This Is Forty: When Two Cultures Collide
My family members were recently horrified and perplexed by my decision to casually divulge episodes in my life that were peppered with elements of eroticism. It was a chain reaction — a ripple effect. Facebook was the culprit and the platform that gave my detractors the ammunition to plot my downfall. A selection of controversial pieces I had written and posted caught the attention of a dear cousin and she swiftly transposed them to the eager screens of my disapproving aunts, uncles and dismayed parents.
Overnight, my sexual exploits were being dissected in a manner I had never imagined. I instantly became a branded harlot in the eyes of the righteous. In keeping with tradition, I was consequently condemned for eloquently describing my one night stand in South Beach, and verbally assaulted for expressing the importance of celebrating my sensuality as a single forty-something female. Growing up Nigerian, forces you to be a hectic watchdog because our culture is a stirring pot filled with leeches, waiting to drain the sanity out of you at any given opportunity.
Once I received word that my popularity had soured in my hometown, I braced for the repercussions. Right on cue, I started receiving an avalanche of messages in response to my “disgraceful” essays. My uncle wasted no time venting his disapproval through a barrage of text messages that chimed through the night — Shame, Shame, Shame!!! You are telling the world you slept on the beach with a total stranger!!! (For the record, I did have sex with a stranger in South Beach, but not literally on the beach) Shame, Shame, Shame. Trash that’s what you have become!!!
I was promptly branded with the Scarlet Letter, and swiftly morphed into a modern day Hester Prynne, whose tarnished soul can only be revived by an act of exorcism. In order to atone for all my sins and re-instate the dignity I had brutally stripped from my parents, I was ordered to immediately make the damning evidence disappear, and to “apologize on d internet.” My mother and her sisters dutifully began the process of cleansing me with biblical fare. The spewed out verses were damningly self-serving, but ironically empowering at the same time. God does have a sense of humor! He and I bonded during this very trying period.
Meanwhile, the firing squad showed little signs of slowing down. I have been rudely awakened from my slumber, and forced to face the consequences that come with playing ping-pong with two diverse cultures. No matter how Americanized my accent has become, my traditional obligations will always haunt me. I also have to acknowledge the fact that I am sharing my creative faculties with an inbuilt nemesis, who is hell bent on thwarting anything that threatens her literary freedom.
The Nigerian way of life is like a badly scripted Reality TV show that lends itself to mindless chatter and brutally erected salaciousness, all in the name of subjecting the accused to a trial that strips them of all their rights. Being a writer with a distinctively tendentious voice is very American, but back in “Naija,” it smells like a fish that was left on the counter overnight. So like a pack of hungry wolves, relentless busybodies gather, plot and devour anyone who dares to be uniquely magnificent — even if that person happens to be one of their own. Now I am caught between the confluence of modernity and the tug of my ancestral strings.
How do I retain my dignity and still find the courage to allow my artistic nature to flourish in the manner that I have been accustomed to without the risk of demeaning my bated clan? As I dust off the humiliation of knowing that my father and mother internalized my very detailed sexual escapades, I am slowly working out the blueprint for my future as a writer of independent means. The first thing on my agenda is to rid myself of those pesky rumormongers, but after that, the draft is blank. That realization makes me nervous but I am certain that at some point the page will fill up. And it will hopefully be a legible testimony of an ongoing triumph.
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