Wednesday, July 23, 2014

MY MORE

So I was just watching a video (Shonda's Speech) of Shonda Rhimes (Creator of our much loved Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Scandal) and listening to her tell me (yes me, Nora!) how I need to stop painting blue skies and fluffy clouds about being so-and-so and actually step out and BE somebody. She thinks it’s high time I actually took steps, no matter how shaky in the direction of turning any of my many dreams to some sort of reality or another and I found myself agreeing.

It’s not that I haven’t heard this speech before…over and over have I heard it. But still as I listen to her talk it rings pure and true. It reverberates in my innermost being and causes something in my stomach (no not my bun) to uncoil. Maybe it’s the fact that I had only hours ago listened to Jason Njoku (Founder of iRoko TV) tell me (yes me… and a room full of TEDx Euston attendees and the www in general) his story about failing into success (Jason's Speech). Maybe its hearing people say over and over that ANYONE can literally migrate from the unimpressive to the relevant and lived-a-meaningful-life region that’s causing this unease on my insides and causing me to ask myself the questions:

·         “Why can’t this be MY story?”
·         “Isn’t there more to me than this life that can be summarized in a paragraph or two?”
·         “What is holding me back from daring to be more?”
and very importantly,
·         “What is THAT more that I can be?”

Ultimately, I come back to this point; the point where my thoughts get fuzzy whenever I venture along this train of thoughts; the point where most times I hit a brick unyielding wall. What IS that more that I can be? What IS that ‘more’ that is frothing impatiently on my inside, waiting for me to discover that it’s been here all along, my true self and glorious destiny?
So I start with an inventory. Who am I TODAY, right now?
I check off mental fingers,

·         I’m a HR Professional,
·         I’m a loved and loving Wife,
·         I’m an adoring mother,
·         I’m a treasured daughter (but I don’t think that counts as I had no input in that)”.

I fall mentally silent at this point and then attempt a deeper probe… surely there must be more to me. Silence still. So I go the only logical way there is to go and it’s a promise to self that there MUST be more to me. I will not live and die on a bland note! I WILL matter for something and it doesn’t have to bring fame and glory. I just want to know that when I lay my head down in final mortal sleep, it is to rest from a life well spent, not one that I barely scratched the surface of.

My question still lingers… “What is my more?”

I’ve always loved and wanted to write something worth reading… just maybe… 

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Is Nigeria too Image Conscious?




I love my country... like a mother hopelessly loves that  child that she fears will eventually give her a heart attack because he has vowed not to hear word.

I can’t run away from my roots (no matter how many plans I make), I can’t turn a deaf ear to her woes (even if I fill my ears with preferred news of how things ARE working in other countries), and I can’t beat her to death with a stick (never mind how many articles I  write huffing and puffing). At the end of the day, ‘my own na my own…Naija na my own.’ So every day, I awake and carry my cross… “My name is Nora and I am a Nigerian.”

In this spirit, when I see an article like the one I’m about to share, I’m torn in 2 directions. One part of me relates to what the author is saying. I have probably said a thing or two on some issues mentioned sef. But as I progress through the article, another part of me starts to nag and squirm. It queries my patriotism for agreeing with someone who seem so uninhibitedly rude to Naija and its people (never mind that she herself is one and is careful to use the words ‘us’… ‘we’…and ‘our’ in acknowledgement of the three fingers pointing in her direction).

As I tweet about her article I second guess my action for a second or two as I think about the backlash I may get for not stating loud and clear in my tweet that “I AM NOT ON THE SIDE OF THE AUTHOR!!!” But I posted my tweet any ways ‘cause I do wonder if she is right? If we sometimes go on about the wrong stuff. I wonder (for the first time to be honest) where the people are that thought “Chai! See what Vocal Slender and that Igbo man…” whose name I can’t remember right now … “ had to go through to turn dreams to realities”.  

Does Nigeria Have an Image Problem?
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Some years ago, a British filmmaker discovered an exotic site in Nigeria: An entire community of human beings subsisting on mountains of refuse.

And not in some remote state, but in Lagos, the country's commercial nerve centre - a city of fast cars, luxury shops and sleek folk, with women in Brazilian hair weaves and men in Ferragamo shoes.

Shortly after the Welcome to Lagos series aired on the BBC in April 2010, Nigerians around the world went berserk.

"There was this colonialist idea of the noble savage which motivated the programme," Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said of the documentary.

"It was patronising and condescending," he added.

The Nigerian just has to kick up a tornado whenever he is perceived unpalatably.

Nigeria's High Commissioner to the UK Dalhatu Tafida described it as "a calculated attempt to bring Nigeria and its hard-working people to international odium and scorn".

Online forums also went ablaze. "They are giving us a bad image," many Nigerians fumed.

Then the Lagos State government submitted a formal complaint to the BBC, calling on the organisation to commission an alternative series to "repair the damage we believe this series has caused to our image".

These patriots were not distressed that their compatriots in the oil giant of Africa were living in such squalor - that development had somehow eluded those Nigerians.

They did not rally with cries of: "There are people in our country living like this? What shall we do? How fast can we act?" No, no, no. The majority of voices were harmonised in one tune: Anxiety over their country's image.

Similarly, Nigeria was reluctant to accept desperately needed foreign assistance to fight terrorism, despite the country's armed forces being clearly overwhelmed.

We were more worried about how requesting help might affect Nigeria's image than about forestalling the wanton destruction by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
In October 1960, Nigeria was loosed from the shackles of imperialism when the colonialists packed their bags and left. But over five decades later, Nigerians remain in captivity: Foreigners control our self-image. What the West thinks of us often takes manic precedence over who we really are, what we know and feel about ourselves.

The Europeans who first landed in Africa were unconcerned when the people they regarded as monkeys equally assumed that the white interlopers were ghosts. The Germans can shrug it off when they are stereotyped as humourless; the Russians can dismiss it when they are described as cold. But the Nigerian just has to kick up a tornado whenever he is perceived unpalatably. He is touchy because he has no alternative image on which to base his confidence.

Like many Africans in the diaspora, a number of Nigerians abroad have erected careers out of defending their people's image. With indignant frowns and stern tones, they strut from one global stage to the other like superintendents, dismantling stereotypes and whitewashing sepulchres. 

This passion probably sprouts from a desire to blend into their host communities, to not be perceived as savages from some nihilistic jungle. Unknowingly, they reinforce the subconscious message that has been passed down to generations of Nigerians and other Africans: That the West's opinion of us is paramount; that enlightening and convincing foreigners matters more than discerning who we are and who we want to be. And so, when the West claps for us, we get excited. When they tell us off, we get upset. When they applaud one of us, we automatically join in applauding the person. We frantically monitor foreign opinions and we panic at the slightest hint of a negative perception of us.
We fret about the many uncomplimentary stories from our land making the rounds on international media circuits, more than about the actual negative circumstances that birth those narratives.

From politicians to intellectuals to entertainers to terrorists, Nigerians have been socialised to rate themselves in the light of Western perceptions. And as some of us have discovered first hand, the most effective way to draw the attention of our own people to any issue, is to speak to them through a Western medium.

It is unhealthy for a people's self-image to be hinged almost entirely on outside forces.
Nigeria expends too much valuable energy on sweeping dirt under carpets and stuffing skeletons inside closets. Consequently, we deny ourselves the opportunity of frank dialogue, cultural criticism and self-examination—processes that are vital for a society to advance, by which the imperious West itself has developed thus far.

Nigeria can lead the rest of Africa in freeing our people from this image bondage.
 Adaobi's article and the pictures were culled from here