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WHY NIGERIANS ARE AMONG THE HAPPIEST
PEOPLE ON EARTH
(I wrote this last night. There was
no light. It was meant for my site, but I am tired of waiting for Nepa so I can
power on my laptop and post on my site . I am tired of fuel queues.)
So, here we go.
***
I am trying to write.
Every twenty seconds, I check my
battery meter. It is yellow. Yellow like the card that precedes the red in
football. Explusion. Blackout.
It is hot. I am wearing Puma shorts
that I shouldn't be wearing and had not better wear tomorrow. Eau De cologne
can't cover Eau De Dirt for too long. It is hot and there is no light. We have
a generator, but there is no fuel and the queues that stretch into miles and
miles of parked cars and rows and rows of shoving and bad-tempered people with
jerry cans discouraged me from going out to look for fuel earlier. I am
conscious of mixing the present and the past in my tenses, but I honestly don't
give a fuck. Time is too short. My phone's battery is yellow. I have to write
faster.
I am drinking Big Cola, too
depressed to give a fuck about my fitness regimen. My no-sugar-for-forty-days
plan. I am too not happy to care about losing whatever gains I have made doing
crunches and jerks and presses and rolls and presses.
Earlier tonight , I go for a walk.
The street is empty and the mallam I buy coffee and wafers from has locked
shop. The street is cool. People are lying outside on mats and cardboard
papers. Someone is scrolling through his phone. The light illumines his face.
They say Nigerians are the happiest
people in the world. I laugh. Bullshit.
Come to Lagos and look at their
faces. These people are not happy. They are not okay. They are depressed,
frustrated, scared, sad. And they are trying so hard not to let it show. Too
hard.
I know it because today, I woke to a
dark cloud. I woke to sweat and low battery and dead laptop( that is spoilt
anyway) and fairly charged powerbanks( I use 2 now) and nothing to do. I woke
as a writer, but my tools, I cannot use them. The government won't give me
light to power my laptop on and think, or fuel. Or oppor-fucking-tunities.
I woke sad. Frustrated. Depressed.
Unhappy. Confused and scared. I woke a Nigerian.
Nigerians are not the happiest
anything. They are not even happy.
Why do you think crowds turn into
lynch mobs so easily?
Why do you think Lagosians are so loud. So aggressive?
Why are our drivers insane and our police and soldiers almost always murderous?
Why do you think Lagosians are so loud. So aggressive?
Why are our drivers insane and our police and soldiers almost always murderous?
Because they have been holding it in
too long: the sadness, anger, frustration, depression and despair. Because some
things cannot be bottled for too long. They find an excuse, an outlet and they
explode. Boom shakalaka! There goes my baby, someone help me pick the fucking
pieces!
Nigerians are not happy. They are
just wired to project it. Because...
Because depression is a taboo.
Because I cannot sit in one corner
for too long, letting myself die from inside out. My mama would get tired, my
Papachi would get tired. Everyone would get tired of me. They would start
praying for God to heal me of my wahala and laziness. Of what Nigeria is doing
to me. Then they will get tired and get angry. And they will shout at me to get
the fuck up and get a fucking job.
Because I am 'too big' to be
depressed. Because depression is an excuse they think I use to be unproductive.
To keep chopping mama thank you o!
Because, there is nothing like
depression to an average Nigerian. There is just laziness and demon-possesion
and misbehaviour and stubborness.
That is why my favourite cousin,
Nduka now roams the village, mad. Because when he first showed signs of
depression; withdrawal, mourning, smoking, starving himself, they thought he
was misbehaving. They came to Papachi to report and Papachi wrote him a letter.
A letter that I stole glances at as he wrote. A letter that ordered Nduka to
'stop it.'
Stop it!
Yeah. Nigerians appear happy because
they think they can control their lives.
But we can't control our lives to
save our fucking lives.
If we could, we won't spend 11 out
of 24 hours at fuel queues. We won't roll over each other voting in crook and
tired, incompetent hands and old brains. We wouldn't act like the basics that
we should get are favours.
Stop it!
How can you stop depression? Do you
switch it off? How can you stop the darkness that creeps into your soul when
you wake up sweaty and broke and tired and you cant see any opportunities
around. You see no changes.
How do you stop insecurity and
unhappiness? By remembering they will come hard on you. That's why the market
woman with four kids never gets depressed. Because they will call her a bad
mother. A lazy woman abandoning her responsibilities. What of the students in
our universities? How do they stop depression? They remember papa and mama will
blame them for bad results. Papa will go on and on about bad company, bad
influence, bad habits. Bad this and that. Mama will blame boys and girls(
pricks and totos) and parties and the bright lights. Because to them, there is
no depression, there is only a wayward child, an unfocused child. There is only
an ungrateful child, a prodigal who doesn't appreciate all their efforts, who
wants to throw it all away and blame unhappiness and confusion and depression
and despair.
What about depressed young people?
Undergraduates? They are told they are lazy. To look for work. They are
reminded they are the future. Even though they have been hearing that all their
lives and the future never comes. Because the future is now and out of their
hands. Why won't they get depressed?
How do you stop depression if you
are a deaf writer in your late twenties with no idea where the heck your life
is going?
Simple. You wake up, you brush away
the dark clouds with 40 sit ups and a couple of press ups. You feel the burning
in your arms, you feel the fire in your belly. Fire that burns away the
weakness. Fire that gives you this illusion of strength. You look in the
mirror, shirt off. You see the tightening in your chest, you flex your arms and
complete the illusion of strength. You are not going to think about spoilt
laptops and lightlessness and futurelessness and fuellessness and anything else
-lessness. And you DEFINITELY are not going to sit down in a cornerof the room
and let lyrics of I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto and Viva La Vida run through
your head. No, sir. You are going to play victorious music on that boombox in
your head. You are going to play Cece Winans 'Hallelujah Praise', Kirk
Franklin's 'Smile' and Joe Praize's( or is it Frank Edwards') 'Victory Today.'
You will go out, meet people. Pay
100 naira to charge your powerbank. Smile. Laugh. Be normal. Facebook. Be
happy. Do your best to add to the illusion of the happy place that is Nigeria.
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