SOME OF MY NIGERIAN BELIEFS

I had just come home from the bank when I realized that I didn’t have enough money on me to pay the okada that had brought me home. I turned to the guy who sold recharge cards outside and asked him to give me some change for the okada man. I stretched out my left hand to receive the money but he held it back and looked at me with admonishment in his eyes

Emma what is it, give me the money na

You are stretching out your left hand… abi you no know say na bad thing to use your left hand collect or give money ne

Hehehehe…… Emma all those times wey I dey use left hand give you money wey you dey collect… you no sabi say na left hand I bin dey use dey give you the money ne

Eeeeeh……maybe my mind bin no dey there jare

 Abeg if you dey give me money give me now… free me all that talk about left hand tin jare….

Later that night in the comfort of my bed while reflecting on the day that I had just had, I thought about all those beliefs attached with irrational fears that a lot of Nigerians held unto.

I want to share some of them with you and maybe you can dispute or validate the credibility of these beliefs;

a.     When I was in secondary school we believed that a female wearing her panties inside out would bring good luck for that day. I don’t know how true this claim was but a lot of time while in the university I usually wore my panties inside out anytime I wanted a favor from a lecturer or I was praying for my uncle to send me some bonus allowance that I wasn’t originally supposed to receive.

b.     I used to spit a lot while in primary school… I would spit on the way to school, on the way to class, during break, when I went to use the toilet… infact I am sure that I spat every one hour but it came to a head one time in primary school when the school administration decided that in order to foster the spirit of positive competition between both sexes there was going to be a novelty football match between boys and girls. I was pretty stocked because I was always trying to compete with the boys in my class to prove to them that I was way better than they could ever be. During the game the boys were spitting a lot and the girls kept telling them to use the heel of their foot to wipe the saliva off the ground or else if someone stepped on their saliva, they would have sore throat. I don’t know how true this claim was because I started believing from that moment that every time I had sore throat it was because someone else had stepped on my saliva.

c.      As kids I was up there with the most stubborn children who didn’t listen to their parents, played a lot, got into trouble and had a lot of injuries. Some of which resulted in a broken tooth. I would usually just spit up the blood like I saw in the good, the bad and the ugly and feel like a badass while I threw the fallen tooth in the gutter. My friends later advised me that it was better if I wrapped that tooth up in a piece of paper and threw it on top of the roof of the building where we lived because it would help the tooth to grow faster. They also advised that every time I got into trouble with my mum, I should pluck out a strand of hair from my eyebrow, wrap it in paper and throw it either into the gutter or on top of the roof. I tried this a lot but it only worked once and I think it was because my mum was tired of beating me with Mr. Do Good every time I did the wrong thing which happened to be almost every day.

d.     We played a lot of pranks as kids. For some reason we thought the idea of someone fainting was super cool and we always tried to learn how to faint. Thinking back now I realize how silly our actions must have seemed but I will not forget in a hurry one time when one of the pupils in the school claimed that she had perfected the act of fainting (especially when a teacher was about to use corporal punishment on a pupil) by putting a seed of beans in each of her armpits. It caused a rukus in school that day as the teachers kept trying to revive the pupil for the next 30 minutes. No one ever flogged her again or even shouted on her after that day. I later found out that this pupil had just watched a Jet Li movie where she had seen the art of pretentious fainting which she executed seamlessly in school that day!

e.      In the university I had a couple of interesting friends who had some theories on the best way to know a dude who had a huge penis. The most popular one that became the standard of measure was that you could tell the size of a dude’s penis by looking at his hands. For a few weeks after that revelation. I started staring at the hands of all the men I came across wondering if it was true that the size of their hands reflected the size of their penis.

f. There was a pair of twins who lived down the street. When we were thirteen waiting for menstruation to start and our chests and buttocks to turn into boobs and ass they were already fully developed! All the girls in the neighbourhood were jealous (even me). None of us could understand how these girls had sprouted boobs overnight. That was until someone came with an explanation that made sense at the time. She alleged that the reason why the twins were sprouting so quickly was because someone was touching/ massaging their assets. I was filled with righteous indignation because it suddenly justified why they were developing more quickly than the rest of us. I still don’t know if that is true. I know for a fact that doing exercises regularly like jugging can reduce the size of the boobs but I do not know if massaging of the boobs by the opposite sex will make the boobs to suddenly start sprouting… metaphorically.

g.     In secondary school I was literally always hungry. The only time I wasn’t hungry was on visiting days and that was for obvious reasons. The rations of food we got were always so small for growing youths like us to survive on. I didn’t have money for tuck shop so I was unable to get alternate meals. One day while I was walking towards what we called the small gate, I contemplated how I was going to survive on an empty stomach from 2pm till 6pm when the next meal was supposed to be dished (I had missed lunch). I remember the sun blazing down on my small frame angrily like if some supernatural being was trying to punish for a crime I wasn’t aware of. As I neared the gate, I saw N200 on the floor. I was surprised and as if acknowledging the site before me the worms in my stomach leapt for joy! I thought about the consequences of taking money that was not mine, top of which was the belief that picking money from the floor could turn a person into a food item (the popular belief then was a tuber of yam). I was so hungry that for once in my life I ignored my fears and morals, picked up the money with shaking hands, headed to tuck shop and bought myself a 35cl coke and N20 agege bread to accompany it. That has to be one of the most delicious meals that have ever gone into my mouth! Thankfully, I didn’t turn into a tuber of yam or any non-living organism…

Sometimes beliefs are there to keep us walking straight, sometimes they are just rumored words that become a fact of life, sometimes they represent our irrational fears giving us a shield to hide behind and at other time they are shackles that hold us back from expanding our horizons…

Drop a comment and share some beliefs that you adhered to while growing up…