The Power of Naija (2)
My experience of Nigerian culture: my host family, food, way of communication and stereotypes!
While work took up most of my time in Osogbo, my host family afforded me a large amount of freedom in my spare time and truly took me in as one of their own. My host brother Kehinde and I went out socialising regularly and my host sister, Taiwo, ensured that I was well looked after in the house. My host mother was the tribal Chief and leader of all women in the region. She was able to educate me about the intricacies of Yoruba life as well as the work of the NGO as she is the Executive Director of WADEM. I was also treated to every variety of local food for breakfast, lunch and supper which usually focussed around yams (pounded, fried or boiled) or rice with a fantastic spicy sauce to accompany it. The yam and cassava dishes are eaten by hand while cutlery is used for the rice but all dishes are delicious if you enjoy spicy food. Now that I am back in Ireland I especially miss jolof rice, dodo, amala, eba, ewede, egusi, akara and moi moi (the Yoruba names for the foods).
Yoruba is the triba
l language spoken
predominantly in the south west of Nigeria but almost everybody in the country
speaks English. While we may
ostensibly speak the same language, the accent barrier created a few strange
encounters. I was deemed to be
entirely incomprehensible by many within Osogbo in my first week and much of my
conversation became non-verbal as I worked on a Nigerian accent. This did not eliminate some
misunderstandings. For example,
one day at the market my host sister looked at me pointedly and, to my alarm,
said “Serious...Conflict”. I had
spent little time in Nigeria at this stage and immediately panicked because of
my preconceptions of the country.
Upon seeing my distress, Taiwo confusedly pointed to the offending
object and repeated: “Cereal...Cornflakes”.
While caution must certainly be used when travelling in any country, I encountered no major security problems during my time in Nigeria. I travelled with other volunteers independently to the north of the country to Kano, Kaduna and Zaria as well as moving extensively around in the south west. The transport consists of okadas (Chinese-made mixtures of scooters and scramblers that are as ubiquitous and noisy and vuvuzelas) and minibuses that are so riddled with rust that a heavy rain may cause them to melt into the mud below. I mention transport when talking about security as the only times when I perhaps felt insecure was when these vehicles inadvertently play chicken with oncoming traffic due to a pothole that engulfs half of the road. This is not to say that corruption and violence do not take place in Nigeria but that I did not encounter them personally.
There was a fitting encounter upon leaving Osogbo when I announced to the children in my street that I was leaving. Amongst the various hugs and protestations that had been providing me with a huge ego for the previous two months, one little girl seemed especially distraught. She seemed inconsolable for around 30 seconds before stepping back and wiping her face which then transformed into a beaming smile. With a little leap and a curtsey she chirped “Ok then, goodbye” and skipped off down the street.
It is an odd paradox in Nigeria that the intensity of emotions takes place with the speed of a drunken phone call on an overindulgent Saturday night while the pace of life remains utterly relaxed. Often in conversation, smiling, shouting and laughing can occur simultaneously in a complexity of emotions that I was never able to fully understand. Instead I often responded with the most Irish of responses to extreme emotion: politely nodding in agreement. In Nigeria every emotion is exaggerated, especially kindness.
The majority of this article was written while on my way to the airport to leave Nigeria. The bus bounced and cajoled its way from Osogbo to Lagos as I sat with my head out the window, as far as common sense would permit. Dust battered my face as the sun set over the forests of palms trees and the reckless driver veered between potholes and oncoming tankers as if the two were equal obstacles. This, for me, was Nigeria. A complete barrage on the senses but in an utterly addictive way.
I found that it was immediately impossible to put the experience into a concise article as ‘Nigeria’ itself refuses to be categorised. The people identify themselves primarily through their tribe rather than nationality, the international press fails to account for the complexity of the country and any therefore any stereotype of Nigeria is doomed to be extremely limited if not entirely false. While this may be partially down to the nature of stereotypes, the sheer geographical and demographic scale of Nigeria makes such reductionisms especially useless. That is not so say that this categorisation is restricted to outsiders. Nigerians were always quick to inform me that any problems in the country were the fault of ‘Lagos’ or ‘Abuja’ which in conversation assume the role of abstract constructs that house all of the ills of Nigeria. The reality is that by refusing to assess the problem beyond mere taglines such as ‘corruption’ or ‘Abuja’, we are therefore ignoring the solutions. These solutions will not come as the consequence of a grand ideal but instead need to be undertaken using small steps and achievable goals. These small steps can be seen across Nigeria from the GAA tops donated by Irish charities that adorn the children on the street to the newly constructed HIV/AIDS clinics and orphanages.
Jack Hamilton (Jack, from co.Down, volunteered in Nigeria during the summer 2010)
This is the second part of Jack's story, read the first part here