I was explaining to my non-Nigeria friend how we use our language when I made this discovery.

I found 10 reasons;

In Nigeria, the word "Abeg" means "'Please" but "Abeegi" means "Don't say that!"

In Nigeria, the word "Mad" means both "insane" and "amazing." When you now add "Mad o," it means "So, so amazing!"

When a Nigerian says "Na you sabi" they mean "I don't care," but when they say "Na you know," they mean "You're the one who knows."

If a Nigerian tells you "I'm coming," it means they're still where they are, but if they say "I'm almost there," it means they're close to where they're going.

It's only in Nigeria that someone says "I'm telling you" to someone who is telling them something when actually, it's not them doing the telling.

Only in Nigeria, the phrase "Come & eat" is different from "We have food o." One is an honest invite to someone to eat with you, but the other is a coded language that means they have food, but even though they're telling you to join them, they don't expect you to accept it.

If a Nigerian tells you "You don't mean it," it doesn't mean you don't mean it, it means they're shocked at what you told them.

In Nigeria, the question "How far?" means "How are you?' not "How distant?"

Nigerians use the same phrase "I dey" to mean both "I'm doing okay" and "I'm around."

And finally, whenever we Nigerians say "God abeg o," we're making a prayer and a statement at then same time.

Tell me why the Nigerian language isn't the greatest of all time?

Nigeria my country

 

    LIVING WITH THE AS GENOTYPE vs LIVING WITH THE AA GENOTYPE - THE PRIVILEGED GENOTYPE.

 

Growing up, all my 5 siblings had the AA genotype, so I automatically assumed that I was one.

 

If you are an AA you know how carefree that makes you feel, right? You could strike up any connection with anyone with no regard to or concern for what genotype the person might have, because, why not? You walk around with your saviour/superiority complex.

 

Unknown to you, as an AA, is the 25%-chance fear which is actually 100%-chance fear in the reality of the AS.

 

Let's not even bother talking about how the SS literally live their lives with the hope that an AA would come save them from reproducing their kind, but I digress.

 

Late 96, at age 15, I became pretty close to one of the most sought after girls in Ikenegbu Layout, Owerri, Imo, Nigeria, but never bothered to ask her genotype. Why should I have been bothered about that? Why should I worry when I was AA - or so I presumed?

 

That was the first girl I could remember that I ever liked in my childhood. 

 

Well, I was very shy and wasn't even very vocal with girls at the time. I also attended an all-boys school - which also isn't completely true.

You see, my school, Government Secondary School, Owerri (GSSO), shared a fence with an all-girls school, Federal Government Girls' College, Owerri (Fedy), so, some of us still had a little experience with communicating with girls (who weren't family) from time to time.

In addition, towards my final years in school, my younger sister started schooling in Fedy and I was mostly the sibling always showing up for her visiting days and all that.

Yup! We were that close, so I had another opportunity to blush at advances made towards me from both her seniors and her mates.

It was just another experience from girls periodically flirting with me since I also had 3 elder sisters whose friends did that with, but I digress again - as usual.

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Back to the first girl I ever liked, the Ikenegbu girl. Let's just say that my mom seeing the girl's framed picture in my room on a certain day, and telling me that HIV was real, made me stop talking to the girl - because although I was still a virgin and had never been sexual with any girl at the time (not even as much as a kiss), I freaked out.

But I never asked to know her genotype.

Why should I have, when I was AA, or so I thought?

 

By 98 or so and over a long period of time, my bestie, Jordan Nwachukwu and I frequently paid this particular family a visit and I had this swift connection with the youngest of sisters. These two sisters eventually told us how, a few years before then, another sister of theirs had died from the SS genotype crisis when their parents were away. The one I was attracted to told us she held her sister as she passed. Guess what else she told us? That she was AS.

 

Welp, I had never had anyone tell me I wasn't AA like my siblings, so I had the assurance, pride and confidence of the AAs.

 

Anyway, we were bonding real quickly and spending a lot of time together whenever we could, until my family moved from Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria to Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.

 

That was the era of dial-up phones and phone booths, so I still kept in touch by spending money and hours calling her through a phone booth until her mom would eventually use the bedroom phone to ask us to get off the phone as she could be missing a call from her husband who lived in the US at the time.

Such innocent, sweet love! Chai!

 

Then came the time for me to go to the university.

 

Well, it was time for me to onboard and register for the undergraduate Computer Science degree at Benson Idahosa University, Benin City, and I was excited to share the news with her.

 

A series of lab tests were done as requirements to start schooling. That was my first time of learning that I was the O+ blood group.

I would also learn other things that day which would eventually change my life and reality forever.

 

When I got my result from the school clinic, I did not have the AA genotype, so, I told the lab attendant that there must have been a mistake as I am AA.

You know how crazy I looked to her and the rest when I kept challenging the result!?

 

When they wouldn't budge, I went to another private clinic with hope that I could prove the school lab's result wrong.

 

One more thing of importance was that I was engineered to believe that I was the "head and not the tail", that everything about me was perfect because God made me so...

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When I got my second result, I couldn't embrace the new shocking reality of my entire life having been a lie the entire time.

 

I reached out to my mom and asked if I was AA at birth. Unfortunately, neither her nor my dad knew what my genotype as they assumed that I must have been AA like the rest of the pack.

Besides, I would like to assume that it wasn't really a thing back then too.

 

With the second result came the gloom, the sadness, the depression, the feeling of inadequacy...

I had a new reality which I wasn't ready to accept!

But again, why would I? I served a God who had the power to change such things, or so I thought.

Since it was a sickness in my opinion and "By his stripes, we were healed", I hoped I would be healed.

 

Anyway, I was so disappointed in and with my new life that I didn't even tell the girl or my bestie. I just couldn't advance beyond the liking phase of the relationship and didn't think it would affect her negatively until I told her in 2008 when she was telling me about a guy she had recently met (her hubby now) and asking for me to vet him and all that.

I was now back to Owerri and was a Banking Associate at First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Assumpta Road, Owerri.

 

I liked and loved her more than I had put on all those years after I had stopped being an AA and had become an AS mutant, but I couldn't tell her because I knew it was mutual but was constrained by our mutant genotypes.

 

We both genuinely loved each other so much that even a girl I ended up dating for 4 years, but whose mom felt I looked too young for her, felt my fellow mutant was a threat - and I couldn't blame her either! So, I kinda cut ties with the AS mutant with whom I was more compatible, but for our mutations.

 

This must have been the beginning of the art of suppressing and cloaking my emotions from people I love.

In a decade, I had mastered the art of loving someone deeply and genuinely, but not expressing it for fear of causing the person pain.

 

It's such a shitty skill which I had to replace by learning another toxic skill of being too open with my feelings right from the start.

But again, I digress.

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Anyway, I had to have the genotype conversation with her just to make her understand why I didn't really proceed from the close friendship stage to an intimate relationship with her all those years.

 

Let me just summarize it as she was not happy that I didn't let her know! I would be mad as well if I were to have been in her shoes.

I had also recently started talking to a certain girl at the time so I didn't want to give in to my feelings for my fellow mutant.

Dang! Self sabotage at its finest!

 

Well, the next girl I dated from 2000 to 2005 who thought this fellow mutant was a threat, was AA, but her mom thought that I looked too young for her and that she would age quicker than I would - although I was just a year older than her.

You now how these things with certain parental reservations often end!

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Eventually, living like an AS was and still is a difficult experience for me for so many reasons.

 

1) Denial:

As an AA you have never had to deal with being in denial after someone with whom you share a great bond suddenly, and with tears in his/her eyes, tells you about how it is both medically and societally impossible for him/her to be with you. 

Even your faith that things would turn out fine is unable to persuade the person.

 

2) The Feeling of Inadequacy:

As an AA, you have never felt so inadequate due to just being you. It's like being treated poorly because you are black, a woman, younger, less educated, of a different religion... It sucks!

As an AA you have certain privileges which the rest of us do not have.

 

3) Pressure & Projecting:

AAs do not know what it means to look desperate when you ask certain questions at the initial stages of meeting someone just because you're tired of and strained from bonding only to detach for medical reasons.

We have to ask these questions in one way or another right from the onset. Do you know how desperate that makes us look and how we've been treated like second-class humans when your kind found out that we were mutants? No, you do not!

 

4) Paranoia:

As as AA, you do not have to become a detective and guess a prospective date's genotype. You do not have to be a diviner either. You're good to go with just anyone.

But we have to listen out for codes and all that. We have to assume that someone is automatically AA is the person never really asks us what we are. 

 

Matter of fact, there are rumours that some of you have a rather disgusting agenda not to mix with the 'inferior' genotypes to preserve your 'pure genotype'. You sound more like Hitler and the rest of those other deplorable humans who are trying to preserve their 'pure' race.

 

5) Deception:

Have you ever had to agree with someone you liked to lie to your families about his/her genotype, only for you families to somehow find out in the near future? I bet you haven't!

 

6) Grief:

I know you might think you know grief - especially if you have lost someone, but this kind of grief hits different because the person did not die, never stopped loving you, and you both have to kill whatever you had going on,

That's an experience you do not come back from, yet might have to repeat over and over if you want to have things growing organically with prospective partners.

How messed up can that be!?

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in 2012, there was this particular girl who I liked so much that I went to 3 times just with the "hope" that the result would change. 

 

Would you believe me if I told you that 90% of the people I have had a smooth connection with since the Ikenegbu girl have been fellow AS mutants?

I'm almost turning 41 and you don't want to know how hard it's been with this mutation.

 

We are literally forced to practice hypergamy or bear the cost.

Now, does that sound like your lives, dear AAs?

I didn't think so.

 

I'll stop here for now, but I hope you now see how great you've got it going for you as an AA.

 

Funny thing is, we share the same reality with the SS folks although we do not share the darkest parts of their biologically and medically gruesome experiences. 

I won't say that I understand how they feel because I never could.

The only thing we share with them is that we both hope to meet your often condescending selves as we're kinda stuck in the loop of genotypic hypergamy for the sake of our offsprings.

 

Suffice it to know that we're not really prone to have the malaria fever because it's been said that those with our blood type, the AS, without any external factors, developed an immunity against the malaria parasite. We're carriers but don't necessarily get sick from it.

There's the only benefit we have.

We mutated during the malaria epidemic, that's why I have chosen to refer to us as mutants.

 

Next time, before you open your privileged mouths to criticize anyone who would rather adopt and not have children of their own, remember this post.

 

One more thing, dear AA, find an AS or SS today to educate you further on our realilities.

 

- Onyedika Mba -

 

 Happy Sunday from Sug Aspirant . Please it's important that we all know our genotype before starting up anything, it's a sad reality that most of us don't even know our genotype. Alot of people are not even aware of the consequences of wrong genotype matchings. 

 

   And as AA do not think about getting married to AA's alone, let's be considerate. You can get married to an AS and solve a whole lot of problems.

 

   Try to find out your genotype before it's too late .

 

Happy Sunday y'all ❤️