Home, sweet home

 

Gloria Ogunbadejo
| credits: File copy

I flew into the country a few days ago and there is something almost spiritual that happens to me every time I come home( my kids tell me it’s all a romantic idealisation in my mind). Maybe it is…so what, that’s my prerogative! After all there’s only one place in the whole wide world that I can say is truly home to me. All other places of abode regardless of how long I have been there or what the accomplishments are there always have a way of letting you know you are still a visitor. There is something instantly magical that I feel coming through the airport and the familiarity (granted sometimes overt) displayed by many of the people I encounter. It’s a cross between curiosity, respect, expectation and I like to think genuine happiness and generosity that is shown. This is always reciprocated by me, knowing full well that it can all change in an instant to aggression and unpleasantness. Similar to what is described in the south of America as southern hospitality; Nigerians exude a distinct charm and graciousness that can be quite intoxicating. As I sat and waited to be collected, I observed with huge respect, amazement, amusement in equal measure and even to some extent pride as people went about their daily activities which entailed a wide range of options; from the sublime through the technically precise, to the obscene and incomprehensible. That is it right there! You get everything in an instant. It was sometimes difficult to know where to look at times, there was so much going on at the same time; but I love it all, thinking what wonderful topics were all there to be written about.

Once I got home( my real home), looked around and thanked God for my safe arrival, thinking about the sadness I left with the last time I was here, it wasn’t long before I was on the phone talking to friends, relatives and well wishers. Yes, this is what I have become accustomed to, this is what really feels second to nature and I am at home with. It dawned on me that I live a double life in an altered state when I am in the UK. It is a life I have also become accustomed to and I am grateful for, but it always takes coming back home to jar me and put me in a different mindset for which I am also very grateful.

It wasn’t long before I was getting all the gist(I like that word, it sounds so conspiratorial, but between you and me, it’s really just pure unadultrated, unashamed gossip and I love it!).

As I listened to the various stories and laughed out with pure delight, I was thinking how my daughters’ would equally be thrilled to hear my shrill laughter that they claim is only reserved for certain people. They have been known to come into my room when they hear this particular quality of laughter to ask who I was speaking to. (My suspicious mind tends to think they want a dossier on people they can all upon to soften me up in times of trouble).

My friend eventually settled to talking about all her own escapades which invariably would include encounters with the opposite sex. She filled me in on this long, arduous, tortuous unfulfilling encounter she had been involved with for the past six years of her life (I am loath to call it a relationship.) It more had the hallmarks of something insidious and nasty, like a festering wound that just would not heal; the scab was repeatedly picked at and opened up again. As I listened to how she was desperately trying to get pregnant for this person who she was convinced (and had the evidence to prove it) was also involved in at least two other equally long-term involvements, who he was the ‘proud’ baby daddy of, I couldn’t help but think how many other women’s reality my friend was describing.

I stopped laughing and asked her what her intention was in this life she was living. She seemed bewildered by my question so I repeated it so she could hear it and think about it. Again it was incredible to note that this was not something she had really ever thought about. It would appear she was simply on auto pilot. In fact to quote my sweet friend, she said ‘Gloria it’s simply what you do in this country as a woman!’ Now I was angry and told her that was just a cop out, whether you are in this country or anywhere else in the world! I told her we were talking about self esteem issues and her psyche as a woman placing herself so far down the ladder of importance or entitlement that she could not see how badly she was treating herself and how appallingly she was teaching people to treat her. Her next accusation was that she did not expect me to understand because I had not had the experience. At first, emotionally, I thought maybe she was right but intellectually and as a mental health professional, I knew that was rubbish. Working with people with a range of traumatic experiences which I have been grateful not to have experienced did not bar me from being able to empathise and understand the experience from a psychological and clinical point of view. I told her she was making poor decisions for her life that she was trying to justify.