In America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure.
The earliest indoctrination many of us have to this mind-set happens at home. Throughout my childhood, “househelps” – usually teenagers from poor families – came to live with my family, sometimes up to three or four of them at a time. In exchange for scrubbing, laundering, cooking, baby-sitting and everything else that brawn could accomplish, either they were sent to school, or their parents were sent regular cash.
My father detested it when our househelps sang. Each time a new one
arrived, my siblings and I spent the first few evenings as emissaries
from the living room, where our family watched TV after dinner, to the
kitchen, where the househelps washed dishes or waited to be summoned.
“My daddy said I should tell you to stop singing.”
Immediately, they would shush. Often, they forgot and started again
– if not that same evening, on a subsequent one. Finally, my father
would lose his imperial cool, stomp over to the kitchen and stand by the
door.
“Stop singing!” he would command.
That usually settled the matter.
I honestly cannot blame my father. Although they hailed from
different villages across the land, their melodies were always the same:
The most lugubrious tunes in the most piercing tones, which made you
think of death.
Melancholic singing was not the only trait they had in common. They
all gave off a feral scent, which never failed to tell the tale each
time they abandoned the wooden stools set aside for them and relaxed on
our sofas while we were out. They all displayed a bottomless hunger that
could never be satisfied, no matter how much you heaped on their plates
or what quantity of our leftovers they cleaned out.
And they all suffered from endless tribulations, in which they always wanted to get you involved.
The roof of their family house got blown off by a rainstorm. Their
mother just had her 11th baby and the doctor had seized mum and newborn,
pending payment of the hospital bill. Their brother, an apprentice
trader in Aba, was wrongfully accused of stealing from his boss and
needed to be bailed out. A farmland tussle had left their father lying
half-dead in hospital, riddled with machete wounds. Their mother’s
auntie, a renowned witch, had cursed their sister so that she could no
longer hear or speak. They were pregnant but the carpenter responsible
was claiming he had never met them before … Always one calamity after
the other.
Househelps were widely believed to be scoundrels and carriers of
disease. The first thing to do when a new one arrived was drag him off
to the laboratory for blood tests, the results of which would determine
whether he should be allowed into your haven. The last thing to do when
one was leaving was to search him for stolen items. In one memorable
incident, the help in my friend’s house, knowing that her luggage would
be searched, donned all the children’s underwear she had stolen. And she
nearly got away with it. But just as she stepped out the door, my
friend’s mother noticed that the girl’s hips had broadened beyond what
food could afflict on the human anatomy in such little time, and
insisted that she raise her skirt.
Every family we knew had similar stories about their domestic
staff. With time, we children learned to think of them as figures
depressed by the hand of nature below the level of the human species, as
if they had been created only as a useful backdrop against which we
were to shine.
Not much has changed since I was a child. My friend’s daughter, who
attends one of those schools where all the students are children of
either well-off Nigerians or well-paid expatriates, recently captured
this attitude while summarizing the plot of my novel to her mother.
“Three people died,” the 11-year-old said, “but one of them was a poor
man.”
It reminded me of the conversation in Mark Twain’s “Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn,” when Huck tries to explain a delay in a journey:
“It warn’t the grounding – that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”
BIGOTS and racists exist in America, without a doubt, but America
today is a more civilized place than Nigeria. Not because of its
infrastructure or schools or welfare system. But because the principle
of equality was laid out way back in its Declaration of Independence.
The Nigerian Constitution states, in Section 17(2)(a), that “every
citizen shall have equality of rights, obligations and opportunities
before the law.” However, this provision is in a portion of the document
that contains “objectives” of the Nigerian state. It is not
enforceable; it certainly isn’t reality.
The average Nigerian’s best hope for dignified treatment is to
acquire the right props. Flashy cars. Praise singers. Elite group
membership. British or American accent. Armed escort. These ensure that
you will get efficient service at banks and hospitals. If the props
prove insufficient, a properly bellowed “Do you know who I am?” could
very well do the trick.
This somebody-nobody mind-set is at the root of corruption and
underdevelopment: ingenuity that could be invested in moving society
forward is instead expended on individuals’ rising just one rung higher,
and immediately claiming their license to disparage and abuse those
below. Even when one househelp is made supervisor over the rest, he ends
up being more callous than the owners of the house.
Some years ago, I made a decision to start treating domestic
workers as “somebodys.” I said “please” and “thank you” and “if you
don’t mind.” I smiled for no reason. But I was only confusing them; they
knew how society worked. They knew that somebodys gave orders and
kicked them around. Anyone who related to them as an equal was no longer
deserving of respect. Thus, the vicious cycle of oppression goes on and
on.
Nigeria is one of Africa’s largest economies; it produces around
two million barrels of crude oil per day. And yet, in 2010, 61 percent
of Nigerians were living in “absolute poverty” – able to afford only the
bare essentials of shelter, food and clothing. In one state in northern
Nigeria, where extremist groups like Boko Haram originate, poverty
levels that year were as high as 86.4 percent.
Economic growth will continue to bypass the majority, the gap
between rich and poor will continue to widen, so long as we see
ourselves as divided between somebodys and nobodys. Only when that
changes will the househelps sing more cheerful tunes.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a journalist and writer, and was
former standards editor at NEXT. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to You
by Chance, was winner of the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best
First Book (Africa).
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