Degrees of backwardness (2): Apes and monkeys for concubines

We were halfway through our lunch on the lagoon when Ogbuagu took over from Taiwo as Complainer-in-Chief.

“Our ever-present flowing robes,” he said, “may well be a sign of our backwardness in the industrial world of work. But I tell you, there are degrees of backwardness.”

“Just try,” said Taiwo. “However you cut it, I promise you Nigeria and Africa will be there.”

“Regressive practices of all sorts run rampant in this 21st century,” Ogbuagu continued. “It’s shocking beyond belief. And the chief culprits are . . .”

“Let me guess,” I cut in, anxious to throw in my two bits. “The chief culprits are Indians, Chinese, Arabs, and of course Africans.”

“Chinese?” asked Taiwo in wide-eyed surprise, probably fake. “Didn’t China just finish winning the prize for Most Improved Nation in the Modern World?”

“Yes, yes,” said Ogbuagu. “But China is the nation that for some decades now has enforced what they call a One Child Policy.”

“True,” said Taiwo. “They really had to curb their population. I mean, one and a half billion people is a lot of people in one country. And such a large population makes China reckless—internally and externally.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Internally, it makes them careless of safety standards. Just open the newspapers or TV any day and see the roll call of preventable industrial accidents, not to speak of environmental pollution in their break-neck race to become No. 1 in the global economy.”

“And I suppose if they do so badly in their own country, how do you expect them to do better when they drill oil or run factories in someone else’s country?”

“Exactly.”

“But what does this have to do with an over-large population?”

“It means they don’t care how many people they lose. They are careless of human life.”

“Anything to reduce the population, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“Now that you mention it, just last year in Hong Kong I saw super-highrise buildings under construction; and guess what, the scaffolds were made of bamboo poles!”

“You’re joking! Don’t they have iron and steel?”

“Of course they do. That’s the whole point: why would anyone construct scaffolds with bamboo when there is iron?”

“Do the scaffolds collapse?”

“Sometimes.  Many of the workers are migrant workers from the mainland—where the roster of missing persons is a mile long.”

“Na wah-o!”

“Anyway, what about this One Child Policy?”

“The One Child Policy,” said Ogbuagu, “means that to curb the population growth, no couple in China is permitted to have more than one child.”

“So what do they do with children born out of wedlock?” asked Taiwo. “Grab the mother . . . and the father if they can find him . . . and execute them?”

“I don’t know,” said Ogbuagu. “What I do know is that many Chinese couples will strangle a girl baby as soon as she’s born.”

“Lord have mercy! Do they hate girls in China?”

“If they must have only one child, most China couples prefer to have a boy.”

“That, unfortunately, is the global standard,” I intoned, first clearing my professorial throat.

“Unfortunately,” said Ogbuagu. “And yet it is women that make life on earth possible. If women refuse to get pregnant, or the boy-lovers manage to murder every girl-baby, soon the human race will die out.”

“Then you’ll revert to making concubines of apes and monkeys!”

The voice was unfamiliar. We swung round. It was our neighbor at the table behind us. One fine lady.

“Sorry I butted in,” she apologized. “I just couldn’t help overhearing your very interesting conversation.”

“That’s quite allright,” I said to her. “But—apes and monkeys? . . .”

“You see,” continued the lady, “I am the oldest child in my family. My father swears he’s the luckiest man on earth because his first child was a girl. A girl, he says, will look after you in your old age, or when you are sick. And he made sure I didn’t marry too far from our village. A boy can barely boil water to make garri, let alone cooking soup or stew that any man of taste would care to taste. At best a boy will send cash from some far-off place . . . .”

“Yes, but isn’t his wife, your mother, there?”

“Whether she is there or not, the equation still balances.”

Q. E. D.

On that mathematical certainty, and having finished her lunch, the lady got up and left.

“Anyway,” said Taiwo, “on this matter of preference for boy children over girls, I think Nigeria is ahead of the game.”

“I don’t know what you mean. In any case let’s scan the globe for a minute . . . .”

• To be continued

Onwuchekwa Jemie