Creole: The Mask
How a nation’s favourite language became my hiding place.
In my country, we speak pidgin, or if you want to get fancy with it, say creole. Pidgin is a creole, but be rest assured if you try to ask anyone about that, unless the person na pa sabitou, then you're on your own.
Pidgin is a very expressive language; all someone has to do is say "jaga jaga" for a grotesque image to come to your mind even before you fully understand what it means, and if you've ever seen someone scream "mamami eh!" then you know it is an instant attention-grabber. However, for all its universality and deep connection to the people and their expressions, pidgin, I have discovered, has no place for "weakness" (or what it perceives as). It is not a language for the depressed, neither for the hurting, nor dying. It is a living language, for the tough and hardcore... but then again I thought to myself maybe it is a language for those who wear masks, yes those same people, the depressed, hurting, dying. After all, the very history of pidgin itself shows two things very clearly, a network and a common circumstance.
The Network
Be it in our normal pidgin (or broken English or just brokin), here in Cameroon and Nigeria, the Deep Patois and Maroon Ritual variant of Jamaicans, or the patois of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) and the West Indies, there are words that have travelled the seas and the land, survived slavery and globalisation to exist in all of these variants and mean the same thing.
Check this out; *wuna* originates from the Igbo word *unu* and actually means *you people* (or if you want to be fancy, *you guys*, *you folks*, na you sabi). In Cameroon, the ‘wuna’ variant is used, while in Jamaica, both variants are used, with unu being more commonplace.
The common circumstance
Pidgin originated at a time when there was either war, or some painful experience, whether as far back as the 1800s in China during the world war, or in Africa and the West Indies, Caribbean, during the slave era. Most oft, this creole mix was used to communicate with the Whites.
¿Lo Sabes?... Don't sound familiar? Well, unless you dabble in Spanish, then it won't, buuuuutttt if I say *you sabi?* every pidgin box worth their salt will give me an answer right away. 'sabi' is a variant of 'sabes', which most likely came to the pidgin vocabulary through Portuguese who hit the Cameroonian coast (yeah, those same guys who said Rio dos Camaroes).
Anyways... These are just my theories, if you want to get fancy with them, na you sabi... This is about people who wear masks.
The Masks
Our ancestors hid their pain in a language that the oppressors couldn't understand, kept it away from their offspring, maybe they imagined a language like this would become their legacy, something that won't be lost in time alongside their efforts to resist slavery. They probably imagined it will survive and will teach their children how to be strong, or at least hide their own pains as well.
If they are listening, you succeeded.
There is no clear expressive word for 'depression', 'fear', 'pain', 'weak', 'death', or even 'emotion'. It is either ‘you di crase' or ‘you don paplé' (which is actually madness). Fear is fear, pain is 'hurt' (but pronounced *hot*), weak is weak, or the description of something that looks weak (ex. Lebe lebe), and death is die, or some variant of a vernacular such *kpemé*. All these words, like words in a vernacular that maintain their borrowed form just to show they had no original place, have no original place in pidgin.
That is how I have hidden my pain and depression from my close ones. I spoke in pidgin. It was easier for them to hear and understand, ‘massa ma head di hot’. ‘boy ju leave am, tins dem no di show’, than to make sense of, ‘‘Brother I need help, I am depressed and can't find my way’’.
The language even blatantly picks on what it considers weak, so you'd hear retorts like, “massa, no di make like woman” (or *chap* *nga* *ndem*(pronounced nde-aim)*), when what the person really means is, “I have no idea what you mean or how to help”.
It was not Melrose Place around this world we grew up in, you had to be tough as a man, hardcore, you had to impose yourself and dominate, else you lose the most important thing that separated men from women, RESPECT. There was no translating that, it was innate in the language, and that is why when women starting fighting for their rights, demanding more than just staying in the kitchen or living as human farms where men came to sow seeds with a mandatory 9-month gestation period, all the language could teach us to say was *that woman their tin* or if you want to be fancy with it, *feminism* *women’s rights*, or if you want to get real with it, *RESPECT*.
I love pidgin, everybody does, it is fun and catchy and all kinds of creative, but it has also been a mask, my hideout, where I was certain the world couldn't see me. It was my prison until I figured out its power and it became my fortress, where I felt safe, all I had to say was, “na small, I go gérer am”. Today, I still speak pidgin when I am hiding, acting tough and macho, because even with all the English, and TOEFL tests, the language is deep within us and at the end of the day, is how we truly express ourselves.
So, when I walk by, sometimes I hear people and even my friends say, “sometime di Bate di make like sey that e crase don wukop”, “Leave that man, e head di shake one one time”. And I can't help but smile and say, “na small”. Because sometimes, most times I di actually crase, or if you want to be fancy and real with it, *depressed*.
Doesn’t matter what they say, only you can make or break you... No one can ever be you and that’s what’s special about you... E’kori E’kori you are brave, you are strong, you will get through the storm, pain doesn’t last forever... E’kori.
— Brave by Bukki
I no fit tell you how water enter coconut, or how I came about some of these crazy theories I spew out sometimes, but what I can tell you, is my story, one word at a time.
An Indigo Child, Beet.
