To My Unborn Child
My dear child, I love
you! I’ve loved you from the very first moment I could conceive the idea of
you. I’m a polyglot but I still can’t find words that perfectly describe how
much I love you, how you warm my heart and make me smile. That’s why it breaks
my heart that I even have to think about writing you this letter. I suppose if
you’re reading this then it’s already too late. You’re already here and I
couldn’t save you.
To be honest, my hope
is that we never have to meet. That I never have you. Beyond that, on the off
chance that I do have you. My hope is that this letter explains, even a tiny
little bit, why I never wanted to have you. They say I’m at an age when the
human brain is at its best. I’m at my optimum thinking capacity and the thought
of bringing you into this world, as it is, looks like a very bad idea to me. It
scares me. I must say I don’t just say this this because of COVID-19. Our world
was already too messed up way before COVID-19 caught our attention.
I wish I could tell
you that you can be whatever you want to be, but I’d be lying. You can’t be
whatever you want to be, not in this world. Not with the way this world is
currently set up. It’s not right, I hate it, but it’s what it is. You see, our
favourite activity in this world is discrimination. We discriminate against
people based on the colour of their skin, their genitals, what they worship or
do not worship, who/how they vote, where they were born, who they were born to,
who they have sex with, how they talk, how educated they are and so many other
silly excuses we make up. We love to discriminate!
There’s nothing that
unites and excites us more than our discrimination. We come together and form
groups to help us make our discrimination more efficient and effective.
Ironically, when we get into those groups, we form smaller groups so we can
discriminate against people in our original groups who don’t quite fit into
these smaller groups. We rinse and repeat the process until we are standing
alone. Dying alone.
People will
discriminate against you. They will put up so many barriers, directly and
indirectly, to ram it home, to make sure you know you don’t belong in their
stupid little groups. Most people you will meet are not even the architect of
these barriers, but they will be damned if they don’t uphold it. Especially
when it’s in their interests. We love to pretend we don’t see these barriers or
that we are powerless. Self-preservation is our 2nd favourite
activity, right after discrimination.
“Why would people
discriminate against me?” you ask? “I have done nothing wrong. I haven’t even
been born.” You protest. “What should I be, if I can’t be whatever I want to
be?” Well let’s see. Everybody discriminates, but, my child, if you’re female,
Black, carry the passport of a 3rd world country, are not so good
looking, not so intelligent and/or poor, you get what I call the negative 6-star
treatment.
If you are really my
child, then there’s a huge chance that you got 3/6 of the above. Normally 50%
is a pass but remember nothing about all of this is normal. In my experience,
the worst is to carry the passport of a 3rd world country. Its quite
simply the worst thing that has ever happened to me and I wasn’t even born when
it happened. I wasn’t consulted. No one asked my opinion. I didn’t consent to
it, but the rest of the world will be damned if they didn’t punish me every day
because of this crime. For it is indeed treated like a crime.
Just as our given
name implies, we are but 3rd class citizens of this world. When the
rest of the world sneezes, we catch a cold. We get to pay for the sins of the
rest of the world. It doesn’t matter if it had nothing to with us but if
someone commits a crime somewhere, be rest assured that some politician will
find a way to blame it on us. On you. Even though you haven’t been born yet,
their children will make sure you pay for it whenever you get here. It’s their
tradition and they will hold it up or die trying.
It gets even worse if
your 3rd world country is an African country. Worst if it’s Nigeria.
You see, it doesn’t matter how much the world hates us and casts us off, our
propensity to self-destruct is unrivalled and it’s our biggest problem. There
is no better example of this than the leaders we elect/rig into office.
Somehow, we have a way of finding the absolute worst among us and putting them
in power. On the few occasions we fail and someone remotely competent gets a
whiff of power we don’t rest until we kick them out or turn them into the dark
side.
At the root of this
propensity to self-destruct is our favourite activity, discrimination. Most of
us would rather see the area and people they had the misfortune of been born
into, burn to the ground than see it made better by someone who doesn’t share
their beliefs, genital uniformity, sexual orientation, political party(I would
say ideologies but our politics isn’t based on ideology), tribe, ethnic group
or language. They would rather discriminate until they are standing alone.
Dying alone.
Being Nigerian, like
a foul smell, follows you everywhere. It comes up, like weeds, in all the
places you least expect and want it to come up. The first time you notice it,
you will see that my analogy of a bad smell isn’t just metaphorical. I say this
because you will notice the, otherwise, normal people you talk to suddenly turn
up their noses on you like you’ve suddenly developed a body odour. this goes
very well with a little backwards tilt of the head, raised eyebrows, curled
lips and, of course, the coup de grace; arms crossed at the front in a
defensive position.
My child, I do not
write this to scare you. I write this in the hope that it prepares you for the near
impossible task ahead of you – being happy in this world. It’s the least I can
do for you after given you this curse of 3rd world citizenship. I hope
that if you ever think of it all one day, you will find a way, a reason, no
matter how small, to forgive me this mistake of mine. I love you. I always have
and I always will.
