Stolen Wombs, Thieving Doctors and Nigeria’s Tales by Moonlight
pollution gets to your baby inside the womb
In July 2009, Chimamanda Adichie gave her famous talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ on the Ted Global Stage. The talk, which I have listened to more than a hundred times, resonates with me on so many levels. It asserts what I thought of all along when stereotypes of different tribes are being thrown around – that one person’s narrative should not be my narrative. Why should I automatically think that all Calabar people are promiscuous? Why should I automatically assume that all Igbo traders are drug dealers? Do I not have upright friends among them? Why should I dismiss all Nigerians who work with the Customs Service as thieves? Why should I be instantly wary of all Kano people just because “Kano people don’t like visitors”- when these people have shown me nothing but love? In fact, I have come to realise that it’s the other way round – it is people from the North East that are tribalistic and don’t like visitors. There I said it.
On second thought, E ma binu. Let us drop that discussion or leave it for another day. Today is for the lovely Chimamanda.
One of my favourite quotes from her talk is this: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
A few weeks ago, while I was in Saudi Arabia minding my business, a story broke the Arewa internet. I glossed through the story flippantly, thinking it to be mere tabloid stories that would fizzle out over a few hours only to have my sister call me, genuinely concerned, a few days later.
“Yaya, what is happening in AKTH?” she questioned in panic. “Is it true what they are saying in the Hausa room? That a woman’s womb was removed without her consent?”
Later, I would sit down and marvel at the gullibility of Nigerians; or is it our collective cynicism that would make a vast number of people believe the story of a woman who wanted, for all intent and purposes, to have her five minutes of fame on social media.
In all honesty, my anger is not at the pitiable woman. It is with the vast number of people in Hausa Room (a popular Instagram blog who were willing to hear one woman’s story and so cast all Nigerian doctors as fraudulent, thieving, womb snatching monsters who referred to patients as ‘Mahaukaciya’.
In what world can a doctor say to a pregnant woman who presents to the hospital in labour: ‘Lie down here, mad woman?’
Haba dan Allah! How can people believe this?
Somehow, Nigerians are beginning to key into this dangerous narrative: that doctors are dangerous. That we are cutting people up and selling their wombs. When one woman called to ask if the story she heard was true, I simply asked if she knew any doctor that would agree to sell my womb for a percentage of the profit. I am willing to sell mine for a token amount of only ten million Naira. Country hard!
In this T-pain era, do you think that if doctors were selling wombs, Nigerian women would not be queuing to get rid of the damn thing? Imagine, no more painful menstrual cramps and no more contraception. We will just be enjoying ourselves like men. And with money too.
Ah! Bliss!
The speed at which the Nigerian public was willing to believe and justify this woman’s story scared me. It means that we are not safe from the general public. Very soon, people will start stoning and lynching us in public for something that was merely a figment of someone’s imagination.
Let’s pretend for a second that it is true. That a gang of doctors specialize in cutting out women’s wombs for the purpose of selling them for …I don’t even know, okay maybe for uterine transplant or as ‘the ordinary president’ wants us to believe for the purposes of ‘juju’. Do you not think that this would be nearly impossible in a government teaching hospital where nurses, doctors and other auxiliary staff are roaming the wards and corridors? Where would the doctor hide the womb? What would he say to the peri-op nurse waiting to receive the specimen (womb) so that it can be labelled appropriately and have it sent to the histopathology lab? What about the patient’s relatives? What about the operation notes? And the signed informed consent? What about all the people in the theatre, from the attendant cleaning the OR to the anaesthetists and to the medical students? Or were they all in cahoots too?
Even if it were true, is that reason enough to castigate all doctors? What about the hundreds of doctors saving lives and performing miracles in Nigeria? Should they be lumped in the same boat as doctors who steal body organs? I assure you that for every doctor who performs illegal kidney transplants, there are thousands more who perform their duties ethically, morally and professionally. Just the other day, I saw a video of a child who swallowed a toy that was obstructing his breathing being saved by surgeons working in South West Nigeria. How will the child’s mother feel?
Growing up in the eighties and nineties, we watched ‘Tales by Moonlight on NTA. My sister and I would sit in front of our mighty contraption of a TV in an apartment on Probyn Road waiting for Aunty Nkem to tell us folktale stories. We listened to the stories about flying tortoises and singing monkeys, thoroughly entertained. By morning, we would have forgotten all about them.
That is what I expected Nigerians to do. To simply listen, laugh and go to bed thoroughly entertained and not lend creditability to a woman whose womb was removed in 2017 but decided to seek justice eight years later.
We need to realise the danger that a single story poses because when we reject the single story, that is when we realize that there is never a single story about any body, any place or any people.
