Reflexion

On Saturday I have been invited to a wedding by a friend who is visiting from Accra/London. This is her very first trip to Lagos and so she is staying with me for part of her time here, which I am looking forward to. Because she knows very few people in Lagos apart from the couple, she has asked me to go along with her to the wedding. Now, my first instinct was one of dread. I didn’t really feel like going to a wedding but now, after a few days of deep breathing, I think I’m good to go. You’re probably wondering what I have against weddings. The answer is nothing. I have nothing against weddings.

In fact, I really like weddings, and this year, since moving back to Lagos, I have had a robust introduction to Naija-style weddings. I have fallen in love with that heady combination of Veuve Cliquot and small chops - it is a recipe for sheer joy. Most, I have actually been invited to, and others I have been dragged along to by friends as their +1 only to find that one half of the couple is someone I went to primary school with aged 6 but then lost touch with, for example. You might call that wedding crashing, but please, everyone in Lagos inadvertently does it at one time or another, so hold your judgement. But you are probably still wondering why I initially balked at the idea of going to this wedding. I’ll tell you why.

It is because I had a bit of a panicky moment on Tuesday. When I woke up on Tuesday morning, the enormity of what a huge year it has been for me suddenly hit me. In May last year when I still lived in London, I got engaged to the guy I had been dating for 4 years. In November, while I was in South Africa looking after my mother after her treatment for breast cancer, after a tumultuous 6 month engagement, I broke off the relationship, returned the Tiffany, and exactly a month later, relocated to Lagos, having moved out of our flat and quit my job, and sold off all my earthly possessions. My whole life changed in the space of 4 weeks.

In the aftermath of the break up, my strategy was to put one foot in front of the other and to keep going. I did not really have the capacity or the inclination to wallow in feeling anything because I was dealing with the turmoil of how close we came to losing my mum again, the stress of what was actually a very trying engagement, the logistics of the resultant break up, and the prospect of starting a new life in my own country, Nigeria, where I have not lived in 17 years. When it rains it pours, right?

There was so much going on that I couldn’t afford to stop and indulge my feelings because I knew that I might not be able to cope. The last thing I needed was to collapse into a blubbering mess. So I put my practical, no-nonsense problem-solving hat on and just got on with it. I have been in this zone pretty much all year, just going at 100 mph and not really stopping to take stock. Obviously, some amount of healing has been happening in the background because there have been those quiet moments of reflection and so on, but the true weight I have been carrying all year, and the true magnitude of the dimensions of what I have been dealing with suddenly broke over my head on Tuesday morning. It knocked me for six, I can tell you that now.

I think it’s a similar feeling to when you’re for example, running a marathon, and you suddenly catch sight of the finish line. That feeling of relief that washes over you because you didn’t think you’d make it and you suddenly become aware of the fact that your feet hurt or you grazed your knee and you didn’t know you were bleeding. That’s how I felt on Tuesday morning. I was like whaaaat? How do I process all that? It dawned on me, and I couldn’t believe that this might have been my first married Christmas, because on the 25th of September 2012, at about 1pm, if I had not decided to leave, I might have been at that very moment, marrying the wrong man, saying the wrong vows, smiling in the wrong pictures, creating the wrong memories, throwing the wrong bouquet, getting dressed with the wrong bridesmaids, clinking glasses to the wrong toast, going on the wrong honeymoon, planning the wrong children, beginning the wrong life, living the wrong destiny.

On Tuesday morning, I was so stunned, I couldn’t even cry. I just lay here gasping, trying to breathe and thanking God that everything worked out the way it did. At the time everything was happening, I just kept saying to God, I don’t know how this is going to work out or why this is happening, but please make me OK. I hate this, but please don’t let me be damaged. I still have this dream of my married life and my family and my kids and I know it doesn’t come from nowhere. Please take care of me and make this all good. That was all I could do. Internally, I was braced to crash through whatever barriers I needed to crash through to breakout of that disastrous time in my life, but I also felt drained and limp. I just did not have the energy for high emotion and drama. It was all I could do to keep it together and keep smiling. So I outsourced my feelings, disconnected my tear ducts, poured myself a cocktail and checked out of emotional-ville for a while.

I don’t think this is the forum in which to get into the whys and wherefores of why my engagement went tits up – that is maybe a post for another day, or maybe for never; I don’t know yet. But because of what happened, I have an even greater respect for relationships and marriage and family. They were pretty damn high up on my list anyway, but if it is possible, they have gone higher. My family saved me from that disastrous situation - they literally fought for my life and I don’t say that lightly.

But now, having come back from the brink of almost making the biggest mistake of my life, and having ventured out of my 100 mph aloof, damage control mode, I am particularly fascinated by the relationships around me and by weddings. There are so many people getting married these days. If you aren’t careful, having your ears pinned back and stinging from wearing a gele will become an every Saturday occurrence. I look at the marriages in my parents’ generation, and in subsequent generations – some of which have worked and some of which haven’t – and I am reminded again and again what a big deal it is. It is a huge freaking deal. But people are still just waltzing into it anyhow. I mean, once you’ve met the right person, and you know they are right, I can see how it’s quite simple in that the plan is to get married and live happily ever after. But I wonder about people who are getting married, hoping the fact that they are married will change the man or change the woman into what they want them to be.

So in the light of everything, you can imagine why the thought of going to a wedding this week presented a challenge for me. All the other weddings I’ve been to this year, I attended in my carefully detached state if mind. I did not engage with the couple’s love or lack of love, period. Because I was in a phase where I wasn’t even downloading my feelings, I could breeze in and breeze out and studiously avoid noticing all the minute details - reading the couple’s gaze, observing their body language, trying to decipher what those things meant for good or for ill; or overhearing stories from the next table about how the bride’s sugar daddy paid for the red velvet cupcakes or the groom’s jump-off had wangled her way onto the bridal train unbeknown to the bride, disguised as a distant cousin. There is so much nonsense going on with marriages in Lagos these days, that no story shocks me anymore.

See, I cannot be dealing with that crap, I just can’t take it. Because if how I felt in those 6 horrendous months of being engaged to the wrong person was just a little taster of what life might be like when you’re married to the wrong person or for the wrong reasons, then man oh man, I don’t even want to know what that’s like. I want nothing to do with any of that. It’s not that I am skeptical of marriage. Quite the opposite – I told y’all I still have a dream – but I think there are far too many people getting married and not enough people thinking. People are so desperate to carry the Mr and Mrs title that they take leave of their senses and just jump into it. I have heard of people getting married this month, December 2012 who as at June 2012 were very single with no prospects on the scene and then boom, they are suddenly entering into wedded bliss. OK, I get that a rare few people have whirlwind romances… I get that and I even know a few people who after 25 years are still married after dating for just 3 months.

But how many people does that happen for really? Let’s be honest. How are you going to bet your forever on some chick or some guy you’ve known 5 minutes? And then when it goes tits up, there’ll be deafening prayers and petitions and all this long-suffering discourse about how God should help you. I don’t mean to sound insensitive, and some people may not like this, but people need to think. And some families don’t help either. I mentioned before how I am grateful to my family for supporting me all the way when I decided to walk away. I have heard stories of people expressing concerns and their families being like meh, invitations have been printed already so it’s too late. Or you are marrying the child of Big Man XYZ so you better suck it up and get on with it and don’t let us hear any nonsense. That’s the most cruel thing in the world. You are effectively handing your child their death sentence because they will not be their best or their fullest self, married to the wrong person.

If it is not right, then WALK THE HELL AWAY. We need to encourage people close to us to walk away if it’s not the right match. I feel so strongly about this now and I didn’t understand the enormity of my decision until I realised what a HAPPY and PEACEFUL year I’ve had over all because I escaped from all the toxicity. I have been honest with some of my girlfriends who are in similar situations to those that contributed to my own problems and I am always shocked when it emerges that in some ways, like me in the early naïve days, they thought the issues would go away and would sort themselves out over time. No honey they won’t. Some issues are resolvable and some aren’t. WALK AWAY.

You will heal. You won’t die, and one day, you will feel normal again. I didn’t think so before but now I know for sure that it is true. And having come full circle, almost a year later, I feel like my life has been enriched. My knowledge of myself has grown, and my understanding of what I need, where I need to work on myself, and the value proposition I might hope to offer to someone some day have become clearer and clearer.

I never usually share personal details like this on my blog and I didn’t do it because I suddenly feel like putting my business out there. This kind of outpouring is usually reserved for my journal. But I did it because it is natural as a year draws to a close, to be caught up in a bit of sombre reflection. It is normal to review the year and try to chart how far you’ve come and try to forge an idea of where you want to go next. My little freak out on Tuesday reminded me of just how much has happened in the last year and how much has changed. I felt that apart from my usual ranting and raving about extraneous material on this blog, I would like to do a meaty post that meant something and that would be useful.

The main thing I learned from my various episodes this year was this: If you are in a situation and you need to make a change in your life, don’t set yourself a date like oh next year or oh next month, blah, blah blah. DO IT NOW. Because your life take a different course at the snap of your fingers and you have the power to change your situation if you are willing. Also, you may not have the strength or the focus or the resources or the energy next month or next year to do what you know you need to do today, and you will allow yourself to remain in that situation when you deserve to be free and happy. I feel it is important to say this now, as people being to think up their resolutions for next year etc. I have never really been one for resolutions and all that but if you are, then one of your resolutions should be to start acting immediately to change the things you don’t like.

Because this post was inspired by my little freak out earlier on in the week, I would like to appropriate what I said above for relationships especially. If you are a good man or woman and you are reading this, and you know that you are in a rubbish relationship that is really only going to drain your spirit and ruin your life, please don’t go into 2013 carrying that baggage. Leave him or her now and you will both be happier for it. You can still each have a shot at a happy life. If you are a bad man or a bad woman and you know that your behaviour is causing your loved one pain and anguish and you have been giving empty promises to be better but have not yet bothered to do so, please don’t wait until 2013 to change your ways. Do it now. And if you can’t then be honest with all of mankind and cut your person loose so as not to be unfair to them.

We have no idea whether our lives will be long or short. We hope for them to be long, but in any case, we should not shackle ourselves to the wrong partner and then expect the three legged race through life to mysteriously be fun. Look after yourself and do what you need to do. So as I go to this wedding on Saturday, I will be praying for the couple and wishing them well. I hope that they are right for each other and that they find the happiness they are looking for. I pray that they have asked themselves those tough questions and found the right answers. This is what I fervently pray when I hear couples are getting married.

Sad Comparison

Last week, I was in Johannesburg and Cape Town. I arrived on a Sunday morning at the rather ungodly hour of 4am. As we walked through the airport I couldn't help but make comparisons between their O.R. Tambo and our Murtala Mohammed airport. For starters, I was not, at the precise moment of disembarkation, choked by a noxious cloud of dry, dusty, violently hot air. There were no random people hanging about calling me Aunty, or Chairwoman, or Big Sister in the hope that a bit of cash might pass between their hands and mine. The loos were clean, in that there was no wading through water on the floor, and I felt comfy enough to brush my teeth at the airport without the fear of catching a violent strain of something nasty. The escalators worked. The air conditioning worked. The baggage came out on time, without the tell tale signs of pilfering. There weren't hoards of people, and the people that there were did not smell.

In the car on the way home, I could not get over how beautiful the sight out of the window was. Between the airport and the drive to Sandton, everything was pretty. There was greenery. There were gorgeous Jacaranda trees everywhere. The traffic lights (or robots, as the Saffas call them) worked. The big industrial buildings were clean. There were no beggars on the road side with eyelids turned inside out going 'akoba adaba alomajareeeee.' I hate to sound like Carrie Bradshaw, because much as I love her, I hate it when she says this - but I couldn't help but wonder...

But really, I couldn't help but wonder; when, if ever my own country might look like this. I thought this same thought when I landed in Accra in September. Other parts of Africa are putting us to shame. When will we ever be so clean and civilised and welcoming? I asked a few people whom I consider to be generally quite knowledgeable and upbeat and their immediate answer was 'NO'. That depressed me a little bit because it is sad to think that when I have kids, they too will inhabit the dirty, dismal, disorganised environment that it has taken me nearly 30 years to come to terms with, and which I still cannot reconcile with our so called might and greatness.

I don't know what the solution is, or if indeed there is a solution, but boy do we need to sort out our mediocrity. Our environment is a disgrace!

Upper Cuts, Big Slaps and Chop Knuckle

About a week ago, I was scrolling through Twitter, in search of some mindless hilarity (as you do) and became aware very quickly that something was afoot. You know when the Tweetmosphere is abuzz with something but you're not sure what? Everyone is talking, jokes are being cracked, and you suddenly notice that there is a theme surrounding all the #hashtagged words? This was one of those times.

All I could see was #UpperCut this and #uppercut that and so on. So I delved into the story a bit more and found out that a girl in Cleveland, Ohio had been decked under the chin by a bus driver because she was rude to him and slapped him. Now reading those tweets, it actually sounded funny. I imagined a situation where she was perhaps being a pest and he brushed her off, kind of like when there are flies buzzing round your head and you are so tired of swatting that you wave them away without any particular conviction. That's what I pictured because all the tweets I saw, from both men and women, were finding this video hilarious.

At the time, I didn't feel the need to go check the video out for myself because it just seemed like a bother. But then this evening, I was thinking about opinions in general and how they are formed. How do you come to believe what you believe and how do you stand up for it? I realised that these days it is so easy to assimilate other people's views and begin to think they are your own, because those views are just out there, taken for granted, made into the mainstream. The only voice of reason I came across on the whole of Twitter, was @miafarradaily where she referred to the Upper Cut as 'battery'. At the time, I must admit, her comment seemed a bit odd and churlish, in the face of so much laughing and jesting. Can you imagine? Around when it happened, I remember laughing to another friend about the #UpperCut cartoons cropping up in Twitter. He got very stern and said could I please stop talking to him about it because anything that involved men hitting women, by default was unfunny to him, no matter how hilarious people claimed it was. Those still small voices of reason, isolated as they were then in the sea of tomfoolery, planted a seed and ultimately brought me to my senses. Tonight, I decided to find out what really happened by watching the video.

I was in two minds as to whether to post this video because I don't want to promote or give it any publicity whatsoever, but I think it is important for you to see it. To see how DISGUSTING it is.





Because I heard all over the internet it was funny, I just took that to be the case. The fact is this is not funny at all. This man could have killed her. Look at the sheer might he came down with, before dragging her bodily out of the bus and dumping her on the road, and then chucking her bags on top of her. I am the first to admit that she should never have hit him. She was wrong, very wrong; and is obviously a badly raised, ratchet, ghetto hoodrat. She obviously has no respect and no home training. I admit that. But he was more wrong. Did what she did warrant that level of abuse? I am not saying it would be OK if he shoved her. I do not agree with fighting and physical abuse going wither way, but my goodness, he gave her a pummeling. Her whole throat is going to be hurting for a long, long time.

Watching that video, I realised that this man has probably beaten many women before, and he probably enjoys it. Yes he was aggravated, but he was so swift to react and his beating was so accurately placed, that you can tell he knows exactly where it hurts. He knocked the wind out of her. She went limp. And then he threw her out from the height of the staircase onto the pavement. That man would have beaten her for less. He was a time bomb waiting to explode.

It is chilling to see the comments about the video on YouTube. Coupled with the comments I saw on Twitter, I realised that most people are OK with this. Most people find this funny. But actually, it is not funny. It is not funny at all. It is disgusting and distressing all at the same time. How are we here? Where men deck women across the face in public and everyone is OK with it. How does an older man whom you assume has seen her type before, and whom should really know by now to have ignored her, get so emotionally involved in the situation that he leaps out of his chair to box her? This is what they call #chopknuckle and not in the good way. This was not friendly, this was dastardly.

And this is not the only Big Slap we've had recently either. Who remembers this phrase, ('Slep me neuw. Slep me neuw beeetch')? That's from the most recent Big Brother Africa series, where a guy slapped a girl. Again, without wishing to promote violence on this blog, I had to post the video.





This is the second example we have in recent weeks where men have beaten women in front of the camera. Again, I admit she should not have gotten all up in his face, but boy, was his response crazy. I worry now that we have a generation of people, and especially MEN, the supposedly stronger, calmer, less reactive sex who have no self-control and no restraint. Men who are so volatile that all it takes is 1 bad woman out of 100 good ones they must meet in the course of daily life to send them over the edge of violence.

It is a problem, and I don't find it funny. Seeing this stuff desensitises you to it, and I worry about the already wayward generation coming up. By the time they've seen enough of this wanton violence on TV, will they begin to think it's acceptable behaviour. Will they think it is normal? Will they start to hit girls?

Your thoughts and 2 cents are very welcome. If you have read this post and are now struggling with your definition of what's funny and what isn't, I have posted a third video for you. This is definitely funny, because the person whose expense the jokes are at is the same person who posted it on YouTube. So we are laughing with her, not at her. Start at 1:35 and watch it to the end. Enjoy...

Bad Casting

I'd like to have a quick word with whoever is in charge of outdoor marketing for Mango's Nigerian operation. As I got to the mall yesterday, I was assaulted by the image of Kate Moss bearing down on me from a great height, looking decidedly edgy and defiant from the billboard on the building. Nothing against ole Kate, I just found her being here jarring. She looked so out of place. It put me in mind of watching a good movie with an actor/ actress one really likes, but having to admit that they were badly cast for the role.

Why, in the middle of sweltering Lagos do we have Kate Moss dressed in black leather flogging us clothes? Surely there are myriad Nigerian (and at a push, even African) models, celebrities, fashionistas, etc who would have embodied the Mango ethos and made it more relevant to this market.

I find Kate an odd choice for Mango in the first place as she has positioned herself in recent years, mostly via the Topshop and Rimmel campaigns as being the ultimate custodian of 'The London Look'. She is not the person whose style comes to mind when you think Mango. Furthermore, for Nigeria, I would have thought they'd go for someone with more of a diverse, international feel.

Of course, I must admit that my argument rests on the assumption that Mango would want to tailor their marketing campaign to the Nigerian market because as a former practitioner, my approach to all outgoing communications is still very geared toward delivering relevant and tailor made messages to each group of stakeholders. My initial tack would have been to get a Miss Nigeria, or a Nigerian Miss World up there. An Oluchi, or an Agbani Darego or a Tiwa Savage or an Eku Edewor.

But maybe that isn't their strategy at all. Maybe they are trying to be 'aspirational' and do the opposite of what I've said which is to amp up their status as a foreign, imported and therefore superior brand, which only a select few with Euro-centric sensibilities can relate to. It could be that rather than trying to Nigerianise their brand, they are trying to Mangofy Nigeria.

On a purely commercial level, I understand why they might want to do the latter of course. In retail terms, it creates justification for nice fat margins which they can slash once a year during the 'sales' and make customers feel special for buying a slinky little top at 150% markup, instead of the usual 300%; I get that. However, I do think that it is crucial for consumers to be able to identify, even just a little it, with the images they see on marketing campaigns aimed at them and I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. It is the reason why brands like Guinness don't have a bunch of Irish guys in their Nigerian campaigns, they have a bunch of Naija guys, hanging out after work. It is this crucial stage of mirroring the audience that I think Mango have missed out.

A final thought occurs to me, and though I find it unpalatable I must share it. What if prior to commencing operations in Nigeria, they carried out all the marketing due diligence one would expect and found out that for ready to wear / pret a porter fashion, Nigerians respond better to non-Nigrian images? It would not surprise me one bit; it is possible, think about it. I truly hope this is not the case as that would be very sad indeed, but one can never rule these things out. There is no point exploring the whys and wherefores of that particular possibility, but if that unfortunate possibility does have some truth to it, then I think it is safe to assume that it is bedfellwows with the category of reasons Nigerian women are so ardent in their pursuit of all the hair in the world, that is, all except their own. But I digress. The fake hair problem is a discussion for another day.

In any case, even from an aesthetic point of view, Kate stands out on that billboard at the Palms and it isn't the successful kind of standing out. Neeeeext!