Africans: Some Sanitary Measures

In this webisode, I chose to address personal hygiene and some measures we Africans can take to keep ourselves clean:

1. Team natural hair -- Team #solangeknowles. Team Chimamanda Adichie. Please comb your natural hair. Do a twist out. Wash it. Whatever. Don’t look like Tarzan or George of the jungle. Americans already think we are from the jungle. What will they think when they see you looking unkempt? Please save us and our reputation.

2. Team white -- typically after wearing a white shirt or white pants once, they're stained. You have to wash them. Now, if you wash whites with other colors, whites will likely be stained. It will now turn to orange or brown. Or maybe the rest of the shirt will be white and then the armpit part will be brown because you’ve been wearing it over and over without washing it. No!

3. Team eye boogers -- Please wash your face in the morning. Some people go as far as taking a selfie and adding hash tag "I woke up like this." Hash tag "flawless." Ain't nothing flawless about you! Please, the first thing to do before coming out to interact with other human beings is wash your face and brush your teeth. So unless there’s an emergency, or there’s an ambulance outside your door waiting to carry you to a hospital, do not come out of your house without washing your face. There's a difference between looking natural and looking dirty.

4. Team tallons -- Unnecessarily long and dirty nails. Then the nails start harboring all kinds of bacteria, virus, fungi. Hand sanitizers don’t replace washing hands with soap and water. If you wash your hands regularly, dirt won’t gather under your nails. Trim your nails if you can’t maintain long nails.

5. Team smelly. 

 a. Ladies, hairy/smelly armpit. Why? Ladies, shave your armpit. And there’s nothing cool about wearing a sleeveless top or dress and your armpit looks like animal fur. And please use deodorants too.

b. Smelling like food -- Like fish, goat, jollof rice. We are Africans, and we cook with spices. But shut your bedroom doors when you’re cooking so that the smell of food doesn't stick on your clothes. And occasionally open the window and let fresh air in so that you won't choke in the smell of your own food. Don't smell like garlic at the gym. Don't smell like jollof rice at church!!

African Party Etiquette

We all love African parties -- the music, the food, the dancing. But some people misbehave. So I have decided to address that. What to do and what not to do at parties:

1. Don’t be a "Long Throat:" Stop overeating and taking too much food to go at parties. Some people act like they've never seen food before -- even educated people who ought to be enlightened.

2. Act as if you're a host, not a guest. Reach out to people standing by themselves. Mingle. Don’t be tribalistic. Don’t not talk to someone because you think they’re not Yoruba or Igbo or Nigerian.

3. Don’t be rude and nasty and carry a "long face" around. We know you have bills to pay. We all do. We know you have mortgage and car loan. But please you’re not the only one in the world with issues. Be pleasant, be cheerful, smile, and mingle, no matter what mood you're in. If you've had a bad day, don't rain on anyone else's parade by talking about your negative experience — unless, of course, you want people to run away from you.

4. Listen more than you talk: You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion. Ratio 2:1. Nothing is more annoying than when your voice will be the loudest at a party. Don’t act like you're an "ITK" (I Too Know). Listen to others and entertain other people’s opinions.

5. Avoid making negative comments on the room, the food, the host, other attendees: Don't be a "nothing satisfies me" kind of person. The jollof rice is not red enough. The egusi soup has too much egusi inside. The gele of the host is too big. Or you might be the one who talks about everyone who walks around: “Meeeen, that woman has bleached and her knuckles are so black.” Just mind your business and be thankful that you have food to eat!! Stop making negative comments!

Nigerians Demystified

Nigerians are a very interesting people (unarguably). Yes, I am Nigerian. This is why I chose to address common stereotypes and myths that follow us in my fourth webisode:


a. We are proud and full of ourselves and think we're better than everyone else.

b. We party a lot. Like every week. For no reason.

c. We have a distinct interesting (and maybe funny) accent. (yes we do!)

d. We are all scammers and can’t be trusted. 

e. We are all from Lagos.

f. We have an insatiable need to show off. An undying urge. 

g. We are loud and we put “o” at the end of every statement. 

h. We all speak pidgin 

i. Nigerians don’t emulate western culture wisely. 

j. (My personal favorite) Overboard weddings

African Pressurizers

Every unmarried West African woman of a certain age has experienced pressure from people. Pressure to date, marry, or get engaged to someone quickly. My third webisode addresses this pressure.

Ways People Can Annoy You:

1. They call you. Ask you questions like: How’s the brother? When will the wedding bells ring? They make you second guess yourself and feel little and incomplete and invisible. These people may have good intentions, but their delivery is inconvenient.

2. The numerous calls and pressure can make you lose focus on school or work or your goals. People will tell you, “No matter how much success you have, you must still end up under a man.”

3. This pressure leads to desperation. You become desperate to find someone and eventually, you could end up with the wrong person. You might end up settling for less than you deserve. You might end up with a messed up man who will lock you in the basement and feed you from a tube. Or even an abuser -- he will beat you like a drum!

For many Africans, a female is always seen as a child until she marries and starts "borning" kids. Only marriage can warrant “adulthood” status.

How To Deal With The Marriage Pressure

1. Block the caller’s number. Block them from every social media.

2. Become a statistician: “Oh, Aunty, 20% of my friends who got married in their early 20s are already getting a divorce! 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime. Women experience more than 4 million physical assaults and rapes because of their partners. Women ages 20 to 24 are at greatest risk of becoming victims of domestic violence. Every year, 1 in 3 women who is a victim of homicide is murdered by her current or former partner.”

3. Focus on yourself. Do things that make you happy. Live. Laugh. Love. Volunteer for a good cause. Don’t be idle lest you get sad. Throw yourself out there. Get busy. Find ways to develop yourself. Take cooking classes. Learn a new language if you’ve always wanted to. Enroll for graduate school classes. There are some interesting things you will learn about yourself if you will stop obsessing over finding a man.

Stay blessed!

Bad Habits of African Immigrants

African time. Colored People's Time (CPT). We've all heard about these labels. Why? Why do Africans dignify their lateness by calling it a name?

On my second webisode, I discuss five annoying habits of African Immigrants in the U.S. (or maybe also in Canada, U.K., Australia, or any other Western country Africans go to these days). Here are some of our bad habits that I address:

1. Pathological lateness

2. Asking people to take things home for you and/or bring things from home when you go visit.

3. African immigrants (men) telling African immigrants (women) to date them for green card and/or citizenship.

4. The "my wife must be a slave mentality."

5. Interracial relationships

As usual, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Live. Love. Laugh.

:)

Africans In The West, Stop Lying!!

I love barbecues. I love get-togethers. It's nice to unwind in the summer after a long work week. At one of these barbecues I went to, we were all Africans. And we were all laughing and talking about the ups and downs of the West, our hopes of turning Africa around, and how we dream of moving back home in the end (it's a dream!)

But during one of our heated conversations, someone steps out to make a phone call. He should not have stepped out. Most of us (West Africans), even when we step out to make/receive a phone call, the people we leave behind will still hear (not overhear) our loud voice. 

So this man is talking on the phone: "My brother, we are at a barbecue o. We are chopping life. We are eating. We are all happy. We do this everyday in the Summer. We eat, drink, laugh, talk."

Now, he wasn't entirely lying. Yes. We eat. We drink. We are happy (sometimes). My problem with his conversation is that he was exaggerating. And sometimes, when you over-exaggerate, you become a liar.

Africans in the West, please don’t lie to folks back home. The American dream is exactly what it is, it’s a dream. This is why I address the most ridiculous things I have heard people say about America, in my pilot webisode:

a. Every immigrant is rich.

b. There are no poor people in America

c. There is no dust in America (really???)

d. There are good jobs everywhere.

e. Everywhere is cold, and it snows constantly everywhere.

Please watch my webisodes. Subscribe to my YouTube channel (kemisaidso), and keep coming back to my blog!

Much love :)