Feeding Your Eyes and Offending Your Mind

by

Obododimma Oha

Many experts would agree that feeding has a psychology. One has to enjoy one's meal. Taking a meal is not the time to overlook the food or eat absent-mindedly. I know that many people are now attached to phones, TV shows, films, etc. They like feeding their eyes and by so doing feed their minds. But this kind of feeding of the mind can conflict with and offend feeding the body,  so that the food we ingest is mere excess luggage. The body cannot be insulted or bribed when the mind is somewhere else. This essay  is simply saying that both are good but have to be done appropriately and in a non-conflicting way.

Phones and films are great stressors and means of killing time. The local Igbo who describe films as "elelebe ejeghị ọrụ" (That which somebody watches and fails to go to work) are very right. Such activities can consume our time if we are attached to them.That means that we should use them wisely. Like every habit, they try to control us. We should not let that happen. Is it a phone call when one is in the middle of something? NO; let it ring out. Is it God calling you? Later you can check and see the "missed Call" and return the call. Same for the films.Don't let the attachment to "ezemmụọ syndrome" lead you to forget that you are putting your android phone inside the soup and not some salt.

But this is about feeding and insulting or offending the mind. When you need to watch your favourite programme on TV is not the time to pretend to attend to your stomach. That is also not the time for "ezemmụọ." Your stomach is asking for a lot of care; is it? Your stomach has to respect modern multi-tasking; is it? Please, feed while you feed and watch pictures while you watch.

Watching pictures would help you to laugh, to smile, to chuckle, to unburden, to take life easy, etc. But it would also make you feed on the raw emotions of others, internalize such, and temporarily step out of yourself to be somebody else or to sympathize with X and Y and be a partisan politician. When you are at table, that is not the time to play all that politics.

It could even be worse if eating and watching pictures are jointly done just before turning in for the night. So, someone has to go to bed with all those emotions burdening one's mind, coupled with the sad experience of COVID and cattle militia? It is highly possible that the fellow would have bad dreams or start shouting while asleep and kicking the next sleeper like football. Even the supper that is taken absent-mindedly may be digested absent-mindedly by the body, leading to indigestion. But the body and the mind need to work together on the food and happily, too. Absent-mindedly ingested, NO.

There was a lady supervior of cookery that I was lucky to have come across in Lagos sometime ago. She would stand to see you served and would then say, "Enjoy your food." That became her signature greeting equivalent to "Bon appetit." I am beginning to realize how right she was. Enjoy your food and do not be distracted. Enjoy our creativity that comes as this food. Enjoy the beauty of this food and the beauty served as this food. Just enjoy.

And she would be beaming with smiles, as if one has to eat her face first, then, eat the food.
Am I beginning to sound like a motivational speaker? An expert in cookery? NO. None of these. Just an idiotic fellow telling you also to enjoy your food. Telling you on behalf of that lady beaming with smiles somewhere. I wished the warmth of her smile and her good wish would follow me to every table.

Didn't I say that watching pictures was also feeding of the mind? Indeed, what you see is what is fed to the mind , what is thought about. So, at other times, be careful with what you feed to the mind. I don't blame those children who easily lose interest in "crazy" adult programmes and prefer to play with their toys. Those indigestible narratives that adults use in complicating their lives. Those painful but "stupid" quarrels. Abeg, I won't play with you again.

Well, you have got it. When you watch your disturbing pictures is not when to pretend to be eating and enjoying your food. Your food is your life. Enjoy your life. If you want to disturb that life later with sad pictures, you can do so.

Watching a film or TV while eating is not always good for your mind and body that receives the food. Eating has a psychology. Those in the film or TV won't know that you are eating if they say or do something that would make you lose appetite. Respect your table today.

Trouble-maker

By

Obododimma Oha

If you still know
the difference between right and wrong
You are
a trouble-maker

If you do not accept
that the abnormal is normal
You are an unrepentant trouble-maker

If you do not think
that a snake can enter
a well-guarded State House
and swallow millions of dollars
You are a terrible trouble-maker from Mars

If you believe appointments are ethnocentric
it means you have been reading too much
narratives of conspiracy, and need to COVID-mask
as a trouble-making spirit
dancing naked in the global village square

Trouble-maker
Rabble-rouser
dangerous citizen
a cocked AK-47 pointing to your head.

Some Interesting Local Re-articulations of Some European Names

by

Obododimma Oha

Taking European names when one is an African may be seen as a sign of being bought over culturally, being fully identified as colonized, but it is seen by some Africans as being modern, being liberated from the bush and its identity, or being converted. I know that no European would normally want to be addressed as "Mr. Okafọ" or "Mr. Okeke," a native of Italy or Greece. But some Africans are very proud to bear European names or try to make the names sound European. In this short blog essay, I reflect on this practice of bearing European names as Africans and particularly how these names have been re-imagined and re-articulated in my local area in Nigeria.

Local people need to be familiar with European names that others bear. Is it not for identification? One has to identify the bearer but one has to show familiarity with the label. So, local people in our village try to impose a familiarization strategy: they re-articulate the labels in a way that the village can recognize. Thus, a label like "Joseph" that somebody  hangs on himself is realized as "Jesiefe" and "Cornelius" becomes "Kolonuusu." You want me to bite my tongue? I have to pronounce it the way that we pronounce it, particularly so as not to bite my tongue.

Okay, names like "Wilfred," "Alfred," "Gregory" and "Grace" ask one to do a little press up to get ready to articulate them. Local people can only think of "Wilfred" as "Wulifreedi,, " "Gregory" as "Ngiringori," and "Alfred" as "Arụfreedi." Would any law on masking in the National Assembly also deal with someone who calls "Grace" something like "Greesi"? I doubt it.

Maybe Igbo language should be partially blamed for this. The language trains its speakers to follow certain patterns in the realization of sounds. Now, you want a person who wants to appear European to do a surgical operation on the tongue or to write a fervent protest letter to Chukwu Abịa-amụma, complaining bitterly about being neither here nor there? You want one of those?

A person is also encouraged in some churches to bear these European names, that they are saint names that serve as passports to Heaven. The original bearers were not local people somewhere before becoming saints. By the way, why is it that these saint names do not include Okeke and Okafọ? And why should I quarrel with bearing saint names and be hated by the saint colonialist who has gone up there?

Further, there is something about looking like the other to become the other in this that I do not like. So, the hosts of Heaven cannot really take me as I am, along with my local name? So, I must appear to be a saint to become one? So, the politics of naming and change of a local outlook even extend to Heaven? Too bad. Let us see how my local name and language are offensive to the authorities "up" there.

As one protests and riots over the politics of naming and re-naming, one cannot help but laugh with the local people in our village when they they re-articulate "Patrick" as "Patriki," "Festus" as "Festuusu," and "Felix" as "Felikisi." Why can't one elongate the name a bit, out-doing the original in modernity? Why can't some syllables be inserted here and there to make one's tongue a bit relaxed?

You see, people in our village are heroes. They  do not have to be world-class theoreticians of onomastics or or decolonization, but they have done a great job. Imagine decolonizing these names without waiting to get permission from Abuja! They also do not ask for any university degree before they can be reognized. If you are "Cornelius," be sure that you are simply "Kolonuusu" in our village. If you are "Wilfred," you are simply "Wulifreedi." The local people are not afraid of you.

Some Interesting COVID-19 Protective Face Masks: Commitment to Survival or Artistic Performance?

by

Obododimma Oha

COVID-19 has almost turned many into masked figures, with their presentation of many types of coverings as their protective masks. It is suspected that the air might be a chief means of transmitting the virus, and the air is shared. Mask covering the mouth and the nose is recommended for preventing an entry of the virus into the body. There is also the conspiracy theory that masks sold by major organizations may be produced to infect many or secretly designed to implant a dubious control chip. For some who think that they are very clever, it is an easy way of ripping people off and making money. In this case, they could mass-produce and sell masks and encourage their use, but they have another agenda. That, of course, is happening, just as some may like an on-going war because it helps them to sell their weapons or bags of beans needed by troops somewhere.

On the other hand, the COVID-19 experience has almost turned protective mask-making into an art. This article is interested in exploring briefly this kind of art that makes the mask a source of fun.

Some Facebook friends have been sharing some of these masks. For instance, Toyin Mojisola-Adegbite Makinde. One may be interested in why she is doing that. One reason, I suspect, is that the mask represents a unique playfulness and there is an attempt at humouring COVID-19 (that means, laughing in-between tears).

Here are some spectacular updates of some funny protective masks on Toyin Mojisola-Adegbite Makinde's wall:
               
                                       (1).

(Taken from an update on Toyin Mojisola- Adegbite Makinde's Facebook wall, but photographer unknown ) 

(2)

(The Ape Facial Mask, taken from Toyin Mojisola-Adegbite Makinde's Facebook wall, photographer unknown). 

(3)

( The Bra Face Mask, taken from Toyin  Mojisola-Adegbite Makinde's Facebook wall, photographer unknown) 

In the second case in which a chimpanzee is mimicked, Wale Sobande in his comment writes: "This is coro monkey facemask." Sobande is right: obviously, there is an attempt to make us view masking as a way of taking the identity of the other. And why not steal that of a chimp that likes imitating a lot? It remains for the mimicry to be extended to walking on all fours and making a monkey-like guttural sound. Is that too fictional?

Mojisola-Adegbite Makinde also brings gender into this masking practice. We could see this clearly in the dressing of the masked figure in a woman's gown. But of the third image of the mask from her shuts one's mouth completely: a woman's bra is used as a mask! Surprising! Or, rather, alarming! Is what is important not the covering of the mouth and the nose?  If bra could do that, fine. And really every mouth or nose has touched what the bra is used in covering. But we are subtly reminded what the bra is originally used for. The secondary use is your own headache. In this case, the underlying idea of breast is just implied and is left to the reader-viewer.

This is where interpretation of signs comes in. Is the breast naturally tied to bra-wearing? Why not COVID? If not, why not?

Then, the worrisome aspect: women are sometimes associated with evil and disasters in male-oriented narratives. Ask Adam and Eve. Ask Delilah. Ask Jezebel. Ask Lady Macbeth. So, a woman's bra taken over by COVID, a global health disaster, reminds us about those terrible narratives. But COVID is not a woman. At least, one is not saying that it is. But COVID is disastrous!

All kinds of things have been used as protective masks, even tin. But also in some cases, one finds very strange, total covering of self, a clear humouring of the masking practice.

Perhaps, very direct to the masquerade link is the update by Chidozie Chukwubuike, in which we have following text: "If we knew we would all eventually be performing as masquerades perhaps my village wouldn't have cancelled our Ekpo masquerade festival in deference to COVID-19." The visual image of a masked self tells the rest of the story.

(Self-masking by Chidozie Chukwubuike, from his Facebook wall)  

For Toayofunmi Diya-Ayokunnumi, a more factual play on masking is also worth considering. So, she uploads the following information for our attention on masking:

(The Hard Facts about Masks and Masking, on Toayofunmi Diya-Ayokunnumi's Facebook wall ) 

She further explains that: "All is good but to be use (sic) at moderation. Excessively usage of N95 might implicate some respiratory complications. Why? It would congest C02 to less aeration." That sounds too Chinese!

Anyway, we could see that making just anything a mask is not protection but a mere performance. And that is the heart of the matter. Humour aside, performance aside, this is about survival. Covering the mouth and the nose is not just out of fun. It is about life, a desire for survival and a visual statement saying that. So, we can enjoy the joke of our miserable selves, but we should look beyond that and struggle to survive.