A story of languages

She speaks

Sometimes I wish I had a better ear for languages like my mother does. Not only is she a polyglot, she had the ability to gather context, tone, understanding and react even to languages she has heard only once.

At least, languages she seriously puts her mind to, she masters, however, she said of her German language experience whilst studying in the UK, they all made fun of both the teacher and the language that they gained nothing from the class apart from snippets for derision or laughter.

Then again, my father related an incident where they were looking for a home in the UK, the landlord then started a side conversation with his partner in a language they did not understand, it was one of the Ghanaian languages, enough for my mother to respond first to their unfriendly banter, their tendency to price gouge as my parents made their excuses to leave.

She deigns

She relayed a story to me about walking up a 1960s London street with a relative when they encountered a sluggish old man and the relative quipped in Yoruba that the craggy old man should move out of the way. To their shock and bewilderment, the old English man responded in accent-perfect Yoruba, that they were craggy spoilt kids.

It transpired that the man had lived in Lagos for 25 years, this experience informed my mother’s decision never to assume she will never be remotely understood, regardless of where and when. I have always taken that lesson to heart.

So, imagine my surprise when having had our puppy rescued from the backyard well by the Lagos State Fire Brigade, we called in the carpenters at the top of our street to construct a protective covering over the well. My mother was quite particular about what she wanted done as the carpenters cussed under their breath that they had never had to deal with such a demanding customer in Igbo.

They learnt

She responded in fluent Igbo and a dialect I soon found the Igbo-speaking teachers in her school where she was principal did not speak. Now, I know my mother grew up in Northern Nigeria, she could well pass for a Hausa woman, she had never visited anywhere to the South-East of Nigeria to my knowledge, at least until a few years after this event when she attended conferences, where did she learn her Igbo from? That was a mystery.

Meanwhile, my father attended every Hausa class and lecture he could find when we lived in the North of Nigeria in the early 1970s and could barely muster a few sentences. His attempts at Pidgin English were comedic at best. My aunt’s first numbers in Hausa have constantly been the stuff of jokes, and suffice it to say that almost 13 years of sojourn in The Netherlands never brought me close to mastering Dutch to any proficiency beyond the rudimentary, yet, I could read enough and speak enough to get by if I had to.

I spoke

I encountered a man on crutches in a lift at Euston Station who was having a conversation on his hands-free phone, it was in Hausa and there I was with Hausa I had learnt as a pre-teen over 40 years ago having a conversation in a language I rarely get to use except on Twitter or on the rare occasion of meeting office cleaners from Ghana in Holland over 10 years ago.

I am always fascinated by languages and I guess if I were a parent in The Netherlands, I probably would have had no other choice than to immerse myself in the greater society of my children, rather than live as an Englishman abroad. The pillow talk, as far as I could remember, was always in English.

Languages still matter a great deal, even if it just starts with the greetings, the numbers and the basic phrases.

Thought Picnic: There Really Was A Country

Of lives and wars

This is one of those spontaneous blogs that started from an exchange on Twitter that moved to Facebook where I for the first time abused the etiquette of leaving a status to write a treatise.

It revolves around how a friend and I were affected by the Nigerian Civil War, his was by reason of experience, and mine was by reason of the effect of pictures on an impressionable young mind. We both found there was a story to be told from our perspectives all the more after the publication of Chinua Achebe’s There Was A Country.

The Facebook thread appears here and below you will find the comment I posted and because I have more scope on a blog, I will allow myself the latitude of more detail.

I walked into Blackwells on Charing Cross Road this evening and there were 5 books prominently displayed near the enquiries desk. Foyles when I went there just over a week ago had sold out and had 23 on order.

When we returned

My parents observed the events that changed Nigeria radically from the UK, I was born a few years before the war but I remember clearly how keen my parents were to return to help rebuild Nigeria. So keen, it was a few months after my dad had qualified as an accountant, winning prizes in the process but he also had to be cleared for travel after having gone for an operation hours after he completed his examinations.

The last picture we took before leaving England had me nestled in the trunks of the legs of the adults that came to bid us farewell, my mother a good 7 to 8 months pregnant with my sister, I am still surprised she was allowed to travel.

Up North, an amazing Nigeria

We arrived in Nigeria and after the hometown and village visits that still have my parents recalling my amazing precocity we were headed up North, first to Kaduna where my parents were lecturers at the Kaduna Polytechnic and then to Jos where I witnessed the many times Yakubu Gowon came home with Gnassingbe Eyadema, he had to drive past my primary school - I have the fondest memories of childhood, Nigeria and the North from those times.

[In the past few years, my heart just breaks when I hear of the indigene-settler conflicts of Jos and the Boko Haram bombings in Kaduna – I remember the neighbourhoods affected quite vividly.]

My visions of the war

The war, our house was full of books but there was one I could not miss, it was Peter Obe's photographic documentary of the war, [Nigeria: A Decade of Crises in Pictures, Peter Obe] I was sat down by my parents and we leafed through every page and for many years afterwards, the horrors of war were imprinted on my seriously impressionable mind.

I must however say, for a long time, I found no scholarly records of the Nigerian Civil War through primary and secondary school, I was a voracious reader of history and by 8 I had devoured all I could learn of American history from our school library, was teaching myself French at 9 and then read up on World War II in secondary school - the World Wars remain some of the material I still find too engaging to drop.

Rekindled interest

I will eventually read Chinua Achebe's book, but it was for good reason that I knew and listed on Twitter at least five names on my Social Network that I really wanted to review that book, Pa Ikhide R. Ikheloa being the most prominent of them all.

I see each time that we are missing complex and informed narratives of the Nigerian Civil War and this especially is lacking amongst our present day youth. I hope they can divorce themselves from the sentimentality of their affinities and allegiances to devour this tome as objectively as their minds will allow them.

My Nigeria

I lived in a Nigeria that once really did seem to work and even more so, my childhood experiences make me feel Nigerian first before any other thing. We left the North in the late 70s but I retain a good deal of the Hausa I learnt in my childhood and since this is about amazing mothers, the pride I have in mine is even more exemplified in the fact that she can pass for Hausa or Igbo just as much as she is Yoruba and the greater feat she achieved was learning to speak Igbo fluently without first setting foot in Igboland which she did decades later.

My regret is having never learnt more Nigerian languages apart from passing conversation in Berom and greetings in Edo.

The story needs to be told and we will do ourselves the greatest justice by dispassionately reviewing all the good material we can find.

I still believe mobility around Nigeria culminating in residency and imbibing the language, traditions and customs of the people in our surroundings is key to Nigerian integration and necessary for the cohesion that will make the entity called Nigeria grow as one united nation and the identity Nigerian mean more to us than where we are from. That challenge falls to our youth today, the generation before mine did live in Nigeria as a whole.

Nigeria: Stand Up! For Nigeria

Not to be dignified

When that mendicant (read megalomaniac) from Libya first suggested Nigeria split up, I considered it beneath me to dignify his rant with an opinion, having never equivocated about the entity of Nigeria or the identity of Nigerian, I could not be perturbed.

However, this new atrocity of a comment from Muammar Gaddafi [1] requires a comprehensive put-down but better still it is that one opportunity for true Nigerians to stand up for their country in purpose, in unity and in truth.

Feeling the whole of Nigeria

I do wish I had lived all around Nigeria, I only lived in the North and the SouthWest, but I do speak two of the three major indigenous languages of Nigeria.

My mother was born in the SouthWest, grew up in the North before travelling out for studies and returned to the North afterwards, she however speaks the three indigenous languages even though she learnt the third without having first visited that region.

She can well pass for an indigene in any of those places for her command of the language and her understanding of nuances of those tongues.

I remember my father struggling with his Hausa lessons, he really did not need to speak Hausa but the sense of Nigerian in him lead to his desire to integrate.

The great Nigeria

But Nigeria as a whole is a wonderful place, a country of 150 million people, maybe 250 tribes and just as many nations but with a common purpose and identity of which we must all be proud and be ready to defend.

If no one has yet seen the evil, despicable and Machiavellian notion of Colonel Gaddafi, review once again his absurd suggestion.

Nigeria should split along ethnic lines, if Nigeria really had clear-cut ethnic lines there might be a second to consider it, but to then give the example of the Yugoslavian split, it sends a clear message of a deep felt hatred for everyone who boldly declares their Nigerian pride.

Working this Nigeria

I would have welcomed the peace of a Czechoslovakian split, but Yugoslavia is one of bloodshed, sectarian violence, war, genocide and backwardness in comparison to ones neighbours - a split would make our sad history of Biafra child's play.

Obviously, we have to find ways to accentuate the things that make us uniquely and wonderfully Nigerians whilst we in unity militate against those things that divide us and take us away from the common purpose and desire of a great fatherland, great to us and great also in Africa. That potential greatness threatens small minds.

There is no clamour for self-determination in our country; what we seek is equity, justice, fairness and peace - with all the abundant resources of our rich country used to the welfare and development of our people by honest, courageous and visionary leaders.

This is the time to ask yourself if you are really Nigerian or someone seeking an unviable fiefdom with speculations of Utopia that do not exist.

The country we have

For 96 years, we have had the entity called Nigeria, whilst it was handed to us by colonial masters, we have run this country for 49 of those years, very few of the countries of colonial progeny that have split up in Africa have ever done so peacefully.

Nigerians need to rise above their religiosity and primitive clannish tendencies to the promise of a worthwhile commitment to a place called Nigeria.

We inter-marry along all sorts of lines, religious, ethnic, tribal, ideological and what else, we have one pledge, one anthem and one identity – it is Nigerian.

Any division would definitely lead to abnormal divisions which is very much like a cancerous growth which eventually kills the host – you can begin to kill Nigeria by entertaining the rotten thought of division and watch it die or starve this travesty of an utterance of oxygen and make Nigeria rise by condemning the notion in its entirety.

You can however allow a Libyan dictator to take away your right to be a Nigerian, but for me, all men would have departed the earth before Nigeria is no more.

My fellow compatriots – Stand Up for Nigeria.

Source

[1] Gaddafi suggests Nigeria split along ethnic lines

Childhood: Driving the languages of sacrifice

Unculu drives

Continuing those stories of childhood down memory lane where I left off weeks ago. My father had moved to Jos to take up a new appointment with the Amalgamated Tin Mines of Nigeria.

My uncle who we have for long lovingly referred to as Unculu had joined us in Kaduna and I remember the many evenings when my mother took him out to teach him how to drive - suffice it to say he did not pick up that skill for another 8 or so years.

By which time, he bought a car and my father was so scared that he was going to brag his way with a drive to his office hardly 3 kilometres away - though we could see the office from our house - followed him so closely, it was almost illegal. Well, Unculu had really learnt to drive in some secret place and was doing quite nicely, Thank you.

Gave up much for us

When we were in Kaduna, my parents had both worked at the Kaduna Polytechnic, I believe my mother was also a lecturer there before we moved to Jos, because when we returned to Kaduna a few years later, at least 2 of her old students visited us as my mother proudly announced that her erstwhile students are now doing very well with their careers.

One has to be very appreciative of our parents and the sacrifices they made to keep the family unit together as much as possible.

Having left a lecturer-ship in Kaduna, my mother ended up as a secondary school teacher, not to far from where I went to primary school and she majored in teaching Commerce.

It is commendable in some ways how women in matrimony have given up promising careers and prospects for their husbands and family - what saddens me is when you get to talk to them and you sometimes hear regret about what they would have wanted to do but never got to do.

The lesson we could learn from this is to be able to have some hindsight that is not too far away from where there is still time to go after your dream.

Speaking in tongues

The many years she had spent in the North before meeting my father came in so useful, she was just as indigenous as the natives that she was referred to as Hajiya - a Hausa woman who had been on Hajj - well; my mother is quite a devout Christian and over time has become a true Nigerian polyglot.

She speaks her native Yoruba, which is spoken in the South-West, then having lived in the North for 23 years in total, is tongue-perfect in Hausa and fully conversant with their customs, but I was quite pleasantly surprised that she had mastered an Igbo dialect spoken in Eastern Nigeria without having ever been there.

I am sorry to say, I do not have the mastery of learning languages as my mother, I am quite good with Yoruba and really improving my Hausa in a way, even though I am not in Nigeria - I have no grasp of Igbo at all.

When it comes to languages, I suppose I am more like my father, he took radio and instructor-taught classes of Hausa and never really made much progress with it. His early attempts at Pidgin English were funny to say the least - he always has had an impeccable command of English - when I was younger, I could remember the number of times I needed to check out a word in the dictionary then the whole thing sinks in.

Mother-tongue of something else

I suppose one interesting thing about languages is that my mother-tongue is not my mother's mother-tongue, mine is English, it being the first language I could speak and still is the language my parents use the most in communicating with me - Yoruba rarely creeps into our conversation.

As I reached 10 my parents tried to engage me more in learning Yoruba, my best score in secondary school where the language was compulsory for the first 3 years was 38%, this was after years of being forced to read the Psalms into water in Yoruba rather than the easier English.

Much as I try, my command of Dutch is still rudimentary, it is still quite Double-Dutch and each time I string together a sentence to the hearing of the Dutch, I might as well be a clown because it brings laughs of incredulity rather than understanding - what could I be getting wrong?

I take this opportunity

The nuisance of association

I have for years shunned gatherings of Nigerians for any kind of activity. The one I joined recently which pertains to my membership of the Nigerian chapter of students on my Masters course more or less ended up looking like subscribing to a SPAM generator and as if that was not bad enough, one email inadvertently sent to all included a squabble that was far from edifying to all concerned.

I was of the good mind of withdrawing from that chapter, however, the moderator prevailed on me to accommodate a few of those nuisances as part of what is Nigerian rather than protesting from a too Westernised perspective.

From buyer to guest

So, the proprietor of the African foodstuffs and goods store at the entrance to the Central Station Metro platforms in Amsterdam passed me an invitation to her 50^th birthday celebrations which I gladly accepted.

We continually have all this idle banter about all sorts of events and issues that leaves us all with belly laughs that could leave some in tears too. When she said she was looking youthful, I asked for the secret and if it was on sale; exceedingly nice lady.

Hail Mary or Bloody Mary

The Africa House was to be the venue of the event which would have started with a Roman Catholic Service at noon, but since I was already going to my church, it meant I missed having to mouth my Hail Mary’s which might lead to the Mother of God streaming tears down from the eyes of a statue somewhere on the premises – Our Lady of Africa House might leave some thinking the shrine was animist rather than Roman Catholic.

Anyway, as I got there, it was obvious that we had gathered for a big party, most of the women in traditional wear with skyscraper headgear and antennas pointing in all directions.

Scruffy dressers in esteemed company

Many of the men were in jackets or suits, but the sloppy dressers with all buttons done up really irritate the dormant snob in me, I still cannot believe any well brought up person would do up all the buttons on their suits or jackets.

If one were to quote Sir Hardy Amies – one time dressmaker for the Queen, one would say, “How scruffy you look today, dear boy”. I do remember him saying you could not trust a man who did up all his buttons; somehow, subconsciously one takes a dim view of such appearances, if their conversation could ever result in anything better than piffle.

The look the problem

On the woman, I could not help but notice the ones who probably in the Igbo tradition had been fattened for marriage that they had a rolling or maybe revolving gait visible from behind, if that was not arresting enough, some definite accentuated the gyration, it was so deliberate they would be needing a hip replacement not too soon.

The men approaching middle age who had their hair shorn all seemed to have these double folds of flesh at the back of their heads, in fact, I did remember my father has those folds, they were substantially muscular and felt like Achilles tendons only that they were at the back of the head.

It had me feeling the back of my head towards the neck for signs and the silent prayer that if it is avoidable, then I do not want that additional feature as part of my pose in a silhouette.

Ceremony or cacophony

There was a programme distributed and the MC arrived a bit late, but as things got going, 30 minutes of getting people to the high table must be a record, because it Nigeria, it takes a lot longer with speeches from everyone that is anyone.

Every introduction started with, “I take this opportunity to invite …” from chiefs to untitled proletariats, space was found to be occupied by the honoured and privileged.

The celebrant all dressed up beautifully and flamboyantly made an entrance; a group of ladies all bedecked in the same attire waving white handkerchiefs surrounded her signing songs and dancing.

Then later the children of the celebrant presented her with flowers to the music of Prince Nico Mbarga of Sweet Mother fame, then I noticed money being sprayed – flinging, throwing, flooding or pasting of currency – on the celebrant.

Dollars trump the Euro

Ah! The Euro does not lend itself to this kind of hedonistic aggrandisement that characterises Nigerian parties, European notaphily begins with the 5 Euro note, and so, it was dollars (one dollar notes) which by the time I left had been gathered to fill a decent sized bin bag.

This, apart from the brisk business of money changers that could fill you with Jesus rage, only that one cannot go upturning the high table.

Food and drinks flowed along with situations where certain favoured guests end up with unopened bottles of wine to take home and I did attain favoured status in company.

The Master Chatterbox

The MC however never really got to excite or control the crowd, be it for getting up for prayer, or getting people to respond to chants of Praise the Lord or Igbo Kwenu, but I definitely did give apploss (sic) when it was asked for.

I never got to meet the celebrant but I got her daughter to deliver my card and present after attending for 3 hours in what looked like it would go on late into the night. Interesting event and strange practices, I think I have become a lot less Nigerian than I thought I was.