One time in my secondary school, in Jss2 precisely, I had been dancing around my dormitory room in a burst of energy and sugar rush. One of my roommates; a senior, retorted that I was behaving like a dog on heat. I didn’t know what that meant so I asked her and she looked amused at my cluelessness and told me to ask my Agriculture teacher. Luckily for me, I had the subject the next day so in my innocence when he was done teaching and asked for questions, my hand shot up in the air instantly. Once given the floor, I innocently asked what it meant for a dog to be on heat. Boom! some of my classmates burst into a fit of laughter and I suddenly felt embarrassed. It dawned on me that I had either asked a stupid question or was stupid for not knowing the answer.
Backstory, I went to a missionary secondary school and I happened to have one of the most pious men as my Agriculture teacher. He asked me where I had heard that phrase and I had to concoct a lie on the spot. Perhaps thinking us too young to hear about the birds and the bees, he asked me to see him after class that day. I sat back down and stewed in further embarrassment mixed with anger. I was angry at myself for not knowing. I was angry at the senior for not telling me the answer when I asked her. I was embarrassed at the fact that my classmates laughed at me. That day birthed something in me; a stubborn pride to never ask questions in public. Pride, fear or insecurity? Whatever it was, it followed me into adulthood.
Since that day, you would hardly ever catch me asking questions in public. I would rather secretly google the answer or do the research in my spare time. Imagine my confusion when I got to University in England and my fellow students were asking questions like no man’s business and the professors gladly obliged. It seemed all so foreign to me. They would ask questions and get clarity meanwhile I would be googling under the table, too afraid to ask a question that would seem dumb. A childhood trauma manifesting itself way into adulthood because even now that I’m grown, I still haven’t outgrown the shame. I still run to google as first response before mustering the courage to ask a question to my colleagues. After all, they say google is your best friend right? I also remember a colleague-turned-friend from my previous job who asked questions so much we nicknamed her Amanpour (Christiane Amanpour). At first it annoyed me till I one day realised that my annoyance was but a mere covering for my jealousy at her ability to show that she didn’t know it all and was secure enough to show that in order to gain more knowledge. To me she was an alien and I secretly wondered if she got a different schooling experience than me.
While a childhood trauma lingers, I have however developed a better attitude to questioning when it comes to societal slavery. I’ve found myself in a season of questioning some of the norms I’ve grown up with, which is one of the ways I came into the decision that I didn’t want kids. It truly is a blissful feeling to develop the courage to challenge the things one had been taught to accept as truth growing up. So I ask questions, most times introspectively; why should women have to work a government/less tedious job to raise kids when no one says this to men? Why do I have to be married before 30? Who set that expiration age? Why can’t I question my elders? Why do I want what I want? Why do I feel the way I feel? What kind of life do I want? Am I doing this because it’s what’s expected of me? What is my motive for doing this? Is this a cycle I want to continue in my life? Is this actually normal? That is the beauty of growing; unlearning things. It’s no secret that in Nigeria, questions from children come off as annoying and we shut them up instead of encouraging their curiousity. Doesn’t it amuse you the difference in intellectuality between an average child raised in Nigeria and one raised in the West? How curiousity is encouraged in one and not the other? How one grows up a more well-rounded person not afraid to question the norm more than the other? Why can’t we have more of that in Nigeria? You find fully grown adults who have walked down a path without ever questioning it. You find people like me who struggle with asking questions in public or in general.
I’m happy that I’ve learnt to ask questions but I often wonder, what would have happened if the events of that day took a different turn. Even with our schooling system, questions were never really entertained, at least in my day. The teachers came in, taught you by writing on a blackboard or telling you what they knew and left. If you didn’t have the naturally curiousity in-built and the courage to voice out your questions then chances are you were left to arrive at understanding by yourself and sometimes at a longer pace. How can we create an environment where we encourage questions from childhood and answer them without making one feel inferior? How do we build a system where a person isn’t afraid to question the norm and create a path that suits them better without worrying about what society would say?
