Have you ever tried to get into the good books of a colleague or a boss before and it seems everything you try never works. think again. how exactly do you feel when doing these things. do you treat them as persons with similar interests, fears amd aspirations, or just as objects, to be used for a certain purpose-which may also be to justify our 'kindness' and 'friendliness'.
I propose that we should be careful in treating people as people if we want to inspire the most productivity in them...