Talaka

Talaka: A Masochist of Some Sort

Abdullah Musa

My understanding of the Hausa word talaka seems to be different from the popular meaning. I understand it to mean a subject to a ruler, particularly one ruled by a monarch of some sort. The popular meaning of course is any person who is poor. The popular meaning derives from the fact that traditional authorities were deemed to have been oppressive to their subjects, majority of whom happened to be poor. Would it be out of place here to ask why the majority should always be poor, and why a minority would be wealthy; and have not only the power to protect their wealth, but also additional wherewithal to subjugate and emasculate further this rather unfortunate majority?

I made recourse to the dictionary for help with definitions. The poor is defined as one “deserving sympathy”; it went further however to include “spiritless and despicable”. A poor relation on the other hand is one who is “inferior or subordinate member of the family”. The peasant, an equivalent to the poor, is considered as “lout” and “boor”. The two definitions translate to “rough and ill-mannered person”. Now how on earth can an informed person go about boasting of satisfying the requirement of being a poor person?

Many politicians have made fortunes in championing the cause of the poor. Yet the poverty of the poor deepens, and the champion of the poor in many situations gets admitted into the circles of the rich and powerful. The poor seems to have the strength to always be a kind of sturdy ladder for any aspiring politician to climb to material success.

Poverty, particularly of the most excruciating type, is caused by ignorance. The lack of necessary resources to finance the demands of life is what is defined as poverty. We do not need to waste the reader’s time going through the possible consequences of poverty. We would however concentrate on one of them in order to show why we think the average poor person, particularly of Northern Nigeria, is a masochist of some sort.

Going from the simple to the complex, we say that when you are poor, you and your family do not live well. So poorly would you live that you may even be forced by the ‘modern’ Nigerian lifestyle, to live dangerously. By this we mean you may be forced to eat food that is unwholesome, that has within it certain destructive chemicals, for the simple reason that you cannot afford something better. The reader may recall the stories of poor people buying industrial salts for cooking because it was offered cheap in the market. Another example we may give is the purchase of fats from the same markets to be used as cooking oil. The origin of the fat not being known, and the only driving factor behind the apparent masochistic conduct of the poor who purchased those hazardous substances being the cheapness of the prices offered.

In order to ensure mutual dependency, God created human beings with differences in endowments. Nearly all are created with the required hormones to ensure the survival of the human race. Beyond that however, some possess tremendous faculties of reasoning and perception, while others may at the extreme of cases, be found to be extreme morons. One may have farming skills; another may be good at blacksmithing; while another, with fall in human values, may decide to be a prostitute.

When we interact, we are supposed to be enriched by the experience, or the exchange. Some products are of course dearer than others. Many a times, there are hundred of thousands of laborers, with their declining muscle power, while few are there who have the capacity to obliterate Iran, if it dares to challenge their illegitimate baby. With the advent of industrial revolution, raw human power lost a significant part of its appeal. A machine may be operated by series of controls, or even by a simple repetitive process. A delicate woman may even come to be preferred in certain operations rather than the brutalizing biceps of a heavyweight champion.

If we are to refer to our earlier definitions from the dictionary with respects to the word ‘poor’, we may come to the shocking conclusion that the dictionary itself was not the handiwork of the poor! This is apparent, for no rational person would describe himself or herself as “rough and ill-mannered”. To be able to describe another as “rough and ill-mannered”, you must not only have an understanding of what it means to be refined, but you must be refined yourself.

Poverty is really not properly defined as long as it is considered as tuwo and miya issue; tuwo and miya being Hausa man’s most basic and even compulsory menu. And lest we are inclined to forget, Hausa people are the poorest in Nigeria, particularly those who hail from Jigawa State. The poor is simply the ignorant. Many had made history, whose lifestyles were that of what we may consider today as poor people. They were not trapped by their material deprivations. In real fact, they, many a times courted deprivation, because they wanted to achieve something loftier than filling their stomachs with food and meat.

The horror of horrors is found in a situation where someone is ignorant and also faces severe deprivation. His or her ignorance is also total: total in the sense that one does not know from where one is, and where one’s final destination is going to be. It is just like being born blind. It is however worse. In blindness, one may come to develop other faculties so acutely as to try to offset the deficiency in sight: having a high sense of sound perception for instance. What makes the situation under reference more pathetic is that the child of this double darkness wants to make the filling of the stomach a life’s goal, but unfortunately he is unable to achieve it. Day in day out he craves for food, and repeatedly it eludes him; particularly in the quantity he wants, while quality is a luxury he hears over the radio waves. The mirage that becomes more elusive is food, while the reality that is abundantly available is knowledge; and this golden key, necessary for opening of all doors, is what the poor disdains!

Many are there who may say that they are unable to educate their children because education nowadays costs fortune; and for one who is a twin brother to misfortune, it is being sadistic to ask him to send his children to school when you really know he cannot afford it: the cripple, according to a witty friend of mine, would be looking on helplessly, while the twig that would be used to lash him is being torn off from the tree; in short he cannot run away from imminent danger.

Western, secular, civilization is all about the enthronement of the arrogance of man; such creature that came to the world naked, and totally vulnerable. Unlike the lamb that starts walking after an hour or so from arriving to the world, man-child must take at least one year burdening his mother, who must teach him how to sit, guide him to crawling and the initial faltering steps of ta-ta-ta! After arrogance comes the satiating of desires; the developing of viler forms of it when monotony comes in after too much wantonness; and the ultimate recourse to drugs to escape from the self-inflicted horror of loss of meaning of life itself.

The poor is a slave to those who understand his cravings: he wants to eat his fill; does not know how to about doing that; and the politicians offer him an ever receding mirage to hanker after: if you vote us in…bla, bla, bla, will be your lot. So how does the poor get educated, since we know that he does not have, may never have the resources to finance same? The first step is to want the education. It is not the motivation stuff of dreaming and concentrating to get your heart’s desire. It is plain truth: you usually get what you aspire to. And we know that you hardly aspire to that which you do not want. Does the poor aspire towards food? I don’t think so; for to aspire means to “have ambition or strong desire”.

When you till the land, defy the elements, fight the pests, pray hard to your Creator for sufficient rainfall, (if you are a believer in God) you may end up with bumper harvest to take care of your food needs for at least six to nine months. Before the harvest, you are literally a slave to the land. You do its bidding because you need its fruits. Year in year out, Northern Emirs go through the charade of convincing parents to send their children to school. Many refuse, preferring them to pass through the Quranic system, and later usually they turn into traders. Such system has its merits: chief amongst which being that the graduate does not get a certificate, and would thus not look for employment. His natural inclination is to go to the market, after having salted away some capital through menial jobs and the likes. The system he went through could not allow him the luxury of arrogance: the feeling that he is beyond certain types of labor.

The question has still not been answered: how can a poor person or his children be educated? Public schools are meant to kill the potentials of the pupils. The teachers are heartless, possibly moronic. The parents do not give a damn about the output, so why should the teachers or even the Ministry of mis-education? Of course there are no resources to fund education, because we do not know the reason why education should be funded.

Since we have new mode of existence that does not tally fully with the Tsangaya system; and since we cannot re-invent the wheel by resorting to apprenticeship even in disciplines such as engineering and medicine; parents who are poor should demand education from those who are in power: elected or imposed. The only tool they require is commitment. I personally do not trust many of those do-gooders. They are usually kaska rabi mai jini, (blood-sucking ticks).

But if the poor insist on being spiritless and despicable, then the looters deserve apology from the Press: they should be re-named as the enlightened few. And that King of France would have been right in his retort when told that “the poor people are revolting”. “Of course they are,” he replied. The report was referring to a rebellion, while he was alluding to “revolting”, as something disgusting, horrible.

I am not poor; neither is the reader.

Abdullah Musa