Sadly, no uhuru for the foot soldiers

I had to catch up with some friends on Kimath Avenue last Saturday when I was in Kenya. Prior to my trip, we had exchanged messages via Facebook and phone calls and they looked forward to welcoming me to Kenya since we last met a few years ago. The Nation Media group, where they work, is situated on the avenue which has a resemblance with our own Broad Street in Lagos.

The trip from the Safari Hotel where I was lodged to the city centre was quite a distance. The taxi took me through the heart of Nairobi where the lower class resides. Along the road is an open market where ‘bend down’ boutiques abound. It is a version of our Yaba market in Lagos. The slow moving traffic afforded me the opportunity to see young men, women, girls and boys ‘select and pay’ for shirts, dresses, jackets and so on. Some of them, dressed in ill-fitting clothes, were obviously shopping for replacements. They are the unfortunate ones who dwell at the bottom of the economic ladder.

As I watched them, I could recall some of the pre-independence, independence and post- independence literary issues treated in my literature class while in school, in particular, protest literature. Colonial Kenya had a very influential white settler community which eroded everything Kenyans could call their own, especially their culture. Kenya's liberation required an armed struggle. The Mau Mau movement was indeed a liberation army that resorted, from time to time, to what, today, would be classified as ‘terrorist’ methods. The Mau Mau fought the British on African soil. They fought to get back their land from the British who they accused of giving them the Bible in exchange for their land. That is why today, the largest chunk of the land in Kenya - including the one on which the hotel I stayed in is built - is owned by whites.
Years after independence, Kenyans are still suffering. Many of them cannot get the colonial mentality out of their system. Even the very poor ones on the streets are seen in dirty looking suits and those who cannot afford suits wear weather beaten jackets. “I don’t think these people have traditional dresses anymore,” observed Tope Ajayi, a Nigerian friend and brother who was in the taxi with me. His observation stemming from what we had seen on the streets. Almost everyone is in one form of suit or another.
“They don’t,” I replied.

“You won’t find this kind of situation in West Africa. In Nigeria, we have the iro and buba, adire and so on, which can be sewn into beautiful styles; even in Ghana, they have traditional dresses. It’s sad then, if Kenyans don’t have.”
“I bet what is left of their traditional wear can be found among the Masai who are rarely seen in town,” I said.

The metaphor for development in the postcolonial era throughout Kenya has been well documented in the novels of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Meja Mwangi, among others. Through the characters they portray in their novels, they have shown how some Kenyans have been motivated largely by a desire to escape the pervasive malaise that has afflicted Kenya after Uhuru (independence). Each of the characters illustrates different strategies for coping in the oppressive conditions of the new black-run country. It is for this reason that in his novels, Wa Thiong’o condemns Kenyan ruling elites who exploit the country's workers and peasants. He vigorously criticises neo-colonialist institutions like Christianity, politicians, schools, businesses, banks, landlords including the highways.

I must say that in reality, Kenyans are yet to get over the oppressive conditions. As I watched some of them walking on the sidewalks around the symbolic Independence Avenue, I could tell they were battling with some internal struggles. The class divide is so wide. The rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The mentality of an average Kenyan is that of fear, oppression and deprivation.

Customer service par excellence

A change in marital status has a way of throwing new things your way. First, you may have to deal with change of name, which usually leaves you wondering why you have to give up your maiden name for someone else’s. Men don’t have to do that at all, and some French women still answer their maiden names long after they get married. That notwithstanding, the name just has to change in our own part of the world.


Next is change of residence. As a sign that a woman has been duly sent off, she has to move to her new home! It could be real fun doing this, you know - when you have to decide, for instance, the colours that will grace the walls of your living room and bedroom, the kind of drape that meets your taste and the fabric you want your settee made of. Getting the kitchen fully equipped is in a class of its own.


Yes, that reminds me of an experience I had late last year with a new set of kitchen utensils I bought at Shoprite. I’m a lover of well-designed cooking ware with glass lids and the Kinox brand and one other brand whose name I can’t remember very well now. One of those November evenings, I was at The Palms shopping mall to buy some stuff for the month, and while looking through the racks at Shoprite, I could not find my choice brand; hence, I opted for a Tower set of cooking pots - three pots and a medium-sized frying pan. Tower is a quality brand and I had no idea I needed to consider its durability, so I paid for it.


I liked the burnt orange colour of the pots and of course, the glass lids, so I dashed home, cleaned one of them and cooked the evening meal in it. But to my greatest surprise, by the following morning the coating in the pot was already peeling off, forming tiny lumps that were already mixing up with the content in it. I was sad and angry. “I paid nearly N10, 000 for a set of non-stick pot, only for the coating to go bad the day after?” I said to myself.


Immediately, I removed the content, washed the pot and returned it to the point of purchase. Luckily, the lady at the Customer Care Unit was patient enough to listen to my complaint. I was surprised that Shoprite could boast of such staff since many of them were very rude in the past. “Hold on, madam, while I call the trainee manager for you,” she said. In less than two minutes, the man was with me. I lodged my complaint which he promised to look into, asking that I should give him my cell phone number so he could easily get back to me.


To make a long story short, he did get back to me and I got a refund. The fact that I could get that for the bad product I bought was surprising in a country where goods sold cannot be returned in most cases.


Most stores do not build a good rapport with the clients they service. They rarely demonstrate courteous interactions with customers during and after sales, but the new Shoprite seems to have charted a new and much better course as far as customer service is concerned!

What’s in a name?

There was a time in the distant past when I moved with some friends who felt their real names did not suit their status at the time. Hence, they went in search of nicknames. One of them, Seyi, came up with a name after combining her Zodiac sign, Leo, with Spark (which I can’t remember how it came about) to form the nickname SparkerLeo.


Then, answering to an English name was the fad and most girls and boys were not proud of their native names like Deji, Adeola, Aduke, among others. Names like Ricardo, Robert, and Anne were more or less the fad.


At the time, I just could not understand why my name should be a problem. Funke sounded funky to me, so I saw no reason to ‘funkify’ or replace it with a nickname. “You are an Old Skool,” Seyi once told me. “You have to move with the times, girl. You have to change your name, get a nickname or spell your ‘Funke’ differently. If you were in my school, my classmates would have made jest of you. You better wake up, girl.”


This incident reminds me of Basketmouth’s (the comedian) comment when he had his first child. He had to give the boy an English name so that “the boy will be proud of his name.” He also had to adopt an English name while growing up because he considered his native name too local. Until he shared his experience, I never knew I was not the only one caught in the web of inferiority complex with names. Many years after his experience, though, I do not understand why Basketmouth is still ruled by that complex such that he will pre-empt his son’s feeling about names even before the latter comes of age.

Today, the complex about naming is growing among the youth, and you need to be on Facebook to understand this trend. On someone’s page for instance, he spelt his name as: Haryour Changecentric Crown Prince. Note that Ayo is now spelt ‘Haryour.’


Another friend on Facebook also changed her name from Lola Kudi-Martins to Alolie Lucious Cuddy-Martins; while someone else spelt Azeez as ‘Harzyz.’ Blessing also took a new form in Blesyn, while Damilola is: ‘Darmylolar’. Ladi is now Ladehl and Gboyega has become a funkified Gboegha.


Some people have even changed their names completely. Hence, you have Olarenwaju Olakunle as Horlanrewaju Olahkunle and Timilehin Oluwatomilayo as Timmylehin Holuwartomilaryor. Some people prefer to just add a nick name to their original names and so there are names like: Marie Sugargurl, Weakywoody Adebayo, Yemi Thelengendary, Demmie Cutebear, to mention a few.


I have always thought that in Africa, especially in Nigeria, we attach great importance to what a child is called. Often, the circumstances surrounding a child’s birth usually inform his/her name. But today, there is a great movement among ‘young’ people to recreate or reinvent their names and who they are. It’s a kind of creativity, you’d agree, a fusion of Yoruba and English spelling of names. But it’s a creativity I am not totally comfortable with. I believe boldly saying my name is Funke shows the kind of person I am, how much I am are proud of my name, and the kind of confidence I exude.


I can recall that in one of my literature classes as an undergraduate, my lecturer, Wale Oyedele of blessed memory, recounted his experience while in the United States. A ‘white man’ could not pronounce his name correctly, so he had to take his time to teach the man that his name has just two syllables, /wa/, /le/; hence, their should be no difficulty pronouncing it properly. That, however, is no longer the case as more and more people feel comfortable ‘Englishnising’ their names.

Watch out for that death hole

My car landed in the pothole with a great thud and I could feel my head hitting the roof when it did. "Ouch!" I screamed. No one was beside me to say sorry, so I rubbed my head with one hand while I controlled the steering with the other.


But just before I could travel a few more metres, the car encountered another pothole. I thought I could dodge it, but while trying to achieve that, yet another reared its ugly head. The road I was journeying on was not on the Mainland which is notorious for pothole-riddled roads. It was at Ikoyi, our very own highbrow Ikoyi.



When I was a little girl, living at Ikoyi was like some sort of Eldorado. I can recall living with my family in Gbagada at the time, when going to the Ikoyi Club every weekend was the norm. And so, on one of such visits to the club, I made a new friend while practising how to swim with my instructor in the pool.

"I can swim faster than you now," Nkechi told me.

"I can see that," I said, laughing at her poor attempt at swimming.

"Will you be here next weekend?" she asked me in a bid to change the conversation.

"Yes," I replied.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

"Gbagada."

"Oh, I thought you live at Dolphin Estate like me."


"No, I don't." She went on to explain how Ikoyi especially Dolphin Estate, were hubs for the rich due to its well-tarred roads, flowers on the sidewalk, among others. Today, however, the story is not the same. Ikoyi has become a shadow of its old self.


A friend who loves the good life got herself a nice 2006 Passat car. It is a beautiful car by all standards, sweet to drive and sweet to be seen in. It is a powerful vehicle but deceptively slow. Because it is a big car and well balanced, when you drive it, you often don't realise you are flying instead of driving. That's to tell you how sleek the car is. However, one day, my friend found herself caught in one of the mega potholes on Ikoyi Road. She had firsthand experience of the disadvantages that come with driving on Nigerian roads which she never had while residing in the US. Driving on Nigerian roads, she learnt, is the art of dodging pot holes and you have to be very good at it.


In most cases, as a driver, you have no choice in the matter; you just have to deep your car into the pot holes, especially when you are driving on the inner roads. Interestingly, some interior parts of the Mainland are not spared from the jump-driving experience.


Perhaps the mistake my friend made was buying a car as low as a Passat which is not made for pothole-riddled roads. Often, she complains about how she had to crawl from one hole to another while her speedometer which loves to see red becomes a useless tool that stands at the bottom of the meter. Her shock absorber is another part of the car she fears will go bad soon.


She once drew my attention to how deceptive Nigerian roads could be since she often got carried away after driving on a smooth road for about six minutes, without knowing a pothole could be up ahead. Hence, by the time she applied her break, she would have fallen into the hole. I have had a similar experience too many times so I have learnt to be more cautious when driving since potholes have become speed breakers of sorts.

The Wazobia storyteller

I once took part in an informal competition on story telling, but it was a poor outing for me because I didn’t have that ‘sweet mouth’ – the sort of ‘sweetness’ that comes with storytelling which can hold the audience spellbound for hours, perhaps days. That day, I actually enjoyed the presentations of two friends blessed with the power of oratory.


You see, traditionally in Africa, storytellers are revered and so are good stories. Although old writing traditions do exist on the continent, most people today, as in the past, are primarily oral people and their art forms are oral rather than literary.


Oral literature or Orature, to use the term of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan writer, is orally composed and transmitted, verbally created and performed with dance and music. This art is rich and varied and the composer or storyteller must be skilled in the art. His facial gestures, voice and ability to play the roles of different characters are integral parts of the storytelling.


Language is also a vital tool because with it, he could create a vivid picture of the scenes in the minds of his audience. This brings to mind the man I have tagged ‘Wazobia storyteller’. I am an ardent listener of Wazobia FM and enjoy all their programmes. Perhaps the aspect I enjoy the most every morning is the News belt anchored by Nedu. For me, his style of news reading is different. Often, he gives me the impression that I am listening to some tales which he creates himself, yet they are actually real news served in a style different from the regular ones.


His style is really engaging and instantly commands my attention any time the news bulleting is on. Perhaps the language he employs, pidgin, also allows him to employ the freestyle of news casting. His mannerisms while reading the news create that live picture in the mind of the listener such that most times, I cannot help but imagine how the item on the news bulleting happened. One instance was the news story on complaints about the failure of the fingerprint machines to capture some people’s fingerprints. Nedu was at it again with his verve. The ‘sweetness’ in his mouth was played up as he passed across INEC’s advice on how to overcome that nightmare. “Make sure you clean ya hand well, well so that the machine no go select ya hand,” he said.


There was yet another story on the Somalia Pirates. Hear Nedu’s explanation on who pirates are: “The Somalia Pirates dem be people wey dey colobi pesin on top of water.” There was another story on women who were raped in Britain, and without sounding vulgar, Nedu used this phrase to drive home his message: “Torchlight the website of 50 women.”


Of course, there are those who write and edit news script, but the taste of the pudding for the listener is in the delivery. That is the ability of the newscaster to deliver the news the way it should be. Nedu, for me, has been able to do that brilliantly using pidgin. His mouth dey sweet for news casting no be small!


I am sure he must have been one of those who listened to those village storytellers who were experts at telling stories about secular tricksters like the Tortoise who often project the kinds of evil forces and bad behaviours against which the human community must contend to survive. He must have acquired that ‘sweet mouth’ from them

This electricity nonsense

I once lived in what I could call a palatial apartment on the Island. It was situated in one of those cosy estates hence, it was tagged by friends and everyone who had visited as ‘the rich man’s area’. Yet the so called rich man abode cried bitterly like any part of the metropolis, nay, country, for adequate power supply.
I could recall those glorious days when I had just moved into the neighbourhood. It was an Eldorado. No power outage and whenever there was, power was back in the twinkle of an eye. There was hardly any night when there was no power supply. It was like a haven until one cold night in December of 2007. There was power outage as usual when a popular soap was airing on TV. The whole family was watching with rapt attention when PHCN struck. Everyone had thought power would be back in the twinkle of an eye, as was the norm. Alas, it was not to be. Seconds, minutes and hours passed, no light, not even a flicker from the bulb. Everyone was disappointed. The generating set which had long been abandoned came alive again. Christmas was a few days away. No power to celebrate the good Lord’s birth. It was awful! That was how the nightmare of the rich began in a hitherto peaceful estate as all manner of noise came out of generating sets all night.

A friend who lived in a room and parlour on the Island also lamented a similar fate. Hers was elegantly christened ‘a mini flat’ by estate agents in order to price it higher; but it is still a room and parlour. It was not even up to a standard room and a parlour on the mainland as the rooms were smaller than average.

For my friend, it was not the room and parlour that was the issue, however. It was the appliances she had in the room and parlour in relation to the monthly bill that almighty PHCN gave her. She had a sound system, a television set, a fridge, an iron, two ceiling fans and, of course, about five bulbs. The challenge was that she did not have a metre which could be dangerous when you are dealing with a powerful entity like PHCN.

According to her, PHCN officials started on the small side whenever they brought the bill, or that was what she thought. In her first year of living in the apartment, her bill was around N1,200 per month which she paid without challenges. Then she realised that because she had a very busy schedule and was hardly at home, she would rather pay her bill in advance. But that was a mistake because it suddenly sent the wrong signals to her electricity benefactor.

Within a few months, her bill jumped to N3,000.00 per month, then to N4,000.00 and finally to N8,000.00 per month. In all these months, her electricity consumption did not change. In fact, in one of the months, she had no electricity supply for a whole month except for about three or four days, and yet in that same month, her bill moved up from the previous month’s N3,000.00 to N4,000.00. She had to pay for being supplied darkness that month.

She eventually became so fed up that she wrote a letter to the PHCN marketing manager on the Island requesting she be disconnected from the PHCN grid since it had obviously become cheaper for her to generate electricity independently via her generating set than to buy from PHCN. Not surprisingly, she did not get an official reply from PHCN. She said she was not expecting one, anyway. “PHCN have no time for small fries like me,” she told me.

The PHCN problem in Nigeria comes in different ways. Like my friend, there are those who have paid for years to be supplied meters but have not been supplied, but still try all they can to pay bills for an electricity consumption that was never measured.

There are people who never even pay any bill at all, they just use free electricity, while there are some people who have meters but have no power supply even as the nation marks her 50 years of independence. The promise of power by 2010 since the regimes of Babangida and Abacha is yet to be fulfilled. Obansanjo made many promises, yet none was fulfilled, although it was said that he laid the foundation for his successor to build on. Unfortunately, the power project did not live to see the light of day.

Now, it is Goodluck’s turn to make promises. We are all quietly waiting to see what he would do regarding this. Nigerians are tired of this electricity nonsense!

This tongue

“The tongue is just a little part of the body,” said a pastor during one of those sermons on the tongue. So it is all the more amazing that this part of the human anatomy is so strong and powerful.

As a biology student, I was taught that the tongue is a muscle on the floor of the mouth that manipulates food for chewing and swallowing. It is the primary organ of taste, as much of its upper surface is covered by papillae and taste buds.
The tongue whose secondary function is speech is very sensitive. It is kept moist by saliva, and richly supplied with nerves and blood vessels to help it move. Lastly, the tongue serves as a natural means by which the teeth can be cleaned.

On another level, the word ‘tongue’ is common in idiomatic expressions and proverbs. For instance, ‘tongue-in-cheek’ is a term that refers to humour in which a statement or an entire fictional work is not meant to be taken seriously, even as its sarcasm is subtle. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the idiom as "Ironic, slyly humorous; not meant to be taken seriously."

The term is also known in films and fictional works. For instance, tongue-in-cheek fiction seems to abide by the conventions of an established serious genre. It gently pokes fun at some aspects of that genre, while still relying on its conventions. Examples of tongue-in-cheek films are Shaun of the Dead, Ninotchka, Demolition Man, True Lies, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. One of the earliest records of the expression is in The Fair Maid of Perth by Sir Walter Scott in 1828, where he writes: "The fellow who gave this all-hail, thrust his tongue in his cheek to some scapegraces like himself."

In Washington Irving's story "Rip Van Winkle," the townspeople listening to Rip's story of falling asleep for 20 years were said to have "put their tongues in their cheeks" because they thought it was a joke or a lie. While the meaning of the expression here is slightly different, it is related and dates to 1819.
There is yet another use of the tongue which has to do with language. Here I mean the language spoken by a particular tribe or people. ‘Tongue’ is referred to as the first or native language which we learn from birth. The term is also used for the language that we speak best. In either case, our first language is a basis for sociolinguistic identity. The term ‘second language’ means the language we speak less well than our first language. Sometimes the term ‘native language’ is used to indicate a language we are as proficient in as a native of that language.
On another level, ‘mother tongue’ or ‘mother language’ refers to the language we learn at home (usually from our parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue.

But you see, at times, this mother tongue has a way of giving you out easily. Those of us from South-Western Nigeria are usually laughed at because of our heavily accented English, spiced with a touch of the typical Oyo mesiogo Yoruba – a variant of English were the ‘Ch’ sound is replaced by ‘Sh’ and ‘C’ with ‘S’. I can recall that in one of my English language classes taught by Seun Oyedola of blessed memory, we argued extensively about ‘Nigerianisms’ in English language. We argued extensively about Yoruba words that have been transferred into English and are now a part of us. Words like “kia-kia” meaning “quick-quick” or “fast-fast.”
You see, re-invention of the English language, we concluded in class that day, showed the dynamism of a people who were able to modify a language handed over to them by the colonialists to suit their purpose.

And so, I used to think, the Yoruba people are the only ones who struggle with poor pronunciation of certain English words. However, my experience in Yenogoa, Bayelsa State made me have a rethink. Bayelsans also suffer from this defect and in a continental gathering like the AMAA, the mother tongue of two women gave them out so easily, such that the audience could not help but laugh. The first woman came on the podium and said: “And the winner is The ‘Shild’ instead of “The Child”. Yet another woman said “Thank you very mush’” instead of “thank you very much.” That is just what our mother tongue has done to us. But you see, it is not entirely derogatory. As the late Oyedola argued, we are just being dynamic with the use of the English Language, even pronunciations!