Awoof Tales

I do not intend that this post serve as an analysis of  the Nigerian behavioural pattern known as 'awoof'.' Neither do I want to discover the etymology of this word, interesting though such a process might be. What I am concerned in documenting, is three instances where this behaviour has risen to the surface of the cultivated exterior that I and my close ones often try to exhibit. I leave analysis and explanation for another more appropriate forum.

1. A few weeks ago, whilst perambulating down my university corridors, I noticed a rather large crowd gathered in a rather large room appropriately called the Great Hall.
"What's going on?" I asked the lady making sure that only those who attended King's were admitted access into the usually unmanned Great Hall.
"It's a law careers fair."

I was on my way somewhere but hearing that a careers fair was in town, my plans for the day were suspended. This of course would make sense if I was interested in pursuing a career in the law. But I am not. I rescheduled my plans for the day because I knew that wherever a careers fair is, freebies must also be there. So I presented my student ID and was let into the hall.

And what a hubbub of law firms all welcoming passing students to their stalls. In the corner, I spied some snazzy pens. On the far right were mugs. To my left were water bottles. Where to begin? I took a step forward and stopped. What was my strategy? After all, I couldn't just walk up to a stall, grab its free goods and run off to the next one, only to do the same. A pattern would soon be observed. A girl of African descent, sidling up to a desk, snatching a highlighter and then making a dash to the next table two feet away. I realised that I would have to strike up conversation at every law firm whose freebies caught my eye in order not to give my people back home a bad name.

What a boring task it was. These lawyers can talk. And talk. And talk. At first I just made mmmm sounds, waiting for their monologues to be over so I could ask,"Please may I have a five-headed highlighter?"

Quite by accident, I struck on a way to make these talks more interesting. One lady, who intended to make me work for my gel pen, asked at the end of her speech, 'Do you have any questions?"
 "Umm. Do you have-- Umm, do you guys do any human rights law?"
"Umm. No. Not really. We have some clients in Africa though."

Each law firm rep, took a different approach to this question. Some, like the first lady were embarrassed by their firm's lack of altruism. Others looked at me like I was stupid before replying, "Of course not." And one lady said to me, when I had walked through the halls and by this time was laden with my loot and a little weary, "To be honest, you won't find anyone who does human rights law here. I wanted to go into that for a while and the best thing to do is to look online." Ah, honesty from a lawyer. How refreshing.

Eventually, I struggled my way through the doors, carrying almost half my weight in freebies and law brochures. I left the brochures on a College Bench for anyone who was interested and went on my merry way, eating my giant lollipop.


2. My sister was fortunate enough to get to the final stages of an interview with a large multinational. Lucky for her, the interview was in luxury hotel in the country. She gushed about how beautiful the place was. The large rooms, the excellent breakfast and of course, the bathroom. For some reason, of all rooms in the house, Nigerians are most enamoured with the bathroom. Perhaps it is because our heavy diets ensure that we spend large portions of our time in there. Anyway, my sister oohed and aahed over the wide mirrors, the deep tub, the towels and then she spotted the soap. It was the same colour as cognac: dark liquid orange and it was kept in a glass carafe.

Needless to say, my sister came back with one. Now before you start shouting and saying, "We knew it! Awoof runs in their family!" let me explain how my sister returned with this rather weighty souvenir. At the end of her stay, she had considered taking the carafe. It was beautiful, stylish, just the right thing to improve the tone of our bathroom at home. But then she thought better about it. This was not like taking a plastic bottle of shampoo or a face flannel, this was more akin to stealing. So she left the hotel as she came, awoof free.

On the train journey back however, she sat with her Nigerian friend from primary school who had also incidentally been called for the interview. Of course, they spent ten minutes gushing about the room. Then the breakfast, those scrambled ehn, freshly laid by a chicken that morning.Then they got to the bathroom. Oh the bathroom. That wonderful place. My sister expressed regret at the morals that stopped her from permanently borrowing the hotel's beautifully packaged shower gel.

Her friend laughed long and hard and then opened her bag. Inside were not one but two glass bottles. One with shampoo, one with shower gel. This friend was generous however, and gave one bottle to my sister. It still sits on our bathroom rim till this day and we refill it and ooh and ahh over the lovely way the glass displays the different colours of shower gel we have poured into it.


3. I have an aunt who was on extended stay in America. We visited her and at some point, went shopping at a well-heeled supermarket. When we got to the till, she declined the woman's offer of bagging and said that we would do it ourselves. Meaning I would do the bagging. As the goods were passed to me, I began to put them in a single bag.
"Double bag them," she said. Some of the goods were quite heavy, so her request was understandable.
I double bagged, and moved on to the next items.
"You're putting too many things in one bag."
I thought the amount of around five items per bag was quite reasonable but clearly my aunt didn't think so. She shoved me aside and I watched as she put a tin of sweetcorn in a plastic bag and then double bagged that. A cabbage was triple bagged, a pack of chewing disappeared into four plastic bags.

The till lady was staring at us but my aunt did not seem to notice. When all the items had been scanned she paid. I went behind the trolley, ready to go when she grabbed a handful of about twenty plastic bags and shoved them into a double-bagged bag of peanuts.
"For good measure," she said as we walked back to her black, SUV.

Now that ladies and gentlemen is how you do awoof.

N.B
Awoof does not directly translate to freebie but nothing reasonable came up when I google imaged 'awoof Nigeria'.

Owambe

I've been to only one Nigerian wedding this year. It was a lovely, beautiful wedding but it seems the wedding planners in Lagos are overtaking everything we have over here. I remember when I was younger, Lagos weddings used to be church, canopy, jollof rice. Now the business is a much more lavish affair. There is the ceremony, the reception and of course jollof rice. Some things don't change.

This wedding that CNN featured had over 1,000 guests. 1,000! What is even the meaning of that? The gate crashers brought grate crashers and they brought their friends and family. Of course the extra guests were catered for. There is no shame like a Nigerian wedding running out of food kind of shame. I was very impressed with the wedding planner. She did an excellent job. I don't even know where I would start planning a party for 1,500 people. The bride was surprisingly calm, at least on camera. The make up was flawlessly done by a lady called Banke Meshida Lawal. Usually Nigerian wedding makeup can look like it was applied with a mop but this was sufficiently light.

I miss Eko. Anyways, enough of my talking. Enjoy the videos.

P.S
Kudos to Christian Purefoy for his amazing dobale. To think that after all the work Lord Lugard did, one day a British man would still press his face to the floor in front of a Yoruba chief.

Goodevening Girls

My parent's hospital shares a wall with one of the most popular night clubs in Ikeja. As a result of this popularity, the area surrounding the night club has become a hub for prostitutes. On any given evening, you can see at least six girls in skimpy clothing waiting to be picked up. One of the hospital's employees has a special name for these women: goodevening girls. The nickname arose from an experience he had.

One evening as he was waiting for the hospital gate to be opened for him, one of these girls opened the door of the car he was driving and slid into the passenger seat.
"Good evening Sir," she said.
"Good evening," he replied.
When he told the story later, he insisted that he had no intention of paying for her services. It was only curiosity that drove him to ask, "How much you dey charge?"
"Five thousand Naira."
At this point,he had laughed long and hard.
"Five thousand Naira for what? Are you going to follow me home and cook and clean for me?" They haggled for a while but it soon became clear that they could not agree on a price. She climbed down from her car and went to wait for her next customer. From then, all the women that stood around the night club were dubbed 'goodevening girls.' He was shocked at how polite the girl had been,how well spoken.

I remembered this story a few days ago and it got me thinking of the good evening girls. Generally they are reviled. They are called gold diggers, husband snatchers, ashewos. Once, I saw a woman throw a bag of rubbish at one, cursing her as she did so. The consensus is that if you are a goodevening girl, it is always your fault. Goodevening girls are never the victims. After all they carried their two legs to stand on the road, they used their two hands to wear those skimpy clothes. In fact, it is the men that pick them up that should be pitied. There they were driving down the road, minding their business when gbosa, they turned and saw all that flesh on display. They say the good evening girls have agency but how much agency can one have when the choices are so limited.

There must be something wrong with a society that drives thousands of young women into prostitution. There must be something twisted when the only ones to blame are those that should be most protected. Most good evening girls are not Jenifa's, looking for Brazilian hair and blackberries. This is the myth that we like to tell ourselves. They could be doing other work if they wanted to. It is only because they are greedy and want fast money. Yet how can this be, looking at the economic demographic of Nigeria. There are goodevening girls in rich areas and in poor areas. As the poor parts of Nigeria vastly outnumber the rich, we must conclude then that many of these goodevening girls are subsisting and living from back to mouth. All over Nigeria, women are selling their bodies to eat, to buy medicine, to buy clothes. In England and America, people were shocked when the writer of The Secret Diary of A Call Girl revealed that she had become a call girl because she was struggling with her finances in college. In Nigeria, this is everyday news, not even worthy of the back page of the most local newspaper.

Young men, even graduates, are becoming armed robbers. Young women, even graduates, are becoming prostitutes. Something is wrong with this system.

Levels Dey

We Nigerians pride ourselves on having a classless society. Like the Americans, we strongly believe that anybody can become a somebody if they work hard enough. Some magnates have little more than a primary education behind them, many somebodies were street hawkers, mechanics or even petty thieves in their youth so we have grown to overlook a person's antecedents. After all, we live in a society where almost all the money is new so as long as you have it, we're not too discriminating about it's age.

Yet though class as the British define it is absent in Nigeria, we have this curious thing that we call 'levels.' ' Levels dey' is a phrase that is common. 'Know your level,' is another one and of course the classic rhetorical, ' Do you think we are on the same level?' Yet, though I use the term freely, I am still unsure as to what exactly a level is.

It is not just an economic grouping. An electronics trader might not be considered on the same level as a banker even though they earn the same amount of money each month. Yet, it is not just a social grouping because a teacher who attended the same university and had the same upbringing as a banker may not be classed as being on the same level. Yet, it is not simply a socio-economic stratification because people who would be considered in the same socio-economic group will still not agree to be on the same 'level.' The maid and the houseboy are not on the same level, the gateman and the driver are not on the same level, the clerk and the teller are not on the same level. Levels, levels dey.

Unlike class, which is imposed from outside, levels are decided by the individual. In my ranking, I might put the President above the Emir of Kano, in someone else ranking, the Emir would come first. In my ranking, a businessman with a modest company might precede the trader whose education has been entirely informal, in other rankings, the uneducated magnate would always top the list.

I suppose there are pros to every individual deciding for themselves how they wish to grade society but the cons stand out for me. The fluidity and ambiguity of a level means that each person is always constantly clinging to their position, trying as much as possible to distinguish themselves from the level below them, to prove once and for all their superiority.

This is why we constantly feel the need to remind each other that levels dey. These reminders can come in subtle and not so subtle forms. We can say point blank, we are not on the same level. We can bring out our phone and put it on the table so those around us can guess our level from our mobile device. We can use verbose vocabulary, discombobulating those around us into agreeing that indeed we are not on the same level. Everyone is constantly trying to assert their level, while at the same time hustling to move to higher altitudes. Thus we have a curious mixture, where we constantly put down those we see as an inch below us and grovel to those that we see as a centimetre above.

This system of levels has chasmed our society. A man who is secure in his class can speak with civility to his domestic help. A man who is constantly needing to assert his level, cannot speak in anything but an abusive tone to his driver. A woman who is comfortable in her class can use the word please, when speaking to her maid. A woman who is constantly needing to assert her level, can only speak to the maid in commands and orders. On and on it goes.

Here's a video that mentions levels. Watch out for the man at 2:31.

MTN Girls

I am a shade that most Nigerians would call yellow. Though I am as brown as the next African, my Igbo heritage has given me enough orangy yellow tints to be considered 'fair.' I put this word in quotation marks because how any black person like myself can be considered 'fair' is beyond me.

Anyways, I grew up surrounded by the mentality that a yellow shade of brown was better than a tan shade of brown which was in turn better than a dark brown shade of brown. Unluckily for me, I am on the cusp between yellow brown and tan brown and I was surrounded by an extended family who soared into the lighter shades of yellow. They would compare each others complexions with conversations like:

"Gosh you are so yellow!"
"No. You are really yallo!"
"No you."
"No! You."
"You."
"You."

Unfortunately I could not join in with these fun dialogues because it would have gone along the lines of this.

ME: Gosh you are so yellow!
YELLOW RELATIVE: I know.

The strange thing though, is that all this never made me want to become lighter. My complexion has never bothered me. I have never gone out of my way to preserve it or augment it like some of my 'fair' companions often do. There are many face washes, secret recipes and 'creams' that can make you lighter but I have scoffed at them all. Why would you want to regulate the colour of your skin so closely, I thought. Why?

Then a few years ago, someone I had not seen in a long while said something along the lines of, "You used to be so yellow. What happened to you?" There was shock in their voice, disgust that I could let myself go so, in other words, as a result of my complexion darkening, I was somehow worse looking.

The problem is, I took this comment as an insult, which was how it was intended but really, I should have known better. I had grown darker, it was a fact and even though it was meant as an insult, this didn't change the fact that it was only a fact and not an insult.

I know better now, thank God. Being lighter doesn't make you prettier. 'Fairer' skinned girls are only trying to make themselves feel good. Being darker doesn't make you prettier, darker skinned girls are only trying to make themselves feel good. Being pretty, makes you prettier.

And that, whether 'fair' skinned or darker skinned ladies and gentlemen, is the hard and inconvenient truth.