Week 1, Part Deux

Continuing with the bad news theme (see previous post), I must discuss the way men in Abuja are treating women. Now, I've always known that respect and equality do not come easily to the females in this country, but the Abuja Big Boys are taking it to a whole new level. I'm not sure who to blame. It would be easiest to say that these men are callous, badly raised, ignorant, disdainful mysogynists, but I dare say it wouldn't be accurate. There are also the women - the golddiggers, the prostitutes, the university girls who might as well be prostitutes - who are giving other women - the intellectuals, the hard-working entrepreneurs, the creative artists - a bad name. I cannot walk into a single establishment in Abuja and be taken seriously as a respectable individual, by men or women alike. Because I'm young and moderately attractive, they assume I'm on the prowl to snatch someone's husband/boyfriend for monetary gain. It's simply unfair.

Take what happened to me the other day, at the Hilton. In any other country, a hotel of this caliber would be a respectable location, where people of taste and some sophistication go to relax and take in some sun by the sparkling pool. Not in Nigeria. Yes, you do find those people and they do do those things, but you also find milling in the lobby "businessmen" of all races and levels, making deals and exchanging business cards. They're working, but out of the corners of their eye, they are on the lookout for their newest "catch" of the day, each of them waiting and ready to pounce on the best-looking (or cheapest-looking) girl that walks past. On this particular day, I was with my brother, who had a meeting with someone in the hotel. I was going to wait for him in the lobby and work on my interview questions (though, at the time, I still had no one to interview). As we walked in, we were greeted by a gentleman in a fancy Italian suit. Let's call him Basil. He was Igbo, and you'll understand why I made this distinction soon enough. When he spotted Basil in the distance, my brother said to me, "This is the man I was telling you about that speaks fluent Italian." I braced myself to be impressed. When my brother shook his hand and playfully said, "Buon giorno," Basil said, with some degree of stuffiness, "You don't speak Italian!" Each of those four words was coated with the unique twang that distinguishes my Igbo brethren from the rest of the world. So thick was Basil's Igbo accent that I was hard pressed to believe that the man had even inhaled the smog in Rome, not to talk of having lived there long enough to pick up the language. At any rate, I was soon too angry to be interested in whether or not he could speak his language, and here's why.

My brother introduced me as his sister, to which Basil responded, with an angry,dismissive flick of his hand, "Oh, come on! There's no need for such pretenses, I know what you mean by sister!" I was still trying to pick up my jaw when my brother, trying really hard to convince Basil, said, "No, really, she's my sister!" Basil said, "Are you sure?" He looked at me. "Are you sure you're his sister?" Trying to smile, I said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're related." Basil again looked at my brother, breathless with shock, "You don't mean it!" His gaze flashed back to me. "You're his sister. You? So pretty!" My brother recounted with a "As pretty as she is, am I not handsome?" Basil just looked at me, his 32 individually-spaced multi-colored teeth grinning with admiration.

At this point, I expected that we would all go our separate ways: my brother to his meeting, me to the lobby, Basil to his lair. So you can imagine my subsequent shock when, in the middle of my cheery "It was nice to meet you," my brother said to Basil, "Why don't you buy her a drink?" I don't think either of them noticed the dismay on my face as Basil cheerily intoned, "Oh, why not!" He ushered me forward with a "Segnora" and began to ask me about what I do. With as much haughtiness as I could muster, I said as loudly as I could without being obnoxious, "I'm a graduate student at Yale. I'm here doing research for my thesis." It was crucial that I sound self-important for a number of reasons. One, neither Basil nor any man within earshot could think of me as a hotel call girl or I would kill someone. The Hilton is a notorious hotspot for female escorts looking for cash. In fact, young women are frequently harrassed by hotel security just in case they are prostitutes because guests have been known to complain about women knocking on their doors, asking if anyone would be interested in "a bit of sex". Two, I wanted the surrounding clientele to know that, even if I wasn't a call girl, I certainly wasn't just one of those chicks who loafs around doing nothing. And by nothing, I mean, waiting around for some guy with money to spend it all on me. I have a brain, and I use it! Lastly, I wanted to make sure that Basil, if he dared to hit on me, would know that I was not going to make it easy. He would definitely have his work cut out for him if he tried to tackle this "princess".

Basil was pleased to hear that I was getting an education at Yale, but he was not about to be one-upped by "this small girl". He began to spout of a list of his credentials including the fact that he went to Harvard and MIT, some other school in Italy, bla bla bla. I must admit that I was impressed; it's not often that I meet an Igbo guy with a whole bunch of advanced degrees like that. (I'm not trying to insult Igbo men o! I'm just speaking from my own experience.) As we approached the lobby, I was struck by the overwhelming number of men just sitting around. Some of them were discussing business with their foreign associates (greasy-looking, pot-bellied white men who looked like they could use a shower); others were watching TV or reading a newspaper. As Basil and I descended the short flight of stairs into the lobby, I noticed how each and everyone one of them stared at me, hungrily. I imagined them all thinking that Basil had paid for my time, which would be easy to believe the way he was strutting with his chest stuck out. I wanted to yell out, angrily, "I don't even want to sit with this man!" But that would have been inappropriate. I just simmered in silence.

We sat. "What do you want to drink?" Basil asked me.

"Just water, thanks." If I had ordered anything else, I would definitely have looked like the cheap hooker everyone thought I was pretending not to be.

"Only water?! Why don't you get soft drink, or stout? Do you drink stout?"

Jehovah! So upon all my yans about being a Yalie, this idiot was still intent on treating me like a common prostitute! It was time to pull out my spare ammunition: my foneh.

"No, I'll just have the wah-der. It's so haht in this country, and I get dehydray-ded so quickly!"

"Ah, ok, no problem. I'm going to have coffee," he pronounced. Good for you, I thought. "Don't you want anything to chew?"

"Anything to what?" For the first time, I was dying to laugh, but by some miracle, I was able to control myself.

"To chew, to chew! I mean, to eat. Do you want to eat something? Why not order something from the bar, like meatpie, or scotch egg, or even salad?" He pronounced "salad", sah-LAHD.

It was too much for me. I had to let myself smile at least as I again refused his offer. Anyone who knows me knows that holding back the laughter was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. We then proceeded to have a conversation about the state of the nation, giving me yet another opportunity to show him that I had some intellectual capacity. But Basil managed to turn this conversation into a pseudo-interview, as he tried to ascertain whether I was the wife he has been looking for his whole life. That was when I learned that he was about 50 years old, and apparently very picky. According to him, he was looking for a wife whose presence beside him on the streets of NEW York wouldn't be an embarrassment. My brother's meeting couldn't have ended soon enough; I don't think Basil even heard my "goodbye" as I fled the Hilton lobby.

I have several stories similar to this, to denote how little respect men accord women here. I won't tell them all, but I must talk about Chief and Ada. Chief is one of my brother's business associates, also Igbo. He came to the house to talk about something with my brother and he brought Ada with him. My brother isn't sure whether or not Chief brought Ada for him, as a sort of gift to smooth their business deal. If he did, Chief must really re-evaluate his tastes. Ada is a masquerade, a truly terrifying specimen of female. She towers about six feet tall, and must weigh about 180 pounds of pure tits-and-ass. She sauntered into our living room, and scared me from across the room when she turned around to greet me and exposed her warpaint makeup. The reddest lipstick coated the thickest lips I have ever seen; her eyes were outlined with black eyeliner, the same eyeliner which she used to paint on her thick devilish eyebrows. Her man-like, beefy hands were tipped with red acrylic claws, and as she sank into my brother's couch, I remember being fearful that it would not be able to hold her up. She made me feel tiny and plain, and I could not take my eyes off her.

I sat behind the couch, working at my laptop as I always do when I'm at home. My brother pointed in my general direction, said to Chief, "That's my sister." I waved, "Hello, good evening." Chief looked at me and decided that he already knew what was going on. "Hello, good eefnin," he answered. Then he gestured at Ada and said, "Ehn, dats my sister too." I couldn't even be upset. For the umpteenth time, nobody was prepared to believe that I could actually be related to my own brother, but the flippancy with which Chief expressed himself was borderline hilarious. Me, with my linen pants and natural face, was now on the same level as the Adas of Nigeria. It's not their fault.

to be continued...