It was the holidays. I’d taken time off running business, everyone was chilling, the atmosphere was very relaxing, music was everywhere and the all-powerful Nigerian Harmattan wind was making sure to carry the scent of foods from one house to another. As if daring to ask “won’t you come have me” or “won’t you join the cooking competition?” Personally I didn’t believe one needed to wait for a certain time to be extra nice to people. I knew this was my personal belief and so I just use the holiday as a period to plan how to execute my next goals or to relax at home. My charming friend Chioma whom I call Éclat (French for chocolate) because of her glowing dark skin and almost doll-like face was coming over. I met Chioma while busy with French exams the year before and we became friends slowly over the course of the year.
As I busied myself waiting for her I secretly wished my neighbors playing really loud music with some of the dirtiest lyrics I knew could fall asleep for another 48hours. The whole drama for the holidays going on in my neighborhood was threatening to sap the very strength I wanted to build. The guys upstairs were professionals at playing very loud music accompanied with calls for more Shisha. The landlord was always cautioning them but the holidays just gave them more opportunity. Chioma arrived clad in red, all 5.8 ft. of her. We hugged making all our appropriate French greetings from cava to C’est Longtemps and laughed at how much time had passed and how I was looking almost pale white standing next to her beautiful chocolate skin. I promised to give her a melanin popping oil from our enchanting naturals holiday relaxation collection to pepper the onlookers when next she went back to Badagry beach resort to complete her French immersion course. Badagry was the boundary point in Nigeria where Nigerian students often went if they are unable to go to francophone countries during the 1-year language immersion break for students studying French in university.
After much deliberation Chioma and I decided rather impulsively to go to the mall in the more affluent side of town, hoping to avoid the student chaos around us. We got there in record time and started first with our “pepper them” photos. Since we both were wearing red it was easy to become the cynosure of many eyes. It did not help that we were dancing to Amadios popular tune in French which we were playing out loud with a smart phone. Ibadan, the city we were in, could easily be a city of the old as well as of the young depending on what side of town one visited. This particular mall was for the middle aged and had some really incredible healthy drinks, foods so we had difficulty deciding which to buy. We finally settled for a box containing small chops, hot dogs, baked chicken and the like and a blend of yogurt health drink. I was always one to be picky with my health weather in skin care, haircare or food care. As it went into my body, I cared what it would do in there and I didn’t care if anyone thought I was too holier than thou or too anything. Or so I thought.
And so it was quite an enlightening surprise to face the next encounter. Chioma accompanied me to a popular Arabic/Lebanese restaurant and supermarket where I picked up some personal care items I needed. I asked her to come with me to the restaurant area to see the sitting arrangement which I felt would be a great place for future events. On passing there we saw a host of people sitting, from different races. One particular man with open, honest looking greenish-brown eyes (whatever that meant), kept looking in our direction and at my face so I made my usual saucy catwalk eyes back at him, laughed and walked on with Chioma. After a few minutes, I saw her off to the gate where we spent considerable time fighting over what app was best to send our numerous painting the town red photos. We finally settled on an app and she got her photos while we waited for a cab for her. Finally, I hugged her good bye, blew kisses and went back into the restaurant to relax for a few minutes before going in another direction for an appointment.
Getting back in the sitting arrangement was a bit different and it so happened that the only available seats were beside Mr. honest open eyes. For a minute I wondered if he did it deliberately but I doubted it. Oh whatever I told myself and sat down beside him, properly like the prim lady my parents raised. He kept looking at my direction with a weird smile on his face and immediately a loud bunch of rancorous Lebanese conversation started at the other table, he got up to go there, laughed with the other Lebanese fellows and came back. I had a sneaky feeling they were telling him to talk to me. Next he offered me a cigarette. I laughed because I was the last person on the universe who would smoke. I took it then told him I will waste it by proceeding to break it in two. I took the fruit drink I’d ordered from the waiter, and turned back to catch Mr. Honest open eye’s open smile again. He would smile then look at a funny object on the table.
At this point I was somewhere between irritated and curious. The socio-cultural anthropologist in me won however and ever the curious researcher I bent and picked up the strange object from the table and asked him to tell me about it. I listened as he went on about how it’s called a hot plate, used in the Middle East for coffee, how the small strange object was the best coffee maker machine in the world (to this I rolled my eyes, unimpressed and unbelieving, plus I didn’t care because I don’t drink coffee anyway, give me good old herbal teas any day). I liked the strange object though and thought it would be cute on my shelf, besides he told me it was made from Brass, same metal with which my Asante locket from Ghana was made. I softly asked him if I could keep it to which he replied “Walai I would leave it for you but I don’t think I can find any other around here”. I didn’t press further.
Bu this time his friends were really making so much noise and the front of the usually pristine classy restaurant now looked like a smoke house. They had all whipped out traditional shisha’s or water pipes as I later found them to be called and were having the smoke time of their lives. Mr. Honest eyes turned out to be good in conversation (which I should have expected since he was a sales man) and pretty soon we were engrossed in a conversation about two things that interested me a lot…you guessed right, culture and marketing. We talked about the city of Ibadan’s culture, swimming, hang out spots, sales and marketing in a diverse country like Nigeria and so on. I found out truly that his friends were teasing him about how lucky he was that a woman sat beside him and bla bla. At some point he invited me to check out a hangout location with them later on…I declined but I told him I just might later that day. We exchanged numbers and they left. After some time spent chatting with another woman who came with her husband and kids- I was always the chatty person who made friends easily, I left for my appointment, then went home. I was just settling in when I remembered that I’d said I might check out the hang out spot. As if my thoughts contacted him, just like they say energies are contagious, my phone rang and it was Mr. Honest greenish-brown eyes whom I now know to be Ahmed pronounced Akmed. The seriousness with which he made the pronunciation of his name still made me laugh …no judgement. After much persuasion I decided to go check out this supposedly cool hangout place. I put on my researcher’s curiosity as further energetic fuel because I was a bit tired.
Getting there was breezy since we’d ordered a cab. Arriving I was plunged into what seemed like an Arabic, Lebanese, Egyptian cocoon. His brothers or friends were all there and the conversation, wine, beer, and loud cultural music all flowed in great amounts. As well as something else from Lebanon or shall I say the middle east…. It was again the scented woozy smoke of the water pipe popularly known in Nigeria as Shisha. I’d seen people, neighbors and others smoked this and never really given it much thought thinking it really was different from cigarettes. Many of my friends though not smokers themselves shared the same thought with me. They kept telling me to join them in Arabic. I thought fast flowing Arabic was sexy to the ears and looked at the beautiful, alluring water pipe containers, similar to the coffee maker we had discussed earlier at the restaurant. These ones were colored and really beautiful in aesthetic design. The curious me would have tried it but this time my religious beliefs held me back. Although I was not sure if it was tobacco I could see it brought out smoke which had to be inhaled and at that moment I vividly recalled scriptural lessons stating “let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of flesh and spirit:”.
This certainly fell into the class of defilement of flesh I chuckled to myself. I politely had to decline several times and instead contented myself with conversing more with my new “friend”, taking photos of their good time whilst the smoke and loud music with Arabic words I didn’t understand curled around my head. At some point I wondered why I didn’t leave but once again, our beautiful water pipe seemed harmless enough and at this point I didn’t want to seem rude or obnoxious especially as I neither was drinking nor doing much other than gently talking. Everyone was really loud in speech but this didn’t really surprise me since I knew enough of the Lebanese culture to know they enjoyed loud, rancorous conversations (wonder why everyone keeps thinking African-Americans are the only ones like that). Fast forward to hours after the hang out, I got home, had some very much needed sleep and woke up the next day to find something had left my body.
Yes darlings…my beautiful sexy soft voice was gone, in its place was a whisper like that of a rat scratching a bucket. In the era of covid-19 I briefly wondered if I caught the virus. A small voice then told me…sitting around any smoker makes you a passive smoker and the recipient of all that toxic smoke whirling around. At this point I knew I was done for. My chest hurt like fire and I kept coughing out serious, thick and green mucus. For someone who avoided alcohol and all inflammatory contents as much as I can, it was like my lungs were crying “mummy why did you sit with these people especially for so long”?
I hugged myself briefly apologizing to my inner child for not leaving when I saw that Shisha smoke curling around me, then went into a health spree like an angry loving mother would for their child. Green tea, tinctures, vitamin c, ginger, onion, a local spice for cough in my ethnic group called ere, hot water, eucalyptus oil, hot baths. The more I did the more mucus I coughed out. I could not believe my chest felt so heavy. I mean I’d sat before at research programs with colleagues who smoked, although they always turned away from my direction. Why was this so severe? I proceeded to start further research and found out just why it was so severe. These were reasons many Nigerians are clearly ignorant of. The more I read the more I decided my original research curiosity as an anthropologist was really not worth the health investment this time and decided to write this article instead in free style form. Below are some quick facts I found.
SHISHA FACTS
1 One Woof/inhalation of Shisha equals 100 packs of cigarettes. Perhaps because its melted tobacco or whatever is mixed into the hot water along with the Tobacco, shisha is 100 times worse than a pack of cigarettes.
2. Shisha is more addictive than cigarettes. No surprise here really. Researchers (I guess I’m not the only curious one) found that a particular drug often given to help cigarette’s addicts overcome their addiction had no effect on Shisha smokers. The Nicotine in Shisha was just too much and made even more complex because it was mixed with other things. The air is also blown out in larger amounts then re-inhaled because its allover the atmosphere, and usually it is thick and smells …not so bad. So re-inhaling it becomes even much more easier.
3. Shisha binds more to the emotional parts of the brain making it even harder to break free. Because Shisha is taken with family and friends as a group or in cultural celebrations, the brain associates it even more with happiness causing the addiction to be worse.
4. Shisha exerts incredibly damaging effects on the lungs, health, skin, hair and nails of smokers.
I found so much more dirt on the beautiful water pipe can from the Lebanon, the middle east or wherever that I stopped reading, and simply became grateful I’d only walked one day in the life of a smoker-sitting passively inhaling all that toxic waste. I concentrated my strength on clearing the rubbish from my chest, declined Mr. Honest green open eyes other hang out, get-to-know-you offers (no offense but I prefer non Shisha smoking friends or acquaintances) and kept drinking green tea for 5 days straight after that exposure because my chest was still heavy. I would go to the bathroom to spit literally every 2 MINUTES when awake and sleep every 3 hours because the body aches were almost as if I’d carried stones. I felt so sick! I could not imagine how people would expose and suffer their bodies like this for years and years! Oh I understood. it’s called addiction but remaining addicted is a CHOICE and I certainly do not plan to suffer for the choice made by other adults.
I made sure to tell all my friends who called me in those 5 days why I was now croaking like a frog instead of sounding like the sweet, soft-voiced Maya they all knew. And as I shared the story I realized even more young people in Nigeria had no idea just what Shisha was about, or how dangerous it could be. Many even thought it was better than cigarettes simply because it looked so pretty, was expensive and appeared exotic or sophisticated. They would often be like “I don’t smoke o. I only smoke Shisha”. Not to start quoting more scriptures but hey even Satan is said to be transformed into an angel of light in the bible. Pretty doesn’t always equals good or even basic healthy. Now if you really don’t care about health, yours’s or others of course you are free to have a shisha plunge forever. Its yo0ur lungs so no judgment. Just avoid sitting close to me or others like me-we care about our health. Come to think of it, most smokers feel judged. I guess that’s because within their conscience (except for conscienceless sociopaths..lol), they know they are under-representing for their bodies. I never saw a man faithful to his wife feeling judged for it. Nor a high performing student allowing herself to feel judged. When you do right, you just feel right. Period.
As for me I no longer care if the whole world smokes the pretty water pipe, nor will I care to not say no and pretend to be extra polite. If anyone sits next to me with that can, cigarette or even a whiff of smoke in their body scent, my body now reacts automatically and I will get up and move away in a very obnoxious, yes holy than thou manner. My chest, skin, hair, body matters. I have already walked a day in the life of a Shisha smoker and the lessons from that day would last my whole life time. I hope you my darling reader pick the lesson from this article and never bother to do your own work or research. I already did the walk for me and you and all others who read this.
Love and light always, Namaste.
Maya.
For Enchanting Naturals.
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