One of my vivid childhood memories is of the day I learned the importance of knowing and understanding what you’re saying/singing. I was roughly ten years old and singing the infamous chorus of Lady Marmalade (remix with Missy, Mya, Pink, etc. of course) when my uncle nearly knocked down the bathroom door demanding I come outside and sing those raunchy lyrics to his face. As I did, I realized I didn’t quite know what I was singing. The song just sounded nice. Since then, I’ve been a stickler for comprehending and appreciating the lyrics as much – if not more- than the melody.Years later, I’m beginning to apply that same idea to the seemingly ‘motivational’ or ‘didactic’ quotes we were raised with and continue to throw around these days – especially framed in graphics and shared on social media. I have found that too many of these statements that ‘sound nice’ are products of bias, instruments of harmful socialization that reinforce unhealthy thinking and lie at the root of a lot of toxic behaviour.In this post, I’ll be flipping the script on five common adages and offering an antithesis of them. It’s fine if you cannot say something nice, but do be honest.If you’re like me, you were raised on the adage, “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”. This indoctrination may sound like a good one on the surface, but as we grow older we realize just how hypocritical forced and momentary niceness really is. Please note, as others have, the difference between niceness and kindness. While being ‘nice’ [which is defined as “pleasing, agreeable, delightful”] may require one to be silent in if one cannot be polite and agreeable; being kind [which comes from the heart] will require that one be honest rather than silent. Niceness is something we’ve been taught we owe society with the indoctrination of such an adage; adhering to such indoctrination speaks of a level of social conformity, and people-pleasing. As we grow to understand that temporarily pleasing people, acting agreeable, going against ourselves and being dishonest about what we think and feel is not ‘moral’ at all, such statements are exposed as harmful. Do not be addicted to bettering yourselfSome year ago, I came across one of those ‘inspirational’ memes that said “Be addicted to bettering yourself”. I loved it. I made it my header on Facebook. It reflected what I believed; that I should be striving to know better, do better, be better… because in so many ways I am not enough. And therein lies the problem with this adage. The perpetual question for improvement is rooted in discontent. This is not to say, we shouldn’t strive for better versions of ourselves- of course, we should. But “addicted”? Addiction refers to control, something else controlling you. Your idealized version- the idea you have of what “a better you” would be; that is what is controlling you when you’re addicted to bettering yourself. Your fear of not being enough, your inability to love yourself in a ‘less than ideal’ state. That is what ‘being addicted to bettering yourself’ speaks of. It has taken me therapy and a lot of self-work to recognize this, it’s not an adage which can be rejected as harmful socialization easily, because ‘bettering’ oneself is a good thing right? Yet, we must ask: what exactly is the ‘better version’ we’re addicted to achieving, and for what reason is it ‘better’ who declared it so? We must ask this to be sure that we’re not addicted to a version of us we feel will be more acceptable, welcomed and pleasing to others… See how this phrase ends up feeding behaviour that is toxic to ourselves? What doesn’t kill you can weaken your spirit?If you’re a fan of Kelly Clarkson’s music, you’ve most definitely sang along to the popular adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” from her hit song Stronger. I tend to hear this phrase used in response to someone narrating how they barely survived something, or how they are not sure they will survive what is to come. The phrase comes from an aphorism of the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and is generally used as an affirmation of resilience. So why do we need to drop it? Because resilience doesn’t always equate to strength. Having survived doesn’t always mean you won, survival is not living and we want to live. Fully live. What doesn’t kill us and what we survive often takes a piece of us, such as; our innocence and/or faith, our immunity to further infection, and even our capacity to feel/care. What doesn’t kill you, can still kill a vital part of your being. In fact, the strongest people are killed by the constant survival of what is thrown at them, they die by the process of weathering- whittled down with every battle survived. Let us not gloss over and abet their slow death with affirmations of resilience. Who they are at their worse is not more valid than who they are at their best.I only recently came to understand how problematic it is when we believe that who/what our friends and loved ones are/do under the worst circumstances represents who they really are. The idea that the version of people you see in the worst of circumstances is their ‘true self’ is passed on through adages like “a drunken man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts” or another that goes “what is said in anger is truth”. These statements make sense at first thought. After all, a drunk person is less inhibited as a result of alcohol and thus drunk people do tend to speak their minds more liberally whether that means being more vulnerably or with less indoctrinated ‘niceness’.Yet, what people fail to factor in is that we humans can lie to ourselves as well; under the influence of alcohol and anger not only are our inhibitions lifted but also our ability for rational thinking is also affected.
An Interview with Myself on Depression: Episode 1
Mental health is gaining traction, more people are speaking up which is great. Getting therapy is becoming normalized (at least via Western media)- also great. But as with most things, “trending” comes along with distortion and confusion and a lot of ignorance. Between November 2020 and April 2022 I have struggled with recurring episodes of severe depression to the point that I can say my great achievement of the last 17 months has been surviving. I promised that if I survive it I’ll tell the tale because I think one of the hardest things is explaining to our family/friends what depression is. Especially when they expect/assume you to be okay. Because loving someone with a mental health problem is hard… yourself included. And because we cannot truly ‘normalize’ and properly address what we do not understand. But writing about experiencing mental health issues is hard. Mostly because writing it out means thinking about it and it is easier to escape. For instance, I have been wanting to write about my emotional eating forever. Hoping that writing would bring some sort of healing, that if I express it, it could be diagnosed understood, and I could be fixed. But I haven’t been able to; writing requires you to think/feel what you want to express and what I want to express is the fact that I eat to cope with hard emotions. Hence writing would be evoking the hard emotions making you want to eat more. I’ve regularly ended up self-soothing with food while writing/thinking of writing about self-soothing with food. So this has taken forever… That is why I’m trying this strategy: an interview with myself. Responding to questions directly, The interview format is kind of like using 2nd person. The topic is still hard, but the use of delimited question help so that feelings don’t flood all at once. You can think of it as a test you’re answering and not a baring of yourself So over a set of instalments which I’ll put on my blog under the category of #DemystifyingMentalHealth, I’ll share interviews on different aspects of mental health issues and wellness. Hopefully, it helps someone. Most of the questions I have responded to in this episode are from my friend Ettamba; if you have questions you’d like me to answer, drop them in the comment section and I’ll consider them for the next segment **** On Depression (Questions from Ettamba) When you say you have depression what do you mean and how was it different from being sad? It’s taken me a while to understand depression as a condition, specifically clinical depression as a disease which is different from sadness. And even longer for me to acknowledge it as a thing given that it’s not adequately acknowledged among Cameroonians… and sometimes I still falter over whether I’m ‘claiming negativity’ as some Christians and ‘toxic positivity’ people put it… In 2018 when I first decided to really seek help understanding what this is. I went to my university’s health centre and scheduled a session with a psychologist and asked them to test me so I can see/have an actual diagnosis. I wanted something like an x-ray to show a broken mind and explain why I was not okay… I needed something to explain that this was not a passing feeling of sadness but something much deeper rooted and that my helplessness in the face of it wasn’t made up. The psychologist explained depression in this way: everyone has hormones which affect how they feel and the balance or imbalance of those hormones means you are generally starting off from one of three points- She drew lines on a piece of paper to explain this… Very happy —————————————————————————————————– Neutral ———————————————————————————————————— Very sad ———————————————————————————————————– Non-clinically depressed people were those who mostly start off at the neutral line, so when they get sad, they can fall below the neutral line when things are bad, but not so much they are at nothing. Likewise, it’s easier for them to go up to happy zones because they’re starting off midway. But clinically depressed people, she explained start off below the neutral line. It is harder for them to go into the happy zone- it takes more effort… and it is easier for them to go down to the low point because they’re already below neutral… I like her explanation and it stayed with me. However, I must say the most accurate explanation of what depression is- for me- how it differs from just sadness was found in Harry Potter. Yes, I know how that sounds. But still, Harry Potter (book 3, in particular) has the best non-medical, for-the-average-person explanation of depression I’ve read. In it, Harry is having a horrible reaction to Dementors which one can see as vectors of depression. As he is more sensitive to Dementors he wonders if it’s because he’s weaker than his peers; the following is a conversation from that book that captures it: “… I suppose they [Dementors] were the reason you fell?” “Yes,” said Harry. He hesitated, and then the question he had to ask burst from him before he could stop himself. “Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just —?” “It has nothing to do with weakness,” said Professor Lupin sharply, as though he had read Harry’s mind. “The Dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don’t have…” “…Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth… they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you…You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life. And the worst that happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.” Replace Dementors with depression or triggers of depression and you’ll get it. People with clinical
Want to have a successful year? How are you defining success?
What if I told you, there’s a way to guarantee you have a successful 2022? Well, I can; because a successful year all depends on how you define success. Here’s a definition I recommend.
On Unlearning: A lesson from A Child
Two weeks ago I came across this short video of @BeleafinFatherhood’s daughter Anaya asking for love. In it you see a little black girl, with a mischievous smile on her face, sticking herself through what was obviously a closed door to make her request. She says: “I’m just standing here, waiting for you to get done, so I can get wuv”. Despite the cute mispronunciation of love as ‘wuv’, the reactions under that video show that many, like me, confronted a very great lacking in themselves when watching that reel. This little girl has what so many adults, especially adult women like myself do not. The confidence and wherewithal needed to ask for love openly. She has something we have lost by growing up, by painful experiences, by never having known it was possible, by lacking the foundations to nurture it. I was, and still am, quite frankly jealous of Anaya. At Anaya’s age, I like many others grew up being told it’s wrong or girl’s to express their desires first. That they should wait to be picked by a guy… that if he doesn’t choose you in the midst of a crowded room he doesn’t love you. In fact, in my culture, we have a traditional wedding practice I always found ‘romantic’. The practice stipulates that your husband to be should be able to recognize you wrapped under sheets of clothing in a line-up of other women wrapped from head to toe as well. Simply playing to our desire to be ‘picked’ first. I like many other girls was taught that men pursue. Human males are ‘hunters’ every relationship guru claims. They should be the ones to propose, to say I love you first (after which you should say I love you more because that fierce hunter seemingly has a fragile ego eh). If there’s one thing Christianity and the secular world seem to agree on it is relationship gender roles. Like many other girls, I grew up with movies telling us to throw pens on the ground to get a guy’s attention (couldn’t we just use the pen to write notes?) or leave secret gifts on our crush’s table and watch from afar, and who to can forget the Bella’s infamous “bend and snap” … we’re to do anything but actually tell the person we need love from that we need it. I recall a particular instance when a classmate took a Polaroid picture of her body in a bikini (nudes before nudes were a thing) and put in an envelope and slipped it in her crush’s locker to ‘get his attention. Her way of saying “I want wuv”; she was barely a teenager with a warped sense of making that request because this was what she’d been told would get her the attention she desired. But it’s not just girls getting tricked. The media will have boy’s like Anaya’s brothers convinced that the way to say “I want love” is to buy a girl the most expensive gifts, drive this car, catch their attention with this sports jacket, and a host of other indirect ways. Because direct is scary for adults. But direct is what Anaya is doing. I wonder how often we have asked for love in the wrong way: by buying a gift anonymously, by giving cash because that is always welcome but the words may not be. By crying. By doing that silly block/unblock dance. By rebelling or lashing out. By lying about who we are and what we want. By sharing memes to… By accepting trash. I know for certain many of us have done everything but knock on a closed door, peek inside, and said plainly “I need wuv”. Why? Because unlike Anaya we no longer believe in fairytales, we no longer have that faith in God (if we ever did), we no longer have the people who we can be sure will respond as Anaya’s daddy did that “I’ll come give you love baby”. And in place of all these things we no longer have we now have dozens of memories of times those who we needed love from said no, or ignored us or mocked us or abused that need. We now have conditioning on how that love should look like and expectations on how it should show up. So I guess what I envy Anaya for is the innocence she has yet to lose. And as I watch that video over and over again, I pray she keeps being able to do this scary beyond-adult thing- confidently ask for love- for a long time.
Wishing You a Decade of Dependency and Thriving Despite Deficiency
As a teenager, I wasn’t really ‘taught’ how to cook. I moved around a lot. And in every home, I would have tasks like dicing onions and tomatoes, fixing the vegetables, grinding spices up, etc. But no one allowed me near the pot and no one allowed me to do everything from scratch. I knew how to cook in theory-everything that needed to be in that meal, but I hadn’t ever done it for myself. It was only when I had dropped out of school in lower-sixth (think age 17) and was staying with my older male cousin at his studio that I was actually ‘in charge’ of cooking (he must have thought, oh now there is a woman in the house). I recall that every time I cooked, no matter how familiar I was with the ‘process’ of the meal I was making, I would begin with a prayer. An honest to God prayer as in : “Dear Lord, please don’t let me mess up this food. Please help me remember how Christy used to make it and let it come out just as well. Please don’t let Elvis laugh at my cooking” Every. Single. Time. If only my cousin knew how much I wanted to impress him then- and not poison both of us, of course. I would pray like that for over two years- 2007 to 2010; just picture it, me praying for guidance for something as simple as mixing pancakes or stewing cabbage. Something that ‘insignificant’, would have me with eyes closed fervently praying and I would BELIEVE God was hearing and would help. Because he God wouldn’t allow me to be shamed before those who I was cooking for nah? Is he not God again? Especially when I was in my first year at the university and imbibing all those self-help books that had us believing we needed to impress guys with our cooking… let me not even go there. The point is, by mid-2010 I was living on my own, had to cook just for me. I was experimenting and learning a lot more but also, the pressure to impress someone else was off. So I stopped praying before cooking. I had mastered a lot of the basic meals, so no need to ask for guidance so the food comes out well. And just like that, I stopped depending on God for that. I believe(d) I was a pro. Cooking isn’t the only thing I have grown out of depending on God for. I used to pray before every time I write- and I’m talking fiction, a blog post, an email, etc. I never felt like I deserved to be in the places I had been accepted into. How could I be at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s workshop when I only just discovered her that year? When I only just managed to buy her book THAT trip because quite frankly I had no access to it before. How could I be in Uganda with so many amazing women writers when all I have a horrible collection of poems published? So of course, I would pray before every single thing I wrote, praying that God makes it better than it is because I know it is crap. Occasionally, I still pray before I write, but now it’s more “Lord, you know I procrastinated and now this deadline is here, help me make it”. The prayer is no longer about really depending to make the thing happen. I am ‘grown’ now and jaded. I think “Monique just sit up and work, what you need is discipline!” And I am right. But I am believing I can (and should) be the discipline master of myself, all day every day. I am also believing I need only discipline. And on these two things, I am wrong. As many cooks will tell you, you can follow the recipe exactly, do everything as you should have and still come out with a mess. As we say in Pidgin-English, life get as e be. Why am I sharing this? Well, two reasons. First, because it’s the end of the year and we’re all taking stock on how far we’ve come (or not) and how far we have yet to go. It occurred to me that as we grow up, mature, and life hurts and disillusions us, we become jaded. We may grow in faith, yes, but it no longer the faith that is hopeful. It is a surrendered faith. Our faith now is either more calculating with us marrying our adult logic to it and thinking along the lines of: “if I fast for this number of days, torture myself in this way, make a vow to God or give this amount of money to church then he will answer my prayers” OR the other which I think of as surrendered/resigned faith which says “Che sara sara, whatever will be, will be”. We lose that innocent faith, that faith that believes God listened to your childish prayer request to have the meal come out just right. We lose that child-like dependency that has us needing God for everything; and like five-year-olds who have finally learned how to use the bathroom on their own, we begin to shut daddy out. Until they may need a new roll of tissue and open the door a crack screaming, so we too call when it’s a mess ‘please give me this or that’. We’re not so independent after all. And we hate it! Or at least I hate it, and that is the second reason I am sharing this. One of the major lessons 2019 taught me is I cannot be all the things. I cannot meet my ideals (and I wasn’t even striving for perfection o!), I cannot save myself, I will be forced to depend. Because I have been built flawed and meant to depend because I am human and expected to fail. With this lesson, I gave myself permission to make mistakes, gave
29 Lessons I’ve Learned at 29: A Collection of Personal Epigrams Thus Far…
Earlier this month, I celebrated my 29th birthday. I have dubbed this year: My year of testimonies signifying my commitment to share more (particularly of lessons learned and vulnerabilities) by way of personal healing, self-evaluation ahead of the big 3.0 and in hope of encouraging someone else as I have often sought to be encouraged this past year. I began this testimony-themed year by sharing my ‘salvation story’ or the account of how and why I committed to the Christian faith. You can read this HERE. My contemplation on how far I’ve come this year and all there is to share led me to review my journals. I found an entry which reminded me that in 2012 as I completed undergrad, I had made an ambitious seven-year plan for fulfillment by the age of thirty. As per this plan, my 29th year was to be “My Year of Preparation”; it was to be the year I became fully ‘adult’. Underneath 29 I had put bullet points listing the goals for the year or what being ‘fully adult’ meant for me at that time. According to that list, as a twenty-nine-year-old I: – Should have a healthier lifestyle- a healthy weight, diet, skin care routine etc. – Should be getting to solvency, with savings, property, and finally acting on that business idea… -Should be enrolled in a postgraduate program and establishing myself as a writer and educationalist. – Should be setting up a family and preparing myself to be all I needed myself as a child. – Should have complete training at church to be a liturgist occasionally and be an active member of a Christian fellowship -Should have plans for establishing a youth center like the YMCA in the works WELL! Let’s just say I had some ambition way back then eh? I will not be holding myself up to this list, rather I shall think of it with appreciation as it shows that even back then, I knew I had to PREPARE and work on myself to achieve the fulfillment I desired and still desire. I am proud of the younger Monique for having figured that out. There’s a lot more I’ve figured out in these 29 odd years and I’ve coined life quotes from lessons learned which I share in this piece. Consider these 29 original sayings as epigrams to remember me by. Notes on Living, Loving and Being … The worst thing about life isn’t the catastrophes, the losses, the pain or disappointments it brings to us all. The worst thing, in my opinion, is that life goes on. It does not stop for us to collect our bearings, regain our rhythm, restore our hope or reclaim our faith. One may lose their entire family, another may lose their only source of joy, yet another the hope which kept them sane; but still life goes on, others live as though the world had not ended had not ended for one. You can believe all you want. Unlike Hollywood PG 13 movies, wishes don’t come true by believing alone. Believe in good, believe that justice will come someday, and right will conquer wrong. But bear in mind that this may happen on the day after you are buried in your grave. And it doesn’t make it too late for there was never a set date. One of the ironies of life, I have found, is how we are encouraged to dream grandly as children only to be urged to settle soon as adults- and our souls expand and contract with each compromise and negotiation, weathering away. The thing about tomorrow? It never has enough hours or the capacity to fulfill all we wish it would, so we always need another one. I have found that many people don’t notice my hearing impairment in the course or a conversation. To them, my rapt attention is response enough. And I can talk to at length with one whose name I do not know, one whom I have only just met. Because sometimes we do not need words. Everyone smiles in the same language, everyone understands the tilt of a head, can comprehend eyes welling up with tears and a hand outstretched…or withheld.
…And that is the story of how I became a Christian.
Hello, I’m Monique and today, 11th October 2018, makes me twenty-nine years old. I added an About My Faith page to this blog at the start of this year as I felt I could do more to share my faith. Recently, after being touched by the testimonies of undergrads shared at the church I’m presently attending and I decided to make an attempt at sharing my salvation story via video. I soon concluded that writing would enable me to be more concise. So with this piece, I share how it all began, or a testimony of how I came to commit to the Christian Journey. I hope my experience with God’s love inspires you on your journey and relationship with God too. *** To begin, I must acknowledge that by some measures, or common (mis)conceptions of what being a Christian is in our society- speaking from a Cameroonian perspective here- one could claim I have always been a Christian. Being born into a family which identifies as Christian, being baptized before I could talk, and being confirmed/taking my first communion by the age of 15 even though I can’t say what that really meant despite the required doctrinal lessons. In fact, I clearly recall that I begged to have my confirmation in school so I could belong, could join the line for communion when others went up and could have my ‘first communion party’ in school which would be a sort of visiting Sunday – cherished by boarding students. So, by the average demographic measure, I was a Christian from age 2, and a fully practicing one by age 15 with my baptismal and communion cards to prove it. Of course, the average view is often wrong. My not being a Christian was obvious in the fact that going to church was an event, not an act of worship nor fellowship. It was something to dress up for once a week. Morning devotions were routines, the songs were the only entertainment we young people were permitted to dance to and the prayers before meals were customary. Something done mindlessly, or out of fear of food-poisoning as seen on Nollywood films. Knowing this, I can say my Christian journey actually began in April of 2007. With neither, a baptism nor a ‘confirmation’. Rather, like most things in Christianity, it began with my pain and death, or my attempted death. *** At the time, I was 17 years old and alone in my cousin’s apartment in Yaoundé after dropping out of school. I had been effectively disowned by most of the family because I decided leave boarding school and was ready to return to the US where my mom and brother were, my cousin who had the apartment likewise left me without a word when he had an opportunity to leave the country. There’s a lot of background to this, but suffice it to say, you should picture a 17-year-old with loads of anger, self-esteem, and belonging issues. One who can’t quite put a finger on the intensity of the emotional pains she feels, knows little about the world, less about her family and no French at all but is now stranded in a francophone city. I was literally at my end. With no adult supervision, after I found out through a friend of my cousins that he had left the country, I began selling stuff to passersby outside the apartment so I could buy food to eat. I did that with some success considering my horrible French LOL! I soon got tired though, soon got fed up and the vacuum I had always filled with food just kept growing. So when I came across a bottle of Advil with expired Ibuprofen tablets already molding to dust form, I thought I’d found the perfect escape route. I was obviously unwanted, unloved and not understood- even by myself. I couldn’t see any reason to keep going, it all seemed like vanity. Wake, eat, perhaps study to impress some people you don’t even like, sleep and repeat. That was life as I knew it. I took a handful of those pills, dressed up and climbed into bed fully intending to die like ‘sleeping beauty’ I still had my vanity. And I recall thinking as I fell asleep crying in bed that I was going to have some very harsh words for God when I met him upon death. But I didn’t die. I slept deep, perhaps from the pills, perhaps from the tears. But I know it was longer than usual for me. Still, I woke up, by myself, feeling nauseous and running to the bathroom to throw up. I spewed out everything I’d consumed and could taste the bitter ibuprofen in my bile. As I was washing up and struggling to get my mouth to taste normal again, I thought of how unfair it was that I couldn’t even die in peace. I was interrupted by a knock on the door and when I went to answer it, the young girl who served my Anglophone neighbors as a house-help was there. She seemed a bit shy but had worked up the courage to come to ask me to teach her how to make pancakes. I had given her some pancakes before, out of guilt. She often cleaned my end of the corridor when she did her chores so I gave her pancakes once as compensation. This girl, who was at least 13 and at most 15 in age had never had that simple pleasure before and had seemingly waited till her bosses had left so she could ask me for how to do it. It was the small thing really but after feeling so useless that you would try to take your own life, being asked to teach someone how to make pancakes has some significance. As I taught her that day, I learned more about her. How she could only complete Primary school in the village and then her mother asked that she follow
So… What did 2017 teach you?
Earlier this year, I wrote on the development of the now year-long crisis which has plagued the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. I outlined the emergence of the struggle and build-up due to utter mishandling from the government and the frustration of a minority, all in hope of our collective learning as a nation. As the year comes to an end and the crisis still rages- with more violence than ever in some parts of these regions- I have wondered if we actually did learn anything. For me the end of year period is meant for reflection; a time for assessing the year about to pass by and preparing for the one about to begin. I have thus considered the lessons 2017 has taught me personally, lessons like: i. Some things/people will never be yours no matter how hard you work, how hard you pray and how much you may deserve it/them. We do not always get what we deserve. That is both a good and bad thing. ii. You matter. Someone impressionable is watching you, looking up to you, believing in you. So act like you matter. iii. Your work matters. Invest in it. Hone your craft. iv. Pain too can bloom things. It’s not the best fertilizer but it works. v. Not everyone you admire is right for you and you are not for everyone. And now I consider the lessons 2017 and the experiences of this year should have taught us all as Cameroonians. In case you’ve been dozing throughout the year, here are some takeaways in point form: 1- Before you start a protest have a plan. Advocacy is targeted, and meaningful. You can be an online activist, your voice is a powerful tool and your social media page is no doubt a useful platform BUT for you to be an advocate, you need to be targeting those in power able to change things or actively following procedure in changing them. Otherwise you’re not doing much. Anger at this government is justified, however misdirected anger and lack of strategy is deadly. We’ve been under this regime for 35+ years… anyone trying to save us from it should have used this time to come up with a good plan. It doesn’t have to be foolproof, but it should be logical. As a friend of mine put it a while back: Before you demand my allegiance to a new order, convince me that what you offer me is better than the last. 2- Hold your heroes to higher standards, this is not a game. A popular adage goes: An unchecked virtue is a vice; meaning what/who is good can easily go bad because of too much praise and too little criticism. I think this is the strongest lesson of the year. In our desire for change we, as Cameroonians have come to crown any loud voice as messiah. However this, the future of our nation and our collective well-being, is not a scenario where we can make do with “a one-eyed man in the land of the blind”. Perhaps because we’re not all that blind, most of us are just suffering from nearsightedness. So please check and double-check your heroes, does your hero/leader of choice make sexist remarks? Is he/or she knowledgeable of the laws/constitution they criticize? Is he or she transparent? Does he or she have lingering scandals? Is he or she a trusted source of verified information? Can he or she handle power without becoming power-drunk? We should have learned that he who cannot handle criticism now will be no better than Biya when it comes his turn to rule. He who would sacrifice others and ignore their real needs at this time, will not suddenly change with power. And not everyone who speaks up for us is meant to be our mouthpiece. Someone can appreciate the general problem, but due to their background and context, be out of touch with the other intersecting oppressions people in different classes, with different levels of education, and so forth experience. 3- Do your research, verify information. Fake news is real; spreading it is not a joke. We may all scoff at the government’s annoying message with veiled threats regarding the spread of fake news- particularly considering how much fake news they spread by lies of omission. Yet, it is an undeniable fact, that unverified information “forwarded as received” caused a lot of destruction of property and loss this year. Unverified information readily shared because it sounds sensational, appeals to our desired outcome or because we’re too damn lazy to cross check sources and possibility, caused a great deal of damage this year. Fake news damaged the credibility of a revolution and led to loss of property and life every time a rumor went around inciting young people to the streets where they were met with certain police brutality. Pray we have learned that not everything is worth sharing. In fact, let me make it clear in our most common language: *holds ear* make this thing sey forwarded as received end this 2017. If you don’t know the source and are not certain the info is true, keep it to yourself.4- In the words of MJ ‘They don’t really care about us”. It is hoped that we’ve learned that no one is coming to save us. That no one owes us more than we owe ourselves. That no one can do for us what we have yet to do for ourselves. This is for those who marched before embassies of France, the United Kingdom, Canada etc. but failed to hold their own ambassadors accountable. This is for those who readily spread rumors about UNESCO canceling a school year only to see some (middle class) children progress to higher institutions with the release of results while theirs were at home. If nothing else, may 2017 have taught us that we must organize to save ourselves. The international community has never been an impartial judge. If we don’t care about ourselves,
Our Identity and Our shame
The Transracial Trend… Please have a look at my picture in the about section of this page. Have a good look, read the bio. Imagine this: I have been reading about Jewish culture, taken a liken to it, truly appreciate the suffering they had to face during the Holocaust, then I decided I feel more Jewish than Cameroonian. So I take up the hairstyle and dressing of Jews. I buy a wig or scarfs for my head. I lie about my background and receive a scholarship from a historically Jewish University to study Jewish History. I graduate and become a spokesperson for the Jewish community. Imagine all this happening, then when caught I feel I did nothing wrong. I “identify as Jewish”. Sounds crazy right? Well, as some writers would be quick to tell you, reality is crazier than fiction. Everything I just described happened except it what an American Caucasian who decided to “identify” as a black American. Lie about her race to the point of having someone claim to be her father. She has received scholarship from a university that was created to give black Americans opportunity in a system that was never created for them. She did all this and when the public went for her, some people abused the term transracial to defend her actions. Transracial is a valid term used to define the unique perspectives of someone who is adopted by a family of a different race, however defenders of Rachel Dolezal now use it to refer to the decision to “identify” as a different race and dress up impersonating people of that race. However this post isn’t so much about Rachel Dolezal and being transracial such as it is about “identifying” as black and what is has meant for me. You see, Dolezal made me wonder about lot of things. For one she made me wonder if she’s crazy. It has been fairly proven that being black in America is not a smooth experience so why did this woman want to switch race so badly? I’m suspicious. We have reasons for everything we do. Stupid reason maybe, but still reasons. Secondly and most pertinent to this post, Dolezal made me wonder what she perceives black to be. You see I’m truly curious about this because I have not always been “black”. Yes, really! On Being black… So, I have not always been black. I have been African, Cameroonian, Bami-Anglo, but not black. Where I come from there are no race arguments because we’re all one color though of various shades. We have better things to classify ourselves by; social class, region of origin, tribe, language group, religion. But my blackness starts and ends when I board a flight and cross the equator. That’s one thing Rachel Dolezal and I have in common; we have not always been black. Given this mutual experience of on and off blackness I wonder when Rachel Dolezal began feeling black. What made her black? Was it watching enough episodes of Moesha and Fresh Prince of Bel Air? Was it the study of black history and being able to narrate/discuss black literature? Was it the moment she fell in love with box braids or the affection she developed for caramelized skin? From Rachel’s appearance and her impersonation, I cannot find more “experience of blackness” from her. And this irks me particularly when I recount the episodes that made me “feel black”. I felt black when a Caucasian lady seated next to me on a flight asked for another seat and was given. She stated her discomfort and asked that she be position elsewhere. The Kenyan seated to my right shook his head as her request was granted. I simply made a black power fist in the air then returned to my novel. I have changed hairstyles from permed hair to dreadlocks all the while in Cameroon. It never made me feel as black as I did when I was stopped in transit my passport and documents checked for over thirty minutes answering questions on where I was going and where I was from because my documents didn’t serve enough as proof. If you don’t get the drift, I have felt black mostly in circumstances of social classification while away from home. In my experience being black IS a social construct as Dolezal and her supporters insist. What I am wondering is when she has ever been boxed into that construct. This seem highly improbable when Ms Dolezal identified as white when police stopped her for a speeding ticket, when she herself identified as white when suing a historically black college. Her identity is her choice I agree. But with certain identities come stereotypes and bias and oppression and shaming. I would like Ms. Dolezal to tell me when she has felt that which is so much a part of the black identity. Has she ever felt jittery when entering a shop, like the security guard was looking particularly at her? Can she relate, truly relate to the #MikeBrowns #TrayvonMartins and that little girl at the McKinney pool party? Where does her blackness stop and where does it start? And the need for shame… As I ponder on this I realize all the times I felt black, I felt immigrant too. Welcome but not quite. And all these times I have felt the shame of being “guilty until proven innocent” and being someone who needed to be helped. Now some god soul might say here “you should not feel ashamed of who you are”. That good soul will be wrong. I do not feel ashamed of who I am, I feel ashamed of who I am perceived to be because I have not done more, my leaders have not done more. Shaming is itself a large part of African and black culture. I clearly remember
The Things We Allow
Have you ever heard the saying “The minute you settle for less that you deserve, you get less than you settled for?” Well I’ve been thinking about this idiom of recent. I walked into a shop I frequent the other day. The owner is a friendly flirt. You come in and Mbah (let’s just give him that name) will call you his baby, his sweetheart. If you get close enough he’ll try to pinch your butt, steal a kiss, or hug you pressing your breasts against his chest. It was his way; he does it with almost all the young female customers. And we allow it because the mostly young ladies he does this with know that by batting their eye lashes and overlooking these liberties taken despite the presence of the family portrait of his lovely wife and two kids hanging behind the counter, Mbah would reduce the prices of whatever we want to buy or just let us take it for free even. It is a wonder the shop is still open. On this particular day I give him my things and he catches my hand kisses the inside and says I have “thrown him” (I always wonder how one can “throw” what they never held in the first place) but I just smile ignorantly while he goes on calculating my stuff and winking suggestively at me. I notice he gives me a lower price on the goods than he did a male customer before me and I smile and go ahead. I had come into the shop with a younger friend, a “small” and as soon as we step out she exclaims “Men are not ashamed oh! That one does not sell oh, he is just here to flirt, as you were selecting things he was chatting another girl and then you will come and he will kiss your hand!” She sighed loud and long and I had to laugh at her attempt at reporting Mbah to me as though I would take offence. None of those girls Mbah flirted with took him seriously they just allowed him his nonsense so they go their lower prices, and so they didn’t seems like “spoilsports”, taking things too seriously or misunderstanding that what he was really doing was “complimenting” them. And to think of it Mbah didn’t take them seriously as well, hell the man probably didn’t take himself seriously. It was all a game for him. But, that aside my friend had me thinking. I realized we should take offence. Of course what Mabh does, borders on sexual harassment, but because we allow it and accept it knowing that it has its benefits (lower prices) and knowing too, that if we take him to task over it we will come out looking like we are making a much ado about nothing, none of us bother. And I thought of how and why we allow other things, like the boys who pushed their wares on you at the market gates, and reached for your hand as you passed calling you names if you shook them off. Or what about the number of times we Anglophone Cameroonians allow Francophones to belittle us even in our own regions speaking to us and expecting replies (in our state offices) in a language other than our own. I thought of the many things we allow, and how one thing led to another and how allowing was very much like settling yielding less and less, with everything we let slide. I thought of how we allow the little things, like paying 500frs to the police on the roadside, but we want the ministers embezzling in high offices to be sacked… And we allow what is traditional “cultural” to rule unquestioned despite the ills of FGM breast ironing etc. but we would control modern culture with decrees on decent dressing. We see nothing wrong when rules are bent, and laws not obeyed when the someone bribes to have a drivers license made, after all everyone does it, this is Cameroon! But then we are all aghast when a few months later a deadly accident occurs, we do not trace what we allow to what happens every day. Most times we are just like the young ladies who would enter Mbah’s shop will allow his flirtation and teasing gropes then complain that “Men are dogs”… Well of course they are for a long time we have allowed them to be.