Giving Is The New High
A few years ago, I had visited home for the Christmas holidays and I must tell you, this season in Nigeria was notorious for its heightened fervent pitch. Owerri was my final destination but I had a layover in Abuja for a day or two to sort out some personal businesses. I always loved passing through this capital city, I had friends that still lived and worked there. Each time I came to Abuja, the reason I had left in the first place comes rushing through. A wonderful city I must confess but with so much similarities with Los Angeles. A city built on tons of façade, little more that meets the eye.
Los Angeles, the city of angels smells and reeks of money, affluence, and achievements but yet within its bellies, houses as many people that fell short of their dreams. In other words, it is common practice to see and hear people with the best of ideas and talent roaming the streets of Los Angeles without a meaningful platform or act. My favorite hangout place in Hollywood , a rooftop lounge that overlooked the Hollywood sign had amongst its staff, a young girl that has the most beautiful voice ever. She had moved from the Midwest to chase her dreams of becoming an accomplished artist. Six years down, she has to her credits, a near vibrant you-tube channel , a handful of Instagram followers but a long way short of her dreams. To survive in one of the meanest cities, she has had to resort to other means, serving drinks and waiting on tables to stay afloat and keep body and soul together. She has ever since I discovered her, being my yardstick for assessment of other dream-chasers I meet on the streets each day. This is a city that gave any newcomer hope and the need to aspire higher.
The first rule in the Hollywood area was to accept that everything was plastic, it is a make-belief kind of world. You can walk around with your head high, dressed sharply “My uncle owns 45% of Manchester united football club” air about you and they would swallow it line, hook, and sinker. You are who you say you are in Los Angeles. All you needed do was show up the part. This was the biggest stage on earth. Everyone in the Hollywood area is a bit of something, everyone has fame in their head in some sort. The second rule takes care of this assertion, dig deep if you must know. Broke and not too famous people hang around the best of places. It is more for optics. You can schedule a meeting with a supposed hedge fund manager at the restaurant at the W and enjoy all the trappings of bourgeois and it will still be all dust. “ Shine your eyes” as Nigerians would say.
Abuja has the greatest number of millionaire realtors per square space in the world by virtue of words on the street. It is common to hear “ I get this semi-detached twin duplex in Maitama , na only two hundred and forty million”, “ I have some shopping complex on sale for one point five billion naira”. Everyone has a property that he or she is selling. It is an unconventional real estate market as the majority are more of fourth party agents “ I know the sister in-law to the brother of the owner”, “ My younger brother’s high school room mate’s uncle owns the building”. The amount of real estate floating around the streets and in the mouths of the teeming youths in Abuja masks the real problem which was unemployment. Real estate was the default setting in Abuja. It made sense as Abuja housed all the large ministries and conglomerates. There seems to be virtual money everywhere in Abuja, you cannot help but get used to the amount of money being mentioned by these folks, albeit to say that they also played the part, dressing up sharp with befitting cars with an accompanying “Gwarinpa” , “Maitama “, “Asokoro” place of abode. A newcomer in Abuja would be mesmerized by every standard. So many name droppers like you would see in Los Angeles, “step-brother to the Minister of power and steel “, “Brother in-law to major general so so and so”. You really have to prod deep in Abuja to separate the façade from reality. Wonderful city still.
I had landed that evening and checked into my hotel around the Wuse area and did not waste a lot of time to call up my friends that I had finally settled in. It was not long before we started haggling on which sit-out park to go out to. The town had not changed much from the last time I visited. A brewery should be located in Abuja, people really drink in this town. My friends decided that we checked out a new joint in town that matched my “ you just returned from America “ status. Nice place, very good sitting arrangement , lighting and, ambiance was not spared. Everything looked pristine. The only snag was the pricing of the drinks on the menu. The drinks were being sold in American dollars with an option of conversion to local currency at one’s bequest. The cheapest drink on that list was the Hennessy V.S.O.P that was going for about a thousand dollars. Yes, a thousand dollars. I had looked at the menu once again to see if it were the Hennessy Richard but alas it was not, it was the mere V.S.O.P.
It did not seem like a big deal to any of my friends as they pointed to other tables, where about six or seven bottles of the similar brand were laying flat on their bellies and by mere calculations, whomever had that bill had at least five thousand dollars to cough up. I went nuts, I must have reached this insanity stage as it had not been long I acquired the Costco membership and a bottle of the V.S.O.P was going for about $39. The disparity was ridiculous. I had tried as much to add double taxation, double freight and handling charges, still, nothing justified the $1000 so I had rested my case that something was either wrong with my friends or the society in general.
We were the problem. We were drinking the solutions to our issues away, we were gulping opportunities to becoming agents of change, we were growing big tummies and swollen feet instead of growing prosperous bases. We clearly have the indices and power to move as progressives, to move as vibrant youths, yet we remained stagnant in the face of this “atrocity”. How can we, as the youths of today and supposedly the leaders of tomorrow wallow in such attitudes that do not meaningfully use the opportunities and wherewithal to champion causes that serve humanity whilst berating the government in power for doing less?, how can we claim to be progressives when we cannot see solutions to simple problems that only needed collective efforts?, what has stopped us from being solution driven.
This was a society that hunger was strewn everywhere, this was a place where children missed school because of fees, a place most families were devoid of basic amenities, a place where the next meal was not guaranteed, a place where electricity was epileptic, a place where good drinking water was a luxury, a place where accommodation was a scarce commodity, a place where there was famine amongst plenty. Something was definitely wrong. I had started then to think on how to help convert the Hennessy dollars to solutions that bothered on imminent issues, how I could convince my friends to see the need to approach social ills in minute forms while having a bigger picture in mind was all I was thinking at that point. If I had paid for the “thousand dollars” bottle, I would have deprived three hundred girls a three month supply of sanitary pads, I would have deprived four hundred elderly women of sanitary depends, I would have deprived sixty children of their school levies for that term , I would have rendered no value at all to my immediate community, the borehole that needed fuel to be pumped would have laid non functional for three months, I would have lost on the opportunity to start up a soup kitchen to provide for the less privileged. The list had the potentials to grow. All that was needed was the collation of great ideas and identification of micro issues and the will to channel Hennessy dollars to alleviate these issues. Old habits die hard but we must try at least to see to make a change.
It does matter that we as a progressive unit see ways to convert Hennessy dollars or its equivalent to ways that will make positive impacts in society. If and only if my friends buy into this vision, we will be rest assured that the multiplier effects on the immediate environ will be felt. “ akpati Moet ( Case of Moet)” cost about one million naira or more ($3000) in some clubs in Nigeria. We can do a lot of re-engineering with that kind of money. We can provide bathing soaps for six months to four hundred girls, we could pay special science and arts tutors for an after-school gig for a hundred kids, we can improve on quality of menstrual hygiene in underage girls, we can guarantee a dedicated driver to ferry some kids to school, we can start a mini kitchen for them, we can bring in an arts curator to teach them. There is a lot we could do. We need the collective will to change the narrative. Let us not be amongst the bandwagon, let us lead the bandwagon.
It matters that we start now and like the old fine wine saying “ the older the better”. Let our Hennessy “ created for royalty, carefully aged, enjoyed neat, on the rocks, or in refined cocktail” serve us in ways that add value with a savoring taste that last an eternity.
