Honey, which means that your life shall be sweet. Palm oil, to lubricate life’s aches. Salt, to protect and help keep you. Kola nut, i can not keep in mind precisely, it is it maybe maybe not sufficient it is the absolute most symbolically Nigerian thing, across all lines that are ethnic?
Exactly what are these? Collectively, they form section of a “bride cost” – money and presents provided by a person’s household to a lady’s upon their wedding. At school in Nigeria, during Yoruba history course, we had been told about women that attracted bride that is incredibly high, influenced by their characteristics. Inversely, there have been females whoever bride rates were therefore paltry, it absolutely was an embarrassment. I do not keep in mind the gifts that are specific whatever they signify any longer, but I really do keep in mind that these classes by which we had been taught about our history had been, for modern budding feminists, a tough pill to ingest.
I will be contemplating bride price again this week, however, due to a brand new application that’s been doing the rounds when you look at the African corners of my internet life. Initially, I became reluctant to publish about that software at all. The narrative of Africa and Africans in the united kingdom along with other Western, mainly white areas can be so old, so outdated and false, so wearying, that we conserve African tales for my safer areas, places where there is absolutely no empathy space. I love speaing frankly about Nigeria without some internet stranger telling us to “Just get on it!” speaking about Africa – its good and its particular bad – in the internet wears me away. So when we third-culture kids meet up, occupying that center area when you look at the Venn diagram that overlaps our moms and dads’ countries using the West’s, we are able to laugh about this. That is exactly what this application is approximately.
Down load the Indpendent Premium that is new software
Sharing the complete tale, not merely the news headlines
The Bride Price app calculated that I became well well worth the “Premium Babe”-ly amount of 494,500 naira that is nigerianNGN) –about ?1,816. Just just just How achieved it get to this figure? Via a number of concerns, and they’re the real celebrity with this software. You’ve got the choice to check always “for yourself” or “for the friend/enemy” – because as Nigerians, the one thing we have been constantly conscious of, even though we can not see or hear them, is our enemy.
Therefore, also before we clicked, I happened to be smiling. Then arrived the true concerns: my height; my fat (choices included the extremely standard “medium”, and the harder-to-decipher “Mama Ronke” – so what does that even mean?); my leg form (“straight”, “sexy bow leg (Beyonce)” etc); my facial beauty (from “intimidating” to “complete no try”) an such like. Each solution possesses value that is monetary no kola pea nuts here – often a “discount”, 60 percent if you should be unfortunate adequate to function as indecipherable “Mama Ronke”. The software does take time to determine the bride price and provides a jaunty message by having a blinking green shekere (a West African drum): “Please wait – the elders are consulting. at the conclusion of the test”
The expression “if you never laugh, you will cry” appears, as part of your, to be manufactured specifically for Nigerians. The narrative that is accepted certainly one of woe, a country lurching from pillar (of calamity) to publish (of catastrophe) despite a resource wide range that may effortlessly function as the reply to our dilemmas. The thought of bride pricing is a screen to your past, a past that is never glorious or edifying whenever seen via a contemporary lens.
But this application is sly – the nuance is almost certainly not noticeable to all eyes, but it is here. Under skin color – which could or might not have had a direct effect on bride price within the days that are olden truly things within the hierarchy of beauty today – comes five groups. “Half caste”; “Light epidermis”; “Dark”; “Whitenicious”; and “Lupita” (such as Nyong’o). The worthiness for every decreases while you go down record, you start with +NGN50,000. Issue – and solution choices simultaneously acknowledge the colour-struck manner attribute of the swathe of Nigerians, along with noting without fuss the number of tints we are available in obviously. There clearly was an level associated with Lupita skin, that is a thing that is small although not.
There are some other markers. On teeth, a “white with gap” gets the value that is highest (my mom has expressed dismay that none of her young ones inherited our grandmother’s “beautiful” jamaican wives diastema), while “Ronaldinho” is sold with a -NGN40,000 label. The place and citizenship concerns are fine “don’t cry – laugh” examples (America is released tops in both), and a Masters is desirable, but a PhD features a penalty of -NGN100,000. Employment views gas and oil show up trumps (+NGN100,000); my journalism job features a value of only +NGN20,000. Fortunately, i will be “redeemed” by my English accent – the– that is highest valued at +NGN45,000.
Then maybe it’s not for you if you can’t see the social commentary in this app.
Anyhow. The software proposed my prospective in-laws deliver 100 yards of cable lace to my family that is ancestral homestead befitting my “Premium Babe” status. Finally, an software that gets me…
