The Nigerian In Us....

Last week, we came home from school run to meet our smoke alarm bad. No, it wasn't blaring out noises but it continuously made one sharp beep over a 30-60 second period. I was worried that the beeps would cause me to be unable to sleep and I googled what could be wrong with it. All the pages I looked at seemed to be saying the same thing: the battery was off. I tried to check this out when the children were asleep, took out the batteries and inserted new ones in but the noise didn't stop. I left it for my husband to have a look at when he was in. Hubby got back by the weekend and checked the batteries thoroughly but still, the beeping would not stop. We were being thorough because, unlike the previous apartment we had lived in before this, when something went bad and you called maintenance, if they came through to discover that it was a trivial thing that didn't require for them to come by, you ended up paying the fee for having them come which was anything from £70 upwards.

It had happened before and for which I had been very incensed so we wanted to be sure that there was actually something wrong. Anyway, they promised to come during the week and so, although we initially worried that the recurring sounds would cause us to be unable to get some proper rest/sleep in, somehow, we were able to sleep through the night after a couple of days. In fact, we almost forgot that the maintenance people had not come to check what was going on until we saw this note posted on the door after about the fifth day.

It was upon receiving this note that we instantly remembered that we had not chased them up as we should and so we did just that and had them come by to fix it. This brings me to the reason I have written this post. I could not help but think about the fact that when this beeping had started last week, I had been so worried and had had a sore head the first night I had slept through the night with it. However, for some reason, I had managed to block this inconvenience out of my mind and was able to manage just fine with it. I honestly think that it is the "Nigerian" in me, the adaptability of the Nigerian spirit in me, that is able to put up with an unpleasant situation until, well, until it is not so unpleasant anymore. It is this same Nigerian adaptability that makes us "make do" with mediocrity; we cry about bad governance, inadequate infrastructure and little or no provision of basic necessities for the common man, and yet, we do nothing about it and find a way to humour the situation. It is this Nigerian adaptability that causes us to stomach poor customer service from people, organisations, etc. We reckon, "...anyway, I do not blame you, if I didn't need this terribly, I might just have refused to work with you...". We refuse to demand respect. We sometimes feel like we do not deserve it, after all, the person you are to demand it from if you had to was a "big man/woman". We do not understand that we have the collective power to make or mar by simply choosing to boycott a service that is inadequate. 

This Nigerian spirit is accustomed to life being tough. Indeed, I do not know that this spirit will accept a life of ease as a norm. It is this Nigerian spirit that made me continue to go on a bus, trekking past the long routes that could not be accessed by this bus, and pushing a buggy with a child no less, to get to my local shops in order to shop for our weekly groceries rather than simply use the online shopping that offered a home delivery service. I had known about the service but it had somehow not made any impact on me until about over a year after I had learned about it. I cannot explain why this is but I guess it lies in the fact that having to do all that hard work of trekking, pushing a buggy, shopping, carrying all the bags and trekking some more for over an hour just somehow made me feel like a "strong woman", I mean, how could I know that I was indeed a "strong woman" if I could not tell you of what a hectic day I had had from trekking with shopping bags and pushing a buggy for over an hour? The Nigerian spirit in action. It is also this same spirit that makes the dishwasher in the house just lie fallow- useless and untouched. The day I used the online portal for my grocery shopping and had it delivered at home the next day, I sat for about fifteen minutes just pondering why on earth I had never used the service before that time....

I often wonder if this Nigerian spirit, so accustomed to life so hard, can survive a society that suddenly begins to work as it should. If corruption were to be totally eradicated and life became easier- good infrastructures, excellent benefit system for the less privileged, excellent customer service and a society in which the government cared more about the people it was serving than itself, would Nigerians embrace this? Could the Nigerian spirit thrive in it? Do you reckon this spirit is self-sabotaging and would never want the country to get to that stage because it would not know how to be good/kind to itself? Do you reckon this spirit would prefer to default to its hard ways as an easy life would feel unfamiliar to it? What do you reckon? Let's discuss, please. Please leave a comment if you can relate, one way or the order, to this post.

Hope you are having a beautiful weekend, my friends, 🙋

Wishing you Love and Light 💓🙏

Love Always,

Judgejudyjudy...

XX

P.s: I'm so sorry I haven't been consistent with my blogging. I've had a lot on my plate. So many things seem to be competing for my attention at the same time and so I have needed to step back and prioritise that which seemed most important. That's not to say that the blog is not as important, not at all. However, because it is so important to me to write my blog, certain things need to be in place which would make writing it consistently, especially at this time, a lot easier and sustainable. 

P.s.s: My next door neighbour who wrote the note is soo polite 😊