The fear of getting naija-whelmed
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- Category: Philosofaith
- Written by Prof Brainy
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In the 1999 movie, 10 Things I Hate about You, Chastity (Gabrielle Union) asks her friend Bianca “I know you can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed but can you ever just be whelmed?”
While the scene was obviously a way the director depicted the shallowness of high school students in America, it’s actually underscores one of the craziness of the English language not to give any semantic significance to a stem after peeling off the suffixes. This type of craziness and others like it have been gloriously depicted by Richard Lederer in his book, Crazy English.
And in the spirit of such craziness, I hope that my coinage and introduction of naija-whelm into the whelm franchise will be excused.
So what’s naija-whelm? For a better understanding of this psychological disorder, let me tell you a story: A brilliant Nigerian had just finished his PhD abroad and had to return to Nigeria to continue teaching in the university. This guy is so good that he authored six articles in high impact journals from his PhD thesis. That’s a lot even for a PhD. Even at Harvard Graduate School of Education, you’re “encourage[d]” to author one of such articles.
In order not to waste such talent, he and his professors came into an arrangement whereby they will conduct the research (since they have the equipments and Nigeria does not) and our Nigerian guy will write it up.
But before he could settle in the Nigerian university, the professors abroad sent him results of a study to write up. Several weeks after the results were sent, he couldn’t write anything. Within those weeks, several attempts to write the report failed; culminating in his laptop getting barbecued as a result of power surge from NEPA.
Eventually, the guy had to write the report in the country whence the results were sent. When he came, he told me, “I don’t want them [the professors] to know that I’m in town yet. I want to quickly write the report and tell them I did it in Nigeria.”
They’re so many factors why we get naija-whelmed. One of which is lack of order. And order is a significant ingredient in our survival and human beings are hardwired to seek or even crave it. Change a baby’s feeding routine and he’ll make sure he tells the world – on top of his voice – how irresponsible his mother has become.
Further, intertwined in orderliness is the power of prediction. We want to know how long it will take for efforts to bear fruits. We want to know how long it will take before NEPA gives us light and how long it will take for it to take it away. We want to know how long it will take for the web page to load. Someone burning with the desire to contribute to his home country doesn’t like leaving things to chance; he wants to know when his state governor sees his people so that he can pitch to him the idea that will save the state. Telling him to come another time is not enough, he wants to know when he does, is he going to see him?
In Nigeria you can’t know all these things. Yet you’re used to doing things in an orderly fashion so when you get to your own country and that order is taken away from you, you become depressed.
The last time I was in Nigeria, I wrote a column that I’m still ashamed of writing. I had the good fortune of writing a series on a topic just before coming to Nigeria so for nearly the two months I spent there was no pressure to write. But just before I left, the series ran out. So I was forced to write something. I can’t even give you the title now for the fear that you may search and find it. All I can tell you is that it was utter nonsense, an article full of heads and tails but lacking a torso that will hold them together.
Then there was a workshop that was an unmitigated disaster. There’s nothing I desire more than speaking in public and I like to do it with different types of audience, including people – professors – who have argument written in their job description. But as any public speaker will tell you, the key to engaging your audience and holding them as if you own them is preparation. However, while in Nigeria, I couldn’t do any preparation and ended up apologizing to the workshop participants because they paid for my time.
Obviously getting naija-whelmed affects one’s quality of thinking too.
Do Nigerians living in Nigeria suffer from this mental disorder? They do not, probably because they are so used to the disorder, it has become an order. But even Nigerians living in Nigeria will confess that whenever they travel and come back home they usually endured a few days of madness – that’s a mild form of naija-whelming. The acute form afflicts only those of us in the Diaspora.
And it’s not strange that a mental disorder will affect such an exclusive demography. There’s a psychological disorder that only the Japanese suffer from and they do so only when they visit Paris. It’s called Paris syndrome.
So why don’t we see apparent symptoms of naija-whelming? It’s actually a paradox; a nation makes you crazy and soothes your pain at the same time. Nigeria is a country where you find people who genuinely care about you – that helps a lot. The Japanese are not that lucky; they find themselves in different psychiatry wards in Paris.
Nonetheless, as I ponder my impending journey to Nigeria, I fear that I’ll get naija-whelmed.
Sunday Trust
The fear of getting naija-whelmed
Category: Philosofaith Written by Prof Brainy Hits: 2679
In the 1999 movie, 10 Things I Hate about You, Chastity (Gabrielle Union) asks her friend Bianca “I know you can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed but can you ever just be whelmed?”
While the scene was obviously a way the director depicted the shallowness of high school students in America, it’s actually underscores one of the craziness of the English language not to give any semantic significance to a stem after peeling off the suffixes. This type of craziness and others like it have been gloriously depicted by Richard Lederer in his book, Crazy English.
And in the spirit of such craziness, I hope that my coinage and introduction of naija-whelm into the whelm franchise will be excused.
So what’s naija-whelm? For a better understanding of this psychological disorder, let me tell you a story: A brilliant Nigerian had just finished his PhD abroad and had to return to Nigeria to continue teaching in the university. This guy is so good that he authored six articles in high impact journals from his PhD thesis. That’s a lot even for a PhD. Even at Harvard Graduate School of Education, you’re “encourage[d]” to author one of such articles.
In order not to waste such talent, he and his professors came into an arrangement whereby they will conduct the research (since they have the equipments and Nigeria does not) and our Nigerian guy will write it up.
But before he could settle in the Nigerian university, the professors abroad sent him results of a study to write up. Several weeks after the results were sent, he couldn’t write anything. Within those weeks, several attempts to write the report failed; culminating in his laptop getting barbecued as a result of power surge from NEPA.
Eventually, the guy had to write the report in the country whence the results were sent. When he came, he told me, “I don’t want them [the professors] to know that I’m in town yet. I want to quickly write the report and tell them I did it in Nigeria.”
They’re so many factors why we get naija-whelmed. One of which is lack of order. And order is a significant ingredient in our survival and human beings are hardwired to seek or even crave it. Change a baby’s feeding routine and he’ll make sure he tells the world – on top of his voice – how irresponsible his mother has become.
Further, intertwined in orderliness is the power of prediction. We want to know how long it will take for efforts to bear fruits. We want to know how long it will take before NEPA gives us light and how long it will take for it to take it away. We want to know how long it will take for the web page to load. Someone burning with the desire to contribute to his home country doesn’t like leaving things to chance; he wants to know when his state governor sees his people so that he can pitch to him the idea that will save the state. Telling him to come another time is not enough, he wants to know when he does, is he going to see him?
In Nigeria you can’t know all these things. Yet you’re used to doing things in an orderly fashion so when you get to your own country and that order is taken away from you, you become depressed.
The last time I was in Nigeria, I wrote a column that I’m still ashamed of writing. I had the good fortune of writing a series on a topic just before coming to Nigeria so for nearly the two months I spent there was no pressure to write. But just before I left, the series ran out. So I was forced to write something. I can’t even give you the title now for the fear that you may search and find it. All I can tell you is that it was utter nonsense, an article full of heads and tails but lacking a torso that will hold them together.
Then there was a workshop that was an unmitigated disaster. There’s nothing I desire more than speaking in public and I like to do it with different types of audience, including people – professors – who have argument written in their job description. But as any public speaker will tell you, the key to engaging your audience and holding them as if you own them is preparation. However, while in Nigeria, I couldn’t do any preparation and ended up apologizing to the workshop participants because they paid for my time.
Obviously getting naija-whelmed affects one’s quality of thinking too.
Do Nigerians living in Nigeria suffer from this mental disorder? They do not, probably because they are so used to the disorder, it has become an order. But even Nigerians living in Nigeria will confess that whenever they travel and come back home they usually endured a few days of madness – that’s a mild form of naija-whelming. The acute form afflicts only those of us in the Diaspora.
And it’s not strange that a mental disorder will affect such an exclusive demography. There’s a psychological disorder that only the Japanese suffer from and they do so only when they visit Paris. It’s called Paris syndrome.
So why don’t we see apparent symptoms of naija-whelming? It’s actually a paradox; a nation makes you crazy and soothes your pain at the same time. Nigeria is a country where you find people who genuinely care about you – that helps a lot. The Japanese are not that lucky; they find themselves in different psychiatry wards in Paris.
Nonetheless, as I ponder my impending journey to Nigeria, I fear that I’ll get naija-whelmed.