Our Kind of People Page 8

  “Before, if you’d seen two people kissing, it would be a jawbreaker,” she said. “It was something that you shouldn’t do. People would go, ‘Oh my god!’ But now it’s normal—kissing in public is nothing. People having sex with different partners is a very common thing. I have my circle of friends, and I know how we behave, and I know how we talk. For some people, it’s actually very cool for them to talk about having different kinds of partners. I’m sorry to say it, but over here, all the guys, like ninety percent of the guys I know, go casual with sex. They have many partners. It’s something that is common. It’s something that is normal here. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in Nigeria, a guy having more than one partner is something that is OK.”

  The official national health survey reports that 26 percent of Nigerian men in both rural and urban areas report having multiple or concurrent partnerships. That is not an insignificant segment of the population and does suggest that concurrency may indeed have cultural roots. I suspect the percentage might actually be higher, given people’s tendency to underreport their sexual activity when asked. In fact, some studies have found that when the populations are sorted by age and gender, the number of men in concurrent partnerships rises to 77 percent.

  “What about for women?” I asked.

  “For here, a girl should not have more than one partner whether married or not,” she said. “But now I’ve noticed the trend is changing. It’s becoming more common. It’s only normal for a human being to want to have sex, and if you’re not getting it with your man and you find yourself in a vulnerable position, you’ll end up doing it.”

  Only 2 percent of Nigerian females report having multiple partners, which reflects the fact that Nigeria is still quite a conservative country when it comes to female sexual behavior. Unfortunately—as is the case in most of the rest of the world—a woman who does not conform to the societal ideal of proper female behavior is quickly and negatively labeled. Thus this statistic is somewhat misleading, for it captures only women who actively seek multiple partners. In reality, many women involved with men who are in multiple partnerships are also in concurrent relationships. Therefore it is probably safe to say that the percentage of women in concurrent relationships—even if not by choice; for example, to avoid extreme poverty—may be close to the percentage of men.

  “I’ve had multiple—if you would call two multiple—partners. That’s the most I’ve had,” she continued. “I was single, and then my ex-boyfriend decided to come back. He was like, ‘OK. I’m back. I’m serious now. I’ve got my life straight. Let’s do this. Let’s get married.’ I was there because I thought this guy was serious about me and I don’t have anyone, so why not? Let me give it a try and see what will come out of it. And I actually liked him before, so I thought, OK, maybe I’ll feel something for him. The other guy—it was just a very rare thing. I met him and we started talking, chatting, meeting. We became very close. We’re still very close. So one thing led to another and we had sex and we just liked it. We just enjoyed it. But then the guy is from Imo State, and he’s obviously a Christian. He could not take me home, and I could not take him home. It could not happen. His parents are very strong Catholics. My parents are Muslims. I’m Hausa. He’s Igbo. He’s from the south. I’m from the north. We knew it was not going to go anywhere, but we really liked each other. We enjoyed sex. We enjoyed talking. We were good friends.”

  Fatimah’s views reflect a newer, more cosmopolitan philosophy of sexual interaction in which, according to Paulina Makinwa-Adebusoye and Richmond Tiemoko, in their introduction to the book Human Sexuality in Africa, “‘shared pleasure’ has gained prominence over ‘life creation’ as amply demonstrated by worldwide declines in fertility and a growing youth culture.” HIV/AIDS plays a complicated role in understandings of this new and emerging sexual behavior. On one hand, for those in Nigeria who believe such new attitudes to be wrong, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS demonstrates a pervasive social corruption and thus necessitates a return to traditional ways of sanctioned sexual interaction as delineated by religion or local cultures. For the more progressive, HIV/AIDS has made clear to Nigerians that a world in which everyone waits until marriage to have sex, and once married, has sex only with his or her spouse, is fantasy. It has forced a discussion that reveals we are all having more of the “wrong kind” of sex than we would have initially wanted to admit and therefore are all more exposed to the virus. At the same time, it requires that we modify our notions of sexual morality. The newer HIV/AIDS awareness programs acknowledge this much. No longer can people legitimately preach that we should simply return to abstaining from sex, as our religious deities and cultural norms demand, in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, because it is becoming more apparent that such abstinence never really existed. To do so would be to deny the evidence and the truism that “body no be wood.” In a nod to the fact that many people are clearly having sex, we now have public health recommendations like the ABCs of Sex, first pioneered in Uganda: Abstain, Be mutually faithful to one partner, and use Condoms if you can’t do the first two. The last directive represents a monumental shift in the way we in Nigeria, with all of our religious predilections, think. Though there is still a cultural norm that condemns all sex outside of marriage, traditional sexual mores now have to share the space and in some cases do battle with condoms, which can be seen as defining a new threshold between legitimate and illegitimate sex. Good sex involves condoms, and bad sex, the kind that spreads HIV/AIDS, does not.

  “Do you use condoms?” I asked Fatimah.

  “I practice safe sex. Inasmuch as I want to have sex and enjoy it, I really, really try so hard to practice safe sex, ‘cause I’ve seen someone die of HIV, and it’s not a good experience for my family, for her family, and obviously for the way that she died. I wouldn’t want to put anyone through that. Pregnancy is not something that I’m scared of, because there are many ways to get rid of a pregnancy. But there is no way to get rid of AIDS when you get it. I can be pregnant and my parents might be mad at me, but my parents will forgive me. God will forgive me, and I will live to raise my child. But if I have HIV, I will be hurting my parents, because people begin to judge you, and that’s what I don’t want. I would rather not have that shame and painful death in the future. I would just rather use the protection.”

  It is telling that at one point in our conversation, Fatimah told me, “Even if my husband ends up sleeping around, I’ve already prepared my mind on how to control it. I don’t want a husband who sleeps around without protection. I’m the type that would pack my husband’s traveling case with condoms inside. I was telling my boyfriend that if he has to cheat on me—and he was like ‘No! No! No! Stop telling me this. You’re trying to put ideas in my head!’—I was like, ‘No! If you have it in you, you will do it. I’m just giving you my own little conditions. Please, please, please, safe sex whatever you do. And don’t bring it near me.’ I’d rather handle the situation at hand. I’d rather tell him these are my conditions if you have to do it. ’Cause I know, sometimes we’re all human.”

  A majority of Nigerians know about condoms, even if we do not always use them correctly or consistently. Ninety percent of people in urban areas and 64 percent of people in rural areas have heard of male condoms. You can find them in hotels and gas stations, in drugstores and even roadside kiosks. Nigerians have used over 900 million condoms since 2002, and that number will only rise. They are here to stay, and they are changing the way we have sex, but the relationship we have with them is complex.

  “For example,” a driver I know named Obong told me as we sat at a brukutu joint where he had taken me for an after-work chat, “now, if I see you with a girl, I will now tell you, ‘Remember your bulletproof.’ I will now tell you, ‘If you see a big river—like river Niger or Benue—instead of you to sleep with this girl without condom, so it is better for you to use block, put rope on it, hang it on your neck, and jump inside river.’” He wrapped an invisible rope around his neck
and then pantomimed tossing a heavy cinder block over the edge into a river, followed, after a short pause, by his body.

  Obong returned to our coarse wooden bench beneath a flamboyant tree with its red blossoms and fanned himself slowly with that morning’s folded newspaper. His shirt bore dark sweat stains where it folded into the creases of his body. He was not an especially large man, but he joked about his growing potbelly and how the extra weight made him sweat a little harder. Around us sprawled a chaotic convention of bars and brothels connected to illegally rigged extensions from the power grid. Men sat in groups, holding bottles of Guinness stout or Star beer as they conversed loudly with one another. Ignored and unhindered, roaming goats gnawed the sackcloth walls of temporary buildings and nuzzled the ground for bits of rubbish.

  “To commit suicide is better than you to go on that girl without condom,” he said again. “Because you should remember what is happening in the town. If you should go enter like that, it means you use rope, tie your neck like that, jump in river. From that you understand where you’re going.”

  His dramatic endorsement of condoms reflects a sentiment that is remarkably widespread in Nigeria. However, while awareness about condoms and their role in stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS is high, condom usage is despairingly low. Only 28 percent of sexually active Nigerians have ever used a condom during intercourse and, as expected, there is more condom use in urban areas than in rural areas. The question, of course, is why—if people know about condoms and their role in preventing HIV/AIDS, why are they not using them?

  There are a number of possible reasons why people don’t use condoms during sexual intercourse, many of which point to the anxiety generated by the sexual experience. First, both men and women the world over agree that sex feels better without condoms. A number of studies suggest that this is the number one reason why people do not use condoms when having sex. This is probably as true in the United States as it is in Nigeria and throughout Africa. Furthermore, condoms can be expensive for the average person in Nigeria, who hasn’t much disposable income. Condoms are also awkward. They are awkward to buy, even in the passionately liberal New York City, as they make a bold statement about one’s sexual activities. This may be more true in Nigeria, where sex is not discussed as openly as in other places. A number of people I spoke with said shopkeepers cast disapproving glances in their direction when they tried to buy condoms. Some received sermons about the sinful nature of premarital sex. Worse, some women were propositioned immediately upon leaving the store. Condoms also break the flow of romance and passion. One young man told me that he thought guys don’t like to use condoms because putting one on gives both parties the chance to consider how sinful sex is. Another young man told me about a university friend who avoided that awkward moment, when the girl might say no while he was putting on the condom, by donning one before going out for the night. Then there are the rumors, the most pervasive and destructive of which is that condoms often break.

  “That’s just it,” Obong said when I asked him what he thought about the idea that condoms are unreliable. He then elaborated. “I was on this assignment in the south, and there was this girl. She was just making phone call when I passed. She was in a wheelchair,” he continued. “All this wheelchair that First Lady used to dash people that cannot walk* That’s the wheelchair she were using, rolling it with her hand. If you see her, how she fat and sit on the wheelchair, you think maybe she look like somebody who has a baby at hand. She’s a pretty girl even though she’s paralyzed—keep herself very neat, with long hair. Since she sit down in the wheelchair, I believe that people doesn’t rush to her like these other beautiful ones that pass. See, when you see a beautiful girl, it’s not only you that see her; many people see her, but those who have money, they go on her. I was not with enough money to spend for all those kind big girls in that area. I now look at her in that way that if I succeed, it will not cost me a lot. Since she agree, I now come to her place later in the evening, since I have that appointment with her. And I just buy her little provision, buy her something in the leather,” he said, referring to plastic grocery bags that, for reasons I have never understood, Nigerians call leather.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “Well, I play with her. I was trying to touch her breasts, play—you know, in romantic way—for her to make a move so that she can allow me to do my aim of coming there. She enjoy me. And I fire her very well. Then I now realize that the taste of my coming to release was now not like when I start. I think you understand?”

  I nodded. The condom was no longer in place.

  “You know by that time you reach, at the point of release, it has no control at that time. Even if they point you gun, you think, you feel, let them shoot. But it’s only till when you come down from there you now realize that ‘Ah! So somebody is standing here with gun to shoot me!’ So I keep on till when I release. After I release, I now find out that the rope of the neck of the condom was on my prick. I now find out that the condom tear. I now ask her to check where is the remaining condom. I even put hand in her private part to look for it—whether the thing cut and go inside. Nothing. The condom tear and now fold as I’m seriously injecting. I now find that all my sperm has released inside her private part. I say, ‘Wow!’ I say, ‘Well, it has happened. It has happened. Since this thing has happened like this, any STD, surely if she has, I will take it. If it is STD—whether nah HIV or not—if God says I should take it, I will take it. If God says I will not take it, then OK.’” He shivered in remembrance of the moment.

  “What did you do after the condom broke?” I asked.

  He released a guarded smile and spoke slowly. “After that thing tear, I did not even care to use even the second condom I was having. I say, ‘After all, I already release into her.’ She let me know I’m fit. I’m a man; I fire her five times. I have to continue. I have to.”

  What would you do at this moment? What would I do? Almost every sexually active person has experienced a broken condom. It causes an intense anxiety even as it generates a certain rush from exposure to the risk of pregnancy or disease. In my friend’s case, his feelings illustrate the larger dilemma and complexity of choices that people face in a time of changing moral standards and attitudes about sex. The belief that sex outside of marriage is wrong still holds sway even as we acknowledge that in practice we often ignore moral convention. Condoms are often seen as tools that enable sin or wrongdoing even if they do provide the benefit of protection against HIV/AIDS. But condoms also diminish sexual pleasure and are considered faulty. They raise the question: if certain kinds of sex are sinful and possible punishment in the form of HIV/AIDS awaits anyway, why mitigate the pleasure of the sin? Many people make that decision and forgo condoms despite the risks. For others the result is mental and emotional gymnastics that seek to take the sin out of sex and in so doing remove the threat of HIV as a possible consequence or punishment. The anthropologist Daniel Jordan Smith describes one of the main ways this is done in Nigeria as moral partnering, the construction of sexual relationships in the language of monogamy and religion, in which relationship morality is associated with decreased risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS.

  On one of my trips to Lagos, in 2007, I had a long chat with Dele, a university student who explained the idea very clearly: “So basically me, I believe that if you love somebody—as in when, I mean, you love somebody, you have to be faithful to the person for you to even love the person. I’m using myself now as an example. My ex-girlfriend—I was faithful to her to the core. I trusted her. I still trust her, you get? If you and your partner trust each other, I don’t think there’s going to be any room for fear of AIDS or any kind of sexual disease.”

  He spoke loudly, but it was hard to hear him over the din outside. We sat by a lectern in a chapel in the compound of a mutual acquaintance. A carved wooden Jesus looked down at us from a simple wooden altar. It was election season then, and the politicking was in full swing. Along the streets, political poste
rs covered nearly every available surface, and vans laden with speakers blasting the advertising jingles of the various candidates could be heard even inside. Dele was a physics major at the well-regarded University of Lagos. Freshly barbered with his hair brushed forward and smoothed to a black shine with sweet-smelling oil, wearing a pressed short-sleeve shirt, stylish jeans, and sneakers that were impossibly white, given the dusty streets outside, he looked more like a GQ model than a physics nerd. He made me incredibly self-conscious of my rumpled green tiedyed shirt and hair that I hadn’t had cut in months.

  “Tell me about your girlfriend,” I said.

  “She’s my ex-girlfriend now,” he said, shifting his weight in an uncomfortable orange plastic chair. “She’s the girl I’m still going to get married to, because I pray to God about it. I used to be seriously crazy about the girl. I’m still crazy about her. She was a very beautiful, reserved girl. She’s pretty.” His hands clutched each other, massaged each other as he sat otherwise still, causing a flutter in his sleeves. “Yeah. She has very good shape, very lovely shape. Yeah. Fit,” he said. “She was a virgin.” He made sure to point this out. “I just wanted to date her. I don’t know sha. Probably I just wanted to sleep with her or something when I first met her. She was really proving stubborn and everything. OK, I now started liking her sha. Then we started dating. She’s the best thing. She changed my life. Seriously, she changed my life. I started breaking up with a lot of girls. I broke up with like half of my girlfriends in the first two weeks.”

  “Sorry,” I interrupted. “You said you broke up with half of your girlfriends?”

  “Then, officially, I had eight girlfriends,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t have time again for girls like that. As in she had this one kind of impact on me. Then later, after about one month or so, I broke up with everybody apart from one other girl. I really liked that girl too. Then along the line, after one and a half years, I just had to choose one.”