things I learnt along the way

18 November 2010

23:07

I have had many teachers, many fathers, many mothers.

The grooming of any child in Africa is such. The responsibility for your emerging as straight as the edge of a blade of elephant grass is a shared, a collective effort. A young girl would be taught to sit with her legs crossed at the ankles, not at the knees because with a short skirt placing one knee over the other tends to expose an unpardonable expanse of African skin. I learnt that, from an usher in church- of course, no reasons were proffered. That bit I had to figure out for myself. Which brings us to another lesson, wrapped in a common Yoruba proverb that figuratively reads- you tell a well trained person just a bit , he understands fully after some thought.

I've learned to give tips, generous tips. A guard at the gate of my adopted uncle's house taught me that by asking, and reminding each time I visited till I yielded. ('Adopted' is used here for clarification only. In Yoruba land, every person old enough to be is your father or mother. The Igbos are less fastidious and Uncles and Aunties are numerous). In a certain sense, age disregards social status, and a guard's gray temples command my proper curtsey. I gave both, the money and my thanks.

You would learn well the art of visiting, to choose attire suitable for dropping in on a Saturday, and to say the right things; small talk, talk politics and the situation of the country, to lament the traffic and berate the authorities for failing to uphold the public good in some regard. You learn to politely offer to help out in the kitchen, knowing that your host will politely refuse- oops! sometimes you find a hostess who missed that lesson. She may very generously allow you to help her shred the peppers and onions.

You learn about social appearances at social events too. You learn to pop in for the thanksgiving of the wedding of one friend, to drink a toast to a second at the reception party and to kick off your heels at a third and join the couple on the dance floor. Of course, if you ever have made the mistake of arriving at the party with just 1000naira notes you learn the hard way never to go to another dance-floor without change. Even better, you learn to get some money changed from the bridesmaids in charge of collecting the bride's takings. The money is after all for the couple after the recycling is done.

In all, you learn from society to be part of society, to understand it's norms and ethics. Ah, maintaining one's individuality you wonder. That bit is simple really. The lessons differ in timing, in import; the teachers too, in colour, in vigour. And the students- I have decided to write this piece to share some of my lessons, I have decided to wear skirts as infrequently as possible, to visit sparingly and insist my friends conference to avoid getting wedded on the same day, what about you?