Is it lazy or a lack of creativity to repeat old columns? Sometimes not, when one is making a point. In this case, using excerpts from a column written in 2006, originally called ‘The anonymous woman’, I leave you to decide.
“My name is Nkechi. If you are being driven, look out of your window and you will see me. It doesn’t matter where you are, I am there. Personally, I am currently sitting by my small stall on the side of the road off the Aba expressway as you turn right towards the markets. But that’s irrelevant because if you are in the go-slow in Ibadan you can see me. If you are on Agege Motor Road I have stalls and bukkas all along the railway line. I am just outside the main market in Kano or in Suleja. There are many of me at bus-stops like Oshodi, but I am thin on the ground as you drive on the main roads. Sometimes as you speed along the expressway towards Benin or between Umuahia and Enugu, look up those dusty, red paths and you might just catch a sight of me. Invariably, I will be carrying one load or another: water, firewood, or possibly a small child. My face is often to be seen wearily looking out of a Molue’s window jerking its laborious way up the Ikorodu road. Although as I write this, my name is Nkechi, it could equally be Jumoke, Halima or Blessing. I am the anonymous woman.”
My Nkechi went on to explain that she is 52 years old. She has six children, four still alive and all struggling to make ends meet. Her husband has lost his job and she is feeding them through selling a few bits and pieces on the roadside. Her family is shaped by their economic status. I tried to capture a story so familiar as to hardly warrant attention.
My heroine was given hope at the start of the new democratic dispensation … “(when) the last general died. We were so happy and thought some of the good times would return. The elections gave us hope for the future. The papers were full of the presidential elections but the ones closer to home meant more to us. Politicians running for chairman of our LGA or representing this governmental candidate or another held rallies. Even the mother of one candidate called for the women in the state to rally behind her. They gave us little money for attending. They made promises. As the elections got close some bad things happened too. The boys of one LGA candidate would fight the others. There were even shootings and the son of our neighbour was badly beaten on his way home from a rally. After the election we believed the new president would help people like us. My husband would tell me the economy will improve, I should wait and see. I waited. Before the second election we saw some new roads. One or two schools were repainted. These second elections were more violent and the Bakassi Boys would help one politician and then swap to another. When the president was re-elected my husband told me again ‘wait and see’. I am waiting. I wait by my stall where I sell soft drinks and recharge cards. I wait at my bukka where I sell rice and chicken. I wait at the church where I go to pray that God will continue to protect my family. Sometimes I read the papers. I see there is a new Minister of Finance who is a woman. That makes me happy. They tell me she is trying. They tell me she and the new government are fighting corruption. Good. But they are fighting in Abuja, at my level I don’t see it. Our LGA gets good money but where is it? They started to fix some roads but never finished. What of light? There is no borehole and my daughter has to carry water or we buy it from touts who carry it from one public standpipe given by a local business. These touts also work for a chairman who has three Mercedes in his yard.”
As one travels around Nigeria women such as Nkechi, Jumoke, Halima, Blessing are everywhere. It is they who struggle to keep their families together. They collect wood and carry water. With children on their back they scratch small plots for cassava. They sit under bleached umbrellas at the side of the road and sell recharge cards, roasted corn and agbo. While their daughters look for work they care for their grandchildren who sit beside them in the dirt. Wrinkled hands wipe baby snot from little noses with their wrappers. When their husbands escape from their problems and spend their little money on a bottle of stout, they will want soup when they come home. They will still have Five Naira notes (when was the last time you saw one of those?) tucked in their blouses. We all know them but we don’t really ‘see’ them. They are just part of our mental furniture, wallpaper.
So, was it legitimate to repeat an old column? Transformation? Change? Will these words mean anything to Nkechi in another eight years or will I repeat this again? I give her that last word. “Me, I don’t know. I don’t care. Na grammar. I am just waiting for my own people in my state and my area to bring the things that are promised. You can see me waiting. In Makurdi and Maiduguri I wait. In Abakaliki, Epe and Sapele I wait. Look out of your car window. See my face as I wait and grow old.”
Keith Richards
