When No One Is Looking
Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels As long as I can remember, I have always cared about the issues that affect Africa, Africans and people of African dissent, with special focus on how these issues affect women and children. Even as a child in primary school, I can remember expressing anger at people who treated women and children poorly and standing up for the girls in my class. It would not be far-fetched to assume I was born this way, having what can be described as a gnawing need to lend my voice to women and children’s issues. I was probably around 10 years old when I learned about basic human rights and the government’s role in protecting them. Without meaning to, that became my Bible and code of conduct. I started creating content from a very young age. I wrote stories and school plays that centered women and children in roles that were not usually associated with their sex or age. These stories became church dramas because for most of my teenage years, I found expression in the church. Granted, most of what I created then was quite gruff and had a diamond-in-the-rough kind of feel but a central theme shone through all my pieces: women and children were human in themselves and needed to be treated with the full respect accorded to them by their basic rights. I remember a play I wrote that we performed in church. It started with the parents of the lead character – a young teen – finding out that she was pregnant. Rather than be judgmental, it promoted allowing yourself to be hurt if your child gets pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ but, loving (and supporting) the child regardless. It showed that children were themselves overwhelmed by the consequences of their actions and beating them or kicking them out of the house was not a fair way to handle the issue. This play connected so well with people that the way teen pregnancies were handled – a problem that was predominant in the community where the church was situated – became markedly different. It was for this openness that I was chosen when I was about 14 years to be part of a peer-education capacity building session on complete sexuality education. This opened my mind’s eye to the Millennium Development Goals and a world bigger than the things my environment had constrained it to. I began to actively promote these goals because I was: unhappy that the world didn’t take the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger as seriously as it should; wondering what could be done to achieve universal primary education; sure I needed to actively promote the idea of gender equality and the need to empower women; broken at the rate of child and maternal mortality and wondering how I could help; hated all discriminatory acts to people living with HIV/AIDS in a world where it was okay to do so; didn’t want anyone to die from Malaria or any other disease that could easily be prevented with small lifestyle changes; and, hated that our environment was gradually becoming dirty and unsustainable as a result of poor sanitation due to reduced enforcement of communal environmental protection activities. These issues became my issues. They mattered to me. And I wanted to do something about them. As I grew from teenager to young adult, I began to refine the areas that I was interested in. While I wanted to work in the field to directly help women and children, I knew it was cost heavy and living on the poverty line myself at that time, I didn’t think there was much I could do to help these people. So, I chose a path that centered more on creating content that could cause a mind shift in the general public and change behaviors that put women in boxes marked, ‘second class citizens’. I continued to write stories and plays for church, making sure to include the women empowerment nuggets in the overall message of the Christian faith. With the advent of social media, I found a bigger outlet for my work…especially as I was questioning faith and removing myself from the church. I began to share my views – my very gruff and many times, antagonistic views – on my social media platforms. A friend told me about blogs and the possibilities they held for massive, and maybe even global, reach. So, I learned about this new frontier of communication and started my blog: Shades of Us. I continued to evolve as a person, finding more perspectives to human rights and seeking even more succinct ways to communicate my ideas around them. When I heard the word ‘feminist’ during Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TedX Talk – We Should All Be Feminists – I knew this was the word that perfectly described exactly who I was and the issues that mattered to me. So here I was: Ramatu Ada Ochekliye, creating content around the Sustainable Development Goals and hoping I could change the world with my words. But, reality check. The world really doesn’t want to be changed. If the world has its way, it will continue to be patriarchal, misogynistic and abusive to women and children. It would continue to express hate against people whose sexuality is different from the accepted norm. It would continue to be intolerant of people’s rights to association, religion, belief and dignity. This is why, my work – and the work of other feminists, human rights activists and advocates, and anyone who just believes in the basic rights of all human beings across the world – can be really tasking. Nobody tells you that it is easier to maintain the status quo, as oppressive as it is, than it is changing anything. And because of this, many activists suffer the painful burnout that comes with wondering if their work even means anything. Oh! There are many reasons to keep
We May All Be Bigots!
Four people holding quote movies.Image: Pexels. Bigot (noun) big·ot ˈbi-gət {Merriam Webster Dictionary} : a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. : a bigoted person; especially : a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group) Bigotry [big-uh-tree]. Noun. Plural bigotries {Dictionary.com} 1. Stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own. 2. The actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot. As I scrolled through my timeline on Facebook on the 28th day of June, 2015, I came across a post which made me do a double take. I scrolled back up and reread the post. On a normal day, I would never have dropped a comment on that post; but I did. The reason I went back to that post was because it was about one of the most trending topics that week. It was a post about the Supreme Court of the United States’ landmark decision on legalizing gay rights to marriage. This is the post. “#SameSexMarriage Well, what else do you expect of a hypersexual society where nudity and sex is the norm and ‘do-do-do’ right from kindergarten to old People’s Homes? They got bored and/or tired of their preordained opposite sexes! And if this rule that allows same sex marriage is not reversed, soon they may get bored of their same sex spouses and may end up dating/marrying animals too. Tir!! May Allah SWT preserve our Iman in sticking to our opposite sexes as spouses. Beautifully and/or perfectly as below…..” The picture above accompanied the post. Reading it, one line caught my attention; the line about a ‘hyper-sexual society’. I was surprised that the author of the post believed that homosexuality was only as a result of a hyper-sexual society. Since I had (in the past) discussed certain issues with this author, I felt that we could rub minds. So I posted this; “ME: Do you know that there are Arabians [sic] marrying transsexuals? Do you know that there are homosexuals in countries where nudity is not found? Where they wear Nikkab and Kaftan only? Do you know the effects of sexually repressing society? Evil persists everywhere, whether a society is hyper-sexual or having repressed sexuality.” When I posted this, I waited to hear his reply. I got one, but it wasn’t his. “BOY 1: I find ur logic pretty twisted…….may be we shud stop “repressing” armed robbery as well! In fact we shud live without code of conduct and allow our animal instincts dictate how we live. “Repressing”!!!” When I saw this, I was like ‘Hol’ up! Urhhh…..what is he talking about?’ Then I replied; “ME: @BOY 1….lol. I am glad you find my logic ‘twisted’. While you may not care about freedom, I am glad you realize that there is evil everywhere…or I hope you do. Maybe you should acquaint yourselves with the number of closeted homosexuals in countries that have….how did you put it…’code of conduct’? Covering up hasn’t prevented men (and women) from being evil; flirting, having multiple partners or even deviating by having sex with children, animals and the likes. So, while I may be ‘twisted’ in my logic, I do realize that society is innately evil and nudity or the absence of it does not make one society any better than another. Get knowledge and be balanced in your ideologies…or quite frankly, take a dive.” Okay…I agree I was a bit harsh. I could blame it on BOY 1 commenting when he didn’t understand what I was saying, but I wouldn’t. It wasn’t long before BOY 1 returned. “BOY 1: Take a dive?………not a chance. But besides dat, if fredoom [sic] were absolute we wouldn’t be having prisons don’t u tink?” To which I responded; “ME: @BOY 1…Freedom is never absolute. NEVER! I’m just saying that people should be balanced in their analysis. Quite simple if I dare say.” “BOY 1: Balanced kuma? (‘balanced again?’ for none Hausa speakers) Am [sic] lost…….” I realized I needed to douse the tension, so I responded with something I hoped will make him laugh. “ME: I pray you get found.” To which he sent a smiling smiley face. Now, as we were having this conversation, the author of the post had not said anything. But that changed after a while. AUTHOR: Yusuf Jnr Interesting! I have missed a lot’ooo….just where have I been all these while? ‘Ramadan tinz’. Yeah……it should be just that. OK, where do I begin? Tomorrow is another day In-Shā-Allah….am gonna cool off and come back a little calmer. From his response, I had a premonition that we weren’t going to ‘rub minds’. While he was cooling off, another friend of his came to the party. “BOY 2: Something Ramatu something, you made your point. Now who said “Arabians” (I think you meant to say “Arabs”) were saints? Arabs are humans and there are sinners among them. But get this clearly, no ‘straight’ government in this world would do this. America is gay. Well, now technically they are. And whoever finds this post offending could be the opposite of an arrow…If you know what I mean. Lastly, before you sing your narrow minded song about civilization [sic], and America being civilized [sic], zip it! I don’t see si.vi.ly.za.shon as sky scrapers and extreme atheism. Si.vi.ly.zay.shon is simply what it is…dunce. think about it, Summun-bukmun!” I am sure you can imagine the look on my face when I read this post. ‘Who the flying French was this guy?’ I asked myself. He even refused to recognize my other names because they didn’t sound like what he believed, instead using ‘something’. What a laugh! I was talking about something, and he was saying something else. And since he felt he needed to correct my mistake, I was quite surprised he made some of his own. Then I saw the words ‘dunce’ and ‘summun-bukmum’. Dunce I know; the latter I didn’t. So, Google to the rescue! When I typed in the phrase,
