Tomorrow I Become a Woman & Wahala

Tomorrow I become a Woman by Aiwanose Odafen (Scribner)
Wahala by Nikki May (Doubleday)
​Reviewer: Nancy Richards 
Wahala means trouble or problem in a number of Nigerian languages including Pidgin English. I learned that from Tomorrow I become a Woman by Nigerian born Aiwanose Odafen who thoughtfully included a glossary at the back of her debut novel. Whilst I was at the back of the book, I also read that it’s ‘loosely based on the real stories 

​of real women known to the author’. Which was a bit of a shock. The things that protagonist Obianuju goes through at the hands of her dapper, church-going husband shouldn’t happen to…well, just shouldn’t happen. And what she tolerates from the mouth of her traditional and unbending mother just shouldn’t be said. That it all takes place between 1978 and 1999 makes you hope that perhaps these things don’t happen anymore. But hey…lets look at our own GBV statistics and opinions on what constitutes a woman’s role before we start pointing fingers.
The years covered mean that it post-dates the Biafran war (1967-1970) that if you read Chimamanda Adichi’s ‘alf of a Yellow Sun. you may remember was harrowingly central. But the stain of war, any war, lingers and the Biafran conflict crops up as one of the themes in this book. Interestingly Aiwanose participated in Adichi’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. So who knows what influences or not may have been at play, but this book feels very much her own and based on what she has witnessed.
One of the other relationship themes that runs through ‘Become a Woman’ is that of female friends. Well in the book ‘Wahala’, also a debut novel by Anglo-Nigerian writer Nikki May, a group of ‘inseparable mixed-race friends’ living in London take the leading roles. So it’s full-on female. And set in the present day, it’s about as contemporary as it gets, ‘Boo tapped her nails on the steel of her laptop’, and life is a million miles from decades-past downtown Lagos. ‘… Simi spent Saturday afternoon in the Cowshed spa… three hours – salt scrub, reflexology, deep tissue massage and hydro-gel mask facial.’ But it’s also laced with Nigerian nostalgia ‘You’re such a coconut. I’ll have amala with ogbomo and assorted meat.’ ‘Jollof rice and chicken for me,’ said Ronke. She couldn’t bring herself to order pounded yam in front of skinny, glamourous Isobel.’ And then there’s the inimitable dialogue, ‘Na your choice be dat. I go make you handbag and headwrap. The aso ebi be like entry ticket – it shows you belong.’
What the two books have in common is that they are both indicators of the painful and poignant world of women – but unlike ‘Become a woman’, ‘Wahala’ is wickedly, if agonizingly, funny.
The reason for talking about them in the same breath so to speak, is that they are both so very much  ‘of Nigeria’ – and both offer such female insight. In addition they are a testimony to how culture can impact your life as a woman – then as now, and wherever you are.
Oh, and while there’s no glossary at the back of ‘Wahala’, there are some recipes to add flavour, including ‘Ronke’s Jollof Rice’.