The Ivory Standard

When I first arrived in Lagos, our house was a revolving door for friends, well-wishers and distant relatives: all coming to welcome me home and I suspect some simply coming to satisfy their curiosity about those living in the highly romanticized ‘Ah-meh-ree-kah.’ One visitor, a stately-yet-animated schoolmarm, said something I found I couldn’t forget, even though I wasn’t wholly surprised to hear it. I was telling her and my father of some of the woes my DC household has been experiencing of late: at the hands of our neighbors who do a poor job of concealing their problems with substance abuse and all-around bad judgment. As they shook their heads and sucked their teeth to hear of our trials, my father’s friend added matter-of-factly, “You see? If it were white people it wouldn’t be that way.”

Uh . . .

“They are white people,” I tell her simply.

“Eh-eh-eh?!” was her reply, her eyebrows raised and her jaw tilted upwards incredulously.

Alright, so I’m not so insulated in thought as to imagine that the colonial regime that held this nation in its grips for the better part of the 20th Century (and beyond) wouldn’t have left an indelible impression – one that would still lay claim to the mind of the everyman in more ways than one. But regardless, I can’t help but frown whenever I hear my father casually refer to the ‘colonial masters’ when attributing to them one feature or another of the country and its traditions.

Now, maybe herein lies my naïveté: my father’s generation was born, and grew into their adult lives, during the occupation, not to mention that they were raised by a generation who knew no other Nigeria. While acknowledging the quasi-inevitability of their partiality, I imagined that by sheer definition, those of the following generation, my generation, would be of a more drastically independent existence and therefore more liberated from possessing similar bias . . . .

This past weekend I endured the disappointment of encountering some opposition to this theory for the first time. My cousin and I spent Valentine’s Day (known here as ‘Lover’s Day’ – so very Nigerian) at a popular beach; one that’s obviously a top-choice in weekend entertainment for many of our peers. As this was the second beach we’d visited in as many weeks and we found it to be quite different from the first, we thought to ask around of what other varieties of seaside paradise we might delight in with the remaining days of my visit.

A young man of about our same age, pleasant and obviously knowledgeable, named one that he said was a bit far off, but assured us that all one had to do was lay eyes upon it’s splendour to know that it was well-worth the trek.

“Is it very nice?” my cousin sought to confirm.

“Ha!” The young man replied, “White people swim there – WHITE people!”

I let out a little laugh, a bit surprised and certainly disappointed, thinking that my cousin would share a similar reaction, but the fact is that neither he nor the young man seemed to notice, or if they did it was obvious from my cousin’s resolute expression that it was the two of them that were of the same opinion in the matter: If white people swam there, it was indisputably a good beach.

Man.

I’m torn in my reasoning on this one, because anyone with one good eye can see that Nigeria needs some work, and that yes, areas where foreigners reside (mostly to perpetuate further exploitation of the land and it’s people) are better maintained and serviced. But there are definitely areas where the hardworking Nigerian and his shockingly corrupt contemporary have pooled together their wealth to form modern communities with the same comforts and diversions as exist in any developed nation . . . . And I’m torn because to acknowledge this configuration within Nigerian society feels a bit like admitting that a square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is only sometimes a square.

. . .

But I flat out refuse to subscribe to any such absolution. To do so would be tantamount to self-imposing the same brand of mental slavery I’m determined to help eradicate within my lifetime.

So no dice.

But here’s another head-scratcher:

Earlier this week I walked into the classroom of my older students (9-13) and caught the tail end of some kind of presentation by one of the more bright-eyed youths. I couldn’t quite hear it, but it seemed that in the delivery of his last line, the student made a rather successful joke, and the entire classroom erupted into laughter and applause. Seeing my blank smile, their teacher happily launched into a brief version of what was apparently a modern-day fable of sorts that the student had been re-telling.

In it there is a man that moves to London and phones his brother here in Nigeria that he has found a wife and is bringing her home to make introductions. The brother prepares for the arrival excitedly but is shocked when he sees that his brother has brought home another Nigerian, and not a white woman. He boldly says as much to the man: “Why would you go out into the world and return with what you already had in your trouser pocket?”

Everyone laughs again, and again I smile, but inside I think to myself, “I just hope that there’s another fable they hear about valuing what one can find in their trouser pocket.”