By Olukorede Yishau
Our streets are filled with them. Yes, people who need help, medical help. We see them scream and assume it is just an anger problem, we see their moods swing like a pendulum within a twinkle of an eye and we rationalise it unscientifically. But, the truth is, we are a nation in denial of a severe mental health challenge. The government does not take it seriously and the people trivialise it.
I have read two books recently that brought this issue to my mind and also reminded me of what psychiatrists have been screaming about but those who should listen are feigning ear problems.
The title story in Jerry Chiemeke’s collection of short stories, ‘Dreaming of ways to understand you’, treats mental health with the care it deserves. This story breathes and screams: empathy is the best way to go about mental health issues. The exchanges between the narrator and Martha, the lady with the mental health issue, make for interesting reading and tug at the soul. The story also shows how insensitive many of us are about mental health issues, and how not a few still consider it strange when an African talks about being depressed and are quick to end such discussions with “we are Africans, we don’t roll like that”. This attitude has resulted in increased suicide and near suicide cases.
Chiemeke’s book is not just about mental health. The late Chinua Achebe once said his stories were not innocent; Chiemeke’s aren’t too. There are subtle commentaries here and there. For instance, in the third story ‘What am I supposed to say to you?’, Chiemeke has a lot to say about the Nigerian university system, which turns out graduates of engineering who are forced to work in fields far removed from their specialisation and are always looking for better opportunities.
In another tale, the famous Ajah axis gridlock that wastes man-hours, and sprinting street hawkers, are weaved into the narrative. So is the habit of airlines to postpone or cancel flights and the effects on passengers given pride of place. And when the electricity supply lasts longer than expected, the author quips: “PHCN proved to be kind to us”. The penchant for many members of the camera-phone generation to capture breaking news on their phones rather than rescuing accident victims is condemned in these lines: “Onlookers threw themselves around the place, in a manner that seemed more out of curiosity than genuine concern. Yeah, some went on to take pictures, eager to breathe life into their social media newsfeeds”.
The author also gives Lagos its well-deserved knocks. From being characterised as a city that can make you go crazy, it is also described as home to people with a bit of madness in them.
In the first story in the collection, the author lures the reader in with a line from Wizkid’s song: I want your body sleeping in my bed. And from then on, it is a cruise. First, you meet the devil’s first son; and some pages into his story, you remember how young girls have met their deaths through friends they meet on social media and how they return from dates in body bags. You also remember the many lies peddled via social media, those lies that make you wonder if there is any truth left in the saying ‘pictures don’t lie’.
You will laugh and you may cry reading ‘Not for Long’. The warning of this tale is: Tread with caution because that man you meet on a social network may be a sociopath. Its nameless narrator is a disciple of serial killer Albert Fish, American criminal, and cult leader Charles Manson, and nihilism promoter Frederick Nietzsche, among others.
The second of the fifteen stories in Chiemeke’s book is titled ‘Coming to terms’. In it, you will meet Melvin and Sade, his fiancée due to become his wife in about three weeks. The trick Chiemeke plays with this story will break your heart and mercifully also mend it. You will need to find out what it is and how well he pulls it off. You may smile at the relationship between this trick and the statement of an old female character: “Person wey don kpef nor fit relate with person wey still dey tanda.”
If you are one of those at the sad end of boarding school life, the story ‘Memories in a glass of whiskey’ may bring back some sad memories. While people are made in these schools, some people have also been destroyed in such schools, especially same-sex ones, where orientations get changed. And it can be so sad when the one who twists your life is the one meant to give it a firm foothold. The protagonist of this story attends a reunion party and meets the ones responsible for his curved direction in life. This is a very heartrending story that is capable of making you give a second thought about condemning people whose orientation is alien to what you see as right. The rhythm and the cadence of this story hum so much that despite its sad tone, it is a delight to read.
One story that you are likely going to remember for its language of rendition is ‘Ugborikoko’. It is narrated entirely in Pidgin English like Iquo DianaAbasi’s ‘Efo Riro’. It, however, takes a good understanding of this very Nigerian English to feel the beauty of this story.
‘In the river brought us here’, the author travels back in time, specifically to 1803, and the tale he has to tell is about slavery in Igboland. It tells of how slave merchants rape and immediately lean on the holy book and assume solemn countenance; how men and women are chained and fed like animals they were not; how brothers betray brothers by turning the other into slaves fit to be shipped to far-away lands; and how scores of years later, the journey back to homeland takes shape.
The author’s love for music is unleashed and a playlist of songs by Olamide, Wizkid, Jidenna, Janelle, Lana Del Ray, Chris Martin, Callum Scott, Don William, Peter Tosh, James Blunt, and others can be compiled by just reading through these stirring stories.
All in all, this collection portrays Chiemeke as a student of the William Zinsser School of writing which hates clutters. The motto of this school is: cut out anything that can make a reader ask ‘What does this mean?’ The author’s clarity of thought shines through all the fifteen stories, his abhorrence of ambiguity is as clear as the oneness of six and a half dozen, and his syntax brims with deliberateness.
Using a variety of points of view, such as close first person, second person, and third person, he stunningly treats dark themes such as mental health, serial killing, queerness, and other intricacies of contemporary living; and he handles them well.
My final take: Mental health is not a joking matter. Nigeria and Nigerians have played with it for too long. We need to change our ways and give this monster the attention it deserves. And please, now is the time to stop saying depression is not an African mental challenge. It is and many are battling it.
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Mental health is not a joking matter. Nigeria and Nigerians have played with it for too long. We need to change our ways and give this monster the attention it deserves. And please, now is the time to stop saying depression is not an African mental challenge. It is and many are battling it.
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of’In The Name of Our Father’and’Vaults’.