My wife: mother of the future US astronauts

“I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costumed party; and I attended with my bare face” - Frank Kafka 

It’s hard to pin me down. It’s hard to understand me. But if you have even a remote awareness of a concept called “minimalism” you will begin to make sense of my life. I have just had a conversation with one of the girls that blink on my radar.  What I found was amusing!

It appears I am living way below the societal expectations, and in some ways, if you know me, you can almost be sure I don’t give a fuck about how the world sees me. I am chaos unto myself, but I have some little personal principles that guide my life. One of them is that I live a minimalist lifestyle. And if you know me you can tell I live a very simple lifestyle. I’m cheap to maintain. I really don’t cost much because I have known how hard it is to earn. A few days after we started living with my roommate, my roommate remarked that my life is simple. I opted for fasting and daily home workouts. I opted for fruits and an organic lifestyle. When my roommate presents drinks at dining, I hardly take them. He knew I dismissively called them accessories and that I do away with unnecessary accessories.

The simple things I buy are simple but not cheap. They’re of top quality, especially things to do with the internal system – the food, water, pharmaceuticals and where to sleep.  And I worried a lot about the quality of the air I breathe. Now that I am not in Nigeria, about the air that people back home breathe. These small but important things are what defined the good and qualified life. They’re what set you apart from reduced humanity and social death, even physical death from accumulated harmful effects. I have expensive tastes for things that nurture internal human soul. But who cares about theories! 

I live a very authentic life. I present to you my authentic self, especially in my WhatsApp circle. To be sure, what you read on my WhatsApp are mostly my true thoughts. They can be hidden in jokes but they are my true feelings. They’re from the bottom of my heart. One more thing to be sure about is that you hardly get a hundred percent truth from my mouth. Once, a senior friend said I should not be called “Saddiq,” a sobriquet of my name that means “the honest one”. While I was not entirely dishonest, he said, I was not also straightforward. My lies are not harmful lies and the truth they hide would not benefit anyone. “You’re a kind of ambiguous character”, he said, which makes it hard to tell when I am lying vs when I am telling the truth. I occupy this liminal space between banter, joke, logic and reason; between religiosity and secularism; seriousness and unseriousness. Even my mother struggles with this fact, including all the women I have been in relationships with. I’m fluid that defy pinning down and categorization. “Keep being fluid and unpinnable until you lose your quest”, one of the girls said.

But no one captures the descriptive energy of my personality so eloquently as my girlfriend. “I know your type”, she said years ago, “you’re honest, but you also like to pretend to tell lies”. Once, another girlfriend in Kaduna said I played too much. Another one, still on my radar, said “I know your shenanigans”. Not once, friends and potential in-laws said I played too much. This is because I am moving in ways understood only to myself.

So, this girl on my radar called and said I was not dressing well. Her remark bordered on admonition and disdain but was more of a suggestion because she offered to help me with my dressing problem. She acknowledged I was low-key, I was self-aware; she added in the same breath, “as in you’re in the US and you’re not buying designers”.  

“But my library is well-stocked”, I said. If she meant I was stingy, I spend fortunes on books, books that I can borrow from the library. But I still buy them to build my library for a planned book donation initiative to Nigerian university libraries in my retirement, including in my Alma Mata where I stole books from the shelf to save them from decay. Besides, I still have shoes and caps and shirts that I bought last year which I never used. So, why waste money on things that I should not use for the whole year? In addition, here in the US, you don’t want to impress anyone. She said it’s not to impress anyone, just to feel good about yourself. I agreed. I told her if this was what she meant then I hardly bought shadda for my clothing even when I was in Nigeria. I opted for “yards”, and tissue white yards for that matter except for the dirty nature of the environment that forced me to abandon the practice. To feel good, I dress light and use perfume with celestial scent. I am also very active in the process of my tailoring, to make sure the thread used on buttons and drawstring are of the same color. For each set of outfits, I spend a deal of time on the internet trying to work out great aesthetics. My tailor complains bitterly about my narcissism. Girl erupted into laughter and said I still don’t understand. 

I was not telling her these things. These were the thoughts running in my mind and I thought she was within the intellectual range. I have a natural disgust for vulgarity and lacking in social graces and taste. 

I noticed a remarkable difference when I visited Nigeria last summer. People dress ostentatiously. The American foolishness started getting into my head, obviously, for I was dressing casually, appearing in jeans and a t-shirt for some outings. 

Obviously, this girl sat down and had a conversation with herself about her future in my life. And she realized, as per her standard and taste, I needed to upgrade. But here in the US, like I always believe, the standard is in your bank accounts and zip code. You would be shocked to see how rich people like to appear! I have rich families from Nigeria as well, rich even by the US standard, whom I know how they live!  

The 7th child of a director in a federal agency, I honestly believe there are people like her who dress ostentatiously without the will to impress. What was amusing was the lack of knowledge of the alternative dressing code, that there are people who can afford to but chose for a minimalist lifestyle. The girl, for the life of her, cannot goddam make sense of what minimalism is.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the mother of the future US astronauts!

Madison, WI

PS

What you read here is but fiction from the figment of my imagination. Take it seriously at your own peril! 

The last straw...

I travelled to Nigeria mid-year. For summer break. And for the end of my Fulbright year. After a long time out of the country, I was full of joy and excitement. Major heartaches happened, but thankfully no incidents of bereavement of the loved ones. 

I had already missed everything that meant so much to me. In addition to that, there are some important and difficult personal stuff that required me to be in the country in-person, including fulfilling the Fulbright requirement, and renewing my papers before returning to the US. 

But people warned me that I shouldn’t return to Nigeria. I was one of them few years ago, telling my friend in Malaysia not come back. But five years ago is different from the present, or even a year ago when I first left. So, truly, I had no idea how worse the country was. 

Fast forward to my departure, I was still elated. I was going to reunite with my roots. In addition to meeting my family once more, my visit to Nigeria marked a significant crossroad in my life whose intensity I only later came to fathom. 

I had taken for granted the ease of the American life. Basic things of life suddenly disappeared from my life in Nigeria. Now that I have experienced what a good life was, everything became hard. I couldn’t bear the brunt of the Nigerian life except it’s extremely necessitated by choicelessness. Nigeria is progressively getting worse thanks to the inept policies of the Buhari’s government. Almost every day is worse than the previous day since the start of the administration, from security to economy to education... I also experienced small ugly feelings that consoled me and provided me with a justification for my intent. 

I launched into the preparation for my return to the States few days after my arrival even though I was not entirely ready for the choice life threw at me. In the first journey I knew I would be back to my roots. I was hopeful. I was not indecisive. I knew home was Nigeria. But home for now, my mind reasoned, is no longer Nigeria. Everything this time represented something lurking beneath the surface. It was intense and emotional. 

Never had I got myself thinking so deeply about my life. 

Childhood friends no longer live in the same street we grew up. They either married and left the neighborhood or have left the state entirely for the livelihood, which left me almost lonely, or living with people as convenient mates. I am also creaking from heavy responsibilities on my shoulder. So, I had to leave, nonetheless. 

The first journey was totally unlike the second. I was a visitor this time, running around and getting things done as though I was on a borrowed time. Bewilderment set in my eyes when asked about my place of residency. I get confused momentarily before I reassured and countered my imagination. Time and again I asked myself: Am I not Nigerian anymore? 

I emptied my closet and distributed its content. I took down my personal library, picked the few books that I wanted and donated out the rest. These are books that formed my intellectual formative years. I had plans for them for the later years of my life. I took out my jotter containing my personal notes, social media and bank accounts details and login credentials. 

The string of these “casual” actions depicted my life tittering on the borderline of “before” and “after”. I don’t see myself giving up on the good life any time soon. My current life is my answered prayer. I have worked and prayed for it! But I have found myself agonizing for it when it finally set to happen. It is one thing to prattle about relocation, quite another thing to come face-to-face with the reality. It is good to recognize and accept this fact of life that we give up something in order to gain something. To be able to make this decision requires uncommon courage and strength. 

The full weight and enormity of what was going on fell on me when I finally set for the airport. The car arrived. My mother and siblings followed me out for goodbye. The siblings were jubilating, but mother and I were aware of the silent mood in the air. Her heart was heavy. My eyes were brimming with tears. I was emotionally breaking down, but I managed to control my tears. My siblings went back home. The jubilation died down. My mother stood there. She stood there forever. We were exchanging silent words. She couldn’t leave. I just realized other than my mother I had no one to cry for me. I entered the car and avoided her eyes. I didn’t know if my friends noticed my tears, but I want to believe they had seen it and only let it pass. 

Off we zoomed to the airport, leaving my mother behind, where my situation became more pronounced. The car parked, the two friends came out, brought out my luggage. As we shook hands and the steward loaded the bags on the trolley, the touch of finality of it all coldly dawned me; nothing could be repeated. I was leaving everything behind. Every step I took into the Departures is the last one. 

After some minutes in the departures lounge, we were called for boarding. Our plane jetted off to Abuja for the onward journey. I sat very pensive and emotional, thinking of my mother, thinking of my life! My shoulders convulsed. Something broke in me and made me stronger immediately afterwards. This was not silent tears. A member of the cabin crew came over me. The woman led me to a private room and asked if I was OK. I was going back to the States! 

This painful decision is not entirely for my own sake. It’s for the siblings to stay in school. For my own kids and their mother when they come! On top of everything else, I shouldn’t be blind to what blessing this represents knowing how Nigeria is! 

Madison, WI

The common good: the politics of happiness and aesthetics of American spaces

I am greatly fascinated by spaces: the built environment and the influence it has on the social and cultural practices. I am deeply in awe of the aesthetics of beautiful places, of great designs and functions. For a while, therefore, I have been thinking of how to streamline my research interests into the aesthetics of spaces, behavior, design and décor and the overall wellbeing of the individual and wellness. I also discovered that there is a whole field of study called Happiness Studies!

Away from heavy theory and philosophizing, I want to venture into the glamor and intrigue of space and social practices. Talk about the aesthetics of landscape architecture and design: the wholesomeness that results from the combination of land policies and planning.  Coming to the US, I was intrigued by the politics of affordance factor of the built environment. So, I decided to audit a course in the Department of Landscape Architecture last spring.

The class helps me find expression to some of my deepest feelings about the environment. I came to have a clearer understanding of my own city. To be sure, most of us would regard Kano as a modern city, but it’s a premodern city like most African cities. First off, Kano has warren and narrow streets designed for communication rather than the free highways and wide streets meant for movement and transportation of a typical modern city.

I don’t even know how we can confront and tackle challenges in our cities. But American cities were once like ours, premodern and chaotic, with streets as giant sewers. The streets in Kano are still the giant sewers, collecting dirt and rubbish and washing them away at the rainstorm.

Industrialization presented new challenges to the modern city, which most African cities currently face. Those challenges give birth to the rise of regulatory state and laws such as pollution regulations, building codes, public health and sanitary codes, for what is called the “common good.” The common good would ensure quality of life, air quality and increased life span. The connection is clear between design, environmental planning and good life. Simple environmental policies such as vaccine, antibiotics and water treatment can help double life span.

Beyond the common good, America puts important values on her housing. In the eyes of the government, Americans are not free-floating subjects confined in her territory. From the design of the houses and neighborhoods, America sees a house as a foundation of all virtues and morality.

Cities become ugly and crowded if architects and planners are not in control. Architects and planners are not in control in Kano. The striking difference between modern city and pre-modern city is that modern city grows up, pre-modern city grows out from the affliction of urban sprawl. The criterion for modernity is not on bridges and electricity but on nuances of space that make life easier and more efficient. It’s about control and resource allocation, planning and implementing policies that move people and goods across spaces unhindered.

If you reform the physical environment in which people live, you’ll also change the underlining factor of social relations for good. With careful and efficient planning and social services, people become polite and less susceptible to crime, cooperative and willing to help authorities. Planning also means being security-conscious on how you build the physical environment. High rise buildings are designed in concepts of panopticon surveillance. Therefore, you can tackle social vices by the design of the city. By designing of the city, you can attract business and provide jobs for the people.  The American public policy realized early on that the cause of crime is social dislocation, the solution is building communities.

As our phones are no longer just machines for making phone calls, the idea of modern architecture goes way beyond building a house for shelter against the elements. A modern house is a machine for living, fitted with dwelling requirements and modern conveniences: heating system, internet and landscape greenery. Building a good, habitable housing is not just about expensive taste, it’s about our humanity and the common good.

But pause to answer this question before we proceed, whether as an individual or a policy maker:  When you are building a city, what problems are you trying to solve? I cannot mention one policy for sure that housing department is solving in Kano. So, at individual level, what problems are you solving when you are building a house?

Does where you live look like somewhere you wish to raise your kids? Fire in my mind, I am intentional of where I should raise my kids. I should be able to choose where I live and not be dictated upon me by choicelessness. I work hard in everything to maximize my options.

When talking about African cities in after-class discussion with the Professor, Lagos regularly came up in our discussion. Most of the things he mentioned about modern cities are relatable to African cities. There are crimes in big cities because too much people want to live in the city. Too much population enables anonymity. Because too many people want to live in the city, modern architecture requires that you need to find ways to effectively manage your resources. Build open spaces for people to walk, build spaces for business so people can work, provide a high-capacity transportation system to take them there and public gardens to unwind. The intersection of landscape architecture, social behavior and housing policies manifests in how people interact with each other and with their environment.

City living has some rules. The smaller the people, the cleaner the environment. Crowded living is not in agreement with the convenience of modern city. As everyone wants to live in the city, the city becomes crowded and dense. High-density can usually mean poverty and easy spread of disease.  Density decline is a function of the distance. That’s why American houses are detached, separate entities, unfenced but private with a specified number of people to live in.

Another great engineering feat is water treatment and supply. How to categorize waters - waste water, rainstorm – treat them and recycle them to the society, effectively making the environment more sustainable. We all want comfortable life in an efficient environment, but efficiency is sometimes ruthlessness. Robert Moses comes to mind in the US history of public works. During this discussion I could only think of the resistance Kwankwaso faced in my state for trying to sanitize the environment. Engineers work in the dilemma of the desire to save the public and the hatred for people, but the benefit of urban renewal is worth the price of dislocation since you can’t build anything without disturbing something. The problem is that city planners only see the problems, not the humans in those buildings. I wish for a more humane approach to dealing with some of these problems in African cities.

As an African newly in the US, I can feel the effects of design and lifestyle in my life. I am sure people in GRAs can relate to the bad side of a highly organized living. The advantage of slums is that they brought people together in a very important human way. They created values of care and solidarity among the residents. This is an important factor in measuring the gross happiness index of the people. The metrics nowadays are no longer about the GDP.

Finally, if Kano city is still a premodern city, American cities in the premodern age were once ugly, infectious and criminal. Where there is a will, there is a way.

 

Ramadan in America

 It was announced Friday in the mosque that the next day was the first day of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting by the Muslim faithful. Ordinarily, the preceding night back home was a moment of great excitement. But the excitement was very little in America. Life goes on as usual, no bustling and excited commotion typical of the first day of Ramadan.

My friend and I left the mosque and boarded the bus for home, doubtful about when exactly to start the fasting. Ramadan started April 2, yes, does this mean we’re to start fasting tonight and wake up with it Saturday or we should start Saturday and wake up with it Sunday? I sent a request to the imam. It was established that we should start fasting on the dawn of Saturday, that is, do our sahoor Friday.  

The marked difference between fasting in America, especially in Wisconsin state, and the experience back home could be into two ways; weather and community. Both has its own advantages and lack thereof.

Back home, the blazing sunlight makes fasting hard, but you are sure of community during sahoor and iftar. The suffering fades in the face of this and the anticipated festivities for the Sallah ahead.

The Madison weather is convenient for fasting. You won’t even notice you’re doing fasting, but you’ll crave community and excitement for sahoor and iftar obtainable back home. A friend of mine, brooding and disappointed, complained that this was not the case in Pakistan. In Pakistan, everywhere is bustling. In Madison, you either visit the mosque for iftar or you do things alone in your den, except the occasional iftar that people organize and invite their friends or the community iftar at the mosque. Going to the mosque for iftar isn’t viable option for many on account of distance and transportation. I went only once and didn’t go back. Which affected the observance of my taraweeh prayer.

Iftar with friends

 

One of the advantages of fasting in this weather is you don’t have to worry about eating heavily or being worried about thirst even if you miss sahoor. You can miss sahoor all you want and be fine. As for me, I don’t even make attempt to wake up for that. I loaded everything I want at iftar and put a bottle of water under my pillow when going to bed, which I would be drinking from throughout the night to sahoor time. A white lady friend of mine wondered aloud how I managed to pull through while others are eating. I told her “optional” hunger isn’t a problem for me and people eating in my presence won’t tempt me or make my hunger painfully acute.

I have been on food rationing and frequent fasting for almost 10 years now (for that, I am very healthy and fit). There is also no sun or physical exertion to deepen my hunger and thirst. It rains here almost every other day. If it doesn’t rain, it is mostly cold outside. On some days when I am out for work, - being only a brief contact and exposure with the element before getting to the bus or my house -  I would have to soak myself in a hot Jacuzzi bath for an average of 20 minutes even if I miss drinking water for sahoor that night.

The only problem is the lonely sahoor and iftar. Oftentimes I wonder and agonize about the bountiful edibles with nobody to share with. People back home are plenty with few resources. Here, I take meat and yogurt to the trash.

The overarching challenge about having the full experience of Ramadan is your time and work schedule. For taraweeh, for instance, one needs to strike a balance and select the days that work for him. If you have less busy day on Tuesday, you can attend the prayer on Monday night. You can’t enjoy the full Ramadan experience however you wish because of what I can call the affordance factor inherent in the American-Christian-Western society.

A friend asked me about itikaf. I’m not sure anyone does that here. But you can hazard a guess yourself. You live in a society running on a calculated mechanical rhythm, with bills to pay and no room for spontaneity and whims. For you to perform and experience Ramadan the way you know it back home you may need to fix your annual leave to coincide with Ramadan period. So that you’re free from work. 

Think of a bus driver or a doctor or a shop attendant or the guy at heating control center deciding to opt for itikaf. His singular act would have a far-reaching damaging consequence. Now I know community, flexibility and spontaneity are the luxury people back home enjoy that they do not even realize.

 

Madison, WI

 

The American Privilege

A lot has happened since I went on recess from this blog. I went on honeymoon as our program draws nearer to the end. I supposed to have traveled to some US states, but the rise in Covid cases at the turn of the year did not allow. And the Spring semester began. This should have been a sad story since I would be leaving the US. But I know I would be back in due course if I like.

Going out of Nigeria does not come to me as a surprise. It’s something that I have been working on once I developed the taste for international exposure. Being a Fulbrighter gives you a badge of honor in US academic circle, but the American privilege is a whole perk on its own.

Americans talk about big, impossible dreams. The American dream is infectious. For instance, recently, I heard a Nigerian talk about his daughter becoming a US president. That sounds far-fetched to Nigerian ear. The US has its faults, but things like that are not impossible.

I remember an incident in a history class I audited. In her remark at the last meeting in the semester, the professor rhetorically asked the students why they were here, in her class. She mentioned that it’s important they know the history of the US. One of them might become president, she said without batting an eye. The class would help them make important decisions when in power. This would be met with rolling eyes in a Nigerian university class.

No matter how these things are explained, it’s hard for you to understand until maybe you come to America, and more importantly, when you come to America on a J1 visa. Which is to say, on a J1 visa, I am like doing NYSC for the US government. All kinds of privileges and perks, from visa process to your departure. You wake up with hundreds of thousand dollars in your health insurance account, provision of security by one of the greatest intelligence agencies and the professors introducing you in class as “an international visiting scholar from Nigeria.”

I have been a NASA and International Space Station enthusiast since from Nigeria. I contacted NASA office in DC to pay them a visit during the New Year break for our mid-year conference. This could have been possible except for the rise in Covid cases.

Another example of American privilege is about my uncertain situation, when I started thinking about my life after the Fulbright year. I wanted to leave the US and go back to Nigeria and do my two-year residency requirement. I have so many things to do with my life in Nigeria. However, there was a certain hesitation somewhere in my mind. I casually started thinking about moving to the UK.

If you know me, however, you can tell that I love traveling and development work. I talked to my student who works on Africa in development sector. A meeting would be arranged with her professor, who has a lot of friends in Africa development sector. She asked if I had specific countries I had in mind. I mentioned Ethiopia of course, Rwanda, and Niger Republic. Niger Republic being a neighbor to Nigeria. I could see people, food and great elements of my own culture. But more importantly, at the back of my mind, I wanted a place where I could easily fly back to Nigeria to refuel the Naija vibe. 

Madison, WI

 

Transcendent Kingdom: a window to the world

 Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom is a fine representation of migrant body and migrant text. It can be read both as an American and Ghanian story, on one hand, and as a chronicle of assorted nightmares of not only immigrants but also Black experience in America, on the other.

The book does a lot of things at once while keeping focused on its central mission. Bits of Kejetia and Alabama; between the two worlds, all was well until at the point of cultural contact. Gifty’s parents emigrated to Alabama from Ghana. The family grapples with adjustment and belonging amidst the pull of the home culture.

Gifty, born in the US and only has had a passing experience of her parents’ homecountry, finds herself boxed in stereotypical immigrant trappings: lonely and introvert, spending long hours in lab and brooding over everything: the suffering in her family, her relationship with colleagues and friends at church.

Nana, her brother, is a talented athlete, afflicted with addiction and died of opioid overdose. The story is somehow about Nana, but it’s in fact about Gifty, the six-year PhD student at Stanford University School of Medicine, who lives in a circle of multiple traumas of lacking – of community who understood her, of her brother, of father and the grief of her dying mother. Readers come to know events through her mouth and private thinking.

Nana is the dominant unifying force. His dying pushed the family further apart but does not stall the story. In death, he is still alive through Gifty’s thinking and reflection.

From the start the book has about it a funeral character. The brooding nature of Gifty’s mind permeates the narrative landscape – somber and moody – which makes the reading meditative, and draws the reader closer to the pain. The sorrowful ambiance makes it possible for us not to be mere spectators.

Interestingly, the story is built on the basis of oppositions and ideational conflicts: faith vs science, family vs profession etc. Gifty set out to understand the basis of reward-seeking behavior in mice and neural circuits of depression in hope of finding solution to the demons that afflicted her family. She is heavily invested in her family and profession almost in equal proportion. She’s selfless in her pursuit to serve the larger humanity beginning with solving her family’s issues.

While this is an intimate, personal story, Gifty does not seem to have a deeper connection with her parents; her mother was simply known as Black Mamba and her father as Chin Chin Man.

From the family to lab and the church spaces, we have seen the social, the scientific and spiritual, spilling and colliding in each other. As these issues – and more – journeyed through the novel and failed to find common ground, they go their separate ways.

The text, overall, is a window to the world. As a locus of cultural negotiation and conflict, it presents and defines the “radical other” between the two traditions, in which the family has to make a choice. Father goes to nationalism, mother and daughter to internationalism. But their trade-off in favor of the host culture wasn’t enough. 

Madison, WI