Dogma

So B, one of my roommates, badges into the room.

‘Uzube,’ he mouths with that peculiar Yoruba accent, substituting the n for a u. ‘To be a man no easy oo.’ He just took a call from whoever. They spoke pidgin, with freckles of Yoruba.

I wonder at what might have prompted the comment. ‘Even to be a woman no easy.’ To be a woman may be harder sef, I want to add, but rethink.

‘Eem,’ he narrows his eyes, as if it were the sun, not my face, he’s looking at, obviously at a loss what to say. ‘Haa!’ – his eureka – ‘but a woman will get married, and her husband go don make am. Na we men wey dey suffer!’ Dogma!

 And you, man, no go get married? I want to say. And your wife no sabi make am? And dem women no dey suffer? And . . . But I’m learning not to argue (too much) again, especially when my ‘opponent’, like B, is a walking trunk without a head. Plus my stammering has become acute of late.

Auchi, 10 September 2015.