And after that?

I was visiting a close friend’s house. I’d often call her house ‘my Lagos village,’ mainly because it keeps me in touch with convention as I call it. When your parents are mixed tribe as mine are, sometimes you forget which custom it is you follow. Given my friend comes from a large family, she often has visitors – a relative passing through, an older friend, a sister, or brother. These visit sessions help bring me up to date with what’s happening in the South South and South East. There’re arguments that help straighten out some of what we read in the papers – like, if indeed a certain road advertised in state X has been fixed or if it was just ‘newspaper noise’ as we say. Our discussions can graduate to politics, faith, work, business, family, children, and marriage.

Often, the most interesting point is the older visitors regaling us with stories of the ‘old Nigeria,’ how things were and what the plan was for a good Nigeria. This visit was no exception; we tumbled from one topic to the other, ending back to the ‘how we were brought up stories.’ The oldest Aunty in our midst entertained us with how in order to keep them on the straight path, her parents had handed them to a teacher to live with during the school days and then they came home only during the holidays, how unbelievably strict the teacher was, how very strict her parents were, we each took turns to dig up stories from our growing up days.

The most entertaining being a friend of ours, who suffered greatly for being outspoken and a little too bold for her parents. From repeated flogs with kobokos, to denials, someone even told us how he was stripped naked and made to stand in front of the mirror for hours. The golden thread running across these stories was the high level of discipline, everything meant something to our parents, they flogged, cut hair, banned us from various activities, took you away from your funky school to a seminary (this happened to one of my cousins) for showing wild traits.

It was puzzling how much psychologists they all were ‘I can see from your eyes that you want to be a bad girl.’ It almost appeared that they beat you in anticipation of an ill you will be doing. When you said yes to an offer of food or drinks while visiting with your parents (without the explicit corner eye approval of your mum), your lot at the end of the day was often ruthless.

Our parents deployed all and every means to keep us in check, another person told a story of how they made him strip off his clothes and stand in front of a mirror. The objective was to teach contentment, learning to abound and abase, learning obedience to authority, teaching that no one is an answer and very predominant in the east – the lesson of ‘you walk your way up the ladder.’ These meetings are often so intense that you needed a strong voice to have an opposing view. I put up my hand to say that – I felt these traits had more disadvantages than advantages, I argued that our parents accounted for a lot of intimated/timid youths in our generation, people who had to wait for university to learn to express themselves or never really learn that. They arrive in the real world waiting for instructions or acting in a way that seeks to avoid reprimand.

My stance was viewed as ‘very foreign’ and utterly ridiculous. I explained that it was a different perspective and perhaps someone could pause and think about it. No one was willing to share this view, but I stood my ground. I had experiences to share. I recall in particular one of these our ‘parental rules’ that almost cost a friend of ours his job in America. Recall that rule where they shouted at you if you looked them directly in the eye?’ They often said you were rude and had forward tendencies!

So, my friend arrives America not wanting to look people in the eye, on his first job, he worked very hard, but avoided looking at older people straight in the eye, lest he be deemed rude. It was a colleague at lunch who asked him earnestly if he did drugs as he had picked up that the office was considering firing him for ‘appearing shifty.’ He was startled and on further enquiry, he was told that he never looked anyone in the eye. He had to explain that, looking at older people in the eye at home is deemed impolite. He had to correct this very quickly.

The cane and other methods of discipline mustn’t be too far from children is my view, but all that bludgeoning of personalities is of course in my view. They should have a balance. The big question that came to mind much later – was – we all have these types of stories to tell – everyone (if you doubt me, raise it at lunch time in your office). The million dollar question though is – if we were all raised with these strong values and tradition, so why then is the nation where it is – where did the values go? I’d need a few body pounds and a physical shield to be able to ask these questions when next I’m at that gathering, I think it is worth risking my hide for this.

By: Nkiru Olumide-Ojo