EACH LITTLE WIN BY OLADEJO OLUYEMISI
GENRE: CREATIVE NON-FICTION
TITLE: EACH LITTLE WIN
AUTHOR: OLADEJO OLUYEMISI, NIGERIA
REVIEWER: MARJORIE MOONO SIMUYUNI, ZAMBIA
Each Little Win is a piece of creative non-fiction, penned by Oladejo Oluyemisi. It was the winning entry for the 2020 African Writers Awards in that category. The writer sets the pace of the race she's about to run, right from the opening paragraph: "Champions reserve songs of victory for the wake of history..." Before one knows the genre of this work, it's not surprising that one could assume it's poetry. But why not? It is poetry!
What makes this creative non-fiction poetic is not just the alliteration in the opening lines. It is the alliteration, the consonance, the allegory, the metaphors, the personification, the similes, the mood, the tone, the rhythm, the rhyme and all that comes with poetry, which she employs to carry us along on her journey.
Typically, victory is an attribute that's perched at the end of the journey and Oluyemisi is not unaware. Ingrates! Utter Ingrates. That is what we are when we do not acknowledge our little wins, and wait for that one grand victory, that if we don't eventually see, we live through life like soacked chickens on a rainy day. Defeated. Down in the mouth, but in reality, we are are victors.
What then is victory, if we could achieve it and not realize it? Oluyemisi elaborately, without dropping her poetic tone, suggests victory is gratitude. Gratitude is not an attribute of the simple. Gratitude is an attitude of the great. Greatness does not lie in crowns or being privileged to stand before masses to proclaim our victory. We find this in these lines: "there are no drums heralding victory in my battle... champions of the battle I fight never celebrate...they are never belted; they are shrouded.' She adds, "I celebrate two weeks of not being down with an infection. I celebrate a month without a hospital admission. I celebrate six months without blood transfusion. These are my little wins. They don't come often, but when they do, I celebrate."
On this premise, one begins to wonder if Oluyemisi is battling an ailment. She unwraps her point in steady doses of information and by the time one gets to the final full stop, one has learnt that she's a warrior at war with a Sickle Cell disease. She is thirty-four years old at the time of writing and has a four years old daughter, whose life at birth was precarious. To quote her, "Did I disgust you four years ago when I sang 'God bless my baby girl', carrying swaddling clothes in my hands, pacing the reception of the Neonatal Unit of Sacred Heart Hospital, and you wondered whether I was sane...she weighed only one kilogram, but she was a baby. She was! And she was a winner....She came unripe and her life hung on a balance, she underwent a myriad of procedures and was nourished the unconventional way, and was kept away from me for several weeks...she stays because she won, and her win is my win, another little win."
Not to glorify Sickle Cell but it goes without saying that it has claimed many loves and continues to do so. That notwithstanding, here is a warrior at war with the disease, birthing a little warrior, who too, conquers the 'monster'. Is that not victory?
The award winner gives a few other accounts of her little wins and how she celebrates them, and rightly so. But it begins to break the reader where she gives an account of this professor of Genetics who compares spending money on her (health) to "loading money in a sachet and throwing it out of a moving car." Where is the education in this person who is expected to be learned enough to be sympathetic? Where is the empathy? Where is their victory in academia if it robs them of humanity and a human tongue? Certainly, victory is on a whole different trajectory from mere conquering of books but that's a topic for another day.
What we do get as Oluyemisi wraps up her narration is that she's not out on a hunt for sympathy. She's merely writing to exhale. She holds no grudge against pitying gazes and the gazers, not even against the Professor with a tongue as sharp as a razor. She says, "I have been at the threshold of depression, but counting my little wins has helped me to accept myself, to say yes to life, to date to dream and live the dream; to share the story of my journey... I have counted each little win, it has helped me not to give in."
On reading the story of her life, one finds a wake-up call. Every day we celebrate warriors, celebrities, historical figures and those presently creating history but we never stop to realize that every day comes with its own challenges. Victors are not only those who are belted and crowned. Victory also includes going to bed feeling battered and broken deep within, but refusing to give in, telling yourself tomorrow is another day and waking up the following day, ready to live. And if we counted all the small wins in our life, perhaps we would for once be grateful, and come alive to the warriors we really are.
Stop waiting for crowns, belts and trophies. Quit being a worrier, and begin to be a warrior. Gratitude is everything!