Eze comes to London!

I had to wait until This Boy was down for his nap before I could risk opening the package that these came in and taking a photo.

You see, it’s his birthday next week and This Boy loves books. If he had caught me, eh, I would have spent the rest of today reading and re-reading them until I was coughing up dust with every word.

I am so excited! I ordered them from a website called Amamife - ‘Knowledge’, how apt – which I have since nicknamed Ngwa-Ngwa because of their super fast delivery.

I also found some Pacesetters books Africabookcentre.com, which is great. I can finally finish my collection. At £5.70 they are more expensive than I used to buy them on Pacesetters.com (at £4.40) but the latter website – as of yesterday – has simply disappeared, so I’ll have to pay the higher price. Every Igbo bone in my body aches at the thought.

Back to the Eze books, I can’t wait to see This Boy’s face next week. Right now, mine looks like this:

Nostalgia: Igbo playground rhyme.

Ogbono soup.

Abu nti n’aso nnunnu

Onye o soro o rachaa

Egusi bu nsi umuazi

Ogbono bu imii.

Ear pus is salty

He who wishes to, should taste it

Egusi (soup) is infant faeces

And Ogbono (soup) is mucus.

Igbo Lego

Maudlin Monday.

• This is the view from one of my windows. The first one was taken around five o’clock and the second around seven o’clock. I keep trying to paint this scene but I never get the colours right. What can I say? I’m a novice.

• Hubs interviewed Linda Ikeji today. Her blog  is one subject we do not agree on. But you know, bless the hustle and all that.

• I must have written about 2,000 words all day today. This post does not count. My editor is terribly English – and a bit posh. When he scolds me, it feels like being chastised by 007.

• I had about eight nightmares yesterday night. I slipped from one into another. It happens when I am stressed.

• I used to write poetry a lot; pages and pages of the stuff. At about 20 I had two poems sent off for publication by a friend in  the Abuja Literary Society. In subsequent reviews, I was  referred to as a ‘He’. It pleased me. It had a certain Brontë-esque quality.

• I found a poem I wrote a while ago. I would love to have a reply to it, or your take on it, in any form. I was trying to tell a story as succinctly as possible. I hope I succeeded. It’s called ‘You Good?‘

He asks ‘You good?’
And I know the mood

But when I step in his life
He likens me to a ‘bored housewife’
Hurries off Central
When our eyes meet
At Bond Street

So when he asks ‘You good?’
I say ‘Hey. I’m good’.

• Ugh. It’s one of those days. I am full of self-loathing.

In defence of (my) Igboness

This blog is NOT about a hatred of Igbo people and things, especially Igbo men.

I do not hate being Igbo.

As a child I didn’t necessarily know I was Igbo. Yes, I spoke the language and I soaked in the culture as if I was a sponge, but when you grow up with everyone singling you out as ‘Nke a muru na obodo oyibo’ (the one that was born abroad) and making it out to be something special, you start to feel you are – somehow – above being Igbo. It’s not something you think about with a conscious mind. You don’t sit for hours pondering your uniqueness. It’s something that thrives in the warmth of admiration but has nothing really to do with who you are. Much like being able to grow your hair past your shoulders or being a lighter shade of black.

I was black. To a large extent, I was white – colourless even; the books I read, the music I listened to, the voice of my subconscious: white, white, white. (If you were born into the middle class and upwards before the mid-90s you understand what I mean. Let’s not get bogged down.)

It took moving abroad to make me appreciate all the things I took for granted growing up; unique forms of expression, smells, sounds. It was like my I-chromosome had been activated. This didn’t happen immediately – nor consciously, at first. It’s true that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. If you let people, they will define you. In my case, many tried.

Yet there is no one definition of Igboness – how can there be?  (I am aware of the irony because the blog seems to hold up a certain type of Igbo as the norm.) I took exception to condensing my life to its purest igbo droplet.  Did this mean I could no longer (unashamedly) enjoy 80s Brit pop? Motorcycles? Spanish culture? Rollerderby? Travel? Trdelnik? World literature? Did this mean I could no longer admire or date anyone not from ‘our side’?  Does discovering other sides to myself make me any less ‘Igbo’?

I don’t think so.

If anything, it has helped to appreciate being Igbo more. I no longer take language for granted, ‘Oh it will always be there’, because it is constantly changing, evolving. More than half the words my maternal grandmother spoke when I was more interested in charging around than listening no longer exist. The paradigms of beauty have shifted so that my dark-skinned paternal grandmother whose teeth were sharpened into points to offset her cheekbones might no longer be considered stunning.

I stopped caring where I was born years ago and considered where I was raised. I know that the English fox is crafty but that the Igbo tortoise is craftier. I know that an Akpu tree is not the same as a cassava plant although they both share the same name. I know what to do with a ripe head of Ukwa even if it is a bloody tough job. Burning tyres will always remind me of New Year as opposed to lynching. I cannot hear ‘Kom Kom’ without being transported to ndi uzu oka. I am from Oba of the nine villages, and my village Ezelle is the youngest, responsible for keeping Idemmili in priests. I can forgive you if there is no ojii when I come to your house, but if you sweep my house at night you are my enemy. Why are you sweeping away my wealth?

I belong.

I do not hate Igbo people. I can take the mickey out of my brothers and sisters, out of my culture because it is mine. I can see our flaws and I can laugh at our mistakes. This does not mean I do not appreciate the beauty of who we are.

After all, you do not throw your baby away just because it has bitten you on the breast.