Monthly Archives: March 2011

*For Mia

I’m going through a metamorphosis right now that is surprising to those who know me best. I really don’t care about a lot of things that would typically drive me mad. I attribute it to turning 30-something, although it could just have more to do with my life experiences thus far.

The 23 year old Malaka and 33 year old Malaka are two completely different people. 23 year old Malaka was crushed if she thought someone didn’t like her. The 23 year old Malaka would give pause and much consideration to the thoughts and opinions of others. Their input really meant a lot. 23 year old Malaka was very eager to please. That’s how 25 year old Malaka ended up having a baby with an absolute idiot…because she was trying to make HIM happy and prove how “down” I was. #alwaysuseacondom and #neverlenda”grown”manmoney

33 year old Malaka on the other had, does not feel like she’s done her job unless you walk away from a conversation with her unoffended. 33 year old Malaka doesn’t give 2 shytes either way about your thoughts or opinions unless your name is Marshall Grant, husband to 33 year old Malaka. The only person I’m trying to please at this point is myself (after God, of course). Let’s take Douche Bag, for example. Last night, his car wouldn’t start. He was supposed to meet me halfway to bring Nadjah back home from her visit. He called me to inform me of the calamity that had befallen him, and asked (nervously) if I could come get her from his house.

“Sure,” I said, and left it at that.

When I got to his house, he offered me food, asked me to come in and was making extensive attempts at being hospitable. I declined, asked Nadjah to get her shoes on and prepared to leave. I had just spent all night on my feet at work.

“I was sure you were going to give me all kinds of lip for not being able to bring her,” he kept saying.

“I’m too tired,” I said dismissively.

Was I aggravated that I had to drive 45 minutes out of my way to go get my child? Absolutely. But in the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t matter – I had to go get my child, and I haven’t looked at Douche Bag as playing a father role in her life in years. He’s just some dude a woman in a black robe said I have to let Nadjah spend time with twice a month. Some things just aren’t worth getting upset over, and I wasn’t about to give myself a headache.

There is yet another example from yesterevening. We have this new idiot manager at our store. As I was leaving last night, she said she had to walk me out and check me before I left. Typically, the manager only has to walk you out if you have a coat, purse or a bag on you, to make sure you haven’t “borrowed” anything from the store.

She was talking to me from the back office.

“I only have my keys on me tonight,” I called.

“I know, but I still have to check you out,” she chirped. “It’s not on me if you leave without being checked out. You’ll get written up if they do a video audit, so it’s on you.”

“I don’t care Becky (not her real name),” I said wearily.

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes,” she said emphatically, “you do.”

“No,” I said flatly. “I don’t.”

Why is she trying to force me to care? Aba! If DSW wants to fire me or write me up because I left the store at the end of my shift with only my keys in my hand, then so be it. As long as they pay me at the end of the week for my hours worked I’m fine. I’m not trying to make a career out of sellin’ shoes.

Speaking of careers, let’s talk about this crazy job I’m on. It’s nice, and it pays the bills – but it’s really JUST A JOB. I’m not trying to have a twenty year tenure with these cats…and unfortunately, they don’t seem to realize that. They keep dangling job security and longevity in front of me, with the not-so-subtle-nuance that if I don’t straighten up and do their bidding precisely as they’ve commanded, I’ll be out of the door and jobless. There is nothing more that I’d like to do than throw a “nigga puh-leeze” at my manager. (Not the English one. He’s cool.)

After everything that God has brought me through, do you think I’m going to stress out over a JOB? Where if you died this week, they’d kick your body out of the chair and put a new one in it? Remember the lady who died in Cali last month…who sat in her cube dead for a whole weekend without anyone noticing? Not this chick. I’m not killing myself for the benefit of anyone’s corporate cotton farm.

The point that I’ve reached in my life is one without ambition. I’ll probably never get to do all the things I wanted to do in my youth – like become a famous actress or achieve great fame and be renowned the world over. But there are some things that I will do that I probably never thought possible or plausible. I’ve got my healthy husband, my healthy kids, and my writing. I’ve got far too much to look forward to in the future than to worry about the things that didn’t happen when I’d hoped for them to in the past.

Outside of those three things, I really couldn’t care less.

Jewelry by Auntie Rose Marie, Mother of Nana Darkoa, Owner of MAKSI Clothing, Accra Ghana

I’m always pretty pissed off when Westerners put Africans in one big box labeled “African”. The notion that we are a ubiquitous people with a homogenous culture and language (i.e. we all speak African) is as accurate as calling a cow a chicken. Although they are both land animals, one is a fowl and the other a mammal. I believe this is the reason Beyonce had the audacity to put on her ridiculous cheetah coat and bone necklace(with mud face paint) as a reference to her roots as an “African queen”.

Tseewwww.

But then I got to thinking. To be fair, there are some things that all Africans have in common. For instance, corn is a heavy influence in our cuisine. From banku, to kenkey, to ugali, to corn beer, we rely on maize to feed us and have done for eons. We all have an affinity for flip flops. Many of our food were meant to be eaten with our hands. And then there is the way we express ourselves. There are some expressions that are just “African”.

For instance, my favorite one: Ei! Is it true?

Followed by: “Ehhh…so you won’t give it to me, eh?” Why do we tug at our eyes to emphasize the shock and disappointment in being denied our request?

When someone is lost and needs directions, we point the wayfarer in the direction he/she needs with a jerk of our heads and a point of our lower lip to indicate that “it’s just over there!”

In the Western world, this face resembles someone suffering from constipation. In Africa, it is the universal expression of This song is so jammin’ that it’s almost paining to dance.

This expression is almost always precluded by “Heeeyyyy! That’s my jam!”

Then there are the fraternal twin expressions of disdain and dismissal:

And that all African expression for mourning, the placing of ones hands on their head as they yelp bwei, bwei, bwei! or yei yei yei!

This final one I’ll leave for you to decipher. It makes no sense to anyone else but an African.

*And by this I don’t mean MY church. My church ain’t half bad (although it could stand to do a lot better) – I mean Christianity as an entity*

This weekend I had the rare opportunity to sit down and watch TV between dashing out of the door to take the kids on an outing and working my PT job. Since we’ve downgraded to the most cable package in a bid to save a few dollars, our viewing choices are pretty limited. Without premium cable, all the other channels that typically go ignored in our home are now front and center – one of those being TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network).

Ugh.

This weekend, TBN was in the throes of their spring “praise-a-thon”, which seemed less about praise and more about raising money. I don’t have a problem with the church raising money. We need it to perform the mandates that God has for us to do. I mean, how are we supposed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the orphans and widows without money?( Matthew 25: 31-46 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:31-25:46&version=NLT) My problem with their praise-a-thon was that is represents everything that is wrong with Christianity today. And that problem is that IT SUCKS. All these pastors with their wavy hair, shiny suits, and auction/snake oil salesman style of parting you from your money ALL SUCK.

So you have “bishop” Clarence McClendon on there, the adulterous liar who left his wife to re-marry in a ceremony performed by his spiritual father (and coincidentally another adulterous liar) Earl Polk, hollering about what he heard the Spirit of the Lord saying to him. Naw bruh. I can’t receive that from you. I don’t think the Lord told you nothing. Just before he took the mic, another pastor/bishop/spiritual poverty pimp was whooping and screaming, commanding the congregants at the camp to get their “offering ready, ready, ready!” because there was “power in this place now!” and God was going to give them a blessing now!” and God was going to eliminate their debt now!” As you can see, there is an emphasis on the word “now” in modern Christian circles. I’m sorry. I thought my bible said in Isaiah that those who waited on the Lord would have their strength renewed…and then there all  these other pesky scriptures that have the word “patient” sprinkled in there that speak contrary to this rabid “NOW” philosophy that is being permeated and peddled throughout the modern church.

Here’s something you can do right now: Instead of asking God to heal you from your diabetes (or any other ailment caused by poor eating habits), why don’t you put down your pop tart and pick up a pomegranate. Proverbs clearly tells you to. God doesn’t like sloth. Additionally, if we had pop tarts and ding dongs in OT times, I’m sure God would have added them to the “don’t eat those” list along with snails and pigs.

This is basic Christianity, but we don’t do it. Why? Because modern Christianity SUCKS. It’s far easier to look forward to a miracle than to do what’s right in the first place. I mean, let’s give God a reason to “show out”.

Oh here’s another one I just love. Give so that God can eliminate your debt! As Christians, we should all tithe and give offerings. But we do not tithe and give offerings so that we can get something back from God – we do it out of a loving heart that wants to please him. Why don’t you try this instead: read Proverbs 31, get industrious, make some money and stop spending the majority of it on frivolous crap you can’t afford. It’s really that simple. But we can’t do that nowadays. Why? Because modern Christianity SUCKS and no one wants to be disciplined about their finances. It’s far more exciting to give a testimony in church about how God wiped your credit card debt clean after you declared bankruptcy, isn’t it? #no integrity.

One of the tasks (and for me it is a task) that my husband and I are meant to be undertaking when we get to South Africa is to start a new church. This would be a great opportunity for me to say that I am SO not looking forward to that aspect of our relocation. The idea of constructing yet another physical structure where people come to perform their perfunctory religious duties (2 fast songs, 1 slow song, an offering message and then a sermon) makes me cringe inwardly. I know that that is the expectation. That I will dress up in a nice suit and always be sweet and give encouraging speeches and always say “the right” thing. I’d rather be like the ancient church: underground (no literally), gritty, moving, doing the work that is going to show God’s goodness and glory – not this sedentary monolith that everyone attends on Sundays and one other day of the week. Let’s face it: with few exceptions, modern Christianity has become about putting impressive church edifices, crusades and a television ministry.

Ugh.

Prove me wrong. When you’re in a bind (pick one), what’s the first group of people you think of to have the solution? Is it your church? Is it any church?

*Crickets*   

I always try to keep my Friday posts happy and light hearted, but this has been a tough week for a number of women in my circle.

This week, I’ve been on the listening end of some real big girl issues, and in being a part of these conversations, I’ve realized that the final nail in the coffin of my somewhat happy-go-lucky youth has firmly hammered it shut.

There is a point where Life gives us many things, and then slowly begins to reclaim them. If we’re lucky, we find the love of our lives in youth, only to have him die in our old age. We work on our education to get good jobs, only to be robbed of it by a broken economy in the future. We work to foster strong unbreakable relationships, only to have them dissolved by betrayal, both real and imagined.  

This week, a friend of mine lost a baby; another discovered she had a half-sister floating around out there; and another was subversively berated on Facebook for not being more “selective” with whom she slept with – a remark meant to ‘advise’ all women.

Let’s start with the last, because it’s the easiest to address. I can assure you that no little girl stands in front of the mirror, looks at herself and says: “You know what? When I grow up I want to get a degree, fall for a guy, convince myself that he’s not lying when he says he wants to be together, have his baby, and raise that baby on my own on just a little bit more than minimum wage because it’s the only thing available. Oh, and I definitely want to make the decision to live in the basement of my mother/best friend’s house with my child – because that’s what a WINNER would do. I just WANT to struggle. That’s the future I want!”

People kill me with their judgments. There was a time when I was judgmental of these so-called ‘loose’ and “unselective” women too… and then God gave me a bitter bowl of reality to lap up. I’m amazed when I read and listen to the drivel of these self-important, pious women, who point their saintly fingers at women who did selectively choose who they fell in love, and ultimately into bed with. Dear God, was I ever that repulsive? To be so high minded that I could not recognize that it only takes someone who is just a wee bit craftier than you to take advantage of you? Well you know what – shame on me and women like me. We shoulda had a V-8. But blaming a woman for not being “selective” with whom she sleeps with and unrepentantly ending up as a single mother is like blaming the investors in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme for not sniffing out a fraud. Some men are just that good, and that’s why sixty-something percent of all Black children will grow up in America this year. But by all means, please keep judging.

Moving right along.

Last night, I sat across my friend who lost her baby in the womb one day ago. We were eating ice-cream and marveling at life.

“I never thought I’d be in one of those circles,” she said. “You know – divorce, miscarriage, things like that. None of those things were supposed to happen to me. And tomorrow I’ll go for a d & c… for some ‘scrapings’.”

(‘Scrapings’ = scraping what was once a baby out of her body.)

I nodded sympathetically, spooning ice-cream into my mouth.

“Malaka, I won’t lie. This hurts.”

“I know!” I yelled.

“How do you know?” she yelled back, her accent becoming more Ghanaian as her emotions escalated. “Have you experienced some before?”

“No.  I haven’t. But I can only imagine that it must hurt.”

“Herm. I’ve seen another part of Life,” she replied, looking off into the distance.

Somehow, someway, I managed to leave her with a smile on her face. It’s the grace of God that has kept her in good spirits and peace, because she readily admitted that she could dwell on it and go into a deep depression or choose to be detached. As detached as she may confess to be, I know there is a stinging inside of her. I hurt for her as much as she hurt for herself.

And then finally, something right out of a Jane Austen novel : The long lost (half) sister.

This story has too many plots and twists for me to discuss in one post, but let me summarize it by saying it is a casserole of neglect and betrayal, baked in a case of lies and poor attempts at deception. At the center of it are two now grown women, one of whom has made something of herself despite the absence of a useless “father” and another who is struggling to find herself because of the absence of her useless “father”. Like I said, the plot in this story is so thick that I would have to pen an 18^th century sized novel to convey every detail, but the most tragic aspect of this tale is that the younger of these two sisters was raped by the father of one of her friends when she was seven, and this useless father has NOTHING to say about it. In fact, the only words he has spoken concerning this girl has been to deny that she is his child (which brings me back to yesterday’s post concerning the bonus that men have in denying their part in the birth of a child – simply by denying it).

My friends have been pretty beat up this week, and I feel like I was tied to the whipping post with them. I feel like I’ve taken a stroll in their shoes; but these experiences are their shoes. I have hurt, laughed and winced in them, but I do have the luxury of handing them back.