The sun after rain

E no mata the condition

Believe in your heart

And you go dey alright

No forget say after rain fall

And after the dark

The sun go shine   – Johnny Drille

You can tell that it’s a blessing in disguise I didn’t win the scholarship in 2020, the year of the Coronavirus international lockdown, until 2021. Those who went to the US on the scholarship that year had to leave.

I had gotten the offer but didn’t tell anybody yet, except one person who kept track through the whole application process. I had legitimate concerns for doing so, though a few people came to know about it later. I slept every day with the enormity of the news in my chest. I brimmed and struggled with excitement, trying to keep the news from spilling out.   

Things continued to move on slowly. Communications went on with the embassy, the IIE and folk at the UW-Madison. I received my contract letter, signed and sent it back to indicate I accepted the offer. The sponsoring agency, the embassy, and the host institution continued to do their collaborative work as each unit has an aspect of the program to administer.

Few days later, after sending back the contract form, I received a call from my alma mater, seeking to know if I was willing to work in one of their agencies. I was almost put in a conundrum. I had been looking for this job, any job, so why now?

ABU is one of the places I was dying to work in, one. Two, the job is permanent, and there was this girl I had been looking from one corner of my eyes. Third, there was underground talk in the family about a certain job, which I didn’t like. What can be worse than declining a job offer from your benefactor? In a country where you don’t have much choices? That’s unthinkable!

This ABU job would save me a lot of headaches: it was a chance for me to avoid a scene with my benefactor, to get money to marry that lady, and to work in the university community I love, a nostalgia from the assorted dreams of my undergraduate days. But I had already signed the Fulbright contract. Well, I told them the truth, which I believed was the best decision for many reasons.

All my life, I wanted to bring something huge independently to my family, be it a job or something, to prove my ability and to counter the contemptuous folk and let everyone see that the useless books I read are not useless after-all. But I was doubtful these days if it would ever happen. I somehow began to trust what folk say. I started seeing myself like the other people: a fool.

I see how God was doing it to my friends. Everyone was settling down on something. I was always thinking I was not doing enough, or maybe God was planning to pay me in arrears with something big. Otherwise, I did not deserve this torment except that in the logic of the world bad things happen to good people.

I felt ashamed my family had to get involved to help me get a job. I was boastful back then in university, too much of myself. Was I not the guy who, because of my ability, played with my grade? The outside world presents different reality. You will earn money, yes, but small money, and there are times that you needed peace and stability. I was tired of all the gig economy stuff.

I was now mellowed down and walked the world with trepidation and caution. I finally surrendered to my mother’s plead and started visiting folk in position to help. It really was something I hated!

Now you can understand why the Fulbright stuff came as the shining sun after rain.

 

Madison, WI

Waiting for so long...

As promised, I would be telling my story about the Fulbright experience beginning with this post, which would be coming on, hopefully, Sundays as events happen worth narrating.

 

Let the rain come down and wash away my tears

Let it fill my soul and drown my fears

Let it shatter the walls for a new, new sun

A new day has… Come  - Celine Dion

 

I don’t know where to start, but first of all, let me begin from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where everything started. Like most young ambitious Nigerian scholars, we want to taste the abroad experience, but finding the correct information and guidance to do that is tricky. And of course, the cumbersome logistics and patience. As for the former, luckily ABU is a right place. 

I first met one Dr Edward Abah when I arrived at ABU, a lecturer, father figure and mentor in the English Department. He teaches African American Literature, but not wholly what he teaches that attracted me to him. Excellent teaching without warmth is nothing. You know, you can rate people based on their humane treatment of others, especially their inferiors. 

Dr Edward has a gracious attitude, which combined with his teaching method to make him awesomely amazing. So, we hit it up with Dr Edward. I guess he likes me because of my avid reading. Dr could bet his last buck that I read the book that most students would be hearing from him for the first time. It was just so easy to hold a conversation and become friends. 

We had been getting along with Dr Edward right from the start that some people assumed I was a graduate student. But soon, towards the end of our program, it seemed our days were numbered. 

Dr Edward suggested I should look for a scholarship. But I was a bit timid with his suggestion. I had been playing with my grades, reading novels for pleasure, spending countless hours on school Wi-Fi, instead of on my primary texts. Since these were books that I could hardly find outside the ABU libraries, and since data and internet connection weren’t as cheap and easy back in Kano, why not enjoy them while they lasted? 

In the final year, I worked hard to graduate with at least Second Class Upper. Not being downhearted by my fate, I followed online conversations around education, politics, creative writing and African studies and engaged in community services. In sum, plus the number of books I read and the writing skills I have, I was like the kind of guy who was not accurately represented by grades. 

Then one day, the American Embassy came to the campus for the Black History Month celebration. Naturally, they seize such moments to advertise the various offerings of the US Education opportunities. I picked up one of the flyers and saw something about the Fulbright program.

When Dr Edward suggested scholarships to me, I connected the dots with what I read. But maybe he was thinking broadly about the various categories of Fulbright scholarship because he linked me up with his friend professor Raymond Bako of the Education Department, the then immediate past president of the Nigeria Fulbright Alumni group. If it was FLTA he was thinking, I was sure he would have linked me up with someone who had participated in this particular program.  

I got an appointment with professor Bako. I went to his office with my computer. He asked me to search a page on the internet and read and follow the instructions.  The information was overwhelming. It was pretty stressful and unhelpful. I left it there feeling terrible, hopeless even, guessing there had to be a way he was not showing me. I am sure most of us think the same way. We just feel that the person helping us should have to give you a form to fill, collect it and send an email to the people in the institute for you. But the thing about foreign scholarships is that you have to do it yourself. 

I ran a few searches on social media. Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún’s name popped up. I chatted him up on Twitter. Before contacting him, even when I found the right Fulbright category for me, I was still doing some hustling on other sides with Dr Muhsin, looking for some graduate programs. 

However, the instructions about the Fulbright program still looked terrifying.  Then Kọ́lá set me up with a contact at the Embassy. I told the guy I was interested in the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program. 

This was 2018, some months after graduation, during my NYSC year. The Embassy guy asked me preliminary questions, but told me the application had closed. Should I be still interested, I could be ready for next year.

Right away, I started preparing. Finally, Kọ́lá agreed to assist me. I went to work, using my free time, researching and compiling the requirements one step at a time. I opened a desk for that, with me in charge, ticking away the checklist for each requirement I had met. 

A journey of a thousand miles in our time begins with a passport.  With it, you have already maximized your chances. I had been intentional all the way although without a clear direction of where to go, but I just knew I had to go. I had gotten a passport immediately after university, thanks to my friend Baffa who lent me money when we just got out of university broke. 

Past the passport issue, which is the first and primary condition for most foreign scholarships, I had almost four months ahead before application start date. When it opened, I was already done with the basic requirements. But I still didn’t know what the application procedures looked like until it opened, and I saw there was more work to do—writing original essays that required research. I was still doing my service. I used that free time to do the research. I saved the NYSC money and bought a computer and used it for that. 

A few months after I returned to Kano the computer broke down barely months after I bought it. But there was a Mazhun Idris who needed a guy to work with. I was the guy, but I didn’t have a computer. He gave me the one he was no longer using. (I still don’t know if it’s free or something). 

I continued my application. I sent each essay I wrote to Kọ́lá, who would look at it and make recommendations. At this stage, I was determined. I effectively controlled my time and social media presence. (My timelines from 2018 upward will show that). 

I sat myself down and chastised me: Habu, what are you doing there? Are you a consumer or contributor of content? What gains do you have spending time on social media anyhow? I have been a shadow figure in anonymity. I like being a private person, sure, but it feels good to have all the likes and comments under your post. But what the likes and the comments will in the end translate to? 

I realized most of the Nigerian scholars you look up to use social media space in some way to advance their career. Most people you sent an email looking for help would only write back to you tonight, when they were done with their business. There was a man who gave me a 3:00am email appointment. 

I redirected my energy. I went underground, quiet but relentless, substantially ignoring the glamorous social media world. 8:00pm-12:00pm were dedicated to researching and writing applications.  12:00pm-01:00am were for sending applications. I was firm and strict on myself. That was how I nearly got a UN communication position!

Regarding my FLTA, I had talked to a few people about what I was up to, the professors who would write my reference letters. I also talked to Muhsin Ibrahim. After what we had done with Kọ́lá, I would again send the essays to Muhsin. There was something I wanted to do. 

I didn’t doubt what Kọ́lá did, himself an FLTA alum. Being from the same culture Muhsin would have some intrinsic understanding of what I was trying to do with my teaching culture essay. Aside from that, we had been working on other applications. 

Muhsin has been incredibly generous with his time and resources. The words he said were personally encouraging and added up considerably to the strengths of my application. Muhsin it was who looked at my final FLTA application. I believe Muhsin is a minimalist; where I put too much wordings, he would tweak them to an adequate few, and offer valuable suggestions until I felt that nothing could stop us. If what they were looking for was an effective, robust application, we had gotten it there. I sent the application and hoped for the best. 

But days after days of silence followed. The thing sat on my mind and refused to go. Then one day, in 2019, I received an email around September about my application interview. I showed it to my friend Musa. The interview lasted just a few minutes, no more than three at most. 

We were now past the ember months into the early 2020. I was anxious, I could no longer wait. I called one of the embassy staffers to know about my application status. He was polite and diplomatic. I didn’t fail, he suggested, but since I had reached January and nobody called me, could I please send in another application? Sure, I said. 

Well, sure and not sure. I was smarting from the pain of failure. I felt bad, bad that I let my people down. How could I mobilize all these people and resources and then fail? I should be ashamed. The logistics it took to get them to write on my behalf, the stiff curve of getting to the interview stage, how could that happen all over again? I couldn’t talk to them.

But Muhsin regularly checked on me. He asked about my well-being and my professional life. I told him what happened with my application. He smiled sagely and said I should not worry; I should feel free to approach my professors again. They would understand. It’s normal in academic circles. 

The thing was that this time I didn’t have to write my application all over again or reapply for my transcripts. I went back to work easily, updated my application and sent it back again. The failure certainly wouldn’t be about the strength of my application in the first instance. So, indeed, where did I go wrong?

I traced my steps. Something was missing the last time. Although I did everything, I suddenly realized I didn’t research about the Fulbright interview. I searched the internet and collected information ahead of the 2021 interview. 

Armed with this new knowledge I knew I had won it this time right from the start.

But that was not the end. 

You have to be selected first by a US host institution before everything could proceed. Months of deepening silence followed. Nobody could tell what the Fulbright people were up to. In the interview they said that I would hear from them within a week if I was selected. But here we were into three months. It was already late May 2021; so, I gave up. 1 June was the closing date for the new application submission. I dusted off my application, intent to submit again for the third time.

Because of the number of rejection letters I received I didn’t even have to open an email to know what it was for. I know the pattern. So, I ignored this email that was sitting in my Promotion folder for three days. By now I formed the habit of checking in social media and my email before going to bed. This time my heart said Okay, go see what this email was for. I opened the message and there it was, a congratulatory message!   

 

Madison, WI

Book Review: Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World

Abubakar Sulaiman

Elif Shafak’s work is one that would never tire you!

10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World is a story of Leila, a lady from traditional Turkish family – a rebel – and her struggle in a personal secular world. When she was found dead, she was buried in a cemetery reserved for the outcast. Her friends showed loyalty and exhumed the body, honored her and put the body to the sea for the fish to swallow.

The book chronicles Leila’s life in reverse order, told through the receding consciousness of the dead, events unfolding by the minutes of her death in successive burst of flash back, from the 10 minutes of her death to the 38 seconds, beginning with her body found in a waste bin at a street corner near a brothel, her birth and the story of her mother’s marriage, her growing up and upbringing, etc.

The daughter of Bannaz, Leila grew up in a closely knit family. An only daughter, she was loved and indulged by her father. His first wife was barren and was possessed with a strong desire to have a child. He got a second wife, Bannaz, Leila’s mother, who gave birth to a child. As a consolation, Leila was handed over to the first wife to bring her up. This was left a secret in the household. Tired of insults and dark innuendoes, Bannaz decided to reveal the secret to her daughter, her own daughter, who didn’t believe her because nobody took her seriously in the house as she was branded mentally ill.

Two things in Leila’s life stood out for me as repugnant and unacceptable, that she is a sex worker and sufferer!

All through more than half the book I was wondering why Leila should go into sex work. This is someone I love. According to my northern sensibilities, I really wouldn’t like to see someone I love in such condition but Leila kept moving from one bad, harsh condition to another.

If Elif sees sex outside traditional marriage as a tool for challenging convention, this harsh, repugnant way that she cast Leila in is unfit and unjustifiable. What did she do to deserve this? Even when I found why, my sense of justice wouldn’t accept it.

Challenging convention, Shafak could do that without being that extreme. Take Zeliha for instance, in The Bastard of Istanbul, wild and rebellious and assertive under fer family roof. Like Zeliha, she can also be rebellious, have sexual freedom and a great life without being suffered.

But with her rebellious writing, there is no way you cannot love Elif. She says of Leila:

Her body had been changing fast. Hair under her arms, dark patch between her legs, new skin, new smells, new emotions. Her breasts had turned into strangers, a pair of snobs, holding the tipis of their noses in the air. Every day she checked her face in the mirror with a curiosity that made her uneasy, as though half expecting to see someone else staring back. She applied make-up at every opportunity, kept her hair unbound instead of in neat braids, wore tight skirts whenever she could, and had recently, secretly, taken up smoking, stealing from Mother’s tobacco pouches.

This is really a Hausa girl, Hausa girl(s) at the start of her puberty: wild, rebellious, bubbling with assertive energy to draw attention to themselves and announce their coming, even thinking, at this point, they are the same with their mothers.

Reading Elif Shafak and Orhan Pamuk brings me to a seeming familiarity with Turkish culture; I know which side of the street is dangerous, which family does what for trade, from which side of the street to get what. Buried inside these books, I can inhale the smell of Bosphorus and the air of Taksim Square.

As a result of these show of small small social and Islamic cultures, I sometimes feel more connected to Turkish or Senegalese novel than to a Southern Nigerian story which I can end up being dumb at for events taking place in closed and intimate spaces, places like the church and the inner family setting where I have no direct experience with.

Leila, the continuation of Zeliha from the Bastard of Instanbul, is what appears to be Elif herself. Bold, rebellious, female characters who disgrace their family. Elif has a way of casting her characters to represent the society she desires. She has the habit of neatly scooping culture and religion off their feet, keeps them upended in the air and then slides them to the ground headfirst!

Leila and Zeliha have incest in the family. Leila was violated by her uncle during a family vacation, and years later, when the novel reached its height, she broke the news to the family. For the first time she is bold and unafraid, no longer hiding things or scared to speak out. But when she opened up, the dreaded thing happened: her family belied her and believed her uncle, which allowed him to walk off the case.

Elif relied on irony, opposition and contradiction to spice up the story. Leila is hugely ideologically different from her parents. The parents are so similar yet markedly different from each other as they struggle with their own inner contradictions. For instance, they wanted to indulge their daughter but they were pulled by the need to keep traditions. Deep within, they believe their daughter’s story but who wants to disgrace their family? Instead, they tried to set her up for an arranged marriage with a relative.

Leila ran to the city. There she fell into the hand of an unassuming criminal, who, along with his business partner, sold her to another hand to another hand, on and on, ending up in prostitution and sexual slavery. She didn’t deserve this! What did she do to warrant this travail? Leila deserved good life that she never had.

Along the way, we have come to know the stories of five people whose paths crossed with Leila’s. Osman, the trans person; Sinan, the son of a Lady Pharmacist; Jameelah, the African prostitute and bead-maker; Zainab122, the short Arab and fortune-teller; Humeyra, one of the five, the ballad singer who escaped terrible marriage from her border town village.

There is D/Ali the itinerant, the revolutionary who later married Leila. Meeting him is one of the best moments of her life, albeit very short-lived experience. D/Ali was killed in the revolutionary march, making her return to prostitution. This time, as a pricy, classy service provider, sought out by a rich man to teach and cure his gay son ahead of his wedding day.

The 38 Seconds remainder revealed the scene of Leila’s body in the morgue and her burial. For me part two of the story is somewhat trash. The story died with Leyla! Explaining the mystery of her death and the story of the rich man’s right-hand man are all but killjoy and a spoiler. I understand Elif is just trying to tell us “Researchers at various world-renowned institutions had observed persistent brain activity in people who had just died; in some cases this had lasted for only a few minutes. In others, for as much as ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds.”

Elif is dead bent on normalizing the abnormal, showing the middle finger to the traditional Turkish society by bringing deviant characters to challenge the established norms. By so doing, she sets up Leila for rebuke and reprove of the traditional society.

What is more, when she died, these characters come to the morgue to receive her body, with a different sense of respect and honor to the dead, smoking cigarettes, flinging insults and aggression.

The doomed cemetery, the cemetery of the companionless, where Leila was taken, is the house of gays and trans women, prostitutes, AIDS victims, crack addicts, pimps, poets, singers and strippers…all sorts of outcast and cultural lepers, as Elif would like to say, rebel with treacherous words and contentious beliefs. But does it matter? No, they are going nowhere. They would be eaten by organisms, absorbed into plants and eaten by humans, on and on into the endless life cycle. 

 

Madison, WI