By
Obododimma
Oha
We are all
hyrids – all humans, except that person that has not resulted from a marriage. But
if that person has, that fellow is the produce of two different kinds from
different gardens. In a marriage, people from two different backgrounds are
paired up, and if Nature wills, they reproduce, and what they have brought into
this space (without asking for its consent, without asking it to sign an
agreement that can be presented later as proof) is a mixture of two different
ways. Christianity has even compounded one’s amazement by saying that in
marriage, the acceptable arithmetic is 1+1 = 1. I thought that arithmetic logic says
that the answer is 2! Anyway, hybridity and the baffling logic of 1+ 1 = 1 make one to distrust mathematical logic a
bit, and also to begin to treat both as being in perfect agreement in producing surprises.
Along this
line of absurd thinking, one has to be a fool, a complete fool, a mumu in Nigerian
public discourse, for one’s marriage to succeed. One has to learn to tell lies and make
it an acceptable art. For instance, if one’s wife is ugly, one has to say that
she is beautiful. If she has weight of flesh a little, tell her that she looks
great, or even use avoidance strategy. A euphemism is still risky! Don’t talk about size at all. Change the
topic of discourse, if somebody introduces the “offensive” topic. Or, get up
and ask for permission to go the toilet. Indeed, you could pass water, hot
water! If your wife asks you: “Honey, how do I look,” don’t ask her to ask her
mirror, or you won’t have your evening meal. Just tell a lie and pretend like a
bloody hypocrite that it does not matter, even if in your prayer you have just
prayed in tongues and have been filled with the holy spirit. The important thing
is to be allowed to wear your jacket and go to work or for the house to
accommodate you when you come back. Learn to tell a little lie. Don’t be a fool
and tell the truth always! You are not in a catechism class!
Are you not a
hybrid? Have you not emerged from two backgrounds, and may be either a
contamination or an enhancement? In keeping with that, you are both holy and
unholy, sacred and profane, just and unjust, and so on. You can even be a
pastor in the State House and at the same time a devil with distinction and can help to cover up shameful State-sponsored crimes. Even
the fool writing this article may be a professor but may actually be a bockhead promoting 11th-century pastoralism, hunting and gathering, in the 21st century. He could pretend to
be promoting amazing enlightenment with only two publications as a “quota professor” but
USAAfricaDialogue is a living witness to the fact that he promotes ignorance.
So, insert your truth in parenthesis. What you even claim to be true is truth, no more. Do
dictatorship and its pseudo-intellectual wing not extend their influence to listserv interventions,
Facebook updates and commentary, twitting and responding to tweets, WhatsApping
endlessly, etc? Yes; truth is your parenthetic town-crier telling the community sharp contrasts.
It is still
the same if the marriage is community-based and has been contracted by coloniality. You were asking
for independence, for self-rule, but now signify your admiration and tendency for
colonization. You were asking oyibo to go, that Heaven had not sent them to
save you, but you are now arguing that the colonial map must stay. You see, you
are a bad hybrid: the colonialist and the colonized! If the colonial authorities had
killed one freedom fighter, colonial offices would have gone up in flames, but
you are shooting at sight flag-waving youths with live bullets and getting promoted for the crime! Also, because you are justified in being a pastoralist
instead of establishing a ranch for your cow business (everywhere is your space), you can drive your
animals to the streets in New York and London.
The marriage
of groups forcefully lumped together by the intruder-colonialist is a perfect
marriage made in Heaven. In fact, St. Peter was the altar boy and Jesus was the
officiating minister at the wedding. What a marriage where cows are more
important than human beings! What a marriage! Do you see how the logic of 1 + 1
= 1 is mysterious to me? I would have preferred 2 (two) as the answer for it
helps me to have a clear direction.
Hybridity and
unusual logics in marriages baffle me. It is simply because I have not yet understood
that one could know the truth and it would set one free, but one should also be
ready to have the knowledge of the truth make one bitter. Being able to see
inside the bag and call the domestic fowl a bush fowl would set somebody free
and send the idealistic kids away. An elder’s eyes knows how a lie can turn to
a truth.
Comments