Among the many fads in Nigeria today is the desire for instant transformation from "black" or "dark skinned" to "fair" or "light skinned" or yellow pawpaw as we say in pidgin happening and is alarming.
More than 70% of the female and about 50 % of male population are caught up in the "bleaching fad” and now we’re gradually all becoming whites.
Nobody wants to be black; nobody wants to be dark skinned and everyone wants to get noticed and what better way than to 'bleach’ your skin yellow. Infact we call the dark skinned amongst us ("the blacks" as we are called by the rest of the world) blacky, tinted, Dudu Osun and other names because of their blackness. Everyone wants to be noticed and I can't blame anyone entirely.
As El-Nathan a popular satirist says in his tweets, the term black beauty is not a positive term; it's negative because they don't expect you to be pretty so when you are, they marvel. So if a dark person manages to be pretty, she gets singled out for praise after all she’s too good to be true.
This fad was brought about by deep rooted issues such as discrimination, the preferential treatment and attention the lighted skinned individuals get and in some cases self-loathing. The white man's perception has long brainwashed us into thinking "white" is superior, finer & chic and we have embraced that thought so much so that we are willing to damage our skins with bleaching or toning creams and soaps as some of us like to call it.
So, yes we can be self-righteous and insult those who bleach especially ladies but we all reinforce the stereotype that fair is better. This open endorsement is visible in the media, runway, classrooms, streets and offices. Even in schools, teachers hardly flog yellow kids because they hold them in high esteem and don’t want to scar their “precious skin” but for us blackies, we are flogged without a second thought cos e no go even show for our body.
We have to be confident in our looks, appreciate, embrace and love it. It's hard despite all sorts of hype over the colour "yellow" trending now but we need to try because if we continue at this rate, there won't be a single dark skinned person left in Nigeria again.
Embrace your blackness, uniqueness and flaunt it don't let nobody tell you otherwise.
Someone asked me recently about what it means to write or to be a writer. I am afraid I gave a very pompous and technical answer that did not answer the real question she was trying to grapple with. I should have said: "you are already writing and you are already a writer." Perhaps not with ink at the end but you are in a story and you are mostly making it up as you go along much like any book on any shelf of stories.
I should have said that the fascination for creativity can take away from many innate creative impulses and being focused too much on the way a book looks and feels and smells and sits on the shelf may rob you of the experience of reading the darn thing. The unexamined life, they say and perhaps rightly, is not worth living but neither is the over analyzed shadow of a life lived on hopes for the outside taste of things without the necessary joy in the inside flow of things. In short, it is far better to live than to wish you were living. Or put another way, it is a better preoccupation to apply yourself to the terrors and beauties of your own story than to wish you had a story. Of course you do. It is happening to you right now in many varied ways.
We live on a vain patch of the universe that is constantly elevating things out of proportion. We have eternity in our hearts so we constantly in the race to do immortal things. We are looking for relevance and power and security and purpose and that unique flavor of truth splattered on a thousand walls in a million cities:
“……waz here” or something to that effect. We all want to 'waz be here'. So we make writers, singers, actors, scientists, politicians and activists as demi-gods to validate the human experience. We elevate some so we can deflate others and seek that elevation to keep us away from the latter group. So we can matter and be waz here. This might all seem sensible and pleasant as a humanist view of that greater life of meaning but as a general rule of living it, is silly. A general rule for all life must apply to all life. A society of classes of people cannot have a general rule outside survival of the fittest. Winners and losers are the very rule of the game. Man has yet to devise a system of life that creates value for one without robbing some value, or sense of value, from others. It will always be a zero sum game. Except to the winner and his caste. They will all rely on evolution. They will all say the poor are all lazy and the cheated are all dumb and the powerless are all naïve. The one that has his value taken is deserving of the loss. He was not a writer or singer or actor or genius or hard worker or leader. He was weak. He "waz not here."
This is not true. It may make us all sleep at night and not encounter the guilt of success but we have to give logic a holiday to truly believe that life is fair and people the world over get what they deserve.
I am a Christian because in Christ I find the ultimate counter-argument to the fallacy of success is good and by the way success is…
If God came to earth in the form of a tribesman to a group under the boot of an empire, uninspired, flailing, much invaded and much hated, what does that tell us about our worship of overt success? If he chose a carpenter and a maiden to raise him in relative poverty what does that portend for my ideas of generational wealth? If he did little until his thirtieth birthday and did everything for all time in three short years after what does that say of our worship of youth and our struggle for old age? If he died like a criminal, never had any money, did not command the respect of everyone who met him or left undisputed what does that say of our love of legacy and of comfort, of validation and vindication?
A correct appraisal of Christ leaves me with the scary notion that all the things I have been told about the general rule of living add up to a house built on sand. It cannot withstand the coming storm of eternity that makes everything new.
There is a life that is life. There is a book that is being written. We are all writers. It is not for the vain or the accomplished or the haughty. These things pass. It is for those we ache for something else. The life advertised in the most beautiful and horrific moments in life, it tells us of the beauty of orange tinted sunrises and the tragedy of murder: it says there is more and there must be more at the same time.
By Forri Banu.
My shop is on a row of shops, located before the Police barracks, so I am a neighbor to the washman, a church, a fish seller’s shop and more. I have since formed a family with the aforementioned; we talk, laugh and share stories and experiences. I open my shop at 9 a.m. daily and close at 9 p.m., all the while waiting for customers to walk in and sample and perhaps buy my wares. I have a table, a chair and a computer, set up to give the impression of the office I want and so I act the part, all the while knowing my desires are a big purchase away. My office as it doubles, serves as a melting pot of activity for everyone, friends, customers and family. I have a cousin who serves as my assistant, seeing as I am the ‘chief shop sales girl’ and a retinue of fun. Typical days bring in customers, dry days bring in friends who won’t leave when it’s their time to leave but hey what can a girl do?
Few months after the shop was opened and there wasn’t an avalanche of customers, my cousin and I decided to do some mobile marketing with my cousin around various offices and I sold everything off my rack. So here with my car, cousin and prayer we’d go into the Yola sun and sell stuff, it was fun, we’d meet people, all kinds, answer all manner of questions, we were not going to get stopped by anything, failure wasn’t an option. We would come back and tell ourselves tomorrow would be better and it would be for as far as we believed it was.
The shop has an air-conditioner that should be powered by Nepa, more often than not, it never does get powered and I have to provide my own light spending money on fuel, servicing and dealing with the generator repair man, who is the only dark spot in my otherwise self-imposed optimism. He will take the generator and give more excuses than necessary, nevere fix it and all the while eating into my mearge profits. This is not to talk of the Police who double as our landlords and security, who come for ‘revenue’ at will and sometimes I wonder why. Least I forget the customers who will come and pick items saying am coming right away and you won't see them or your money till you chase after them or till they find you, weeks later. But all in all, am growing and learning the ropes and gradually making more sales with each new month. If you ever nurtured a dream of owning your own bussiness, now is the time to stop dreaming and start doing. Goodluck
