Ozoro Festival, SA, and Why We Cry—Final
"Why did you cancel the ride?” in an angry voice and tone that suggested I had done something wrong. I answered in the meekest voice I could muster that the ride was not forthcoming and that I had things to do. He started screaming and raining curses on me. I cut the phone because the new ride I ordered through another app was here.
A few minutes into my new ride, I saw a text; it was from the Bolt driver (see the picture attached). I forwarded the message to customer service through their app, but they failed to take any satisfactory action. The incident was during my summer fieldwork in 2024; I was shaken the rest of my stay that summer. During the same trip, my Uber rating dropped so low that I had to ask what was happening. I started paying attention, only to realize that minding my business was a crime and refusing to be exploited was why drivers would create non-existent reasons to assign me low ratings.
When they are not doing that, almost every pickup looks at me in a way that makes it clear they are judging me. A woman conducting research for a second PhD at one of the top Ivy League public R1s in North America is nothing to them but a prostitute. As long as my pickup was from a hotel where I stayed and paid for out of two major grants I received for my research and, of course, my savings, I was still a prostitute.
If you are still asking why we "faraya,"
We lament for bodies denied the choice to determine what and how the materiality of their bodies is used (with a nod here to Henrietta Lacks).
We cry for our foremothers whose strive for purity was polluted by a society that saw them as chattel. I remember Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent), who lived in a "loophole of retreat" for years to avoid sexual slavery by her owner. If you don’t read anything this year, please read the 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
We lament because of Bamise, who was SA's and murdered in a BRT bus, and the following day, Governor Sanwo-Olu was dancing before her body was put in the grave. A stark reminder that our deaths count for nothing to Nigerian leaders.
We cry for the girls who are currently touched inappropriately because they are vulnerable. This last point is why I look at Omoyele Sowore with a double mind. One part of me praises his activism, no matter how flawed, while another part believes that his explanation of the video Adetoun gave him, showing young girl hawkers SA’d under Ikeja Bridge, was grossly insufficient.
When you see us scatter bodies, ask what you can do so women ahead won't cry for the same reason that we are "hysterical."
When Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois said he would forgive everything that was done to Black people but the sexual and bodily violence against Black women, I believe, like many of us, he was thinking of all the atrocities I have written about in previous posts and more.
Join us in ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable.
