Ogbomosho
I knew two words of Yoruba when I began my Yoruba lessons last Fall: Obasanjo and Ogbomosho. The former is rather obvious, and the latter had been a recurring theme in my academic research: a great deal of Yorubas in the Diaspora originate from the town of Ogbomosho. The Ogbomoshos travel. They stick together. And they don't forget where they come from. That felt strangely familiar to me. When it came time to take on a Yoruba persona in my class, I thus became Titilayo from Ogbomosho. And when my Yoruba respondents in Accra asked me defiantly if I had "ever been to Nigeria," I responded without a flinch that I was headed to Ogbomosho in May. So when I found the opportunity to accompany my friend Jide back home to Ogbomosho, I had to seize it.
Ogbomosho is a rather small city (of approximately 1.5 million people) by Nigerian standards. It has one reputable university, one impressive meat market (where they kill, cut, sell and burn cattle right there in the open air), one stadium, one football team, one Baptist seminary and over 400 Baptist churches. There are five or six hours of electricity at night and on Sunday mornings if we're lucky. The roads are packed with taxis, okadas (moto-taxis) and oil trucks; the latter have the right of way.
In Ogbomosho I am the rare Oyinbo (pronounced O-EE-BO, a.k.a. Obruni) to step out of the gates of the Baptist seminary and to come on academic and not evangelizing mission; and because Yoruba is a tonal language, the Oyinbo interpellation sounds like a question: Oyinbo? Oyinbo? is all I hear when I zoom by on okadas. Ogbomosho is the second largest town in Oyo State, Nigeria's "Pace Setter" State. (Lagos, by the way, is Nigeria's "Center of Excellence" while Abuja is its "Center of Unity" - whoever came up with these mottos?) This time of year, electric rain storms paralyze the town every other day and keep the landscape green and the air refreshingly light.
The people of Ogbomosho welcomed me to Nigeria with such kindness and generosity that I almost forgot which country I was in. Those I interviewed showered me with food and drinks the way only my Hungarian grandmother used to. They were delighted with my forays into their colorful culture, and the Yoruba greeting and bowing sent them cheering with laughter. They thought I looked "beautiful" when I went native with my braids and Yoruba cloth (I thought it made me look like a market mama. It's all relative.) They loved to call me Titi. And they all tried to get me to accept Christ. Don't worry mom, they failed.
Lizzie Williams, who wrote a brilliant Bradt travel guide for Nigeria, claims that "[Q]uite frankly there is no other way to write about Nigeria than personally. It's a destination that's not about Eiffel Towers or Serengeti Plains, but about a conversation or a unique moment." She is right.
One Chief I interviewed offered me the opportunity to meet the King of Ogbomosho and before I knew it, Chief Evergreen escorted Jide and me to the Kabiyesi Palace. I didn't know what to expect but was instructed to call him Kabiyesi (King) and to kneel in greeting. We entered the Kabiyesi quarters in Chief Evergreen's red Mercedes. We approached the Palace's visiting room and as we entered, I let Jide and Evergreen take the lead because in a room full of old men in Yoruba attire, I had no idea which was King. Jide and Evergreen walked forward and suddenly prostrated themselves right there, face flat, on the carpet. I kneeled, as instructed, and looked up to find a short elderly man in a purple gown, rocking his legs from side to side on his chair and smiling at me. He motioned for me to come sit next to him and he asked me about my research. We chatted for a while about Ogbomosho, the Yorubas, my work, Nigeria. Every now and then his attention turned to the television set in the corner: Desperate Housewives was on, followed by the Martha Stewart show. What dissonance, I thought, to be chatting with the 81-year-old King of Ogbomosho while Martha baked a cake in the background.
The King told me of his travels to Britain, Germany, France, and the Middle East. The U.S.? I asked. He had never been to America. He told me he had an opportunity to go to Texas in 1957 while working for a French oil company. "But I found out that it wasn't good to be black in America then," he said as he pointed to the skin on his arm. He shook his head resoundingly. "So I decided I didn't want to go to the U.S." The gap between his dated impression of the U.S. and the kind of place I knew it to be today really struck me, and I pondered how much space there was between the kinds of things I heard about Nigeria back home and the taste I got of Nigeria today.
And maybe both can be true. Nigeria is a notorious image of violence and fraud that almost kept me away entirely, and a depth and wealth of personality I am grateful to have experienced - if only briefly. I don' think Nigeria was meant to be summed up in a blog for it is a country of contradictions and constant dissonance. Like when a King watches Desperate Housewives as he receives visitors; or when the women of the house cook dinner lighting charcoal with one hand and holding their cell phones as flashlights with the other; or when the same people who drive on the shoulders of roads and have no regard for a line at the bank, the chop shop, or the gas station, queue up willingly for their daily church offering; or when newspaper editorials scrutinize and criticize a flawed election process and conclude that Yar'Adua's victory was God's will; or when children all over town jump up and down in joy when electricity comes back on for a few hours at night in a country that holds 10% of the world's oil reserves and the tenth largest gas reserves in the world.
Nowhere else did I find such big hearts and loud mouths, so many open arms and so many grabbing hands. Hard as I try, I can't paint a picture of Nigeria. But maybe these snapshots can give you a taste... if not a good laugh.
Ogbomosho is a rather small city (of approximately 1.5 million people) by Nigerian standards. It has one reputable university, one impressive meat market (where they kill, cut, sell and burn cattle right there in the open air), one stadium, one football team, one Baptist seminary and over 400 Baptist churches. There are five or six hours of electricity at night and on Sunday mornings if we're lucky. The roads are packed with taxis, okadas (moto-taxis) and oil trucks; the latter have the right of way.
In Ogbomosho I am the rare Oyinbo (pronounced O-EE-BO, a.k.a. Obruni) to step out of the gates of the Baptist seminary and to come on academic and not evangelizing mission; and because Yoruba is a tonal language, the Oyinbo interpellation sounds like a question: Oyinbo? Oyinbo? is all I hear when I zoom by on okadas. Ogbomosho is the second largest town in Oyo State, Nigeria's "Pace Setter" State. (Lagos, by the way, is Nigeria's "Center of Excellence" while Abuja is its "Center of Unity" - whoever came up with these mottos?) This time of year, electric rain storms paralyze the town every other day and keep the landscape green and the air refreshingly light.
The people of Ogbomosho welcomed me to Nigeria with such kindness and generosity that I almost forgot which country I was in. Those I interviewed showered me with food and drinks the way only my Hungarian grandmother used to. They were delighted with my forays into their colorful culture, and the Yoruba greeting and bowing sent them cheering with laughter. They thought I looked "beautiful" when I went native with my braids and Yoruba cloth (I thought it made me look like a market mama. It's all relative.) They loved to call me Titi. And they all tried to get me to accept Christ. Don't worry mom, they failed.
Lizzie Williams, who wrote a brilliant Bradt travel guide for Nigeria, claims that "[Q]uite frankly there is no other way to write about Nigeria than personally. It's a destination that's not about Eiffel Towers or Serengeti Plains, but about a conversation or a unique moment." She is right.
One Chief I interviewed offered me the opportunity to meet the King of Ogbomosho and before I knew it, Chief Evergreen escorted Jide and me to the Kabiyesi Palace. I didn't know what to expect but was instructed to call him Kabiyesi (King) and to kneel in greeting. We entered the Kabiyesi quarters in Chief Evergreen's red Mercedes. We approached the Palace's visiting room and as we entered, I let Jide and Evergreen take the lead because in a room full of old men in Yoruba attire, I had no idea which was King. Jide and Evergreen walked forward and suddenly prostrated themselves right there, face flat, on the carpet. I kneeled, as instructed, and looked up to find a short elderly man in a purple gown, rocking his legs from side to side on his chair and smiling at me. He motioned for me to come sit next to him and he asked me about my research. We chatted for a while about Ogbomosho, the Yorubas, my work, Nigeria. Every now and then his attention turned to the television set in the corner: Desperate Housewives was on, followed by the Martha Stewart show. What dissonance, I thought, to be chatting with the 81-year-old King of Ogbomosho while Martha baked a cake in the background.
The King told me of his travels to Britain, Germany, France, and the Middle East. The U.S.? I asked. He had never been to America. He told me he had an opportunity to go to Texas in 1957 while working for a French oil company. "But I found out that it wasn't good to be black in America then," he said as he pointed to the skin on his arm. He shook his head resoundingly. "So I decided I didn't want to go to the U.S." The gap between his dated impression of the U.S. and the kind of place I knew it to be today really struck me, and I pondered how much space there was between the kinds of things I heard about Nigeria back home and the taste I got of Nigeria today.
And maybe both can be true. Nigeria is a notorious image of violence and fraud that almost kept me away entirely, and a depth and wealth of personality I am grateful to have experienced - if only briefly. I don' think Nigeria was meant to be summed up in a blog for it is a country of contradictions and constant dissonance. Like when a King watches Desperate Housewives as he receives visitors; or when the women of the house cook dinner lighting charcoal with one hand and holding their cell phones as flashlights with the other; or when the same people who drive on the shoulders of roads and have no regard for a line at the bank, the chop shop, or the gas station, queue up willingly for their daily church offering; or when newspaper editorials scrutinize and criticize a flawed election process and conclude that Yar'Adua's victory was God's will; or when children all over town jump up and down in joy when electricity comes back on for a few hours at night in a country that holds 10% of the world's oil reserves and the tenth largest gas reserves in the world.
Nowhere else did I find such big hearts and loud mouths, so many open arms and so many grabbing hands. Hard as I try, I can't paint a picture of Nigeria. But maybe these snapshots can give you a taste... if not a good laugh.
posted by cla at 11:34 AM
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