Dream Crazier
Uncle Seyi (does everybody have an uncle Seyi or what?) likes to tell my siblings and I stories from our childhood. Every time he visits, even now as adults, we sit/stand around to listen to our naughty or strange ways as children (talk about premium crackheads). My favourite story from his unwritten collection is a story about my older sister.
The story goes like this: one evening, when she was in kindergarten, and my brother was in primary one, before I was even born, they showed our parents their report cards. My brother had come first, so my father gave him a piece of meat from his plate. You know how exciting meat can be. My sister on the other hand, had no “position” written on her report card apart from general remarks as is/was the custom in kindergartens. Seeing my brother with a piece of meat got her angry and maybe even jealous. She asked to know her position and demanded a piece of meat. If I was there, I’d have told her: “Aunty, you no get position, calm down,” but I wasn’t even born like I said — [rolling my eyes]. Long story short, she burst into tears and said, under dim lantern light, (again, I wasn’t there, but I can picture the setting at our old house in Amen Street, Abule-Oja, almost too vividly), “You people don’t know that when I’m in primary one, I’ll be coming first all the time.” My uncle says she repeated this 7 times before they pacified her with a piece of meat.
Fun fact: my sister came first all through primary school, almost all through secondary school in ISL, was the best graduating student in her faculty and department as an undergraduate (Psychology and Social sciences), Masters and would definitely be at the top of her class at the end of her PhD. Cheers to dreaming and dreaming out loud.
In another Thoughts Day, I’ll write about how I live(d) in her shadow. Today, I’ll just muse about ambition. I was going through instagram stories when a collage of images from Nike Women popped up asking that we “don’t change our dream,” and that instead, we “change the world,” by “just do(ing) it”. You know how social media can be a rabbit hole, somehow, somehow, I ended up on Naomi Osaka’s interview on the highlights on Nike Women’s Instagram page. As she narrated the events that led up to her tennis career, how she’d always known what she wanted to do, how her dreams keep growing, how everything all connects, how everything we do isn’t a coincidence, how our whole life has been leading up to one moment, etc. etc., I thought, I’d be damned, this is me. Why? I’ve always dreamt.
Unfortunately, not everyone can relate. There was a time, and it still happens here and elsewhere, where girls were/are chided for being too ambitious. To an extent, I grew up with the idea that I should be limited in my career ambitions because I’m a woman. I probably did not learn this from my parents. My mother is a banker who reached (to a considerable extent) the peak of her career before she retired. Maybe by society. I only recently realized this in my pay expectations, thanks to this Naira Life post for opening my eyes (shine your eyes, ladies, get your coins). Sheryl Sandberg coined the phrase ‘ambition gap’ arguing that girls’ ambition is thwarted from childhood: “We don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons.” We also remember Chimamanda’s quote off We Should All Be Feminists as heard repeatedly in Beyonce’s Flawless.
As a feminist and someone who plans to maybe have a child or two (read a daughter or two; beware, future husband) this has been a growing concern for me (well, generally, gender issues) but how can I be different? What can I do differently? Luckily, a few people around the world are taking steps to control things. Notably, three amazing teenagers are working to change the law on child marriage which we can all agree is something that thwarts ambition. Many thanks to Serena and the Nike Campaign too for asking us to dream crazier (I’m hoping I have a wild dream tonight tbh.) This is me acknowledging that inspite of any limitations I’ve mentioned, the truth is that I’m privileged; I’m grateful that I can dream (literally and figuratively).
Interesting Reads?
Today, I took a long walk down Isaac John, unto Joel Ogunnaike, listening to this podcast which sort of relates to our conversation last week (shout out to me for always thinking about you.) I recently discovered the Personal History column on the New Yorker and MY GOD, it is everything. I read My Childhood in a Cult, Losing Religion and Finding Ecstasy in Houston and My Father’s Stack of Books. My conversation with Nnamdi Ehirim, author of Prince of Monkeys also recently got published on Arts and Africa.
Typing half asleep because I’m exhausted. I hope you’ll excuse the abruptness of this letter based on this. I don’t think it’s because I worked particularly hard this week; I don’t think I’m getting enough rest. Trying to be a writer, editor, ‘reader’ etc. is hard and tedious. Speaking of reading, here’s a pick-me-up from this week that I loved so much: Mary Oliver on books and why passion for work is the “great antidote to pain.”
“The world’s otherness is antidote to confusion [and] standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”
Goodnight & talk soon. Love you guys.
