₦airaland Forum

bemeruca:
Why should Mexico pay for US wall?

His promise before he got elected. Yet Mexico paid no dime.

bemeruca:
While Biden hires all the wrong people and never fire them.

Biden is not running. Your hero who brags to know the best people is. Is Mexico going to pay for the wall now?

Funflipper:
You were lied to. The typical white woman is sweet, full of love and affection. They know what a home should be like and moreover, they know how to carry themselves with respect and glamor unlike the blacks who feel comfortable wearing pants and flip-flops to go do grocery shopping and dropping off their kids in school.

Are you married to one? Which country?

Obrigardo:
Too bad he is not in any good position to win. He's bleeding republican voters real bad, maga cult wants to ignore it lol. He's already casting doubts on the election and before now, the rnc have about 150 cases fighting voting and voter suppressions in courts right now.

Just watch out for basilico loco's stop the steal part 2 when the rapists loses.

I pray he loses. Either way, I have witnessed in real time how it is possible for people to (nearly) destroy democracy.

pocohantas:
So even the reverred white women do not give you guys peace of mind? Interesting!

I have heard some admit that white women are even worse. They consider divorce an option, take the kids and the house and call the police on them. But it’s just anecdotal evidence so don’t mind me.

If Trump wins, will he still keep screaming that the election system is rigged? Or is it only rigged when he loses?

Trump says he hires all ”the best people“ but then somehow ends up firing them.

cococandy:
He should’ve asserted his masculine dominance by not giving birth to girls 🤣

The brain dead comments that we get to read here.

Sewell Setzer III

descarado:
If it's possible, mums should have been doing that.

Could you leave your kids with this kind of a person?

cococandy:
@bold, 💯
I know him. At least I remember him now that I went through his other threads. Single man wey be say his few clothes and dishes are piling up in a house he’s living in alone na that one wan take care of small children?

If not for moms’ hearts and fear of seeing your children go through difficulty at the hands of relatives, I really think all divorced moms should be leaving their kids for the dads. That way we’ll stop listening to them complaining about financially providing for the kids.

They will drop them with their female relatives and that’s it. Any man who complains about taking care of their kids, financially or otherwise, doesn’t deserve to be called dad.

cococandy:
Even lower the taxes they still won’t see.
Unless they’re secret billionaires that we don’t know about. Trump’s tax plan is to milk them dry to feed people like Elon. But these ones are in the class of temporarily embarrassed billionaires too stuck up their own wazoo to see it yet.

I know dear but I am trying to keep the conversation simple when talking to Trump supporters. You get why.

[quote author=bemeruca post=132564126][/quote]You will vote for the American Hitler because of taxes, right?

A40:
You people are laughable and funny.

On the contrary Trump has been prosecuted and almost assassinated. Trump has been the victim of all types of persecution in office and out of office

A man that did not arrest and prosecute one opponent. Did not invade a single country, did not start a single war. Is not funding wars in Ukraine and Middle East as we speak

That has a daughter and grandkids married to the people Hitler actually exterminated. That is who you're comparing to Adolf Hitler

Like JD Vance said. Do you hear yourself??

Laughable and funny? Says the one who thinks that people compare Trump to Hitler because of Jews.

A40:
It's ill informed and a very stupid comparison. How any intelligent person compares Trump to a man synonymous with systematic genocide is vile and evil.

This is a man that did not start any new wars or prosecute his opponents. Not even the ones that accused him of Russian collusion and other myths

Hitler didn’t start off by killing Jews. He scapegoated them first like Trump constantly does with different minority groups, Mexicans, Haitians, Muslims and people from ”shythole countries“.

Hitler ran on the slogan ”Make Germany great again“. Does it ring a bell?

Hitler knew that extreme statements and rhetoric will give him media attention which Trump has perfectly mastered too and uses to his advantage.

Hitler persecuted the opposition in Germany installing himself as a dictator. Trump recently announced that he would persecute political opponents too.

Hitler was democratically elected. His reign of terror and destruction of democracy didn’t happen over night.

There are more similarities between these two men but I am afraid your mind is made up.

A40:
Kamala actually called Biden a rapist. Tell us something new

Look at Trump looking very Hitlery

So you think people compare him to Hitler because they think that he hates Jews? Oh boy! Is that all you know about Hitler?

NetbizBoss:
If they rigged Harris in as planned. That will be the beginning of the fall of the USA. No world power had ever been rule by a woman. Harris will not win

Go back to school.

A40:
He's Hitler. How convenient we are hearing about these lies 2 weeks to the election

These people think you are stupid

She is not the first and only one. Even JD Vance called him ”the American Hitler“.

cococandy:
It does have quite a bit of pepper. My kids don’t eat it so I’m always free to be generous with the spice

They don’t know what they are missing but more for you. Enjoy! It looks very delicious.

cococandy:
Egusi and plantain fufu

Yummy! Please tell me it has a lot of pepper even if you have to lie.

The Sani family in northern Nigeria has six children, more than the parents can afford but fewer than their own parents had. Birthrates, and the decisions couples make about family size, are changing across Africa.

Five young sisters and their brother crowded around a small television in their modest cement house, a wriggling, giggling pile of skinny limbs and abandoned homework. Like families across northern Nigeria, the Sani family had been waiting all week for Thursday night to watch the latest episode of their favorite show, a comedy drama called “Gidan Badamasi.”

Everyone was talking about the show last year in their suburb of Kano, Nigeria’s second-biggest city, where rows of well-behaved children sit on sidewalks every afternoon, learning the Quran by heart.

And almost everyone knew of someone like the show’s feckless protagonist: a wealthy serial divorcé who had had 20 wives and so many children he had lost count — and was too stingy to support them.

The show’s theme — the consequences of having many children — has struck a chord in Nigeria. It is a pressing issue for many in Africa, where a protracted baby boom is fueling the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet, even as birthrates plummet in richer regions. The scale of this youth boom opens up enormous potential opportunities for global influence and possibly economic growth, but also huge challenges for societies that need to educate and employ all of these people.

Many African women have far more children than women on other continents do: Women in Nigeria have an average of over five children, while American and European women have about 1.5, and Chinese women even fewer. And recent progress in reducing child mortality in Africa means more of them survive into adulthood than ever before.

But Africa’s birthrate is also gradually dropping: It has fallen by about 38 percent over the past 60 years. That is largely because of education, economics and shifting attitudes toward family size on display in conversations prompted by shows like “Gidan Badamasi,” one of the biggest hits of recent years on the leading Hausa-language television channel.

“It’s a very bad habit, breeding children he can’t take care of,” said Sani Ibrahim, 53, a school principal and the father of the six siblings laughing along to the show on the sofa last year, tutting at the show’s lead character.

The subject was close to home, though, Sani admitted. Sani came from a big family, but had wanted “two, or at most three,” children himself, he said. He blamed his wife for having six.

“It’s a problem for me,” he said, “that I have this many children.”

Counting the Pennies, and the Babies

Northern and southern Africa have long been going through “fertility transitions” — significant reductions in their birthrates. But in most of the rest of Africa, fertility has mostly stayed high.

That is not the case everywhere, though. Four decades ago, Kenyan and Malawian women had more than seven babies on average; today, that has come down to 3.4 and 3.7 respectively. Rwandan women had six babies on average in 2005, and four a decade later. The birthrates fell after contraception became more available, girls became more educated and governments encouraged having fewer children.

Even in places like Kano, home to the Sani family, change is afoot.

In Kano, a religiously conservative city, large families are considered a blessing and a sensible bet to ensure care in old age.

But for many in Kano — and across Africa — the economic and social calculation is changing.

Families used to live in large compounds, the children cared for by a whole extended family. Now, they increasingly live in smaller units in urban areas, putting parents under more pressure to provide. Far more children survive into adulthood than did 40 years ago, when one in five African children died before turning 5. Contraceptives are now more available and less controversial than before. And education is accessible and desired — including education for girls, which has been shown to reduce birthrates.

But paying school fees for big families gets expensive, as Sani knows only too well.

As the children watched the show’s protagonist flirt with his latest 22-year-old wife on the screen that Thursday night, Sani and his wife, Fatima Ado Saleh, 37, hovered in the tiny courtyard outside.

They were anxious.

The children, whose ages range from 3 to 16, were putting the family’s finances under serious strain.
Sani spent his days teaching other people’s children, but could not afford the school fees for his own. He could barely afford a $42 sack of rice on his $72 monthly salary. The annual rent payment of about $120 was almost due — and between food, clothes and school fees, he had none of it.

Researchers have long said that the richer societies get, the lower fertility rates become. But in Kano, many said it was the other way around: Rich men still have dozens of children with multiple wives, but most people have fewer because of soaring living costs.

Sani’s father had four wives and 19 children; Fatima’s, three wives and 30 children, six of whom died as infants. Her grandfather had four wives, each of whom had at least 10 children, though many did not survive into adulthood.

So their six represented a major break from previous generations.

Getting Educated

As the light gradually materialized in their small gray home one morning, the Sani children got ready for school.

The two eldest, Saratu and Juwairiyyah — who go by the nicknames Baby and Nana — smoothed down their uniforms. Under their head scarves, each put on one earring of the pair they shared, small golden apples like the tech company’s logo. Like most Kano families, they had no running water, so Sadiq, the only boy, washed his face with water bought by the jerry can from a vendor. Baby swept the concrete courtyard, then set before her siblings two large plates of beans and homemade pasta. Bought pasta was too expensive.
Then, stepping onto the sandy street, she and Nana left for school, setting off in opposite directions.

Baby and Nana were exceptionally bright girls. Wide-eyed Baby, 16, was very academic; Nana, 14, more sage and worldly.

Sani had managed to get Baby into an excellent private school for underprivileged children, with free tuition. But Nana had not been so lucky. Somehow, he cobbled together about $9 annually for Nana’s private school, but he sighed as he flipped through her exercise books. He could tell the school was substandard.
“It’s obvious that Nana’s intelligence is deteriorating because I can’t afford a good school for her,” he said that afternoon after work on the sofa, cuddling Asma’u, then 2.

And after Baby and Nana, there were four more children to educate.

Sani had a diploma. Fatima had completed high school — unusual in their part of Kano, where some consider an educated woman to be unmarriageable. But they were determined their girls’ educations would be even better than their own.

Perhaps, as educated girls have been shown to have fewer children, his daughters would realize his dream and have smaller families themselves, Sani thought.

Discovering Birth Control

The problem, as Sani saw it, was his wife’s circle of girlfriends.

He suspected they held the traditional view, that modern contraception was bad, and were influencing her.

Clinics with free pills, condoms, implants and shots — much of it funded by international organizations — are in most Kano neighborhoods. But a taboo around contraception persists.
Many believe using it is un-Islamic — despite a half-dozen Kano clerics giving assurances, in interviews, that it was perfectly acceptable. (They all said the withdrawal method was preferable, however.)

Despite all of the free contraceptives, it is not always easy for women to get hold of them.

At one dilapidated clinic serving Fatima’s neighborhood, the family-planning provider said she used to send women home to get their husbands’ permission if they did not already have it. If they were unmarried, it was always a straight no.

“Religiously, you can’t give an unmarried woman contraceptives, when she’s under her parents’ supervision,” said the provider, Halima Umar Baba, before handing pills to a woman who had hidden under a face-covering niqab to walk to the clinic.

Recently, though, Ms. Baba has relented on husbands’ permissions. Over the past decade, Nigerians have suffered through two recessions, runaway inflation and a cash crisis — and the women coming to her often do not have enough food. So she helps limit the mouths they have to feed. Often, she invites women to her home at night for their shots, so nobody sees them at the clinic.

Sani said he tried to talk to his wife about injectable contraceptives. He did not consider condoms viable, as they reduced pleasure. He said Fatima would not listen until their sixth child was on the way, and she realized what financial straits they were in.

“Now,” he said, “she understands what I was trying to say.”

That is not how his wife tells it. She found out about contraception from her sister Samira, she said, when she was pregnant with her third child in five years. It was a revelation. Having three infants in diapers “wasn’t a healthy situation,” she said.

Fatima got the shots and started spacing out her children. But she did not stop having them altogether.

Fertility Influencers

One Friday night, Sani’s imam, Sheikh Goni Auwal Alhassan, swept into the soundproofed studio of Radio Aminci, a bevy of clerics in his wake, for his weekly show.
The clerics had officiated at four weddings that day. They had advised each groom to keep close tabs on any children they might have.

These influential clerics said family size was a common topic of conversation among Kano’s imams. But ultimately the number depends on the parent, they said, citing a former emir of Kano and a business tycoon, each of whom had at least 60 children.

“It’s not about the number,” Salisu Al Hassan, one of the clerics, said, as they sat together on a plastic mat outside the radio station after the show, stars twinkling reddish in the dusty sky.

Many, including the creators of “Gidan Badamasi,” disagree. In an interview in a Kano hotel last year, the show’s main writer, Nazir Adam Salih, said there was a widespread view that people were having too many children for their own good — and for society’s.

“Gidan Badamasi” had a “massive, instant” effect, starting conversations about reducing family size. It succeeded, he said, where many international organizations had failed.

“You can’t just come to this part of the world saying that people should not get married, people should not give birth to many children, people should get birth control,” Mr. Salih said.

For decades, African leaders have pushed back against Western characterizations of African population growth as a problem that needs solving.

One morning in a Kano grain depot, Mohammed Mahmoud, an accountant with a sideline as a social media influencer, who has a large following in Kano, explained to his colleagues why he was a birth control skeptic.
A vocal proponent of early marriage and large families, Mr. Mahmoud pointed to shrinking populations in the West and their reliance on migrant labor.

“So many Western countries are having problems due to this birth control. Why should we imbibe it? Why should we accept it?” he said. If Nigeria started having labor shortages, he said: “Who will migrate to us? Will Americans? No way!”

Praying for a Boy

After her fourth and fifth children were born — both girls — Fatima said she decided that was enough. But then, she said, she went to her local clinic for her latest contraceptive shot, and was told she did not need it.

“The nurse said I had enough in my blood already, and that my blood was too weak to take any more,” she said. The clinic declined requests for an interview.

Fatima’s sister Samira doubted this story. She thought her sister was trying for another boy. As in many patriarchal societies, sons are often valued more highly than daughters. And Sani’s family had never hidden their disapproval of Fatima producing girl after girl. Fatima recalled bitterly the day her mother-in-law told her she was “giving birth to liabilities.”

When she became pregnant with their sixth child, Fatima said she was distraught. The family was already under severe financial strain. How would they cope?

She even considered abortion. In Kano, sharia law applies, and abortion is almost always illegal, taboo and dangerous.

“It’s forbidden,” she said. But, she added, “I just had these feelings in me.”

Her circle of girlfriends said Fatima should have the baby, but ensure it was her last. Then, knowing the pressure she was under from her in-laws, they immediately started praying for a boy.
Fatima prayed fervently for a boy, too.

But she had another girl.

Today, that girl, Asma’u, is a dearly cherished 3-year-old, constantly stealing the TV remote and trying to escape into the street. But because she is a girl, Fatima said she and her mother-in-law no longer speak to or visit each other.

Nana, especially, feels the sexism from her father’s relatives keenly, and fights fiercely against the idea that boys are inherently better than girls.

“You hate us, but we’ll make you proud of us,” she said she recently told her aunt.

A Woman’s Place

Feet up on the sofa, Baby and Nana whispered into each other’s shoulders as they watched the “Gidan Badamasi” star rage at his latest love interest.

“He found out she had six children, so now he doesn’t want to marry her,” Baby explained.

Fatima ducked into the living room and picked up Asma’u, whose bedtime was approaching. Having spent most of the day at a naming ceremony for a new niece — the latest addition to her huge extended family — she had missed most of the “Gidan Badamasi” episode. But she knew Nana, the resident expert, would catch her up later.

The power went off. The children poured into the dark courtyard, unrolling a plastic mat and turning back to their homework, writing by the light of a cellphone. By the time the power came back on, Alhaji Badamasi had abandoned his new wife.

Before she got married, Fatima longed to become a nurse, but she was reliant first on her father and then her husband, and they did not support her. But, she said, since she grew up, “Things have changed.” Many families are reconsidering the place of women and girls in society, particularly as more women are getting jobs and helping pay for soaring household expenses.

Many of Baby’s friends at Quranic school are getting married. But Baby wants to train as a doctor at medical school first.

Fatima wants that, too, and wants Nana to become a nurse, fulfilling her own old dream.

Determined that nothing will stop her daughters, she has gone to extreme lengths, telling credulous Baby that merely touching a boy will get her pregnant.
“I missed out on things,” Fatima said.

If she can help it, she said, her daughters will not.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/world/africa/africa-nigeria-birthrate-fertility.html

Lunch

Melagros:
COMRADES, I am creating this post in response to a thread created yesterday by a fellow Nairalander that; when he's married his living condition will be better! That he is tired of living in abject poverty! (I'll be very happy if the mods can add that link to this post)

I went to see a friend today, unfortunately, when I called her, she told me that she was not around, then I decided to stroll back home; on my way home, lo and behold! This is what I saw! A family of four: 'papa, mama, senior pikin, and junior pikin' carrying dirty sack bags on their heads, immediately, my curiosity was aroused! Then I said let me trail these guys and see what they were carrying, and where they were going! After trailing them for a long distance/ journey, then I discovered that they were scavengers! In awe, and disbelief, I'd exclaimed and asked myself!...a whole family scavenging in order to survive?

FIRST PHOTO; is the last kid, age between 9-10 years old

SECOND PHOTO; is the first son age between 11-12 years old, he was the first to arrive at the selling point, you can see that he is sorting the garbage/ market

THIRD PICTURE; their father walking barefooted, when you look at the photo of the father, you'll see that from afar there is a little school boy also staring at the father and the last child, a mild drama was played out at that moment, the mother of the little boy and his sisters had already boarded an autorigshow (keke) but the little boy has refused to follow them in, he stood outside staring at the scavengers...only God knows what was in the mind of that child

LAST PHOTO; when we all arrived at the selling point, then I looked at the other direction, there, I saw their mother coming to join them; I tried to know about the transaction, then the buyer (a Hausa guy) approached me (because I looked suspicious) and asked me, 'hope it is OK', I replied him in Hausa, 'yes it is'...I lost my way, then I left them there!

My advice to every single person/bachelor out there is that; things are not longer getting better in this country, always get yourself prepared before getting a woman pregnant or
married, don't allow anyone to push you into unprepared marriage and thereafter remained unarranged and scattered for the rest of your life!
Thank you all

LOCATION IS PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE. NIGERIA THE GIANT OF AFRICA!

My name is Maeve and I approve of this message.

Good thread.

Please remove the pictures that show their faces. You don’t have their permission to post them. Respect their privacy please.

cococandy:
I didn’t either until I tried this one blueberry goat cheese from Trader Joe’s. I don’t know if it’s available online but it converted me.

This looks like something I could enjoy.

cococandy:
Tell me you like goat cheese

Not really but I had a burger with goat cheese in Spain once and it was the best burger ever. It was with caramalized onions and a special kind of bun. I have tried to remake it but it was not the same.

cococandy:
Yep always simple and refreshing.

On top is the type of feta cheese I used. I don’t really like plain feta cheese. So I got this pre-seasoned from the Turkish store.

I love feta, plain and seasoned.

When you are apart, you love the person how you imagine them to be. Perfect. An illusion. When you are together, you see the person for who they are with all their flaws and shortcomings. The reality hits you. Disillusionment. You either learn to love the person for who they are or you break up if you can’t.

cococandy:
Mediterranean pasta salad.

I used olive oil and lemon juice for my vinaigrette.

You got to love the simplicity of the Mediterranean cuisine. What is this thing in the middle on top?

doggedfighter:
Is this jollof or another kind of rice ?

I asked because of the colour.

I added some curry when I was boiling it, that’s why it’s yellowish. I made it in a big pot with all the veggies left in the fridge that I needed to use up but it’s very similar to fried rice.

Dinner last night