To my unborn child

Well, I shall never know, I can only hazard a guess! I am reliably informed that all being well, you should scream your way into this world in the first week of May, in about 4 months from now. This letter is of course no use to a baby just drawing its very first breath. […]

Well, I shall never know, I can only hazard a guess! I am reliably informed that all being well, you should scream your way into this world in the first week of May, in about 4 months from now. This letter is of course no use to a baby just drawing its very first breath. I intend to keep this letter until you turn 18, by which time I shall present it to you. By then, almost a generation after it was written, you will be at liberty to discern the veracity of my claims, whether my fears were founded. We live in troubled times; to be sure we are not at war but the circumstances of our existence are evocative of a time of uncommon strife. I am not sure if your mother and I made the right choice to sire you at this time! In the event that you do not approve of your circumstances, please accept our profound apologies and try to make your way through life as best as you can. Let me begin with a warning: all births begin with a yell!
As soon as you emerge from the warm confines of your mother’s womb, the sudden drop in temperature and the loss of your comfort zone for the preceding 9months will as of necessity compel you to wail! Your caterwauls, a signal of distress, are ironically our own assurance that all is well with your lungs and hopefully other vital organs. The pitch darkness of your mother’s womb shall remain an enduring feature of the new life you shall soon discover: it shall however be interrupted by day light and the luminance provided by generators. As you will eventually discover, our lives are characterised by shortages and dereliction on an epic scale: fuel scarcity, power outages, bad roads, ill-equipped hospitals, a perennial threat to life and property; the woeful fruits of years of unaccountable governance by tyrants and scoundrels.
To be sure, it is not all gloom and doom. Your fellow citizens are among the most gregarious, resilient and stoic people on earth, incurably optimistic about what the future holds even as ordinary dreams elude them as a matter of routine. You can count yourself fortunate as you shall have a head start over the vast majority of your peers: Your mother and I belong to a diminished and diminishing middle class, but mercifully we can provide you with what Italians call ‘La Dolce vita’, the good things of life your peers can only dream of. You will never go to bed hungry, wake up hungry with no idea of where the next meal will come from, you will not wear rags neither will you scavenge for anything. You will live in a leafy, serene part of town amidst neighbours who won’t begrudge you anything because you share the same aspirations. My fear for you is not about any looming peril to your personal circumstances.
Rather I worry about the viability of the Nigerians state, buffeted by years of misrule, arbitrariness and impunity. I worry that you do not read this letter in a refugee camp, our abode after the dismemberment of our benighted nation. This may sound rather macabre but my fears are compelled by the woeful trajectory of our national life, a course that is at once injurious to, and subversive of a unifying ideal in a multi ethnic state as ours. I am reasonably persuaded that you will grow up into a well- adjusted man/woman (your mother and I have deliberately refrained from making inquiries about your gender, preferring to find out when you finally emerge from your ‘solitary confinement’!) I do not expect you to cheat during exams, neither do I envisage you in some dreadful cult. And I find it improbable that you will inhale anything other than fresh air! The great poet, essayist and novelist, Wole Soyinka once referred to his as the ‘wasted generation’. I wonder if your generation will eventually provide redemption and shepherd us to the right path. I must interrupt this letter now and take your mother to see her physician. She claims she has not noticed your normally robust movements inside her confines all day!
My heart skips a beat; ominous images of a stillbirth over a decade ago overwhelming me. She lifts her gown to reveal her distended stomach and runs my hand over the surface. Here she says is the head, and down here are the legs. And as I feel with my hand, what transmits to my sense of touch is consistent with these body parts! And suddenly, you moved like a giant rodent in an enclosed sack! A huge smile only matched by mine lights up your mother’s face. All is well, she says; and I nod in joyful agreement. But we must nonetheless go and see the gynaecologist I insist. Why, asks your mother. I want to know the sex of this baby I replied as If somehow this knowledge will forestall any looming disaster.

Maiyaki wrote from Utako, FCT,
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