THE DELETERIOUS FUMES

By OMOSEYE BOLAJI

“The unexpectedness of my daughter smoking gave me a shock. A woman’s mouth exhaling the acrid smell of tobacco, instead of being fragrant. A woman’s teeth blackened with tobacco instead of sparkling with whiteness…”

Mariama Ba, in the novel, So long a letter

Yes, let me admit it folks – I have always been biased against authentic black African women who have embraced the habit of smoking in rather prolific fashion. This despite the fact that in other countries, including South Africa I have dated in the past black women who smoked like chimneys! And of course I have countless friends, male and female, who smoke.

Perhaps my bias - or should we call it a predilection? – was stoked long ago whilst I was growing up in a quite decent middle class family in Nigeria where things like smoking – not to talk of taking alcohol – were completely unacceptable. Even when I entered the university at a very young age (Obafemi Awolowo University) and savoured the heady freedom of campus life, I could never bring myself to smoke a cigarette

To put it bluntly, during my years of youth the only black women in Nigeria who most of my generation thought smoked openly were hard-core prostitutes, the “hotel women’ who were utterly shameless, hard, brassy and calculating. Yes, every now and then some female “been-tos” were known to smoke licentiously, but by and large they were not really accepted as “part of the indigenous society”. Oh, how I hated those deleterious fumes of smoking!

But of course in a country like South Africa a very large number of people, including females smoke regularly. It is really nothing special here, though at least even many of my black friends here over the years are conservative enough to frown at this practice. “You know these things were brought by the white man, we don’t like our black women smoking too” many of them say.

It remains incongruous that most of us accept the fact that many white women are chain- smokers, consuming dozens of cigarettes every day and we don’t find it strange. Just because they are white! I can’t even begin to think of many white female friends of mine who smoke a lot. Somehow it does not look that unseemly when it is done by a white woman.

The coloureds (half-castes) in South Africa also have a justifiable reputation for smoking in proliferating fashion. It is not unusual to see such girls just approaching puberty (or shall we say in their early teens) already on the way to becoming most assiduous smokers here. It is just a way of life. Go to the ‘coloured/ townships and see for yourself....

The advent of winter in South Africa (which is often at its apogee from around June to August) sparks an increase in smoking, whether white, coloured or black. Apparently, smoking helps to stave off the cold – naively I can not vouch for this in my old age, since I have never smoked in my life!

Incredibly, even till date I still feel uneasy when so many of my black female acquaintances here are smoking, or rather when it is clear that they have just finished taking some puffs of the stick (this can be ascertained from the tell-tale smell, the tobacco whiff that surrounds them after a quick smoke in a corner!) To me there is something unreal, irritating, almost slap-stick about it. Do they really enjoy smoking?

Many of my male friends here would say: “You know our women, our black women, being in such close proximity to white women, coloured women, many times feel there is something ‘classy’ about smoking. Hence they start smoking surreptitiously too, and don’t even bother to hide this habit as time goes on. They will say that smoking ‘de-stresses’ them, whatever this means!”

On a lighter note, to round off this piece, as I was putting finishing touches here, a journalist friend of mine glanced through what I have written here and grimaced. A proudly Zulu (one of South Africa’s major tribes here) he chuntered: “Bathong! There is nothing I hate more than kissing the lips of a woman who smokes!”

ISHMAEL M. SOQAGA, essayist and writer wishes to comment thus:

"Smoking is not a white man's thing it has been here too i mean in
Africa, In traditional Xhosa women were and are still smoking thier
long pipe called UMBEKAPHESHELE). You can find them
in Covimvaba and Umthatha, Thembu Xhosa grannies are still smoking
even today. But nevertheless i agree with those who say smoking for
women is not good, even in traditional Xhosa women doesn't used it
like this young girls in township who smoke cigarette. Your letter is
fascinating, because our traditional Xhosa tobacco did not contain tar
and nicotine but is naturally from the ground..."