Strong women

“We in the West” often pity the African woman. In fact, we pity all the women who are not born in the rich and free west. They are oppressed and have no rights, so we say. This weekend I saw an Asian film in which the women were not only beautiful, but also as powerful as men. It made me think…

Here in Africa there are female heads of state. One of the major banks in Nigeria is run by a woman. Women here are more feisty than men and are VERY loud in expressing their wishes. In e.g. the US the immigrated group of Nigerians are far better educated than the indigenous population and it’s also the women who hold PhD degrees. African women are often breadwinners AND manage to run households, for which they deserve and receive respect.

Of course, not all women are that respected! Yes, there is a lot of oppression, but it seems to be positively correlated with poverty. The wealthier Nigerian women make their own choices while apparently obeying men. It’s like lions in fact: the women rule, but allow the men to show off. That does goes hand in hand with men having multiple sex partners, but on the other end of the scale I have hardly seen weak women here, or women who give up their job when they get children.

The Netherlands, home of the free and educated, a country based on equal rights (okay, until the majority became right-wing unfortunately!) has the lowest female labour participation in Europe, women make less money than men, and only a few end up having a high position or prosperous company of their own. Yet we pity all those ‘poor African women’. If poverty enhances the oppression of women, then why are we in the rich west not more equal to men?

Funny.

Land of the loud people

My Ugandan friends keep asking me whether I am already through with what they claim is “the land of the loud people”. I have only been to Uganda and Ghana outside Nigeria and the difference is startling indeed. In Ghana I felt there was a silencing blanket over the country, and in Uganda I experienced the people as incredibly friendly yet almost shy people. But Nigeria and the Nigerians are loud.

People here laugh loudly, engage in loud conversations, and seem to prefer to shout in their phones instead of talking normally. A car without breaks can be seen as functioning, but without a loud claxon no car will enter the road. Music has to come from every direction, and did I ever mention the churches that aim their loudspeakers to the street so they can sell their particular religious conviction best –even at night? And there are always, always people around. This loudness makes Nigeria so captivating; and its people are not only loud, but also warm, extrovert and fun.

Yesterday I got a hint why I feel at home here so much. I thought I was a quiet person, but it only takes the Dutch playing in the Euro soccer cup to awaken my “Nigerian side”. In fact, I think most Nigerians were impressed by the noise generated by the mere ten orange supporters! The beauty of Nigeria is that you can express yourself and that you don’t have to feel embarrassed; After all, some 140 million other people in this country continuously show what loudness is all about!

Talking to the police

Driving away from a bush bar in the evening, we came across a police check. I tried to ignore them and drive on, but clearly I had to stop as the police man shouted quite angrily ‘stop’ and since they do carry guns…

So I stopped, afraid I had to defend myself for not stopping immediately, etc etc, but instead the following (typical Nigerian) conversation took place:

“oyibo! How you dey?”
“fine oh, good evening sir”
“oyibo, how work?”
“fine, thank you, how work?”
“Fine, how family?”
“fine, how is your own?”
“thank you, how Nigeria?”
“we love Nigeria, thank you”
“so what did you bring for us?”
“we didn’t bring anything, sir, only our smiles”
“ah… well… uh… ”
“thank you sir, good evening sir, bye bye”

And we drove off, with the sweet smiles still plastered on our faces. By now we find it normal to be stopped at gunpoint only to engage in a conversation about work and family. Somehow I don’t see Dutch policemen do the same…

Close encounters of the Nigerian kind

The way people drive here, keeps surprising me. The way I adapt to it, is perhaps even more surprising. These days you can see me speeding through the city, using my arm as an indicator light, and horning my way through close encounters with other cars. Sometimes these encounters are quite too close though.

The other day I was leisurely driving up a slope to some traffic lights. To my direct amazement, a car was reversing on that same road. Reversing myself was no option because of the cars behind me, but clearly the guy in the car heading towards me didn’t have the same sense. Horning and shouting did not help either, and less than a minute later my front lamp was crushed and my bumper cracked. And that’s when the theatrics began…

The policeman who first tried to put fear in the man who bumped into me, ended up trying to shield him from my rage. Quiet me (normally, that is) was shouting at the bloody stupid imbecile who drove into me, asking him where the money was to repair the damage. He was on his knees, begging me (“mommy, mommy”) because he didn’t have money. He also didn’t have a driving license, I found out. He was the kind of guy that I used to help when I was still “saving the world” as a volunteer, yet I was too enraged to care about his poverty. If you don’t have money, then you shouldn’t reverse into other people’s cars, I would say. He kept begging, I kept raging. We went in a convoy with the police to his employer where he got a bit of money for the transport he did that day. An entire street came out to help with the “negotiations”, and it was such a spectacle that another accident happened right next to us… In the end I took his day’s earnings off him. A fortune for him, but not nearly enough to repair the damage.

Only a week later did I realize that I was in fact insured and that all of the above hadn’t been necessary. I’ve been in Nigeria so long that theatrical negotiating comes naturally.

Since that accident, I have had countless near-accidents. Driving in Nigeria requires special skill, one could say. On top of everything you would need in eg. Europe, here you also need to foresee potholes and anticipate the behaviour of other drivers to the extreme. That could be anything from reversing on main roads, to stopping abruptly or jumping up in the air –nothing would surprise me anymore!