A Bit of Difference. Sefi Atta
pressure to marry is relentless. Being single is like trying to convince a heckling audience your act is worth seeing. Subu could be the chairman of her bank and her mother would say, ‘But she could be married with children.’ Subu could be the prime minister of England and her mother would still say, ‘But she could be married with children.’
Deola worked as an account officer for Trust Bank after she graduated from LSE, during her national service year and the year after. Her mother tells her to come home for good, to work for the bank, by which she means Deola ought to find a man to settle down with. She drops hints like, ‘I saw this fellow and his wife. She’s expecting again,’ or ‘I saw so-and-so. They have another one on the way.’
‘My family wants me to come home for Christmas,’ Subu says.
‘Will you?’
‘Naija? Naija is too tough. No water, no light. Armed robbers all over the place and people demanding money. I told my mother to come here instead. I will send her money for a ticket. Let her come here and relax.’
Subu, too, has a British passport. She refers to Nigeria as home, but she never goes back. She sends money home to her family and her mother stays with her whenever she is in London, sometimes for months. Nigeria, for her, is a place to escape from.
‘Are you going home for Africa Beat?’ she asks.
‘Africa Beat is based in South Africa.’
‘Why? When you have a Naija spokesman?’
‘They have a high rate of infection there.’
‘More than us?’
‘We’re getting there, small by small.’
Subu shakes her head. ‘People should just abstain.’
Deola resists raising her eyes. She suspects Subu has had more lovers in her church family than she has ever had dates in her secular circles. Subu’s ex-boyfriend was a deacon and Deola was curious to know what he’d done wrong, since he was so Christianly. All Subu would say about that was that she’d reported him to God, after which Subu decided she was going to be a virgin all over again, declaring, ‘My body is my temple,’ with a smile, as if she were not quite taking her abstinence seriously.
‘As for Dára,’ Subu says, ‘they practically worship him in this place.’
‘He’s done well for himself,’ Deola says.
‘He has, but please, what streets of Lagos is he singing about? His parents are lecturers.’
‘They are?’
‘At Lagos State University. He was going there before he found his way here. He was not an area boy.’
‘He wasn’t?’
‘At least that is what I heard. I’m glad he’s made it, but he should stop telling lies about his background, and these oyinbos don’t seem to be able to see through him.’
‘Maybe they don’t want to,’ Deola says.
She never bothered to question Dára’s story, except to note that he didn’t call himself an area boy; he said he was a street child.
‘He’s on tour in the States soon, isn’t he?’ Subu asks.
‘So I hear.’
‘They’ve been making a lot of noise about him. I don’t understand it.’
‘He’s definitely over-hyped.’
‘Have you met him?’
‘I’m administrative staff. We don’t meet anyone.’
She has not met any of LINK’s benefactors and won’t have cause to meet their beneficiaries unless a fieldwork review is necessary.
‘So people need him to tell them to give money?’
‘Apparently.’
‘I’m sure there will be an ABC concert.’
‘And ABC T-shirts and ABC CDs.’
‘Of course the concert will be held in South Africa.’
‘Where else?’
‘And of course they will invite Mandela.’
Deola laughs. ‘If we can get him.’
She would rather not say any more. Most Nigerians she knows abuse celebrities involved in African charities. They accuse them of looking for attention or knighthoods. If they talk about the plight of Africa, they are sanctimonious. If they adopt African children, they are closet child molesters. She has heard all the arguments: charities portray Africans as starving and diseased. Western countries ought to give Africa trade and debt relief, not aid. The drug companies should reduce the cost of their medications. The churches ought to shut the hell up with their message of abstinence and start distributing condoms. Africa T-shirts are just designer wear for the socially conscious.
Africa Beat gets funding from churches and pharmaceutical companies. Their posters of Africa can be simplistic, but so is most advertising, Deola believes. Her experiences may also be negated, but Africa does suffer, unduly, unnecessarily, and if all she has to cope with is the occasional embarrassment about how Africans are portrayed, then she is fortunate.
‘What’s going on, Shoe Boo?’ she asks again.
Subu shrugs. ‘We’re fine, we’re here.’
Today they have little to say to each other. They seem to have exhausted their friendship now that they don’t have their simple left-wing–right-wing rows any more. Deola is thankful when Subu leaves. There is a melancholy about Subu and she is aware how contagious it can be.
When she was a student at LSE, she went out every weekend and how ridiculously young she and her friends were, living in their parents’ flats, running up their parents’ phone bills and driving cars their parents had bought them. They spent their pocket money on memberships at nightclubs like Stringfellows and L’Equipe Anglaise so they could get past bouncers, and threw raucous parties after midnight until their neighbours called the police.
Nigerian boys carried on like little polygamists, juggling their serious girlfriends and chicks on the side. Well-brought-up Nigerian girls were essentially housewives-in-training. They dressed and behaved more mature than they were, cooked for their boyfriends and didn’t party much. Useless girls slept around. A guy had to rape a girl before he was considered that useless and even then someone would still go out with him and attribute his reputation to rumour. There were rumours about cocaine habits, beatings and experimental buggery. The guys eventually got married.
None of her boyfriends counted until Tosan, whom she met during her accountancy training. He graduated as an architect at the beginning of the post-Thatcher redundancies and couldn’t find a job. He shared a flat with some friends in Camden and cycled around, even in the winter. Deola was working in the city and studying for her exams. After she bought her flat, Tosan spent weekends with her. He cooked and cleaned up. He had her listening to francophone African music and reading Kundera novels. He owed her money for plays they’d seen, like Hamlet with Judi Dench and Daniel Day-Lewis and Burn This with Juliet Stevenson and John Malkovich. He smoked marijuana and she didn’t. She told him he had to do that at his own place. She also drew the line at going to the pub.
She had never met a Nigerian who enjoyed a rundown, dirty, smelly, mouldy English public house as much as Tosan did. She didn’t go to pubs with him because they would end up not speaking. She embarrassed him whenever she checked her wine glasses for lipstick stains. Tosan went to pubs on his own, but he also needed company. He talked a lot, too much. He was always going on about arts and culture and punctuated everything he said with a ‘You know wha’ I mean?’ Sometimes she wanted to say, ‘Actually, I don’t.’ Other times, she just wanted him to be quiet. She barely had time for him while she was studying for her final exams and that was probably when he began to look around.
He