New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  China is Africa’s largest trading partner, an economic relationship that has grown significantly since 2000. China provided huge loans to the continent when the IMF would not. It built infrastructure projects to replace the haggard modernist monoliths that sprouted during oil booms and colonial times. New bridges, highways, airports, stadiums and presidential palaces. The poorest of African countries were granted zero-tariffs on a sizeable chunk of their exports to China.

  In turn, Africans were allowed to enter China and buy the small commodities that our low-manufacturing economies don’t make or have stopped making. They began travelling here as traders on temporary visas, others settling there permanently. It is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of global migration. For some, this relationship between China and Africa signified the start of a post-colonial epoch, free of Western mediation. No more finger-wagging “Wypipo” on their civilising missions. The Middle Kingdom’s refusal to criticise or moralise was music to the ears of sensitive kleptocrats in Africa as well as some commentators, who saw a refreshing simplicity in this deal, this New Amorality.

  While Europe narrowed its doors to Africans with non-essential skills, China offered a chance for Africans to live within its borders or visit on short-term visas in order to buy small commodities and other business. By 2008, up to 300,000 Africans were thought to be living in the southern city of Guangzhou, concentrated in an enclave known in the national media as “Chocolate City” (Chinese geographical nomenclature of all kinds often being indicative rather than artful).

  From the Tianxiu building I headed to the busy Guangyuanxi Road in the Sanyuanli district. The smell of Chinese-brand cigarettes and egg waffles thickened the air. Visa overstayers leaned languidly against the railings while their fellow sub-Saharans—the visiting traders—loaded boxes into taxis with contrasting verve. Two black men sat on roadside stools getting their shoes shined by Chinese women. The seventies buildings, the Anglophone shop hoardings, the concrete flyover colonised by creeping vines, resembled many a city in Africa.

  Such a melanin-rich environment was too much to handle for some Chinese folks, who expressed their discontent with a frankness bordering on the comical. Take, for example, the online reviews for the Donfranc Hotel, which is popular with African visitors. Translated from Google, one review was bluntly titled, “Here are blacks”. In another entry someone reported: “the hotel facilities are obsolete . . . the rooms are dirty, dimly lit, with no windows inside . . . guests predominantly black . . .”

  Those African hotel guests come to Guangzhou to buy goods, particularly clothes, because the Chinese have undercut textile production back home. I could see their stalls diagonally opposite Canaan Market, run by friendly Cantonese ladies. The sight of them handling piles of African wax prints was to my eyes as culturally transgressive as those male shop assistants who handle ladies’ underwear in Saudi Arabian lingerie shops. But that’s the way of the world these days. Africa plays no part in the displaying of African attire either: manning the corridors of Canaan Market were white mannequins—fibreglass Vikings modelling kaftans and kufi hats; blue-eyed plastic children wearing faux-gold Africa-shaped pendants and Gucci knock-off T-shirts festooned with the kind of glitter that exfoliates your flesh on contact.

  African buyers haggled with the Chinese for this stuff. It led to heated face-offs at times, due mainly to cultural differences. In Africa, bartering is an art form, performed with some banter and perhaps a smile. But some Chinese took it as a provocation. Africans haggle too much, they complained. Always want things cheaper!

  “Nigerian market woman will pet you,” one Nigerian guy told me. “She will tell you why it is costing this much—the trouble with her business . . . The Chinese? They just charge you.”

  The slightest hint of a negotiation sent certain Guangzhou vendors into a rage. I got a first-hand taste of this after requesting a discount for a rucksack. The shopkeeper reacted as if I had just pinched her arse. She was scary looking too: her fringe and pollution mask combined to cover her entire face save for two disgusted eyes. With shocking ferocity she waved me away, her calculator falling from her hand and clattering on the counter. End of discussion. I wasn’t even allowed to improve my offer.

  I walked on. There was nothing the Chinese didn’t produce and sell, it seemed. Further down the road I could see that even Nigeria’s election paraphernalia accessories were being manufactured and sold in Guangzhou. Shop windows were plastered with election bunting for Nigeria’s two biggest political parties; bracelets proclaiming: “So-and-so 4 Governor”; stickers of election hopefuls such as Charles Kenechi Ugwu, whose face tilted righteously above the words: “The Lord’s Chosen . . . Divine gift to Nsukka people”. Rumour has it that the ballot papers for one of Kenya’s general elections were delivered to Nairobi with “X”s already marked in the box for the ruling party. (I can believe it. While travelling in Kenya on trains built by the Chinese, I saw signs written in poorly translated “Chinglish”—proof that the government had abdicated supervision at the most basic level.)

  Next to the election paraphernalia were displays of Nigerian police uniforms and badges. To my surprise, the vendor gave me prices on request. It made me realise I could clothe my own fake police force if I wanted to. One wholesale order—no questions asked—was all I needed to “establish my authority” on the streets of Lagos or Port Harcourt. Which was amusing but also alarming. That the apparel of such an important branch of Nigerian governance could be sold so casually in Guangzhou spoke volumes about the power imbalance between China and our Mother Continent.

  In Africa, the Chinese have bought up huge tracts of farmland and mining concessions with the consent of the national leaders, but here in China, we and other foreigners aren’t allowed majority ownership of so much as a hole-in-the-wall food stall.

  I stepped out onto the street again. A trio of Nigerian “market women” walked past, wearing boubous and carrying bags of merchandise on their heads. Curly-mop hair weaves, eyebrows like painted caterpillars; dark lips contrasting ghoulishly against bleached skin. These ladies negotiated the streets of Guangzhou with the blinkered nonchalance of the business traveller. The vision of them sauntering along the road, butt cheeks dancing behind, could easily be transposed to their ancestral villages where, like their forbears, they might have trekked several miles to fetch water—a time-consuming task that drains productivity. Instead, they had “trekked” halfway round the world to Guangzhou on a trip costing upwards of £5,000. It’s a long way to go to fetch life’s everyday items.

  The more things change, it seems, the more things stay the same.

  Taiye Selasi

  An author and photographer born in London and raised in Boston, she is of Ghanaian and Nigerian heritage. She holds a BA in American Studies from Yale University and an MPhil in International Relations from Oxford. In 2005 she published the seminal essay “Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What is an Afropolitan?)”, sparking a movement among transnational Africans. Her debut novel, the New York Times bestseller Ghana Must Go, was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the Wall Street Journal and The Economist. The same year she was named on Granta’s list of Best Young British Novelists. In 2014 she featured on the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her 2015 TED talk “Don’t Ask Where I’m From, Ask Where I’m a Local” has reached more than 2.5 million viewers, redefining the way a global society conceives of personal identity.

  From The Sex Lives of African Girls

  Begin, inevitably, with Uncle.

  There you are, eleven, alone in the study in the dark in a cool pool of moonlight at the window. The party is in full swing on the back lawn outside. Half of Accra must be out there. In production. Some fifty-odd tables dressed in white linen table skirts, the walls at the periphery all covered in lights, the swimming pool glittering with tea lights in bowls bobbing lightly on the surface of the water, glowing green. The sm
ells of things—night-damp earth, open grill, frangipani trees, citronella—seep in through the window, slightly cracked. You tap the glass lightly and wave your hand, testing, but no one looks up. They can’t see for the dark. It rained around four for five minutes and not longer; now the sky is rich black for its cleansing. Beneath it a soukous band shows off the latest from Congo, the lead singer wailing in French and Lingala.

  She ought to be ridiculous: little leopard-print shorts, platform heels, hot-pink half-top, two half-arms of bangles. Instead, wet with sweat and moon, trembling, ascendant, all movement and muscle, she is fearsome. It is a heart-wrenching voice, cutting straight through the din of the chatter, forced laughter, clinked glasses, the crickets. She is shaking her shoulders, hips, braided extensions. She has the most genuine intentions of any woman out there.

  And they.

  Their bright bubas adorn the large garden like odd brilliant bulbs that bloom only at night. From the dark of the study you watch with the interest of a scientist observing a species. A small one. Rich African women, like Japanese geisha in wax-batik geles, their skin bleached too light. They are strange to you, strange to the landscape, the dark, with the same polished skill-set of rich women worldwide: how to smile with full lips while the eyes remain empty; how to hate with indifference; how to love without heat. You wonder if they find themselves beautiful, or powerful? Or perplexing, as they seem to you, watching from here?

  The young ones sit mutely, sipping foam off their Maltas, waiting to be asked to dance by the men in full suits, shoving cake into their mouths when they’re sure no one’s looking (it rained around four; no one sees for the dark). The bolder ones preening, little aunties-in-training, being paraded around the garden, introduced to parents’ friends. “This is Abena, our eldest, just went up to Oxford.” “This is Maame, the lawyer. She trained in the States.” Then the push from the mother, the tentative handshake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. How is your son?” You wonder if they enjoy it. You can’t tell by watching. They all wear the same one impenetrable expression: eyebrows up, lips pushed out, nostrils slightly flared in poor imitation of the 1990s supermodel. It is a difficult expression to pull off successfully, the long-suffering look of women bored with being looked at. The girls in the garden look more startled than self-satisfied, as if their features are shocked to be forming this face.

  But their dresses.

  What dresses. They belong on the cake trays: as bright, sweet and frothy as frosted desserts, the lacy “up-and-downs” with sequins, tiny mirrors and bell sleeves, the rage in Accra this Christmas. It’s the related complications—tying the gele, the headwrap; wrapping then trying to walk in the ankle-length skirt; the troubling fact that you haven’t got hips yet to showcase—that puts you off them.

  You can barely manage movement in the big one-piece buba you borrowed from Comfort, your cousin, under duress. The off-the-shoulder neckline keeps slipping to your elbow, exposing your (troublingly) flat chest. Absent breasts, the hem drags and gets caught underfoot, a malfunction exacerbated by your footwear, also Comfort’s: gold leather stilettos two sizes too small with a thick crust of sequins and straps of no use. You’ve been tripping and falling around the garden all evening, with night-damp earth sucking at the heels of the shoes, the excess folds of the buba sort of draped around your body, making you look like a black Statue of Liberty. Except: the Statue of Liberty wears those comfortable sandals and doesn’t get sent to go fetch this and that—which is how you’ve now found yourself alone in the study having stumbled across the garden, being noticed as you went: little pretty thing, solitary, making haste for the house with the shuffle-shuffle steps of skinny girls in women’s shoes; and why you tripped as you entered, snagging the hem with your heel, the cloth yanked from your chest as you fell to the rug.

  And lay. The dry quiet a sharp sudden contrast to the wet of the heat and the racket outside. And as sharply and as suddenly, the consciousness of nakedness. Eve, after apple.

  Your bare breastless chest.

  How strange to feel naked in a room not your own, and not stepping from the bath into the humidity’s embrace, but here cold and half-naked in the leather-scented darkness, remembering the morning, the rain around four. This was moments ago (nakedness) as you lay, having fallen, the conditioned-air chilly and silky against your chest. Against your nipples. Two points you’d never noticed before but considered very deeply now: nipples. And yours. The outermost boundaries of a body, the endpoints, where the land of warm skin meets the sea of cold air. Shore. You lay on your back in the dark on the floor, like that, newly aware of your nipples.

  Presently, the heart-wrenching voice floating up from the garden, “Je t’aime, mon amour. Je t’attends.” You sat up. You listened for a moment, as if to a message, then kicked off the sandals and stood to your feet. You went to the window and looked at the singer, in flight on the stage to the high note. “Je t’attends!”

  Indeed.

  So it is that you’re here at the window when, five minutes later, he enters the room, his reflection appearing dimly on the window before you, not closing the door in the silvery dark. You think of the houseboys with their lawn chairs in an oval reading Othello in thick accents, Uncle watching with pride. Demand me nothing: what you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word. (Likely not. With the thing come together, the pattern emerging, the lines, circles, secrets, lies, hurts, back to this, here, the study, where else, given the fabric, the pattern, the stars. What to say?)

  Enter Uncle.

  * * *

  He walks in behind you, saying nothing at all and not closing the door in the silvery dark. You turn around to face him. Full circle. Explaining, “I was fetching an album for Auntie. I’m sorry.” Your buba slides down. You start to say more but he holds up a hand, shakes his head, is not angry.

  “It’s nice to be away from it all. Isn’t it?” He smiles.

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I’ll bring her the album. Relax.” He joins you at the window. Ever so slightly behind you. Puts a hand on your shoulder, palm surprisingly cold. In a very gentle motion he rearranges the buba. “Are you happy?” The question surprises you.

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “What I mean is, are you happy here? Happy living here?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “And you would tell me if you weren’t?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Meaning no.”

  “No, Uncle”

  “‘No, Uncle.’ Better than ‘yes’, I suppose.” He chuckles almost sadly. He is quiet for a moment. “Do you miss her?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  He nods. “Yes, of course.” Then you stare out the window, another couple at a painting. The singer is hitting a high note, clutching the mic as if for life. You look at the dance floor. You see Kwabena but not Auntie. The younger girls dancing with men in full suits. You look to the tables. There is Comfort, sitting stiffly. Iago, in a server’s tux, approaches with drinks. He pours her more Malta; Comfort doesn’t look up. You feel your breath quicken. Uncle’s hand on your neck.

  “You remind me so much of your mother.” He leans down now. The hotness of rum and his breath on your skin. The buba slides off and he adjusts it again carefully. “She had this long neck. Just like yours,” he says, touching. You stiffen. Not at the touch but the tense. He notices. “I frighten you,” he says, sad, surprised.

  “No, Uncle.”

  “Bloody hell. Is that all you say?” He speaks through clenched teeth. “It’s a question for God’s sake. Do I frighten you?” You are silent, unable to move. “Answer me.” Not gently, he turns you around. Unable to face him you stare at your feet sinking into the carpet, toe nails painted pink. But when he lifts your chin, whispering, “Look at me,” you do—and don’t find the anger you’re expecting. None at all. You have never been this close to Uncle’s face. You have never noticed its resemblance to your mother’s. The dark deep-set eyes. And in them something fa
miliar. Something you recognize. Loneliness. Loss. “I didn’t frighten her,” he says insistently, slurring the words. “I never frightened her. Do I frighten you?” Your chin in his hands.

  You shake your head quickly. “No, Uncle,” you mumble.

  “I miss her so much.” He cups a palm around your cheek. And when he leans down to kiss you, you know what he means. You feel his tears on your face, mixed with yours, warm; his cool. There is something sort of disgusting about the feel of his lips. But you bear it for those moments, as an act of generosity (or something like it), feeling for the first time at home in his house.

  Still, you can imagine how it must look from the doorway when you hear Auntie, “How long does it take—?” Then sudden silence as she sees. “Oh, God,” she splutters out in a horrified whisper. The only sound in the darkness. “Oh, God.”

  Uncle pulls away from you and looks at his wife. “Khadijeh.” And there is Auntie, in the doorway. How she falls. She leans against the doorframe then slumps to the ground. She repeats the words, “Oh, God.” Close to hyperventilating. In tears. Uncle smoothes his trousers with the palms of his hands. He touches your shoulder calmly before going to the door.

  “Khadijeh,” he says, kneeling, but she pushes him away.

  “Don’t touch me. How dare you? God damn you to hell.” She hits him now, desperately. “She’s your blood. She’s your blood.”

  “That’s enough,” he says softly, as she kicks at his shins. He grabs her by the shoulders, standing her up on her feet. She flails at him, sobbing. He slaps her. Hard. Once. “This is my house,” he says. Walks away.