…As Told By The Yoruba Girl Who Doesn’t Speak Yoruba

This one was inspired by Somto Ibe — and my love for the way she tells her stories.

In an ideal world, I’d be the typical Yoruba woman. My mother is, as is her mother and her mother’s mother — all married to Yoruba men and proud of their old Oyo heritage. The heritage that existed before the influx of the overrated Ibadan jokes and the same heritage that serves as the sole custodian of the amala and ewedu-gbegiri recipe handed down from generation to generation. My father, on the other side of my family tree, proudly announced to me that I was the first one ever, in the entire history of his lineage as he knows it, to bring home a potential partner of non-Yoruba origin.

My world however, is far from ideal.

You see, I was born and raised in Northern Nigeria. And for the most of my childhood and early adolescence where I was shipped off to American boarding schools, I was in no way accustomed to my native Yoruba or the prevalent Hausa generally spoken by the locals. You could say I was shielded away from it. For me, English was all I knew.

Fast forward to when my family moved down to Lagos on account of the ethno-religious crisis and my first real exposure to Nigerian language(s) taught in my new school. Naturally, I opted for Yoruba — the language of my ancestry.

I wanted to learn. I really did. For one thing, my mother’s first family always took pleasure in scolding her for our inability to converse in the language whenever we met at family reunions and functions. I always saw the sadness in her eyes when we could not respond like we should. My mom birthed bright children — but who could know that when all we did was smile and nod sheepishly in response to whatever we were told. Or asked.

Oh, the shame!

A particular incident leaps to mind at this point. My father’s eldest brother came visiting once and asked our youngest, who was barely six at the time to tell him her name. With so much pride in her sparkling eyes, she announced, “ ’Seyi Ben-Ajepe” which is true, save for the fact(s) that;

→ her full name is Oluwaseyi

→ our family name is Ajepe

(Yes, I was the one who incorporated my father’s first name into our surname making it a compound name and everyone else followed suit, just in case you were wondering.) For parents who had failed in their responsibilities to teach us Yoruba — this became a worthy topic to discuss whenever our paths crossed. I mean, like, they had only one job right?!

I guess we all felt guilty and put in more effort into trying to speak the language. My mom bought tons of Yoruba literature books. My dad bought a Yoruba Bible for family devotion too! I remember now that he read it to us only once. He also tried to make his girls kneel in greeting and my brother to prostrate respectively as the custom demands. It lasted about week, I think. Probably three days. I struggled in Yoruba classes. Kids are mean, you know? I felt they were picking me out to read texts to humor themselves. They laughed a lot and never made any corrections at all so I gave up eventually. The teachers weren’t exactly helpful. And so my mom hired a Yoruba lesson teacher — the guy had jokes for days. I only remember his fine sense of humor — a bit too mature for children, now that I think about it.

So yes, the only Fs on my report card were courtesy of Yoruba and my final school leaving Yoruba exam met me at home playing video games but at least, I understand and have a shaky grasp of the language. And I can write in it too. Mostly for the laughs. (My Yoruba essays for the exams in secondary school are pure gold.) But my spoken game is whack. It is comforting to know that I will never be sold by anyone marketing in the language. But even if I was, I’d have picked on by the time they were giving and collecting change.

I do speak some sensible Hausa though. It might not be impeccable and articulate as my dad’s but it scores me a good amount of jara whenever I buy suya. Or kilishi. And more recently, I’ve heard that I speak some mean Igbo for someone with such limited exposure to the language. I understand that I hit the intonations quite right. And not to brag but my expressions are quite epic! It’s good for my ego. At least, I’m not that stupid after all.

Case in point: The other day, a yellow bus driver scraped our car and I wound down and snarled, “onye-ara!” — that’s mad man (or woman) in Igbo. I live in Lagos. The correct thing to ask would be, “so ti ya were?” which loosely translates to “are you mad?” in Yoruba.

And Yoruba is what’s generally spoken around these parts.