My experience with the Mirena Coil

In light of all the conversation surrounding intrauterine devices after the recent US elections.

I feel I need to write about my experience with IUD’s, specifically the Mirena coil.

Source: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3340120/images/o-IUD-facebook.jpg

It’s not been fun games definitely and I’d hate for other women to rush to it without knowing about all the side effects and potential drawbacks. Prepare for some TMI, sorry but I need to do my duty to fellow uterus owners

(sorry mum)

For me a life with a Mirena coil is better than what I used to suffer from before. Those that are close to me know the ordeal I went through on a monthly basis. Half my life was spent preparing for my period, and I missed so much school due to my cramps.

It got so bad and affected my attendance so much  my secondary school had a dedicated room set  in the school nurse area that I used to make use of regularly every month.

 

I’d be vomiting and crying. I was on the highest dose of codeine for six years. It was that bad.

 

The Mirena Coil has reduced this pain so much, and given me a new lease on life. I never knew a life without chronic pain could be possible.

My  parents cried when my first period came after the Mirena was inserted and I did not shed a single tear. It was painful still but, I have a high pain threshold now and I could deal with this pain.

Health wise, I have a very close relationship with my parents, I mean I have no choice, after going through all I’ve been through for the past two decades, they know everything.

It helps that they’re also both in the Healthcare industry with mum being a nurse for almost 40 years and dad having a PhD in immunology.

Dad used to be my main supplier of trifles and McD whenever I had my periods. And he kept track and used to remind me to get new prescriptions whenever he guessed they were running low. He knew my cycle like the back of his hand, probably also because he used to leave work early many many times to come pick me up whenever school called to tell him I was crying on the corridor or was passed out in the nurse’s office. So he learnt to anticipate.

 

*Honestly I could never repay my parents for all they have done*

 

However the Mirena coil has still got me on tramadol and naproxen for those random times I get debilitating cramps. After I got it,  I was put on oral morphine for breakthrough pain. Yes the pain can get that bad once in a while.

And there’s also been the horror of the never ending period. Yes, you read that right. I had a heavy period for one and a half straight months after insertion. I lost so much nutrients I ended up with angular stomatitis.

And even till now I’m getting periods that have no  business appearing at the time they’re coming,  basically my cycle is drunk and I cannot make head or tail of it. Planning is impossible and I get no warnings, I have one day periods, 3 day periods, one week periods, 5 periods a month… Or as the medical community calls it (lies I tell you), ‘spotting between periods’ . I refuse to call it spotting though as I don’t know when it stops being spotting and becomes a period. Whatever it is, it’s heavy and unplannable.

For some women, Mirena coils can cause debilitating period pains where there wasn’t before. For others it stops their periods.
For me, a week after implantation I was taken in an ambulance to the hospital for unbearable pain like I’d never experienced before and I got admitted. I was on gas, IV paracetamol, morphine, tramadol and diclofenac.

My family was horrified and I was delirious enough to say some unrepeatable things to my poor long suffering dad.

 

But in the grand scheme of things, my pain now is on average a million times less than it used to be

 

Months after this, I still get pain, I’m still on pain killers, my period hasn’t disappeared but my cramps have lessened.

And for me it’s a price worth paying.
For other women not used to the cramp life, it’s gonna come as a shock if you’re unlucky enough.

Also insertion can be a bitch, I got mine done under general anaesthesia after a minor procedure but more often than not IT IS A PAINFUL MINOR PROCEDURE that involves widening the cervix but doctors don’t mention that unless you press for information
Please please research your options on all the contraceptives out there, especially if your aim is to help with pain control.

And there are many more risks like increased PID chance, perforation of the uterus, ectopic pregnancies etc that I haven’t touched on.

I don’t normally talk about my health publicly but I sincerely hope this post helps those that are considering getting the coil.

We are tired

Police brutality against minorities hasn’t just suddenly increased in America. It’s always been there, modern technology just makes it easier to disprove the lies and refinements of the rotten maggots that populate the halls of power.

It was the police (great grand parents and older) that used to kill and scalp escaped slaves during the 400 years of slavery for profit. It was the police (grandparents of the current generation) that used to allow their families to lynch black people till the 60’s (this barbaric practice only started to be frowned upon in the West during the 50’s.) my dad was born in the 50’s.
It was the police members (parents of the current generation) and chiefs that ran the local kkk chapters, donning the white uniforms at night and the blue ones at day time.
It was these same police chiefs, members of the kkk and active during the civil rights era who retired and whose kids took over and are still there today.
Thesr butchers and white supremacists were never brought to trial, justice was never served. Instead my people have to gaze upon their faces immortalised in sculptures and university mottos, in every walk of life they are reminded that their life is cheap and murderers can get away with it as long as the murdered is black.

This is the result of hundreds of years of state sanctioned ethnic cleansing. But it’s been prettied up and disguised. It’s roots are still showing though, like a bad dye job. ETHNIC CLEANSING.

And you wonder why black people distrut the police. BECAUSE THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN A SYMBOL OF PROTECTION, THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A TOOL OF OPPRESSION.

My solidarity to my brothers and sisters in that country that since its inception has let the collective blood of over a hundred million black and brown bodies. This is why America cannot know peace. It’s hands are bloody and the complicity of whites continues to enable this.

Fuck you and your white privilege that enabled you to sit comfortably behind your computer screen and defend state sanctioned killings.

Fuck you and your white privilege that enabled you to determine that these people’s lives weren’t worth enough to get a fair trial.

Fuck you and your white privilege that enabled you to rationalise the death of a fellow human being even when all the evidence points to them not deserving it time and time again.

Fuck you and your fucking privileged existence that makes you think that we don’t get a right to fair trial because we have rap sheets.

Fuck you and your fucking white privilege that has makes you think that my life is somehow worth less because I have a different level of melanin in my skin.

Infinity fuck you and your white privilege to the point of shuffling off this mortal coil that makes you blind to the fact that these same police captured Dylan roof alive and diffused the Waco shootout without killing a single biker even though they had killed each other.

Eternally fuck you for continuing to enable the despicable actions of the police by removing the humanity of their INNOCENT victims. Being black is not a crime. BEING AN ETHNIC MINORITY IS NOT A FUCKING CRIME and we shouldn’t have to pay with blood.

FUCK YOU

#AltonSterling
#BlackLivesMatter
#TamirRice
#WeDemandJustice
#WeAreNotBloodSacrificesOnTheAltarOfWhiteSupremacy
#EricGarner
#InnocentUntilProvenGuilty
#BlackIsNotACrime
#PhilandoCastile
#ExistingWhileBlack
#EndPoliceBrutality

Colour-Blindness in the modern world

 

Colour-Blindness in the modern world

Thesis

There is a growing trend in the race movement of the modern world to claim a “superior” position of colour blindness which is a destructive stance as it provides an easy way to ignore minority issues for the ethnic majorities and often leads to the belief of reverse racism being real towards whites in western society.

Introduction

Historically speaking, the definition of racism in the minds of the common populace has revolved around the obvious kinds of discrimination, those that call for the killing of coloured people by the local KKK, burning of crosses, refusal to share public space with a minority. These are all the obvious forms of racism that people are aware of. There are however more subtle forms of racism that have entered the public domain in recent years. These insidious forms seem to be growing in terms of general acceptance in the population as opposed to the other more confrontational forms that have slowly and thankfully gone out of favour in modern society. For example, it has become frowned upon by the general population “blacken up” as a way of portraying African/black characters. The use of the word “nigger” is no longer socially acceptable by Caucasians and there are affirmative action policies that are seeking to redress the balance of power held by Caucasians in positions of power as well as in schools and higher learning institutions.

Out of this movement to level the racial playing filed, a growing trend has emerged especially amongst ethnic majorities to take a stance of colour blindness. This ideal, although well-meaning to start with as a legitimate millennial movement against racism in the modern world has now devolved into a catch all phrase which people use. Mainly as a way to discredit the experiences of ethnic minorities in society. It has now become a phrase used to silence the minorities when an accusation of racism, either institutional or racial bias, are seen in a situation. This stance claims that the person who holds the view does not see colour and as such cannot be accused of racism as said person treats all races equally.

The phrase has most recently been used extensively and heavily by Caucasians against African-Americans fighting for an end to the institutional racism that exists in the American justice system. It has become a way of shutting down discord during conversations, by immediately stating that they treat everyone equally. This stance is an admirable stance to have, especially by ethnic majorities. The problem with this stance however, is the fact that we do not live in a post-racial world.

 

Body

The stance of colour blindness is problematic to say the least and regressive as a movement against racism. It renders the people who utter the phrase blind, figuratively to the struggles of the ethnic minorities. It invalidates their pain and assumes that they start life on a level playing field with Caucasians. In this essay, I will attempt to trace the roots of the word which began as a movement against racism; from the beginning of the civil rights movement to the birth of the millennials and the ideals of a post racial world being superimposed in a race dominated world, and the claims that reverse racism is real towards Caucasians.

For centuries in the west, mainly in North America, ethnic minorities, especially African-American people were victimized, enslaved, brutalized and were owned as property. After the abolishment of slavery, the status quo did not change much for centuries after with African-Americans being denied decent schools, hospitals and decent government services. This led to a majority being uneducated and stuck in a cycle of poverty for generations. As a result extreme poverty continued to dominate the lives of the minorities and most led the lives of share croppers and maids, not far from conditions that their grandfathers experienced as slaves centuries before.

Schools and public services in America especially were segregated to black and white schools until the famous Brown vs Board of education, 347 U.S. 483 in 1954. It ruled that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. The decision overturned a previous decision, Plessy v. Ferguson which allowed state-sponsored segregation in pubic education. This ruling in 1954 was a major victory to the civil rights movement and paved the way for racial integration in schools.[1]

Full racial integration was not achieved until after the civil rights act of 1964 was passed a decade later.[2]  This led the way for the rise of affirmative action policies being extended to African-Americans in a bid to redress the atrocities of the past. Unfortunately however, this has given rise to the myth that African-Americans gain the most out of other under-privileged groups as a result of the policies and it is frequently used as a way of belittling the achievements of African Americans in society today.

As Anthony M. Platt put it in his paper on the rise and fall of affirmative action, this policy was not originally intended for African-Americans, it was introduced as government initiated intervention to stop injustices against individuals or groups whose suffering was not self-inflicted; to correct the injustices caused by systemic discrimination; and to prevent its recurrence. Such a broad definition meant that people of different classes, ethnicities, racial designation, gender and sexuality who had been denied rights based on these factors were covered by the policy.[3]

It can be deduced from this definition of affirmative action that the majority of people who benefited from this policy were certainly not African-Americans but mainly white lower class Americans. In fact according to the United States labour department, the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. The department estimates that 6 million women workers are in higher occupational classifications today than they would have been without affirmative action policies.[4]

As a result of this perceived injustice in affirmative action policies, counter protest groups sprung up, rejecting the ideas behind it. Their main grudge was the misguided opinion that African-Americans have to do less and achieve less compared to their white counterparts. They argued that the university policies of reserving places specifically for ethnic minorities from under-privileged backgrounds was a form of discrimination. Their claim was based upon the ideas that living in a post-racial world at the end of the civil rights movement meant that no special treatment should be given to any one race. They argued that it was reverse discrimination against whites. And this movement was bolstered by some former liberal scholars who published books in the early 90’s criticising Affirmative Action as a negative policy.

According to them, Affirmative action and other colour-conscious policies betrayed the original goals of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. They saw it as a perversion of the colour-blind society promise. They saw it as a colour-blind policy of antidiscrimination being transformed into a policy of compensatory justice.[5]

Advocates of this movement have been called racial realists by Professor Alan Wolfe [6] in his book review of “Someone else’s house” in 1998. An extract from his review is below:

“In the past few years, however, there has emerged a challenge to the liberal consensus among liberals (or former liberals…they are united on two important points. One is that whites have not resisted demands for racial justice but have accepted tremendous progress in race relations. The other is that those who claim to speak in the name of African-Americans do not always serve the interests of those for whom they supposedly speak.” [7]

The books Alan Wolfe criticise in his review put the blame of continued racial segregation on the shoulders of civil rights leaders like the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who were public and vocal supporters of Affirmative Action policies and pursued race-conscious solutions to societal problems.

This played into a new feeling in the white community of reverse racism as well as a victim mentality in which they refused to see or acknowledge the still heavily racialized world we live in today. In a way, they rebelled against the status quo by pursuing a different, if misguided movement against racism.  The demographics that felt this the most were the “millennials”, those that had gone to universities with ethnic minorities and had seen affirmative action policies at the universities they attended. This group perceived themselves as the victims in a world which was increasingly catering to just ethnic minorities. The belief that racism didn’t exist anymore and affirmative action policies were unfair to them in a post racial world was and is widespread amongst this demographic. This was the beginning of the Colour-blind movement in mainstream society. [8]

As Joe Kincheloe put it in 1998, this idea or “benign” response works to deny and, therefore, erase the identity of the subject(s) of the response. According to him, Colour-blindness is a luxury that only those who are very secure in position of whiteness and power can have. This idea ignores the treatment that many people of colour encounter. Together, the defensiveness and denial of this “benign” response function to maintain the status quo while absolving the white reactor’s responsibility for any bias to race that him/herself carries[9]

As many scholars have pointed out, the myth of reverse racism has become a tool by the oppressors to oppress the minorities. Through claims of colour blindness and the rejection of affirmative action policies due to the myth of it conferring an unfair advantage on a group, whites in America especially choose to go down the route of subtle racism.[10]

Conclusion

The idea of colour blindness started out as a noble, if slightly skewed way of dealing with racial inequality by treating everyone as if they started on a level playing field. Its roots were indeed noble as a movement against racism in the modern world. However, over time the movement has morphed into one of the single biggest racial challenges in the modern world and as the views become entrenched, it becomes more of a stumbling block to the minorities it claims to help by being impartial. It is an idea that can only work in a post racial world where everyone starts life on equal footing. Unfortunately, we know this to be untrue, the criminal justice system is still heavily biased towards whites and against blacks to the extent that whole books have been written on the subject in the dawn of the new Millennia[11].

As a result of this, its proponents, whilst claiming not to see race, choose to discredit the voice of minorities that protest the unfair advantages at the start of life conferred upon individuals based on the virtue of their race. In this way, this movement that started as a movement against racism has now devolved into a blind movement that impedes the people it proclaims to help due to continued ring fencing of white privilege. Or as Lopez put it; the current trend of colour blindness allows racial remediation while protecting the status quo[12]

Footnotes

[1] Hartford, Bruce. n.d. 1954. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe

[2] “Civil Rights Act 1964”. 2015. In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide. Abington: Helicon. http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/heliconhe/civil_rights_act_1964/0

[3] Anthony M. Platt, The Rise and Fall of Affirmative Action, 11 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 67 (1997). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndjlepp/vol11/iss1/4

[4] University, North Carolina State. 2010. NC State University Affirmative Action in Employment Training. Accessed November 18, 2015. https://www.ncsu.edu/project/oeo-training/aa/beneficiaries.htm

[5] Brown, Michael K. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society.( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 169.

[6] Political Science Department, Boston College. 2015. Alan Wolfe. 20 November. Accessed November 23, 2015. http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/polisci/facstaff/wolfe.html

[7] Wolfe, Alan. 1998. Enough Blame to Go Around. Book Review, New York: The New York Times.

[8] Carr, L. (1997). “Color-blind” racism. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications)

[9] Kincheloe, Joe L. White Reign : Deploying Whiteness in America. 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

[10] Anderson, Kristin J. Benign Bigotry : The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice. (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.)

[11] Bell, Derrick A. Race, Racism, and American Law. 4th ed. (Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Law & Business, 2000.)

[12] Haney Lopez, Ian. “Colorblind to the Reality of Race in America.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 53, no. 11 (2006): B.6-B9. (Pgs 1-2)

“This Is What They Did For Fun”: The Story Of A Modern-Day Lynching – BuzzFeed News

I came across this article on a break from writing my essay (funnily enough, my thesis asks: Why is the practice of colour blindness amongst ethnic majorities as a way to deal with racial inequality such a problem in the modern world?). I’m in the mood to rant, I am angry at the injustices. If you’re not ready for this, then click away.

 

Craig Anderson was headed home to celebrate his birthday with his partner. Instead, he became the victim of a brutal and violent form of racism that many in Mississippi had thought long gone.

Source: “This Is What They Did For Fun”: The Story Of A Modern-Day Lynching – BuzzFeed News

 

An excerpt from the article:

 

“Sarah Graves’ mother, Mary Miles Harvey, wrote a letter to the court saying that she didn’t raise her daughter to be a racist. At Graves’ sentencing hearing, Judge Harvey Wingate called Harvey to the witness stand to ask her about the letter. He noted that Graves had told investigators that when her and her brother’s rooms were messy, Harvey would tell them they were “living like niggers.” Harvey denied saying that.
“I would have said Negroes, not niggers,” she said. “I just meant that their rooms were nasty, like a pigsty.”
Wingate asked her what she thought the word “nigger” meant.
“An ignorant, nasty person,” Harvey said. “I was taught in school that a nigger was a nasty person, and a Negro was a black person.”
I thank my lucky stars daily that I’m not African American. WHen they protest institutional racism and violence, people tell them they’re too sensitive.

They tell us as black people that we’re seeing racism in everything. We’re too sensitive, we use the card too much. We’re too quick to call it racism

Imagine this happening 5,000 times over to your grandfathers, rapes on an unimaginable scale to your grandmothers. The perpetrators getting off scot free, and in some cases becoming respected members of society.

We like to think that the plight of black people ended with the end of the slave trade centuries ago, but we conveniently ignore the fact that these people were still to all intents and purposes treated as animals till just over 50 years ago.

And in some “modern countries” institutional racism still exists. We tell ourselves to never forget the Holocaust, never forget the Great War.

In the same vein we tell blacks to get over half a millennium of slavery, jim crow, segregation, exploitation, pillage and barbaric acts committed against them.

The Belgians were cutting off hands of indigenous citizens (including very young children) in the mid 1900’s. The British committed atrocities against the Mau Mau in Kenya in the last half a century. The mere thought of brining up what the white Afrikaners perpetuated against the natives is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

 

When I talk about racism, people tell me to shut up, to not always play the race card, to give it a rest. They talk about how black people have been “free” now for years and we still commit the highest proportion of crimes in developed countries. They lean on these excuses of blacks being violent and uncivilised. It’s their crutch. It’s their way of burying their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. They pretend we live in a post-racial world

They forget that intergenerational trauma exists. If we accept intergenerational trauma for non POC (WW1&2 survivors and Holocaust survivors). Why do we ignore it as a factor in the issues affecting blacks now, especially in North America. Why do we ignore the trauma caused by segregation and centuries of White power in the form of the KKK terrorising black people? Why do we ignore the effects of racism that has meant less funding for schools in deprived areas? Less funding for services committed to the mental well being of POC? Why do white people ignore this?

 

WHY do I as a black person have to be “dignified” and “respectable” when protesting the deaths of:

Dontre Hamilton (Milwaukee)

Eric Garner (New York)

John Crawford III (Dayton, Ohio)

Michael Brown Jr. (Ferguson, Missouri)

Ezell Ford (Florence, California)

Dante Parker (Victorville, California)

Tanisha Anderson (Cleveland)

Akai Gurley (Brooklyn, New York)

Tamir Rice (Cleveland)

Rumain Brisbon (Phoenix)

Jerame Reid (Bridgeton, New Jersey)

Tony Robinson (Madison, Wisconsin)

Phillip White (Vineland, New Jersey)

Eric Harris (Tulsa, Oklahoma)

Walter Scott (North Charleston, South Carolina)

Freddie Gray (Baltimore)

But you  can throw a riot when your team loses and its alright?

Why can the detestable womam quoted above feel free to say such things in a court of law as proof her daughter was not raised a racist? YES I KNOW, NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE.

 

But if the screams I hear on the internet are to be believed, a vocal minority are tarnishing the ‘good name’ of a silent majority of the race. WHy don’t the silent majority rise up and show the world that these racist bigots and hate crimes are not supported by them? Why dont they come out and strongly oppose these crimes? Why don’t they take responsibility? This is ironically a charge the white majority has levelled against the muslim community time and time again after terrorist attacks.

Selling my skills to the highest bidder…AKA job hunting

When you’re £2000 deep into your overdraft, there’s no job too little and no task too small to undertake if it means reducing it. I have many excues for my overdraft being that deep, most of them useless.

Me trying to explain to my dad why I’m so poor and his reaction

Which is why I’ve recently become pro active in the job application front. I spent the whole of yesterday evening dusting off and febreezing the bullshit off my CV and I wrote a professional cover letter——- for the first time. The job was for a part time dishwasher in downtown Saskatoon. Yeah, these kinds of jobs exist in Canada. I sent off my CV and cover letter at 11pm on tuesday night and got a call for an interview almost exactly 12 hours later. The informal job market is really healthy over here, plus my standards have dropped significantly. Failing getting a job, my only other option might be to marry an arab Sheikh or sell a kidney.

Absolute last resort

I also applied for a Scotia Bank Scholarship. The question was: Who or what has helped you make your student life easier, and how

My answer was:

“Going into my third year of university, I’ve developed a routine for settling down at the end of each holiday period. I’ve added some rituals, discarded some and modified some over these past three years. The one ritual that has remained the same, regardless of whether I’m starting a new year, moving into a new room or even going off on a gap year adventure is my collection of ageing pictures and train ticket stubs which I put up in my room unfailingly. These have become my family away from home. Whenever I’m feeling homesick, I merely have to glance at a random picture on my wall to be transported to that period in time, the joy comes back to reassure me. When I study my collection of ticket stubs, the journey comes alive again, vivid as the day I collected the ticket from the forlorn station machines in England.”

I’m getting very good at flowery language it seems!

There, not back yet; Part 1

So I did it, I packed my bags, including my trusty sound system, train ticket stubs and 300 odd pictures and embarked on a 4,500 mile flight to Canada for an adventure. It’s the beginning of a year long adventure, a long time in the making.

For those of you that don’t know the deets, I’ll tell the story from the beginning.

I began this journey earlier this year when I got  my letter of acceptance from the University of Saskatchewan for an exchange year.

Ire receiving her letter of acceptance

This was just the beginning though and of course there were terms and conditions I had to meet before I could say that I was going as a definite. This included passing my modules in one go (easy you say) and the main stumbling block was the 11 exams that were scheduled within 3 weeks by my lecturers (I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity they gave me to overcome the need for sleep).

The embodiment of 11 exams I had to conquer

Anyway I got through that fight relatively unscathed, a few cuts and bruises acquired but the important thing was that I survived. My ordeal was not over though and I now had to wait for the results to come out. This translated to one whole month on tenterhooks. I refused to apply for my visa or buy my plane ticket, in case my results came back and it turned out I was a colossal olodo.

I might have done this in my genetics paper

Eventually when the results came out and I found out that I had indeed passed all my modules in one try, I predictably leapt for joy. It was a huuuuggggeee relief and I went about congratulating myself for a job well done (I should congratulate wikipedia more tbh)

DJ Khaled was talking to me in my dreams

Now came the slightly problematic issue of visa application to the Canadian Immigration Services (CIC). Even though I’ve been in the UK for 10 years, I’m still in possession of a Nigerian passport. I saw no need to apply for citizenship before this year so I kept the status quo (besides that fee for citizenship is a pisstake, I’m not a bag of money Theresa May -_-). I’m a fearless goat though and I confidently applied for a student visa to the CIC with my green passport and waited….and waited….and waited.

Waiting for that email from the CIC services

Eventually, they got back to me, asked for details of my life, my parents’ lives, my pets’ lives. Everyone’s lives who was connected to me. Where my other exchange friends got an email within a week with their visa instruction, I got an email after almost a month asking for me to come give my biometrics at their London office.

Whilst this was happening on the visa side of things, I was being hung, drawn and quartered by my exchange university fees wise. First they misclassified me as an international student with international student fees (Jesu), then they asked me to provide $1500 out of thin air for  accommodation deposit. In July.

I had to explain to them that Student finance doesn’t drop in July in England…I did a fair bit of pleading too to convince them to extend my deadline.

Lost my dignity

Thankfully, they agreed to extend my deadline.

“Because I’m happy!!”

Achievement unlocked #AdultEmailCompetency.

My next shock came when I looked at flight tickets with a direct flight from England to Canada ( I couldn’t transit in America which would have been cheaper due to a lack of a British passport)

£879 for a ticket?

The cost of the flight ticket coupled with an insurance bill of £780+ through the University ensured an August where I was desperately begging for money from whoever would listen

Self-explanatory

God delivered me from the throes of disappointment though and provided through a gift from close family friends and another very special individual in my life. I won’t mention names however as I’ve not gotten their permission to expose them on here <3. these special people were my father christmas and it was like all my prayers had been answered. I also got some very good news from one of them that week too. It’s safe to say that I was floating on cloud 9 that week!

Multiple santas rescued my year abroad

Next on the list, after buying the plane ticket and settling for cheaper insurance elsewhere, I then turned my focus to making new friends before arriving at my destination.

Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t a freshers’ page for the university. This is something I’m sure a lot of us take for granted in the UK as part of the freshers’ experience. I tried the official facebook pages for the university and joined many groups affiliated with the university but I still couldn’t find a page dedicated to actually making friends before arrival.

I solved that dilemma creatively however; I bought a tinder subscription and my thumb got busy in Saskatoon. I soon developed a nervous twitch of my thumb favouring the left side.

So many fishing pictures and tons of profiles lacking in the very crucial ingredient; BANTER!

After what felt like forever and almost close to giving up, I swiped right on this guy who was also in the same boat as me. His profile said “exchange student from Sweden”, my heart said bae.

He messaged me first to ask about my year abroad plans and we soon struck up a good online friendship. Like we had been mates for years, And I was crossing all fingers and toes that he wouldn’t turn out to be some awkward stranger in real life.

This initial decision of mine to find a kindred spirit online saved my hide when I finally got to my designated town. But more on that later!

Where was I?

So I made a friend online before arrival and I booked a hotel as well (cancelled the sucker though and paid for an AirBnb which was less than half the price of the hotel).

The 27th of August came creeping slowly on me and family members though and the day before the 27th, I spent the last £20 in my account on new fish in preparation for the long absence from home. The next day I set off with both my parents to London Heathrow Terminal 5.

As excited as I was to be going on a year abroad, as excited as I was to leave England for a whole year;

I still had to say a very tearful goodbye to some very special individuals in my life, from my biological parents and brothers and sister to my adopted mother and close friends. That, for me was the toughest part of leaving. I stemmed the tears and tried to be brave about it all, but inside I wanted to hug my family and friends one last time before leaving Torbay. But circumstances and time constraints meant I had to say a hasty goodbye and take a couple of pictures. It still has not hit me yet that I am a whole ocean and half a continent away from any biological family member.

When we got to the airport I could see the sadness in my parents’ eyes. Their little girl is growing up after all. They bought me a final meal of Fish and Chips at the terminal before waving me off to begin my adventure. a few pictures were taken at the airport however (a lot actually) and I felt like a child being waved at as she attended her first day of school. Scared, alone, excited and with a healthy amount of student loan in my account.

Daddy’s little girl

Down the Rabbithole

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

” A woman’s polite devotion is her greatest beauty.” Unknown

About one and a half years ago I read a post on a popular Nigerian facebook group. This post detailed the gruesome murder of some Nigerian female nurses in America at the hands of their husbands. These women left their husbands and tried to forge a new life for themselves away from controlling and jealous husbands. Their reward was death. The debate as to whether this stories were real or manufactured is open to debate. what is not however was the response to the story, especially by the men.

Snapshot of typical comments on the post

Enraged at this blatant injustice I had to comment. Now I will be the first to acknowledge that my comment was incendiary, adding fuel to the fire,

My reply and the shitstorm it generated on the page

Shortly after commenting on this, I stopped following the page. One of the reasons for unfollowing was the sheer amount of misogyny the men openly displayed. I was told that red lipstick denoted a prostitute (Now I don’t know about you, but red is my signature lipstick. Dior 5th Avenue specifically, I like the good stuff in life), trousers were a sign of loose morals, a woman had no say in politics, amongst other comments. I forgot about this comment and the page itself as a whole until June this year when my brother brought my attention to a video posted on the page of a woman in the commercial capital of Nigeria (Lagos) stripped half naked and in the process of being tortured by a group of men. The video is too horrific to post the link here and I was shaking with rage and frustration after watching it; This woman along with two others were accused of stealing peppers, which they denied. The men proceeded to torture a confession out of them by pouring scotch bonnet powder (very hot chilli powder) into their eyes and then vaginas. The fact that these ‘normal men’, not police officers, not community officers, not law enforcement in any way, thought it was alright to torture a human being is not the disturbing part of this tale. No, the truly disturbing part was them adding scotch bonnet powder into their vaginas, they targeted them as woman, trying to inflict the maximum amount of pain on them, did not care about the fact that this could potentially kill them, they did not care about the psychological trauma these woman would go through and the agonizing physical trauma they must have suffered. One of the poor women later died as a result. This video as gruesome and as heartbreaking as it is, restarted my interest in women’s rights in Nigeria.

I have been pondering the significance of this event for many weeks now and I have spoken with as many nigerian men as I could (mainly dad, grandfather, family friends and brother) about this issue and women’s rights as a whole. Although my family is progressive by Nigerian standards, their views of women are still somewhat archaic, not quite modern enough for my tastes. What I have gleaned from the many talks and arguments is that a lot of Nigerian men are happy for their wives and daughters and women to shatter glass ceilings. However when they come back home, they gotta leave the power woman and the strong woman at the doormat. Once they step into the home, they have to revert back to being subservient. the men’s egos are simply too fragile to tolerate their partners being successful.

Now of course, Nigeria is a “deeply religious” country (the degree of religiousness in a country where corruption comes second nature to breathing is debatable). Some might say, more religious than the vatican judging by the amount of global churches that have roots in the nation. And unfortunately a LOT of the misogyny displayed in the country is down to the interpretations taken from the scriptures about a woman’s role in society.

A woman, in Nigeria has to be a good cook, patient, loving, virtuous, silent, etc. And the most important trait in a woman according to Nigerian society is the desire to get married. A woman in Nigeria cannot aspire to be a CEO or a highflier without first marrying. Similarly, a woman is not considered successful until she is married with a good dozen children in the nursery, regardless of the degrees or fortune she has amassed. A good woman does not intimidate (note the fragile egos of the males) her partner with her success, and a woman who is too successful runs the great risk of not finding a man to marry her.

This idea of marriage being the ultimate goal of a woman is so prevalent in Nigeria that you would often find mothers telling their daughters off for bad behaviour by threatening them that they will never find a man to marry them. Women that are not maternal, not loving in a traditional sense, who are ambitious high-fliers and/or just don’t conform to these societal identity of femininity are discarded on the rubbish heap, most often labelled as unnatural, or my personal favourite; witches.

There are more female “witches” in nigeria than corrupt politicians if these claims of witchcraft are to be believed.

This idea that a woman’s main purpose in life is to be effectively a brood mare and a slave to her husband is like a rot in the fabric of Nigerian society. There is nothing traditional about it and there is nothing religious about it. If indeed it is a sacre held tradition, then traditions are meant to be broken. Not so long ago, the Igbos traditionally sacrificed twins at the altar of the oracles as they perceived them as unnatural.

The hashtags #BeingAWomanInNigeria and #BeingFemaleInNigeria started to trend on twitter earlier this month and it could not have come at a more perfect time for this article. I encourage readers to search for these hashtags on twitter and read the hilarious yet painfully accurate descriptions of the struggles of being a woman in Nigeria.

A selection from channel 4 of the #BeingFemaleInNigeria hashtag

Nigerians are big on religion, Nigerian men even more so when it comes to justifying their views. Some quote the bible like they were present when the original scrolls were being written. Favourite verse being;

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything

I do not take issue with households following a religious way of life, what I do take issue is with households using select bible verses to justify oppression towards the womenfolk in their homes. Twisted Interpretations of these verses result in men who associate red lipstick with prostitution, trousers with loose morals and intelligence with confrontation. If I had a penny for every time a Nigerian man tells me he could never marry a woman like me, I’d be richer than the country itself. So many of the men I clash with on a daily basis online use the bible as a resource to back up their points yet have no qualms declaring their use of the occultic against me for not being agreeable. One minute a christian, the next a “devil worshipper”. I’m sure I’m not the only one that finds this funny.

Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these men’s egos are so fragile, they cannot bear to have a woman more successful than they are, more intelligent than they are and they absolutely hate a woman that has a mind of her own. When confronted with a woman with a mind, the default setting in the minds of these men is to insult, targeting the femininity of the woman first, hence the prevalence of the label witch to describe women.

I’ve had a few experiences of this peculiar male defence mechanism. One promised me that he would behead me and use my head for a money making blood ritual and the other assured the audience that I hate men because I was raped 70 times in my infancy by my father, brothers and uncles. This in his twisted mind explained why I was so vocal in my defence of the murdered victims of domestic violence. Seeing the response of Nigerian men to my post has helped me better understand the mindset of the average Nigerian man, it has also helped me to understand how the barbaric act filmed on camera could have happened. In a culture where women are treated as second class citizens, it seems a woman and her vagina are fair game to these individuals.

Ask most Nigerians if domestic violence is endemic in the country and I can guarantee that most respondents will say no. Nigerians living in the diaspora love to paint this rosy picture where men don’t kill their wives and domestic abuse does not happen when confronted with ugly stories of domestic violence in the British media. And for a while I used to believe this lie too. In fact I used to argue its merits with my colleagues. Now I know for a fact that nothing could be further from the truth. Domestic violence is endemic in Nigeria. it is regarded as dirty linen that no one talks about. the media in Nigeria does not cover stories about women being murdered by their partners. Listening on the grapevine however tends to paint a clearer image. Stories of wives disappearing, visiting the hospital with unexplained bruises or ending up dead in mysterious circumstances are not unheard of.  This hidden epidemic of domestic violence goes on in the society with impunity and the perpetrators almost always get away scot free, marrying another wife in many cases. In situations where the wife is not killed or harmed, she is often left by the husband literally holding the child as he abandons them. In a country where there is no social security net, no child benefit and a weak court system, getting the man to pay child support is impossible. This is another common occurrence in Nigeria with separated women (not quite divorced as divorce is still a societal taboo….a sure fire way to label the wife a witch for life) living away and eking out a living whilst supporting children.

Most Nigerian women are expected to submit to their husbands in everything from marital rape to family planning. The balance of power is so uneven that many men take mistresses and pay for sex with prostitutes, blatantly keeping other women whilst expecting their would be wives to be virtuous and virginal. In churches there is always messages devoted to women about keeping their virginity whilst the men are left to sow their wild oats. If religion was truly the reasoning behind such a demeaning view of women then surely the sermons and the preachings would equally target both sex and premarital sex would be frowned upon in both sexes. As we all know, a sin is a sin is a sin. No sin is bigger than the other under christianity, so why do our men hide behind religion as a reason to expect holiness and other angelic qualities from their partners whilst they themselves are involved in sinful acts, both before marriage AND after. Why do Nigerian men see it as their right to choose to give their partners’ freedom? This was a recurring theme in the facebook argument I had, A great deal of men thought it was their God given right to chose to give their partners their freedom. And I spent a great deal of time explaining to them that the freedom of their wives was not theirs’ to give, their wives already had their freedom and as they are not slaves in the marriage, why should their husband be able to choose whether to grant them their freedom?

As I round up this badly structured ‘essay’ about women’s living conditions which started out as an angry rant and has slowly developed into a slightly legible article, I have one more question. Why do our mothers raise us Nigerian women to always see ourselves as less than men? Nigerian men are complicit in their treatment of their partners. But I cannot absolve blame from the mothers. Why do they not encourage us to see ourselves as individuals in our own rights? Why do they encourage us to tie our worth as human beings to the men in our lives? Mothers have a responsibility to raise daughters that see their own self worth and are not dependent on the approval of a male gaze to get fulfillment in life.

The aim of this article was to try to highlight the issues facing women in Nigeria, however it has devolved into a pseudo-rant about the conditions of women. I apologise for the structure but not for the content. I hope it was legible and readable, because lord knows I vomited my thoughts onto a keyboard. This post won’t win journalistic awards, but I sincerely hope that many men, especially Nigerian men would read this and maybe reconsider their stance on gender equality in the country.

Natural Hair Care

A lot of people think that properly caring for natural afro hair is a lot of work and too expensive. As a student whose main achievements at university have been to waste money like water on food and procrastinate on all pieces of coursework. I’m living proof that caring for afro hair can be cheap, fun and within everyone’s expertise. Cheap here means costing you less than your next weave or braids. And I’m going to give a few pointers and tips in this article

A good starting point is knowing what works and what doesn’t for your hair. As I’m the proud owner of tightly coiled locks, this piece will be talking mainly about that kind of hair, however those of you fortunate/unfortunate enough to have looser coils can still follow this but maybe reduce the amounts of products used. I don’t follow the hair typing rule in caring for my hair, this was a major source of pain when I first started, was I a 4A or 5C or 3DD?

The dreaded hair type chart where “good hair” is distinguished from “bad hair”

I used to spend hours reading up on all these techniques of specific hair types. To me now, they’re a waste of time seeing as I’m a 3B at the back, 4A in the middle and 3C in the front…Or I think so anyway. The point is that hair typing is not as important as knowing what works for your hair. It could be the expensive Shea moisture products, or simple olive oil/coconut oil. What does not work as a moisturiser or styling product however is Pink Oil and other petrochemical products, you’ll get better moisturising by rinsing your hair in crude oil (which they are refined from)

Raw Shea Butter

Selection of Shea Moisture products. https://corporate.target.com/article/2012/10/from-sierra-leone-to-the-streets-of-new-york-local

Almonds, the superfood, also the source of sweet Almond oil

Don’t fall into the trap of becoming a product junkie. I speak from experience, I have a cupboard full of half used and unused products at great expense to my student loan. This was as a result of watching YouTube videos and believing that to get the same results I’d have to splurge on the expensive products the blogger’s used. Seriously, don’t fall into that trap, these people are paid to promote these products to you. Find what works best for you.

For me, it’s as simple as whipped shea butter as styling cream for my twist outs, braid outs etc. A homemade mixture of water, almond oil, avocado oil, grape seed oil and lavender oil (my four miracle oils) as a daily moisturising spray. A large toothed comb for everyday duties and a rat tail comb for styling. I limit combing to once or twice a week. To avoid breakages and split ends, dampen the hair first, comb in little sections and comb from the top gently

Good picture, terrible combing technique.

Partition hair, dampen if needed, gentle use of wide toothed comb from top to bottom.

Washing the hair is a once every three week occurrence in winter, however I co wash it with a mixture of conditioner (shea moisture coconut and hibiscus conditioner) and the four oils mentioned above weekly, if needed (after the occasional exercise), up to twice in one week. This last point is very important, it took me almost a decade to realise the reason I looked like an extra on Roots was because I washed it daily (whilst texturized). It was so dry and brittle, it never progressed past a dusty looking twa with sharp edges.

Circa 2006-2007. Thank jesus for puberty, good hair care and MAC.

2015, blowdried healthy hair. Don’t be afraid of the heat

2015, bendy rollers and shea butter.

Twist out and Shea butter

My haircare regime is pleasantly simple, it has to be for someone a lazy as me:

Sunday: cowash, twist out/braid out

Monday: enjoy twist/braid out

Tuesday: spritz with water and oil, enjoy twist/braid out

Wednesday: enjoy twist/braid out.

Thursday: enjoy twist/braid out. Re-twist/Re-braid at night especially if going out on Friday

Friday: enjoy twist/braid out

Saturday: spritz with water and oil, enjoy twist/braid out

The twists/braids take about an hour to do, 5 if I’m watching TV.

I don’t have special days where I do deep protein conditioning, banana and egg wash etc. I don’t need them personally but if your hair is in need of more TLC then there is space to schedule that into the regime above. In total my oils and conditioner cost me £25 on Amazon and the oils mixed together are also an effective after shower moisturiser. With daily use of the oils after shower as well as weekly use on hair, they’ve lasted me almost 3 months. It is this regime that has allowed my hair to grow from a twa when I cut it finally in July to shoulder length 12 months later. It truly works, and my skin is baby soft too as an added bonus

Big chop August 2014

April 2015. 8 months growth.

If you need any styling or moisturising advice, feel free to drop me an email or a message below. Also please, check out my #GlowUpChallenge

Ire

Plantains and Peanuts; An excerpt of a work in progress

Prologue

Hi, my name is  Modupe Folarin. I was born on the 5^th of December 1980 hence my first name Abiodun. I was the third out of 5 children born to my mother and the only surviving after having lived in Nigeria as part of the so called lower class. My father was the best anyone could ask for, his only fault was that he loved his country. My mother was destined for success……or she would have been if the fates had been kinder.

I don’t remember anything about my formative years; perhaps this is nature’s way of softening life’s blows. I’m not bitter about my fate, I’ve learned that to survive you have to accept fate’s fickleness quickly, and accept it I did. It didn’t matter that circumstances forced me to question my fate; I accepted my lot in life. Never lost hope. This was mine and my mother’s downfall.

The earliest traumatic experience I had was on the 11^th of February 1994. Up until then my childhood had been uneventful. It started out as any other ordinary day. We all woke up at 6am, as usual, and the six of us children flooded into mommy and daddy’s tiny bedroom. Shola, the oldest was on mummy’s right side. She was sitting with her slender legs stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. Her hair was long and loosely curled; it reached down to her shoulders. Her eyes were almond shaped and widespread; they were honey brown and complemented her skin tone. A rich milk chocolate with a clear complexion that was the envy of every other 17 year old in the neighbourhood. There was Doyin the second eldest, she was of a stockier build and she was lying down on daddy’s right side with her head resting on his right thigh. She was still recovering from an episode two weeks earlier. Thankfully she seemed to be getting stronger although we all knew her sickle cell anaemia meant she would never be completely healthy. But for a 15½ year old she didn’t let the condition rule her life. I was sitting on mummy’s left side, my body slouched into her’s to support myself as I dozed during the lengthy prayer. The twins Segun and Timi were both lying intertwined in the middle of the bed behind our father. I envied them ther right to sleep till whenever they wanted. In my mind they should have been woken up and put in mummy’s lap, it didn’t matter that they were only 3½ years old.

The prayer started with the usual praise and worship followed by a short plea to God to deliver Nigeria from the hands of the military, daddy always led the first half of the session. This was followed by an intense prayer by both parents for God to provide the funds to build our own house, the amens to this were more vigorous. Of course I had heard these prayer points many times and my prayer predictably ran out after about 2 minutes, peeping out of my half shut eyes I saw that Shola and Doyin’s mouths were not moving, indicating they had dozed off. Not long after I was back in dreamland myself. It seemed like mere seconds since I closed my eyes however Dupe’s plea for me to wake up and get ready for school told me it was no longer 6:15am but 7:30am. Daddy had already set off for work, with it being Lagos morning traffic was always chaotic so he normally left at 7am to meet his resumption time of 9am as a cashier at the Standard Chartered bank of Nigeria. That morning, bare chested with his small afro disorderly and some stubble showing on his leathered cheeks, prematurely aged by the unforgiving rays of the African sun and pockmarked by numerous ingrown hairs resulting from cheap razors. Daddy, with ingrown hairs peeking out of his weathered face, the stubble slightly greying, and his paunchy chest on show in the hot, humid Nigerian morning was the last image I had of my father, the picture of him that fateful morning as we held our morning prayers was the last time I ever saw my father alive.

The day proceeded like normal with Dupe and Doyin going to the nearby secondary school and mom dropping me off at the local primary school, Timi and Segun toddling along as their pre-school started an hour after mine so the routine was to drop me at school and then the twins at pre-school. You could already tell by their personalities that they were strong-willed and mischievous; this was further compounded by the fact that they were pampered silly by both mama and papa.

The school bell jingled periodically, at the start of school, break, lunch and the end of school. This particular day though the bells were not rung at the start of school by 08:50am but by 11:00am just after the bells rung for break I was heading back home with a close family friend. Her name was Mrs Adeniyi. Usually she was a gregarious individual, the loudest of mama’s friends and the most outspoken. However today she was withdrawn, gripping my wrists tightly as we walked down the dusty street back home and her normally expressive features were shuttered, all she had told me at school was that I was needed at home urgently. At that point I had a premonition of impending doom, but the feeling was alien to me at that time. I just concentrated on following her footsteps as she weaved in and out of the busy street, avoiding hawkers selling groundnuts and plantains, pure water and boiled eggs. As we rounded the street corner, just before our modest rented property came into view, the midday sun retreated behind a menacing dark cloud that seemed to have crept up on it, stretching out over the horizon. The smell changed abruptly as a slow, fat breeze rolled down the dusty unpaved street, bringing with it an elusive sweet scent. That indescribable scent that alerted you to an advancing thunderstorm. The pervasive smell of frying akara and open gutters was replaced. Silence reigned for the briefest of moments as we turned the corner, and almost eerie quiet…the sounds of the normal hustle and bustle gone, replaced by the wind getting stronger and louder. As well as the gentle howling of the wind was the faint panicked bleats of a goat in distress. This sound seemed to break the spell and human activity started to pick up again as mothers called their children and goats in whilst shopkeepers hurriedly carried their wares indoors and the akara women frantically tried to extinguish the flames below the big pots of boiling oil used to fry the bean cakes.

As our bungalow came into view, the first thing I noticed was a grey Peugeot 504 parked in front. At first I thought papa was home early with his “oga”. After all if papa’s boss was visiting us then the man had to have some very important news to share with us. Of course the wails drifting from the house sounded anguished more than ecstatic and to compound matters they sounded like mama.

Mrs Adeniyi led me up the stairs to the veranda surrounding the property. She opened the mosquito screen to let me in and then entered herself but not before kicking the resident chicken away from the door. Walking past the kitchen I know something was seriously wrong as our next door neighbours were in there and the women looked at me with pity as I walked past on my way down the corridor. In the sitting room was my normally well-groomed mother sitting on the floor, her wrapper untied and headgear undone on the floor. Her undergarments were visible and her elaborate suku had come undone. Worst of all, tears and mucus was freely streaming from her face. Her voice hoarse, she was crying and talking at the same time. This was not the same mama I bid farewell to that morning at the school gates. Two female members of our church were holding her arms outstretched on opposite sides and they looked like they were doing a good job of restraining her all whilst quoting bible verses. Talking about someone’s ascension to eternal peace and greater glory. On the armchair facing mama was papa’s boss, he looked haunted and was as still as a statue.

It was then that I realised what was happening, why the church members were quoting bible verses to my ma, why the neighbours and Mrs Adeniyi were acting so out of character, why I had been experiencing the strange feeling of loss all morning. It all clicked into place.

Papa was not coming back home.

My father was dead. He was 40

Hit by a yellow bus

He died almost instantaneously, his life snatched away callously and selfishly by a speeding driver.

A day that has started so full of life and promises had turned so quickly, the hopes and dreams burnt into ashes and tinder, leaving a permanent scar in our lives.

Global Well Being and The Media

An essay I wrote almost 5 years ago now about the role the media plays on how Africa is viewed. Still just as relevant now as it was then. I have had to convert it into wordpress form and as a result, the picture in it is very unclear, the references were also not added at the end of the essay. Enjoy!

New Orleans: a vibrant city, bursting to the seams with culture, the birthplace of jazz and legends like Louis Armstrong, and the gateway to the Mighty Mississippi River. No other city is quite like it, with its scintillating nightlife and burlesque shows, waterways that criss-cross the entire city, a mix of races and culture too numerous to quantify, all fused into one city. The temperature is just perfect. The most unique multicultural city in the US which has both sweeping plantation homes as old as the city on one part; and some slightly less grand city dwellings on the other.  A democratic political system where people can aspire to be presidents and marvel at the distinct French-creole architectural style. The name alone conjures up new beginnings and a bucketful of hope….

I’ve never been there though. How is it that I can describe the architecture, history and social life as a native inhabitant might? How did I know about the Mardi gras celebrations and the French-creole architectures? The more I thought about it the more I realised, I hadn’t set out to broaden my horizons, and neither did I find out about New Orleans to be able to participate in a discussion about American carnivals. In fact I hadn’t actively sought out information about it. I hadn’t ‘googled’ it and sat through page after page of interlinking Wikipedia articles. It was simply there. A huge database of information consisting of random snippets from various films, documentaries and cartoons condensed into a general knowledge of the city. I didn’t know about the Mardi Gras until I watched the Disney film: “The Princess and the Frog”. (Twins, 2010)  As a result I didn’t have to think to describe New Orleans, even though I’d never tasted the air or smelt the Mississippi’s unique scent.

Trying to visualise an African city however posed a different set of challenges. It wasn’t a lack of information or underexposure to stories from the continent. The crux of the problem was negativity.  I had to consciously sift through the countries to find the most positive. Every time I tried to think of a city in Africa my mind immediately started playing back documentaries about desertification, famine, civil war, genocide, even the Hollywood film: “Black Hawk Down”. (Pathay, 2001). I realised that my subconscious was selecting the country I knew most about. My mind was stuck on Somalia. I was halfway into my brainstorming before I realised my level of ignorance on the small matter of cities within Somalia.

It occurred to me that while the media brought stories about the country they never described the country farther than on an international level. Apart from Mogadishu I had no idea of the other cities. I was guilty of failing one of the fundamental judging points I used for strangers. On my first day of secondary school in the UK a well-meaning girl came up to me and gently asked where I came from. To which I replied Nigeria. After elaborating further, she was able to get a grip on the location. Puzzled, she asked me how a country could exist within another country. This was when I realised that she had a view of Africa as a country not a continent. I can’t blame her for it though as we were both young and naïve. However a similar occurrence happened in year 10 when a girl asked me which type of hut I used to live in as she had seen some on holiday to Tanzania. This question I found much more difficult to understand. A quick Google search reveals why she asked:

The similar results section in Google asked me to specify my search result even farther to “Kenyan poor houses”. Whilst this was no fault of Google, it was simply displaying the most common search terms to do with Kenya. People do not generally expect much in the way of infrastructure from Africa, this stems from the images beamed to us through our news channels and television screens. Ultimately when they search for Kenyan houses on Google they specify the search to show what they perceive as a normal African house…or “poor house” My father once cried out in exasperation when a BBC correspondent was interviewed in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. He was moved to tears of frustration when the correspondent was interviewed in front of an open market in the rundown outskirts of the city. I was younger then and I did not realise his frustration. The BBC chose to show archive footage of a run-down area to support the correspondent’s report on the country’s politics. The city of Abuja is a mega-city custom built out of the lush savannah, a similar feat to the construction of Las-Vegas with stunning architectures and it is one of the most modernised in Africa. Whilst the BBC may have not acted deliberately, they inadvertently fed into the belief that Nigeria’s flagship city is nothing to write home about. It was then that I realised that our perceptions of the Third World, especially Africa are mostly shaped by what we see, hear and read in the media. The media does not deliberately go out of its way to portray Africa in a bad light; it reports on the latest famine in Somalia, the latest genocide in Rwanda and atrocities in Libya because it wants to inspire, it wants people to act and donate or buy fair-trade because it cares to make a difference. The problem however is that too much of the same kind of story is not good for a place. Just as my description of New-Orleans sounds too sweet and sickly, so does my description of Somalia sound too violent and harrowing. I don’t advocate that we simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend that people are not threading a fine line between life and death in Somalia. Neither am I suggesting that we go out of our way to portray Somalia as a Garden of Eden, like my idealised view on New-Orleans.  In reality New-Orleans is still recovering from the destruction caused by hurricane Katrina, race equality is one of the worst in America and many ethnic minorities live in places similar to a Third World city.

“On September 22 the Census Bureau released information from their 2010 annual American Community Survey based on a poll of 2,500 people in New Orleans. Not surprisingly, the report was ignored by the local mainstream media since it speaks volumes about the inequality of the Katrina recovery. The survey revealed that 27% of New Orleans adults now live in poverty and 42% of children… The new spike in poverty signal that blacks are not sharing equally in the employment benefits of recovery dollars. Indeed, the city may be creating a new generation of chronically unemployed poor who were previously part of the low-wage working poor.” (Hill, 2011)

For a MEDC the figures above are unacceptable and it shows the gap between minorities. As stated The media largely ignored this as it portrayed the city in a bad light. Without doing any independent research of my own I would not have known that such levels of inequality exist in the United States. Yet I know that thousands of people have fled Somalia due to conflict and even more have died from famine and related causes. I know that as recently as a few weeks ago, hundreds of people died and thousands were displaced when a ‘tribe’ went to war with a neighbouring tribe over stolen cattle (ABC, 2012). I didn’t research it but the news media chose to broadcast it. The danger in press practices like this is that people fall into the trap of a ‘single story’. According to a prominent Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; a single story is dangerous as it only shows one perspective and the audience have to form their own perceptions from a narrow point of view. (Tunca, 2009)  She goes further to say that most people in the developed world have a single story of Africa.

“My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. “ (Adichie, 2009)

In the speech she implies that the media is guilty of perpetuating a single story of less developed countries. They might be well meaning but ultimately through the use of terms like ‘tribal’ which depict a backward race they are helping to form stereotypes about Africa.

Ultimately we need to ask ourselves what part the media plays in forming our ideas and stereotypes about wellbeing in LEDCs. Are we guilty of fostering our perceived notions about wellbeing and wealth on a different culture? In the UK, to marry a woman a man might have to produce an engagement ring and the bigger the stone, the better according to conventions. This society puts value on precious stones, jewellery, houses’ the ultimate holiday to the Bahamas etc. It is a product of the country’s history and geography. In the UK water is seen as a common commodity as we have rivers of it. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, to marry a woman you need to provide the family with a certain number of livestock, tubers etc. In countries like that holidays, diamonds, big houses with the latest gadgets and fashionable clothes are not valued as they are not of top priority. This is not because some cannot afford it. But it is because by its very nature a society values what it does not have an abundance of. For example in the UK precious stones and gold are status symbols because they have to be imported making them expensive. In Somalia land is not valuable but water is, if a rural living Somali man was given diamonds it would be more worthless than water, it does not feed his prized cattle or make the rains fall. We cannot judge a country’s level of wellbeing by comparing what they have with what we have, as cultures are the product of environment.

“In developed economies virtually every activity has been commercialised…national accounts of any western nation include payments for personal beauty care, which for the US is around $60 billion a year. Such an item would hardly feature in the accounts of African nations. However, this does not mean that African men and women living in villages do not enjoy ‘beauty’ treatments – activities are not commercialised. In 1996 Britain spent some $33 billion on beer, wine and spirits…the consumption of palm wine, local spirits and other indigenous alcoholic brews in African villages is not incorporated in national accounts…in capitalist societies, virtually all aspects of culture is monetized and incorporated in the national accounts…total annual expenditure on marriages and funerals in the US runs into several billions of dollars a year…people marry in African societies in elaborate and joyful ceremonies and the dead are buried with appropriate ritual, little of these activities get into the national accounts… Leisure and entertainment sectors account for a large proportion of the GDP of western nations, but in the GDP of poor countries these universal components of life hardly figure…When considering the material conditions of people in Africa, a distinction should be made between absolute poverty and relative poverty…” (Obadina, 2008) 

There is no denying the levels of absolute poverty in Africa but is the media guilty of perpetuating a single story to us in the information they choose to show. Are we guilty of succumbing to the single story? Maybe we should ask ourselves, how many times we have seen pictures of Africans living in poverty and assumed the continent is a single story of catastrophe. Although well-meaning, how many of us have fallen into the trap of the single-story portrayed by the media and changed our default position to one of pity? In this are we guilty of robbing a continent of its dignity?  Our generation and the generations before got it wrong, however we can still try to rewrite history. By re-educating the new generation of children and teaching them the dangers of single stories, it might be too late for our generation but we have the opportunity to mould the future of our children. As countries become more diverse we need to teach our children the dangers of a single story so they do not get left behind in the ever evolving politics of the dynamic modern world we live in.