Meandering Thoughts on Saint Valentine’s Day 2021 by Elizabeth Obadina ... HTW on the theme of 'love'

What about love? What to write?

Floundering, St Valentine’s Day dawned bright

And brought with it unexpected insight.

Sunday Worship[i] on the radio spoke to me something quite new

That whilst Jesus taught ‘love’ was what Christians must do,

Its opposite isn’t hate. There’s another point of view.

The opposite to love, said the speaker … and I pricked up one ear,

The cause of all prejudice, neglect; great hurt far and near

Is not hate. Hate’s not love’s flipside. No … love’s opposite is fear.

After that programme I got a call from a friend

And we talked of a marriage that had come to an end

Of a man fearing his true self was one none could love, nor comprehend.

 

So, spider-like he wove a web of lies and deceit

Held together by shame, hiding acts so discreet

That his wife and children ne’er heard that other drumbeat

 

Until its crescendo, like a tsunami rumbling in,  

Crashed through the marriage with confessions of sin.

And his wife’s trust was shattered, but his children still loved him.

 

Their love and his family’s, guided them through

Though they’re living apart, they’re beginning anew,

Avoiding hurt, shame and fear; avoiding hullabaloo.

 

Then I talked with another friend about this Valentine’s Day

Remembering her father who just last year passed away

And the love of our parents, always felt, always with us to stay.

 

And just as we were parting she suddenly said, “‘It’s a Sin’[ii]! The programme I mean.

Have you seen it? Have you seen Imari[iii]?” Whom we’d watched as a teen

Work his way from youth theatre to the national thespian scene.

 

So as this Valentine’s Day ended, in twenty, twenty-one

I watched ‘It’s a Sin’ and was transported back to when the AIDS pandemic had begun.

When fear seeped into lives o’er the world, and into mine, when my children were young.

 

And I remembered how in Lagos I feared for my lovely gay hairdresser and the people he knew.

And I feared my sons would wriggle, be snipped by barbers’ shears and get AIDS so I let their hair grow.

And I feared buying bad blood one dark, nightmare night for our meguard whose skull was macheted clean through.

 

After a while pandemic palava died down

Though HIV spread, there were treatments around

And people showed love to those HIV-stricken; put away masks and gowns.

 

Until twenty fourteen[iv] when …

In Nigeria, a country beset by strife and division,

Where basic necessities are wanting in provision,

A populist president found a wheeze to unite all religions.

 

He united Nigerians by stoking fear of gay men

Who had lived and been let live but were now condemned

To hide, risk stoning , risk prison and risk too, the lives of their friends.

 

The Anglican archbishops put love to one side.

The Islamist North turned on ancient yan daudu[v] they’d long lived beside

And 98 per cent of people thought gays shouldn’t survive.

 

Bishops and terrorists, tele-evangelists too

Poured their poisonous preaching into a virulent stew

Of hatred kept boiling by the fears of a few.

 

So, my meandering through love on this Valentine’s Day

Found me wondering why those preaching love have just platitudes to say

Which people nod along to yet go on their way

 

To cast the first stone at people they know not, whom they yet fear

Forgetting the command Jesus, whether teacher or prophet, had asked them to hear:

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Don’t fear.

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[i] Sunday Worship Facets of Love BBC Radio 4 Sunday 14^th

[ii] It’s A Sin Channel 4 4-part mini-series 2021

[iii] Imari Douglas, Wolverhampton born actor who plays Roscoe Babatunde in It’s A Sin

[iv] 2014 Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) signed into law by President Goodluck Johnson having been passed with overwhelming cross-party support by the Nigerian legislature. It criminalises homosexuality and proscribes 14 year prison sentences, or death by stoning in northern areas subject to Sharia Law, for being homosexual and provides sentences for people supporting or promoting homosexuals. “Expressions of affection between two people of the same sex” become illegal. The Act was an ‘open sesame’ moment for vigilante and police attacks on suspected homosexuals and although arrests have been reported under the act, most arrested were released after the payment of large bribes or bail and in 2019 one of the most notorious Lagos trials was dismissed by the judge for lack of prosecution evidence.

[v] Yan Daudu – communities of muslim homosexuals and transvestites which grew up along the ancient trans Saharan trade and slave routes of northern Nigeria. Most yan daudu are poor, illiterate and harassed. Those who have survived earn their living nowadays as food sellers and in the sex trade, often as go-betweens for female prostitutes.