The Nigerian and Tenderness
I started thinking of the Nigerian and tenderness well before I relocated. I had been contacting friends and colleagues, expressing my relief that eating jollof rice, chin-chin and okra soup would soon be my new normal. I was itching to leave Nairobi. For as much as I appreciated the welcoming ethos of Kenya, after I had found large tomato chunks in my order of okra soup, something in me was ready to go.
In contacting the Nigerians I knew, I had noticed they shared a particular sentiment. All of them would punctuate my eagerness with a frank statement. Here’s an example from one colleague, “Yes, you will have great food here, we would never put large tomato chunks in okra soup. What a travesty. But remember, Nigeria is tough.”
My first three months in Nigeria was an intense reality check. With many obstacles to navigate, toughness was a necessity. I found that everyone has a tough story. It’s almost like a rite of passage to prove you’re Nigerian-ness. The day that driver told you he had no change to give you for the 1000 naira you gave (the bill was 600 naira), and you didn’t bat an eyelash to tell him, “Oh, yes you do.” Or the time you got tired of waiting in the checkout line for the cashier to simply stamp three receipts, so you marched to the counter and began stamping (and then you asked for 200 naira from her salary). And what about that time you sat through a three hour commute (I’m talking to Lagos folks), and managed to drag yourself to the kitchen and fix dinner?
I had also accumulated my own tough stories, my most colorful being when I knew someone was charging an unfair price and I was so frustrated that I shouted until the price was fair.
I’ve noticed that these stories are more acceptable to share and even boast about in a culture where toughness is valued.
But what about tenderness?
Adaku — a close friend I made — spoke of how her mind races so much that at night she gets headaches. Before I could console her, she dismissed all sentimentality saying, “Who in the world doesn’t have problems? I just have to manage and tough it out.”
Underneath the tough exterior, I felt her fear of engaging with the anxiety. It was easier to bypass those messy feelings instead of befriending them. I wondered what critical information the anxiety could teach her about her stress levels…Was her nervous system overtaxed? What was her anxiety concerning? How long had this been going on?
I’ve noticed this “tough it out” attitude in many people, and I also noticed this pattern emerging in myself. The way I treated anything outside of myself — mostly rough, cutthroat, stoic — was becoming the way I responded to myself.
“Tenderness, especially cultivating an inward tenderness, is a reckoning with one’s self, rather than a reckoning with something external.”
Toughness, our expressions of it, usually deals in absolutes. If something needs to be done, do it. If you scrape your knee trying to get out of a crowded keke*, dress the wound. If someone crosses you, check them. It’s a cleaner emotion, with tighter lines and quicker answers. Tenderness is more porous. Not so easy to navigate. (Ex: If you scrape your knee trying to get out of the keke and then you cry because it really hurts, and then someone tramples on your foot while you were trying to cross the highway to get into a taxi, but now the taxi is too crowded to fit you in it, and the blood is dripping down your leg, and you feel like crap, and you want to cry, so you do, and everyone looks at you, saying, “Why are you crying? Go fix your knee…” and how will this scenario end?).
Tenderness, especially cultivating an inward tenderness, is a reckoning with one’s self, rather than a reckoning with something external. In Nigeria, life is very much about responding to what’s outside of you, and from personal experience, it’s easy to forget that you have a right to cultivate an inner life and develop empathy for yourself.
It’s easier to identify with toughness because we’ve been conditioned to believe its more appropriate and honorable. For the Nigerian — just like for many people — tenderness is deeply misunderstood.
I’ll never forget the words from another friend — Isaac — who after much back and forth admitted that he was terrified of facing his vulnerability. He also revealed that knowing so much was out of his control made him uncomfortable, saying, “The thought of being weak — even to myself — would destroy me.”
Chiron: I cry so much sometimes I turn to drops.
Moonlight
Everyone has had a childhood, and most everyone begins here when thinking back to the day they learned that tenderness was considered weakness. In my time here, the experiences are plenty: My Dad told me men don’t smile, so I stopped smiling…I burnt myself on the stove and I was hit for not knowing any better…We never had enough to eat when I was kid, what can you do but pray for better days? It is well…
Sometimes, depending on your situation, the wisest approach might actually be to tough it out until you have the capacity to shift into another choice, but the idea that your feelings won’t catch up with you, and that you’ll never need to find a healthy way to attend to them, simply isn’t true. Feelings are energy, and if energy is neither created nor destroyed, then these emotions are manifesting themselves somehow. For the majority of folks, it’s in some form of stress or stress related dis-ease.
“Feelings are energy, and if energy is neither created nor destroyed, then these emotions are manifesting themselves somehow.”
We live in a multidimensional world with an abundance of intelligences, the idea that simply coping or toughing it out will save the day is only one out of many possibilities, and in today’s world of mental health awareness, self care, and social movements rigorously critiquing how capitalism runs us ragged, the information on the shifts we might need to make as a human collective abounds. It’s not to say that we should all immediately start crying, hugging it out, and quitting whatever doesn’t make us happy (even though I’ve done exactly this and I’m better for it. Just saying…). It’s more about, what are the small steps that can help shift your orientation to yourself? Do you appreciate yourself enough to actually listen to yourself? Doing so, is a step towards tenderness.
To revisit the conversation I had with Isaac, I’ll leave you with his words,
“Tenderness…what is that? I guess I could have my cousin fix me something to eat when I have a rough day, and maybe talk to my pastor about what I’m going through? And maybe — I don’t know — therapy? Isn’t that what everyone’s doing these days? You pay someone to cry to, right? Someone to talk to about… what’s happened. I’ll try. It’s the best I can do, for now.”
*Keke, Naija term for three wheelers. Full name keke napep.
