When I was in Nigeria last year, one of my grandmother’s neighbours started calling me orobo (slang for “fat person”). I decided not to take it personally, because I had expected someone to call me fat during the trip. I told myself that she’s an older woman who feels like she’s just stating a fact and isn’t trying to be rude. So when she’d greet me, saying something like “Orobo, how are you today?” I’d respond politely. But things only got more difficult to ignore: when she’d see me she’d call me orobo, then repeat it in a different way, saying “Orobo…iya repete (I think that means something like “blubbery woman”?)” and move on to mention a part of me that was big. It seemed the more agreeable I was, the longer her names for me grew, and the more she felt it was ok to comment on my size. I eventually got annoyed and told her that where I live, it’s considered rude to call people fat. I didn’t say it rudely; just matter of factly, and none of the adults in the room chastised me.

My grandma’s neighbour just laughed, which made me say “I’m serious! No one would call you fat to your face like that.” (imagine me saying this in very poor Yoruba). She got the message though and she actually apologized. Too bad I waited until the last few days of the trip before saying anything.

Although I eventually got annoyed with this lady, after the fact I started thinking along the lines of At least she’s saying it to my face; how many people are thinking the exact same thing but not saying it? Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is better. Obviously the best case scenario would be where we all see more than a person’s imperfections and instead focus on recognizing their good points.

If you haven’t read about my own great aunt’s comments on my size, read it here.

I was talking to the bride-to-be last weekend and of course her biggest problem is how large the wedding is getting due to all the uninvited guests that will be attending. If you’re not Nigerian or African, this might seem strange to you because most North Americans I know don’t crash weddings, no matter how popular the movie Wedding Crashers was. As of last weekend, the bride-to-be was expecting 500 people, which is more than she had invited. She sent out invitations and what baffled her most wasn’t that Mr. & Mrs. X included the names of their children on the RSVP card that they were returning (even though in some cases the kids weren’t invited), but the fact that Mr. & Mrs. X included the names of Mr. & Mrs. Y, people that the bride and groom do not know at all! And this happened more than once.

Personally, I don’t understand it. Let’s imagine that Mr. & Mrs. X have visitors staying with them and they feel bad leaving them at home to attend a wedding. First of all, Mr. & Mrs. Y don’t even know the bride and groom, so why would they want to attend the wedding? Why can’t Mr. & Mrs. Y spend a quiet evening at their friends’ home, understanding that due to plans that were determined before their arrival, their hosts won’t be available to entertain them for that evening? I think most houseguests would be understanding about that. But in many cases, RSVP or not, Mr. & Mrs. X will bring their houseguests along, not caring if their guests take the seats meant for someone who actually knows the bride and groom and who received an invitation. It’s aggravating for brides especially. Imagine: you invite 200 people to your wedding and you could have 50 extra people show up – or more! Regardless of whether or not you’re serving buffet style food or by the plate, an extra 50 people makes a difference.

I have heard of Nigerian brides and grooms who have managed to pull off small, intimate weddings that don’t include their cousin’s university roommate. I’ve heard of some different tricks that worked:

Sending the invitations on very short notice, hoping that people will be busy on the wedding day
I don’t like this idea because sometimes the people you really want at your wedding may not be able to attend. You could tell the people you really want to attend to “save the date”, but I wonder if word of mouth would cause the information about the wedding to spread to people you don’t want to attend anyway.

Insisting that wedding guests bring their wedding invitation to the venue and not admiting anyone to the wedding who does not have the wedding invitation | By invitation only weddings
This one works, especially if you have a list of all the invitees on a checklist for those who will forget their invitation but who are actually invited. Bouncers at the wedding would also be an important component of this plan. How mortifying would it be to show up for a wedding you were not invited to, and be turned away? Yikes.

Having a destination wedding
This is a good way to keep numbers down: don’t get married where most of your family and friends live. If the destination is one of those one or two week vacation package deals you can guarantee that due to time or money restrictions, you won’t have a full house of guests…unless you give them lots of notice so they can save money (and vacation time) for it.

When my turn comes, I intend to keep things small by Nigerian wedding standards at around 150 people (keep in mind how random this number is since I have no idea if my future husband will have a trillion family members, all of whom are very special and dear to him). If I have my way I will get married in Canada (and do my engagement in Nigeria) so that will automatically keep my wedding numbers low. I would love to do the guestlist/bouncer thing, but that’s a bit much for what I expect to be no more than about 150 people. Instead, I will beg my mom on my knees to please not mention my wedding to anybody except the people she asked me to invite.

Then I’ll pray very very hard the only thing I’ll have to worry about is the length of my very long-winded father’s speech!

1. How have you or friends of yours successfully kept the number of wedding guests down?
2. Do you think keeping numbers down is the biggest wedding-related concern after ‘Where do I find my bride/groom in the first place?’

• kneeling in a corner with your eyes closed and your arms straight up in the air
• a good old knuckle to the head
• a hot slap (for talking back)
• the belt (reserved for telling lies)

I am the eldest child and a lot was expected of me. I was the example, after all, so any bad behaviour I exhibited had to be curbed so that my younger impressionable siblings didn’t follow my atrocious example. In my family you could count on my mom to deliver on her promises to discipline us for a misdeed. My dad, however, was often more merciful, and you knew if he said “when we get home you’re going to get it”, he’d conveniently forget and we’d be off the hook. My mom wasn’t a fan of telling us that we’d “get it” when we got home; she’d mete out discipline right away so she never forgot.

I think most children thinks their younger siblings received less discipline than they did. My sister definitely did, but she was an obedient, unmouthy child, and quiet as a mouse. I was less so. ;) One of my younger brothers definitely rivaled me for the amount of discipline he received (though I still don’t think he received enough). By the time my brothers arrived in the family, my parents were less creative when it came to discipline, and the boys received less variety of discipline as a result, maybe because North Americans are bigger fans of Time Outs or taking away a favourite toy or video game than some good hand-to-child contact. One thing that I appreciated (more as an adult than when I was a child) is the fact that neither parent ENJOYED meting out physical discipline, not before they administered it, and not after. My dad always made sure we knew that. No loving parent wants to cause their child pain, so their motivation was the hope that this would get through where words had not, in most cases.

While we were in Nigeria last year, we were waken up by some terrible screams (ok, I lied: they didn’t wake me up because I can sleep through anything, but my sister woke me up because the noise woke her up). The noise was truly disturbing: you’d hear some hard-to-decipher noises, then screams for mercy, someone literally begging for their life. We went to where our grandmother was sleeping, and we huddled there until the noise stopped. The next morning we found out that a boy who lives in the neighbourhood is regularly beaten by his father in the wee hours of the morning so that others in the neighbourhood can’t hear it because he (child) is apparently a thief in need of punishment. I was disturbed by the severity of the beating that must have taken place and his screams, and I’m glad I never saw the boy.

I haven’t thought much to how I will discipline my own children (why waste time on that when the father of my children is still missing in action), but they will be disciplined. In my personal experience, no method of discipline is consistently effective from the first time it’s used (though that probably depends on the “will” of the child being disciplined). I like to think I’m living proof that a message delivered with a little “emphasis” doesn’t damage a child, as long as the emphasis doesn’t turn into abuse. And I’m certainly not saying that physical discipline doesn’t hurt like heck, because it does. The whole matter is a definite point of contention though, so I’m in favour of leaving final decisions on the matter to the parents or persons charged with raising the child (and not strangers as solomon sydelle recounted), with the hope that any discipline decisions made by these individuals will be with a goal of making the child better, and not simply venting one’s anger. One thing I will say is that failing to raise a child in a way that will make him or her a well-adjusted, decent human being is a crime, and someone should punish parents who unleash their undisciplined children into the world for doing them a disservice.

Earlier this year, I went to the eLDee concert that was heavily publicized, and was disappointed. I felt bad because I convinced a few friends to go with me and nobody got their money’s worth.

When I heard there was another Nigerian-organized event being planned a few weeks later, I decided to give it a try, but sadly it disappointed again. I will officially count on Ms. O and Bob-Ij to advise me on events that are worth it and events that have “Fail” all over it.

When my friend and I arrived, we were the first two females there. The other six or seven people there were guys. We went in, called our friend who had arrived there before us (he had said the place was completely dead), and he met us there. We stood around waiting for people to arrive for a couple of hours and they just trickled in. I felt horrible for the organizer because when we left after a couple of hours there were less than 50 people in the whole place. He was actually in the back of the bar taking shots of alcohol and looking very down when we left him.

The organizer tried to get people in a party mood: he came up to my friend and I a couple of times and told us to not worry, that there would be tons of people arriving any moment. Sadly he was wrong. The DJ was great but for some reason no one was dancing! I’m not the type to open up the dance floor so maybe everyone who was there that night felt the same way. Even the bartender started drinking Red Bull to stay awake, it was that dead…she certainly did not sell up to 30 drinks.

Let me give the organizer credit:

• he came up to us and welcomed us and thanked us for coming
• the DJ was good
• the club was nicely organized
• we received a facebook message after the event, thanking us for braving the rain to come

But again, I left feeling cheated and angry that once again I was duped by something that sounded good and would have been good had it delivered what it promised. I honestly believe that we have to support our fellow Nigerians who take on these initiatives but how many chances should they get? Nobody wins if we give up: Nigerians don’t get an opportunity to meet and mingle with people in the same city that they might not otherwise meet, and promoters or organizers decide that there is no need or interest on the part of Nigerians in this city for such events, which is totally wrong. When I think of Femi Kuti and King Sunny Ade who are coming to my city this summer, I can be happy that at least they will come (God forbid bad thing) because the organizers are not amateurs and have consistently delivered on their promises year after year. Perhaps some of these people running around calling themselves promoters should volunteer at this festival and learn a thing or two about how to organize an event and deliver what you promise.

I’m sure the organizer of this last event I attended barely earned enough money to pay the club for renting the space, but he wasn’t the only one who lost out. What about those of us who paid to come to a club and were sorely disappointed?

Well eLDee was great…for the 15 minutes, maximum that he performed.

By the time 1:30am (clubs here close by 2am) passed and we were still waiting for him to show up, and people started saying we had been 419ed, I was starting to think he wouldn’t show up at all. So I just glad that he came that I forgave him for totally cheating us.

To be fair, the evening wasn’t supposed to be all about eLDee, though he was the main attraction: there were suppposed to be two Nigerian DJs there. Dj Don X came, but the other didn’t show up. We were also supposed to have two surprise Nigerian artists performing and again we were let down (the act that did perform was good, though I don’t think they were Nigerian — someone correct me if I’m wrong). They had to deal with an audience that just wanted Eldee to show up already…not the most welcoming of audiences they’ve had I’m sure!

Add to that the fact the event was supposed to start at 9pm, we showed up at 10pm and were told that the place where the event was taking place was not ready, something about the fact that the floors were still being cleaned…an hour after the show should have started. I have no problem with them not starting the festivities until more people showed up but surely the room should be ready for people to enter and mingle and whatnot.

When we were finally allowed to enter the place almost an hour and a half after it was supposed to be ready, none of the guest DJs had arrived yet, so we listened to some other DJ who was playing some random music, and the organizers were still setting things up. One thing that was set up though was a paparazzi corner, where they had some professional photographers taking pictures of the attendees as they came in…it was pretty neat (we all know how Nigerians like to be photographed).

For me the most apalling part of the evening was when the woman taking our tickets came up to us and asked for two of our IDs. Clueless me, I thought she was asking because she hadn’t seen them when we gave her our tickets but no, she wanted us to give her our IDs so she could get her underage friends in! I found it so unprofessional, but maybe I’m just showing my age.

The music was okay but of the many many Nigerian songs out there, why did we hear some songs three and four times!? There are so many great artists out there that I expected to hear new music and awesome remixes of music I already knew. I was very disappointed by that.

Anyway, my friends and I had a talk about this event because this always happens: an event that sounds good on paper (and in the advertising leading up to the event) ends up getting a lackluster turnout or ends up being disorganized and turning people off from attending the next event. And then what happens is the organizers get disappointed by the turnout and the negative comments and decide not to bother throwing such an event in our city again. And then everyone just decides that no one in this city likes to party, that they should stick to having events in Toronto when it’s not true! If you’re going to throw an event, take the time to do a good followthrough: don’t just sell the tickets then forget about delivering what you’ve promised the attendees! I’ve seen it happen time and time again and it’s really sad.

It almost makes me want to go into event planning: either to see if I could do better (and I really think I could) or to see how hard it really is to make it happen.

Now, I don’t think it’s very helpful to criticize someone or something without offering ways they could make things better, so in my mind here are some ways that this event could have been improved (based, of course, on my limited knowledge of what actually led to the disorganization I sensed):

• They should have chosen a smaller venue. This venue was HUGE, which only served to emphasize how few attendees there were. Better to have a venue half the size, that makes people feel like there are a lot of them than to have a room where you can almost hear the echo. The location was beautiful but there was no feeling of “wow, everyone wants to or wanted to be here!” and I think that has a a large effect on the vibe of the event.
• They should have created a great mix cd of Nigerian artists (which they could have gotten from one of the DJs who would be spinning) and played that for the first hour, when people were arriving, to get them excited about the music that they’d be hearing, and to get them dancing. There was a lot of waiting around to hear good music.
• There should have been periodic announcements as to when the guests of honour were expected, to build interest and curb people spreading rumours that eLDeeb likely wouldn’t even show. That sort of got folks down.
• Those other opening acts they promised should have shown up!

With all the Nigerian talent we have in the city (I’m thinking of this makeup artist, or this graphic/web designer to name just two), maybe having the first part of the evening be some sort of networking event where Nigerians in the community who have a business or are offering services could have gone on stage and shared a two minute thing on what they do and how they can be reached would have been good (especially if the DJs and eLDee weren’t going to show up for so long). I for one would love to know more about where to buy ankara or find someone who does hair well or something. They could have totally had some great music playing in the background while each person had a two-minute slot to tell us what they do and how they can help us. It might not have been the time or place for it though. I don’t know, but I think people would have liked it!

Oya gist me: what are the best and worst Nigerian-organized events you’ve been to?