I once had a friend who is one of seven sisters. The friendship was one of those that I considered to be a sisterhood. My bad. It wasn’t. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Perhaps I should have taken closer note of her constant inverted compliments that never felt like compliments. Nor could she ever accept my own compliments.The energy I got was one of resentment. And envy.
On more than one occasion when some young person mistook her for one of her sisters (they are all between middle-aged and old, btw) it made me cringe slightly to hear a woman in her sixties correct the mistaken young person with “No, I’m the pretty one”. In truth she was considerably more beautiful than the sister for whom she had been mistaken, but none of us could have been described as pretty for decades, and even if it was meant to be a joke, I found it to be in questionable taste, most especially because I had got to know that that stuff really mattered to her.
Our friendship came full circle as I got to know her better, and I realised that her compulsive competition with other women was deep seated, and I needed to retire the pseudo-friendship. She was keeping me close because it gave her the power to keep me down, I found.
It reminded me of a road in North London on which I once had a favourite garment retailer. It was called Seven Sisters Road, and Costas was a Turkish Cypriot, a gay man with amazing taste in sumptuous silks, linens and cashmere, and women’s attire. He had one-off pieces in his little boutique, and often not in the full range of sizes, so women would often grab a garment off the rack just to try it on before someone else got it, whether it was the right size or not. Sometimes, they’d force themselves in and rip a seam or break a zip. I believed it was not entirely without malice that these ‘accidents’ occurred. Well if I can’t have it, then nobody else should.
Costas always called me when he got new stock in. I once overheard him on the phone, while I was in the curtained cubicle, trying on all the pieces I’d picked. He was talking to a friend trying to find a good time for them to come to the shop and visit. With that stroke of luck of my inadvertent eavesdropping I got to know which days were slow at the shop. It had become a standing joke that I was going to fight my seven sisters for some new clothes at his. shop, from that day forth I only went in on his slow days, just to avoid the passive and the sometimes quite overt aggression from my sister customers.
We have a lot of that in Africa, one only has to go to TikTok to see Africans putting each other’s countries down, sometimes quite viciously. And there’s that perennial tussle between Ghana and Nigeria over a dish that in fact belongs to Senegal, namely jollof rice. Some of it is playful, but the antagonism is just below the surface, and just one little scratch can tip it over into a full-on attack of one group on another. In Europe or America, the use of the nickname ‘Ghana-must-go‘ for the Chinese-produced PVC zipper bags popular among many African travellers should normally be deemed politically incorrect. This bag symbolises a dark history of mutual expulsion from each others countries, between Ghana and Nigeria. That said, my favourite instance of brilliance in the use of the that bag was during the Afcon 2013 semi finals when Nigeria needed Ghana to lose.
But the gibes are not always innocuous. Recently in the Caribbean I was accused of being an entitled red-skin woman, by an acquaintance from Trinidad. Clolourism is a thing in the Caribbean, wayyyyy more than it is in Nigeria. My acquaintance could not recognise the Nigerian assuredness in me, and that Igbo pride, as anything other than an entitlement that came from having fair skin, and in their words “silky hair”. I felt compelled to set the record straight. We don’t worship those things quite the same in my culture as you do in yours, I said. Shall I tell you what they sometimes call me back home? I’ll say it in a Nigerian accent for you, so that you can feel the sentiment. My Trini friend looked at me just a little uneasy, but mostly inquisitive. “Unfortunate European!” I said them in my loudest Naija bellow.
On discrimination though, na so Naija pipo go call all Caribbean pipo Jammo. Or Nigerian Southerners call Northerners Mallo. Some people call me Omo-Ibo, and my people call others Mgbati. And it would be remiss of me to leave out the Sarros.
More than anything though, I grew up harmoniously in Nigeria being fondly called African Oyibo. God bless my Nigeria. The one that I hold in the memories of my childhood and youth. And God bless today’s Nigeria in which youngsters cross-reference each other’s languages in Afrobeats, and borrow each others cuisine and trad threads in party gatherings like weddings and other owambes.
And God bless the Nigeria that is about to enjoy the best of what scientists call hybrid vigour, aka heterosis, in the personification of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour. Wondering what that is? It was first scientifically identified and recorded by a humble Augustinian monk in his vegetable garden. Named by Britannica as the the father of modern genetics, the Austro-Czech abbot, Gregor Mendel, wrote the first mathematical formulae and algorithms in the discipline. Now me, I have always been an Igbo Yorubaphile, often to the chagrin of my more closed-minded Igbo brethren and sistren, who would castigate my love for all things Yoruba with reminders about betrayals in the civil war, and other silly arguments of that persuasion. But just imagine what could happen when you roll up the strengths of those two individually powerful and dynamic ethnic groups, the Igbo and the Yoruba, in one human? BTW, that was alphabetical order o, una don hear?
Way back in 2010 courtesy of the African Artists’ Foundation, I had a photographic exhibition at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island, titled ‘Double Caste’. It showcased a bunch of us mixed-race Nigerians from several generations. Random fact: I’m proud to say that the artistes Nneka and Adebantu featured in it. Altogether, the mixes were interesting, we had everything from the usual German, English and American to the more exotic South and East Asian, and of course Lebanon represented the Middle East. My ultimate reason for doing that exhibition was to make us think about the fact that there are many ‘mixed’ Nigerians whose mix cannot not be immediately visually perceived, because they have occurred, sometimes multiply over generations and across ethnicities between our very own 300 plus ethnic groups.
We each have strengths and weaknesses that are peculiar to our DNA and culture. We should never let bad actors with egotistical, indeed sociopathic agendas convince us that our diversity is is a reason to hate our brothers and sisters, when in fact it is one of our most precious resources. We all know about the American Dream, so why is it so hard for us to imagine the Nigerian Dream? Nollywood and Afrobeats have given us just a glimpse of what we could do with our diversity, both in terms of creativity as well as monetising, and even social change for that matter.
As resources go, there is more that enough to go around, which is why all manner of foreigners with less melanin than one would wish to have are always flocking to our continent and crowding us out at the trough. My people, there is no need for envy, hatred or discrimination. These are emotions felt by all humans, yet other races understand when it is time to close ranks and face a common goal, or a common adversary. Why can we Black people in general not see the value in such behaviour? Why are we so myopic that we cannot see the grand horizon onto which we could and should project our dreams and chart our collective future?
Me, I do not want to be the prettier sister, I am just another pretty intelligent and dynamic sister. And I am in awe of each and every one of you and your talents!
What with slavery, colonisation and racism we have a lot of unpacking to do. But envy has no place in our midst. Jamaicans say “Want-ee want-ee can’t get-ee, and get-ee get-ee no want-ee.”
Let’s stop being crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down. Let’s stop fighting for scraps at the trough. Let’s pull together and achieve great things. Your ego is not your amigo, don’t let it stand in the way of our collective progress and success. Always remember the song “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”