Valentine's Daily

February is a great month. It comes after January, so you're no longer broke from overspending at Christmas. It has only 28 days, so you  don't work as long, and it houses the universally acknowledged day of love, the 14th - which is why I usually cannot wait until March. It is the hump month, crammed with expectation of one day, followed by disappointment, and isn't everyone just so relieved when it's over?

Growing up - and might I add, born a romantic - love meant flowers and chocolates and gondola rides. I read more than my fair share of romance novels, and as such I knew better than to ever expect a Nigerian born man to understand the intricacies of amour. This was ideal, because it meant that come Valentine's day I was never disappointed. That is, of course, until I turned sixteen.
See, I say that I was never disappointed, but not for want of reasons. Even in an all-girl secondary school, Val's Day was special. At midnight, 'chonko's and 'aloveh's (still don't know what those mean) would run to each others' rooms with cakes baked from Food and Nutrition class, cards bought illegally outside the school fence at break time, and sometimes even clothes and underwear imported by siblings 'in the abroad'. There was always chocolate, sometimes by way of Chocomilo and at other times, Bournvita, but the real gees were the girls whose boyfriends sent actual valentine's gifts to them through classmates. It was almost always clothes, teddy bears and perfume (I will never respect the Issey Miyake line), but the recipient was automatically catapulted to a height of popularity that would last until a bigger teddy bear was delivered through the de-louvred windows.

I remember my first year in secondary school, talking to a classmate who wanted to get a present for her School Mother. This ten-year-old JSS1 girl had it all figured out: she would make a bowl of garri with not enough water, and leave it to swell. Then, she would draw a perfect heart on a piece of blue or pink cardboard. Finally, she would pour some cough mixture into her swollen garri for colour and flavour ("You know cough syrup is sweet!" she said to me) and leave the garri cake to set. After, she would mould it into the shape of the cardboard heart - which would double as a tray - and serve. ("What do you think?" her eyes asked. I was silent, such dedication is hard to fault.)

I know a girl whose admirer got her a perfume set on the fourteenth, maybe eight years ago. She hadn't really liked him, he was just a random guy, and she told him so, but he hasn't stopped calling her since then. Present tense, dears.
I know a couple that's so in love it's ridiculous, who are split exactly down the middle about the value of gift-giving on Valentine's. It's the one day of the entire year that they do not speak to each other fondly.

The anti-valentine team goes pretty hard around this time of year, team forever alone, we like to call them.
"Money can't buy love!" "It's a capitalist construct to promote consumerism!" "Love doesn't need a special day!" "What values are we teaching our children!" "Africans are hungry, send them the money!"  etcetera. And despite my relationship with the dreary day, I am pro-valentine's.
I think there is something sweet to be said for setting a day aside for Love. After all, we're a day older every day but we celebrate birthdays, we spend money buying things we don't need at Christmas (and every other time), and Africans are always hungry. Maybe it's the gondolas in my head (I really should google that one romance) but there's something sweet about getting a bouquet of flowers delivered to your office, having the one you love - or like - say your name on the radio, staring at your Other over dinner at a nice restaurant, or even getting a sweet, handwritten love letter from your spouse. For a lot of people, it is the only time we remember to acknowledge the people we care about in our lives, all talk of "we can show love everyday" be damned.

My brother once drove across states to spend a weekend with the girl he was seeing. He paid for a nice hotel room and got her an engraved music player on his pocket money (no endorsements here, thank you). He didn't have a lot of money - I know, I was getting the same thing - and she ended up cheating on him, but it was such a sweet thing to do anyway.


When I was sixteen I had a guy. A little someone who called me up everyday after school. He was older, about to go into the university. To become a doctor, no less! I was so lucky. I wrote him letters, shyly said "I love you, too," after he did, and I just knew we were forever - or at least until I got into university.
On that, what I would call my first valentine's day, he didn't get me anything because he knew I wasn't the sort of girl that would expect a gift on such a contrived day. When I got home from school I called him anyway, and we made lovey noises to each other on the phone, which was totes better than plastic flowers and cough-syrup cakes.

The rest of my valentine's history has pretty much been the same - I'm guessing it's a case of the first one setting the tone. Well, once, I made a guy buy me chocolates but he didn't bother to wrap the box, and another day an ex's friend reminded him to pick out a single rose from party decorations on his way out to me. So I guess, in a way, I did get my flowers and chocolates.