Things I Feel Strongly About: Water No Get Enemy

Things I Feel Strongly About: Water No Get Enemy: You absolutely must listen to Shakara too.. .

Yellow Fever, Fela Kuti

This hit song by Fela Kuti from 1976.

Yellow Fever, the term is used as a satirical metaphor to criticise the popular and harmful practice of skin bleaching among African women. Fela framed the artificial lightening of dark skin using chemical creams as a form of sickness. He compared it to a fever, singing that while an "original" fever (like jaundice fever or malaria fever) is a natural illness that the body can fight off, skin bleaching is a self-inflicted, artificial disease. 

Beyond physical health risks, Fela used the term to attack a post-colonial inferiority complex. He viewed the obsession with lighter, "Caucasoid" skin tones as a sign of mental colonisation and a rejection of natural African identity.

The phrase "Yellow Fever" was originally a local nickname given to traffic wardens in Nigeria because of the bright yellow shirts they wore. Fela borrowed the term and redirected it at people who bleached their skin.

In truth, yellow fever, is, in fact, a serious viral disease spread by the bites of infected mosquitoes in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and South America. 

Cotonou

I watched the dust of Cotonou settle onto my shoes, realising how strange it felt to be an outsider in a place that looked exactly like home. As an African travelling across my own continent, crossing a border doesn't mean entering a new world; it means entering a mirror that has been slightly tilted. Back in Lagos, the cacophony is loud, the soundscape is always of busy traffic, loud car horns, and raised voices, but here, there is hardly a noise, with the Atlantic humidity wrapping around you like a heavy, familiar cloth, as if you are constantly in the pleasant Lagos city district of Victoria Island wherever in Cotonou you are.

Walking through the Dantokpa Market I didn't feel the sharp detachment of a foreign tourist. Instead, I felt a quiet frustration—the sensation of recognising everything and recognising nothing at all, all at once. The rhythm of the women bargaining, the vocals of Beninese local music spilling from speakers were familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time; and the aroma of roasting plantains was entirely intimate, but I could not speak the local Fon and Egun languages, or French, fluently enough to blend in.

My friend and I went to the city’s port. There were newly imported used cars from Europe for sale, and my friend was interested in replacing his car. The ambience was relaxed, nothing like the hurried helter-skelter of Lagos, where everyone seems to be dashing around at a frenzied pace. It was in Cotonou that I heard Zouk music for the first time, this French Caribbean music genre pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. In Cotonou, in the Republic of Benin, the word "chill" took on a new meaning for me.

Stranded between the comfort of shared identity and the isolation of being a stranger, I found a strange kind of peace. I didn't need to explain myself here. The land understood my bones, even if the city didn't know my name.