Turning the tables

At last the tables had turned. She stood before me, thumbs thrust in the waistband of her jeans, fists at her waist, hips cocked. I could tell she was going to enjoy this.

"So anyway," she started, as if the subject wasn't busting to get out of her, "I've just got back from your country…"

"And…"

"Well apart from the terrible weather I saw many things that made me think."

"Really?" I think I knew where this was going, I've been waiting for something like this for a while. She's the girlfriend of another oyibo, and its meant she's been party to many of those conversations about Nigeria which expats have when they're amongst each other; The latest funny thing to happen, the difficulties of communication, the grinding frustration of nothing working right, the terrible driving stories, how annoying it is when people talk in the cinema, etc, etc. She'd weathered it all with a smile. And now it was her turn, and I was going to let her have her fun.

"Because of the rain I watched a lot of television, and I realised your people are really very stupid."

What were you watching?

"I was watching this show, it's this one man called the Jeremy Kyle…" Some young people were on the show, chronic, uncontrollable, hashish smokers who wouldn't listen to their families and stop it. My friend said: "What I saw was these people have wasted all the opportunities your country has to offer. People in your place call it cannabis, once you start smoking it you don't do anything else. If you give these people understanding they go and do it more. It makes me just want to slap them."

Another favourite subject on talk shows is young mothers. The UK has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe. They're seen as a drain on society, getting government handouts and to the top of waiting lists for cheaper social housing. It's been a seminal moment in many of my female friend's lives; coming back form university and seeing their school mates (often the tougher working class girls) pushing prams.

My friend said: "There was a 19-year-old girl with three children, she had one at 15, 17 and 18. I was horrified! In my country that doesn't happen as much because there is no government help for them."

She has it right, my people are stupid, drug smoking, sex addicts, pampered by a social welfare system that has failed us.

Jeremy Kyle is billed as "Britain's Jerry Springer", but actually he's the direct descendant of another more British chat show baron, Robert Kilroy-Silk. Kilroy's schtick was to get the drek of British society into his studio and then patronise them mercilessly. He would patiently listen to the horrid stories of their lumpen lives, tease all the horrendous detail from, say, a single mother with eight different kids by eight different fathers, and then stand back and pass judgement on them in a snide and malicious way. He got away with it because he never relinquished grip of the microphone so he could just cut them off with a snip, and of course centuries of the British class system made him feel superior to these forelock-tugging proles sitting in the studio.

Jeremy Kyle is even worse. He goes on long tirades against his own guests, batters them with the power of the "moral majority", wrapped up in a glossy TV format. Somehow he believes himself to be the highest arbiter of moral decency in the land. How he has not been lynched by the guests live on TV I will never know.

The truth is that these people are cherry picked for television, selected especially to enrage, and entertain, audiences. The show goes out mid afternoon, who is watching? Usually old people, naturally socially conservative, they already believe the world has gone to the dogs, and these shows just fortify their judgements. But I'll concede to my friends views of "my people", because there is a kernel of truth to them -and it was refreshing to hear someone else's unedited opinion of the British.

Letter to a new arrival.

Dear newcomer,
I sat next to you on the late night plane from London, where you told me you were moving to Nigeria to work for an international organisation. We chatted a bit about our destination, you asked me many questions about your new home. Some of them I could answer, but tiredness and my own shortcomings prevented me from giving you fuller answers, or really convey much of what I have learned about the country where we have chosen to live, past the immediate necessities: where to shop, or go swimming, or how to get a car.
It's been a year since I was in your shoes, arriving with nothing but my bags and my ideals to a place I had only read about. In the days before I left I spoke to several Nigerians living in London who said I was crazy. "They'll rob you naked before you even get to town," they said. I'd heard many stories about Nigeria, about random violence, fraud, religious fanaticism, and awful food. These Nigerians in Diaspora never made me question if I should uproot myself from my comfortable life, no matter how hard they tried. And I'm glad you have got past these people too.
-Why do we do this, you and I? Uzodinma Iweala, the son of Nigeria's former finance minister recently wrote of his frustration at American college students trying to "save" Africa. And I suspect he's right in a way. Africa doesn't need "saving" from itself, that spin on Empire suggested by John Stuart Mill as he questioned the British role in India. At least it doesn't need saving by the likes of us. So why come here? After a year I have reconciled myself with my reason, even though it is purely selfish. I am curious.
And Nigerians have provided me with much to be curious about. Far from being the rapacious, violent, intolerant, thieves their countrymen would have me believe, Nigerians are among the most hospitable people I have ever met. However, I've learned it's a funny kind of hospitable, more akin to the chummy, if slightly aggressive, banter of the East End cockney than genteel politeness. Prepare to be buffeted, poked and prodded, even sniffed for weakness. If you can bob up with a funny retort, you're ok. Be cheeky. Make a Nigerian laugh more than once and you will become friends forever.
The Nigerians I know are among the most forgiving people in the world. I have made many blunders, and become frustrated many times, but most have forgiven me, more than once. As a friend who has lived here nine years confided: "Cultural difference is like running into an invisible wall. You do it, and then you get up and run headlong into the next one." Indeed you have to, because once you slow down and try to side step them, you start to pre-judge things. Secretly, I think, Nigerians quite like pointing out where they differ from us.
Nigerians call people they have just met, only to say "hello". It's one of the most baffling things I have ever come across, and one that white expats still struggle to deal with. I've overheard many an awkward conversation. Better to just be overjoyed they rang and don't forget to ask them how their family is.
Nigerians are very religious. "God is bored with Nigerians," I've heard people say, "they're on the phone to him all the time." In spite of this some people believe in some pretty weird superstitions, but don't close yourself off to these completely. A Catholic missionary friend of mine who has lived here 20 years told me: "Discount juju at your peril!" I am coming to believe the world may be way weirder than I will ever really know.
Most of all, I've learned Nigerians can be brutally frank. I've heard people say things about each other to their faces that would make Lady Bracknell wince, but that's not their way. If it happens to you let it run off like water from a duck's back.
As we got off the plane I looked at you and tried to remember how I felt as I arrived for the first time. In that moment I felt like a very different person from the one who arrived here a year ago, I realised I've stopped worrying about why I'm here. I've been touched by another place, confused and intrigued by its complexity, and marked by it. When, eventually I will leave I will take Nigeria with me, in a small dose.

Laughing at bombs

"There were two doctors immediately on the scene of the attempted bombing, unfortunately one was on fire and the other was trying to blow himself up…"
Comedians in Britain have seized on the latest terrorist attacks in Glasgow and London. And I have to admit, in the absence of any innocent person being hurt, there is an element of comedy to the situation.
The London attempt was foiled when one of the cars was towed away, proving that even terrorists are not immune from the bane of London drivers' lives. That traffic wardens, most often the butt of most people's hatred, should be the heroes of the day invites irony. And for the really dark comedians there is the "what if" scenario… What if no one had noticed the bomb in the car and it had exploded in the pound. Would anyone have mourned those brave traffic wardens who went with it?
"A blazing car was driven into the entrance of Glasgow airport… The news said it was the most violent thing to happen in Glasgow that day. In fact it wasn't even close."
The bombing in Glasgow threw up an unlikely hero. John Smeaton, a baggage handler was there when the jeep, on fire, smashed into the doors. He appeared on every news channel afterward and said in his thick 'Glasge' accent: "Ae jus dun wha every other member of th' public wouldae… Jus' try tae get a few kicks in on the guy, jus try tae bring him doon." His man of action approach to the situation has brought comparisons with Jack Bauer, the terrorist-smashing hero of US TV hit 24. T-Shirts have appeared with his face bearing the legend "What would John Smeaton do?" In the popular imagination Glasgow has always been a violent place, as the hero worship website Johnsmeaton.com said: "Nobody gets between 10,000 Weegies (Glaswegians) and their £99 week in Ibiza". A collection led by the website to buy a drink for 'Smeato' hit £1000 in a matter of minutes.
"Two men who drove a lit car into the main concourse at Glasgow Airport are to be charged under Scotland's tough anti-smoking laws," said Scottish satire website The Daily Mash. "The attackers were caught on CCTV as they lit-up a four litre Jeep Cherokee and then allowed it to burn in an enclosed public place."
Last week when I was in America, many people asked me if I was alarmed at the number of terrorist plots seemingly going on in Britain. The ones this month bring the number foiled to four, including the would-be 21/7 bombers and some young men jailed for drawing up target lists which included nightclubs and tourist destinations. My attitude is that people seem to have already forgotten this is nothing new to us.
In my life I have been less than a mile away from five terrorist bombs, planted by the Irish Republican Army. I vividly remember the day at nursery school when the police arrived and asked teachers to move all the children into a room with no windows. We sat in there for several hours singing songs and playing games, cramped together on the wooden floor, as special branch raided a bomb factory hidden in a house nearby. Years later when I was at secondary school I woke up one morning to the sound of a bomb going off. My widows rattled, but didn't break. The bomb was at my regular school bus stop. An hour later I might have been killed. When you live in this kind of situation humour is the natural harbour to shelter yourself in.
Phillip Hodson of the British Association of Psychologists told The Scotsman: "The difference between fanatical terrorists and the rest of us is that we are able to take more than one look at a situation and to laugh at ourselves. Many of us have some sort of belief system or a set of attitudes or a faith, but we are able to keep it in one compartment of our mind. Extremists let it take over their whole mind, whereas we have the ability to laugh at ourselves. It is an essential part of who we are and the way we deal with the things that we are afraid of or cannot understand - by seeing a different side to it, often one which makes us laugh".
And as one comedian said: "If I was a terrorist who believed an almighty god controlled absolutely everything, if we'd failed four times -I might start to think that Allah quite liked Britain."