Nwapa Women are Different

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983-2381-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 239 Seiten

Women are Different is the moving story of a group of Nigerian women, from their schooldays together through the trials and tribulations of their adult lives. Through their stories we see some of the universal problems faced by women everywhere: the struggle for financial independence and a rewarding career, combined with the need to bring up a family, often without a man. All this is set against the background of a developing Nigeria, from colonial times, through the Nigerian Civil War to the present day. Once again, Flora Nwapa demonstrates her skill and compassionate insight into the problems of women in creating a book you will never forget.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nwapa, Flora

Leseproben

Chapter 2

The ‘Three Musketeers’ as well as Comfort were in trouble. Miss Hill had made a note when she saw them the morning the Grammar School boys brought them back to school. She was shocked to have such precocious girls in her school. She would have thought that the four girls would be the first set of girls to return, not the last. She expected that kind of behaviour from her more senior girls not girls who were in their first year.

She did not call the girls to her office until the beginning of the new term. She had wanted to ignore the incident of last term since the girls were not responsible for the kit car breaking down again, and if anything had happened to the girls that night, she and the teachers were to be held responsible. But of late the four girls had been receiving a series of letters from boys especially boys from the Grammar School, and elsewhere.

Miss Hill knew the writing of each girl in the school. The girls were supposed to post their letters written on Sundays, in Miss Hill’s office. She had not seen letters written by these girls, yet she had seen many letters addressed to them. What had happened to the innocent girls during the holidays?

Miss Hill did not know that a lot happened that night. The four girls had had their first kisses, not from younger boys of their class, but from senior boys in classes three and four. They had agreed that they would meet in Port Harcourt during the holidays. They had actually met, went to see films, and had quite a good time. Dora had met Chris, and now was writing to him regularly; Rose was writing to Ernest, and Agnes was writing Jo Sam. As for Comfort, because she performed so well at the debate, she was writing to four boys in the same school, and many more in Denis Memorial Grammar School and Hope Wadell. She bragged about it. She said she wanted to have a boyfriend in Kings College, Lagos. Why should the girls of Queen’s College, Lagos monopolise the boys of King’s? It did not strike her that the Girls of ACMGS were monopolising the boys of the Grammar School. In pursuing this policy, if one could call it so, Comfort got into serious trouble in the boys’ schools where she operated. She caused so much confusion and trouble, that in her third year, all the boys who wrote to her, after series of quarrels, got together and decided that she was not worth all that trouble, and therefore abandoned her. But Comfort did not mind. As insensitive as she was she even told the story herself and laughed with the girls. ‘What I know is that I am not going to put all my eggs in one basket.’ One thing with Comfort was that she spoke the King’s English as well as she spoke the pidgin English spoken in Port Harcourt area. To some girls it was not easy.

One of the girls who was not all that flushed about boys was Agnes. She wrote to Sam all right, but not with the zeal of her other friends. Rose was almost fanatical about Ernest. She wrote him every week whether he replied or not. Her friends thought she was stupid and said so to her, but she said she could not help herself. Comfort told her that if she wrote to a boy and he did not reply in a fortnight, she lost interest. A boy, she insisted, must have the responsibility to reply to her letter on time. She hated to be ignored, and ended up by saying that she would never give anybody the chance to ignore her. ‘The person, boy or girl, who will ignore me has not been born,’ she frequently said.

Agnes was quieter during the second term. Something must have happened to her during the holidays. She had told the girls that she lived with her father and her father’s wife. She did not like her, but who did? She did very little and concentrated on her school work. She would not talk much about her home during conversations.

Miss Hill called the girls one after the other and talked to them about their love lives. She told them they spent more time writing love letters, and less time doing their school work. And warned them that if they continued in that way, she was going to report them to their parents.

Comfort made nothing out of it. Dora and Rose were a bit shaken, Agnes was in tears. She went privately to Miss Hill and begged her not to give her a bad report. ‘That will be the end of me and my schooling,’ she said. Thereafter, Miss Hill sat her down and asked her to confide in her. She did. She was under pressure to get married to someone she did not like. He was much older than herself - no, he was as old as her father, but because her step-mother wanted to get rid of her fast by marrying her off, she had convinced her father that the man was good for her. She loathed the man, but there was nothing she could do on her own. All she was asking of the Principal was not to write an adverse report on her. That would give her father more cause to marry her off during the holidays. She knew her own mind, and she was determined to be in school and take the Cambridge School Certificate examination before she married.

Miss Hill had a thousand and one things to say to the girl, but she did not. After all she thought, she was a foreigner in a foreign land with strange cultures. She was not going to interfere. If she could, or she had the opportunity, she would talk to Agnes’ father on her behalf. She would tell Agnes’ father that his daughter was brilliant, and it would be in his best interest to give her a full secondary school education, and then marry her off if he must.

What was the use of spending so much time and energy teaching a child algebra and geometry and all the other subjects if she was not going to make use of them? Wasn’t that other missionary right in recommending that the school which Miss Hill carefully set up to educate the elite of Nigerian women, should be down-graded, and used for the training of Catechists, and church agents’ wives? She had opposed that other missionaries’ views so vehemently at the conference when the topic was discussed. Perhaps, in view of what was happening she, Miss Hill was wrong.

But she felt Nigeria needed well brought up Christian girls who would take their places when they eventually handed over power to the people. Miss Hill could see the handwriting on the wall since the advent of Mr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.

To counteract all these bad influences, the missionaries and the colonial government in Nigeria needed schools of the status of ACMGS. They as missionaries should teach these girls properly, and that was exactly what she was doing. But then other influences intervened. Agnes’ father would not even allow her to have a four-year education. She had not graduated in Oxford and come to Nigeria to train Nigerian girls to be good wives. She was not a wife. She was a missionary who had shunned all worldly attractions to do the will of God.

Newspapers, though scarce in those days were not read in the school. Rose received The West African Pilot the other day by post, and Miss Hill had to confiscate it. However, when Mbonu Ojike wanted to speak to the girls on the Ibo language, Miss Hill allowed him to come, though she refused the request of Dr. Nnuku Eziso, perhaps because of his bombastic English. (He had, the year before spoken to the boys of the Grammar School, and after his lecture, the Principal thanked him for his entertainment!)

Miss Hill was interested in Mazi Mbonu Ojike because he was keen on the preservation of the Ibo language and culture. The girls were encouraged to sing and dance Ibo dances, and speak Ibo in school (it was pidgin English that she disallowed). Ibo language was one of the subjects taught in school, and church services were conducted in English as well as Ibo. On ‘Parents Days’ the girls performed Ibo dances as well as English Country dances and the Scottish Reel, and they were encouraged to dress in their native attire whenever possible.

There was no wonder therefore that Miss Hill welcomed Mazi Mbonu Ojike, the ‘Boycott King’ to address the girls on the Ibo language. He arrived at the school, wearing a jumper and apiece of ‘jorge’ tied round his waist. To the girls who had some foreign influence through Christianity in their elementary schools, Mazi Ojike’s appearance was a bit odd. Some would have preferred him to have worn an English suit; others said he was projecting our culture and praised him for doing so.

Mazi Mbonu Ojike spoke eloquently in Ibo without adulterating it with spices of the English language. He maintained that the Ibo language was rich and complete, and it was a pity that many schools did not offer it as one of their subjects for the Cambridge School Certificate Examination. He was conversant with the writings of Peter Nwana, especially his classic work, ‘Omenuko’. Ojike’s language was so rich in idioms and proverbs that the girls applauded him. He told them that the spellings in the Ibo language were easy compared to English. The English, he said, pronounced one thing, and wrote another. The reason for this, he said was that the English borrowed words from other languages, and ‘got confused’ with the spellings.

Mazi Mbonu Ojike’s visit was the talk of the school for many weeks. Many girls became more interested in the Ibo language, especially Rose and Dora. They spent their time collecting Ibo proverbs and idioms. Rose even went as far as writing a story in Ibo and won the recognition of their Ibo teacher Miss Okeke, who they learnt came from the same area as Mazi Mbonu Ojike. The rest of the Ibo lessons in Rose’s class that term were devoted to the visit of the Mazi who was so well learned...