Igbo dads and dangerous phalluses.

Once upon a time I was heading out to study for my final university exams with friends when my father called me back.

“Nwunye,” he shouted after going through the names of the other twelve of my siblings.

“Sah?” I answered, because I am a good child.

“Where do you think you are going at this time of night?”

“I am going to Ogo’s house, sah.” I looked at my watch. It was 5 pm.

“Which Ogo?”

“Ogo my friend, sah. You have met her sah.”

“I have?”

“Yes sah. She has big…brains sah.”

“Ah, the big-brained Ogo. So what are you doing in her house at this time of the night eh?”

“We are studying sah. Me and Ogo and Chiamaka and Ifeoma.”

My father grunted, picking  vegetables from his teeth with a toothpick. When he finished, he popped the teeth back into his mouth. “Okay. But this one you are always  going to study with those girls…” He fidgeted.

“Sah?” I bristled, thinking he was calling their character into question. Did he not remember who they were?

“Just know I don’t want any daughters-in-law. I want sons. Sons-in-law.”

I caught many flies in my mouth on the okada to Ogo’s house that day.

Yes. This really happened.  I remember relaying the story to my study group when I got to Ogo’s house. (And for those who are wondering, yes, I did attend university from home. If you’ve only known me as an adult, you’ve just had an ‘Ah-ha’ moment because shit just made sense.) My friends thought it was funny. Me, I was just dazed that my square to the power of infinity dad knew about lesbianism. I didn’t dwell too much on this though because I would have started to wonder what else he knew and my imagination cannot handle things like that. Every generation likes to think they invented sex after all.

But this is what I do not understand.  This is the same man that flogged the brown off my skin because I went on a date with a guy at seventeen. It wasn’t even a date if I am honest. Okay, it kinda was. But I was in my second year of university and for chrissakes it wasn’t like I lay down on the road and had sex with him. That came much later. I wouldn’t recommend it by the way. Vehicles are a bloody nuisance and Nigerian grit gets into cracks like you cannot imagine. Sometimes when I sneeze, a little bit of sand and coal tar comes out.

A good Igbo girl is not supposed to think of guys other than as things to beat in school which is unsurprisingly easy.  (Yeah, I said it. Heh heh!) Not even when the boys in question are your cousins. You get to a point when your breast buds appear and all male cousins suddenly become off limits.

You spend the next few decades learning that men are the enemy. You spit when they talk to you, your put-downs are legendary and if they touch you, it’s hi-ya! and out pops their eyes. Your parents applaud you, chaste Virginia, you. At what point are you supposed to stop using them for target practice and start seeing them as potential mates?  It was a wonder I even tried that first date on for size. (Such was the level of my inexperience with humans of the male persuasion that the first date became the start of a two-and-a-half-year stint.)

I know I have said all this before, but things keep happening that make my jaw drop. Some Igbo parents can really screw up their female kids.

At what point am I supposed to consider giving you (if I desire it) sons-in-law as opposed to daughters-in-law? After all the scare stories about the beastly nature of men, their dangerous phalluses and their fickle-mindedness in dealing with the consequences of their sexual actions (pregnancy, disease. Pregnancy.), when exactly am I supposed to think “Hmmm. I’d like to jump on that dangerous phallus and snare me a diseased baby or two?”

Cover up, close your legs, don’t whistle, don’t sit on a man’s thighs, don’t laugh with a man, he’ll think you’re cheap, don’t whistle, don’t wear rings on your fingers if you’re not married, don’t go anywhere once the sun sets, don’t be arrogant, don’t correct a man in public, don’t raise your voice, don’t argue and my personal favourite , don’t drive – he’ll think you’re feeling too big, then who’ll you marry?

No wonder some women cry at their weddings. Lucky me, I didn’t. My dad did though. Huge, splashy, snotty tears and much hysterical sobbing. My mother looked as if she wanted to give him Snickers bar.

I guess he was just relieved I ended up with a dude.

This is NOT a post about Flavour N’abania

Well. That’s a change right?

No, this post is about one of those P-Square twins. I asked on Twitter and it seems the one I dreamt about day before yesterday night was Peter. Peter Okoye.

This one:

 Why was I dreaming about him? I’m glad you asked because I have NO IDEA.

No, shut up, I am not that shallow. 

In fact before I had the dream, I didn’t know he looked like this. Or which one he was. Or that he looked like this.

I didn’t really care about their music, didn’t get the hype…well, I like that ‘She’s on Fire’ song but I don’t particularly care for the newest one. Basically normal everyday stuff.

But then I had the dream…oh boy!…talk about drama. We were together and there was beef from some girl and there was a whole lot of driving around trying to escape this girl and then it turned into trying to protect my family from this mad girl and then I was married so we had to hide….look the details are unimportant, even if the love I felt for the P-Square character ‘burned’ like a urinary tract infection (If you haven’t been pregnant yet, just you wait) before antibiotics. 

(Come to think of it, I did wake up with that too-full bladder feeling so maybe it was that as opposed to undying love).

The point is, if you know him, or know someone who knows him or his brother/sister/grandmother/maiguard, please tell him to contact me. I want to know if he had the same dream, if our paths are to collide somehow and how to Flash Forwardly prevent what happened in that dream from occurring.

If however this is one of those Igbo dreams  – like if you dream someone is dead it means they are going to live until they turn to dust on their feet – then please he should stay on his own side of the fence. Igbo chis are tricky.

Last thing I need is for one of my sisters to introduce him as her intended. There is no Igbo way of telling someone you’ve seen their fiance naked. Even if it was just in a dream.

Weekend Ramblings: Mosquito bumps and ancestral copulations.

Children in this country are something else. 

As a postgraduate student, I used to work part time in M&S to earn/supplement my allowance. I hated the late shift during winter because it meant that you arrived around one pm or two and left around 10pm. This in itself was not too bad. I just put my head down and got on with it until it was closing time.

What got me was the walk to the bus stop afterwards. Management advised that female staff  leave in groups thus covering their asses so that you wouldn’t sue if you got raped  because they cared for our well-being.

Half of a Yellow Sun film, sex with Chiwetel and how you solve a problem like Thandie.

Ndi Igbo worldwide are up in arms.

The Half of a Yellow Sun book by nwa ada Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie has been optioned for a Hollywood film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as ‘Odenigbo’, Thandie Newton as ‘Olanna’ and Dominic Cooper as ‘Richard’. Now, this is good news. How many Nigerian books have made it into Hollywood after all?

But are Igbo people happy? Like heck.