The Evening I Became a Woman 

I

We are all thieves. Thieves of joy, of pain, and of other people’s narratives.

Lately, I have felt a certain familiarity at the back of my tongue whenever I have heard the story of a dismissal: the dismissal of someone else’s story by another, often by the one who seems to have all the answers.

It is a metallic taste (always a metallic taste) like the taste of iron or lead at the back of my tongue. It comes with the memory of the many times I have also deflated others.

Then there is the sweeping over by the shame. A consumption birthed by my own monstrosity towards others.

When I think of the many times I have dismissed other people’s feelings, cancelling their experiences, stealing their voices and their stories from them simply because I couldn’t relate to them, I feel a bitter taste in my mouth, then a deep sense of shame.

II

The evening I became a woman was like any regular evening I had spent outside of the office: I would step out of the house when the sky had become a splash of happy colours – pale blue and soft pink and kind orange – and when the sun had thrown its warm amber light onto the earth, so that everything had a golden hue about it and glowed with the godlike radiance of things adored and hoped for.

It had become an endearing ritual in the eighteen months that I had lived at Oyibi, to meander through the dust roads of the valley to the hills, where I’d ascend the rocky grounds and breathe in the freshness of our small town’s lush greenery.

It was always a happy moment to view the rest of Accra lie unbothered on the other side.

The slither of the snake was swift, so fleeting, it seemed almost illusory. The small, coffee-hued snake had glided effortlessly past me, vanishing into the coppice merely inches from my left foot.

I hesitated for a moment before pretending to look into the thicket. Or I did perhaps genuinely try to look, but fear held me back from confronting what might lurk within.

This was when the man strolled up to me. A towering figure chiseled like a deity, with a physique that exuded virility: broad shoulders, an imposing height, rippling muscles. His sturdy frame commanded my attention, so that my face lifted herself to his, my chin tilting slightly upwards into the gentle evening breeze.

The streetlights had just come on, and his eyes shone with deep concern. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, worry lacing his voice. I nodded. But my reassurance was betrayed by my stutter, and then a nervous ramble about having seen a snake.

He let out a low, throaty chuckle, the skin of his eyes crinkling at the corners.

‘A snake?’ He asked as his eyebrows furrowed.

‘That’s impossible. There are no snakes here.’

Before I would finish saying that I had really seen a small snake, he had adopted a patronisingly gentle tone, like a father placating a frightened child, reassuring me that there were no snakes where I had just seen one.

The surge of indignation that flared in my chest wasn’t due to his repeated dismissal, it was, rather, the softness of his whisper which dripped with the confidence of one who held all the power, all the answers.

My feet refused to obey my brain’s urgent signals to leave like he had suggested. Instead, I found myself transfixed by the puddle where the snake had plunged, its ripples slowly settling. Now, I imagined the snake hiding in the nearby shrubs, listening in on our exchange and probably mocking my helplessness.

III

A youth conference I once attended has taught me an enduring lesson on empathy in communication. A participant in the same line of business as one of the panelists posed a question, seeking insight into the strategies that had made the panelist’s business a success, as he was facing challenges in his business.

The panelist, a young lady thriving in entrepreneurship, misconstrued his inquiry, launching into a tangent about the youth’s tendency to copy others and lacking focus.

Because of her oblivion to the gentleman’s struggles, she assumed he must have been doing something wrong in his business to be facing those challenges.

I cringed at the public humiliation he must have felt with all the media present, A supposed knowledge holder just diminished the dignity of another, simply because she couldn’t expand her worldview to empathise with the young man.

Whenever we say things like, ‘Oh, it’s not that deep,’ or ‘It’s not what you think,’ or ‘Stop making a mountain out of a molehill,’ we inadvertently play society’s harmful game of silencing marginalised voices and minimising their experiences.

Whenever we downplay the weight of others’ emotions, perspectives, and struggles, we reinforce a culture of dismissal and erasure. We steal people’s stories from them, shrinking their experiences, when in reality, our own inability to expand our worldviews is the problem.

In ‘The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives’, Shoneyini vividly captures this in the conversation Bolanle musters to have with her mother about having been raped as a teenager. In a stutter through lopsided lips, her stroke-stricken mother rejects this reality with a vehement shaking of her head and even calls Bolanle a liar.

She thought no child of hers could be raped.

Wasn’t she the mother who made sacrifices to ensure her daughters had the best of the little things she could provide? The reality is harsh for her, ugly even, for rape is only meant for the other woman’s children, not hers.

As I left the place of the incident that evening, I began to wonder if what I had seen was really a snake of if I had imagined it all.

In Genesis 2:19, Adam’s naming of creation bestowed identity and meaning on every living thing. Similarly, our words and attitudes shape our realities and those of others. I realised, much later, after this incident, that a single seed of doubt can shatter a person’s experience, eroding their sense of self and truth.

When we fail to venture beyond our limited perspectives, when we’re unwilling to strive for inclusive dialogue that honours the complexity of human experience beyond what we are accustomed to, we risk erasing the experiences and realities of others.

As the man’s gaze lingered on my arms, now speckled with goosebumps, he asked if it was the illusion of a snake that had left my arms prickly and smiled down at me with fascination in his eyes.

Before we would part ways, he told me the reason I thought I saw a snake: ‘You’re a woman. Oh, you women and your wild imaginations! I see why you think you saw a snake. Oh, women!’

He guffawed heartily and said what I had seen wasn’t a snake; he had already told me there were no snakes in the area.