Mother Tongue Eroded for A Journey

Mike just came out of the arrival lounge of Port Harcourt International Airport.

“Hey! Mike. You look good. Where have you been?” Jane quizzed as she descended the airport terminal steps.

 “I just arrived from UK. Eh! Jane, we are seeing again after so many years.” Mike hugged her warmly.

“You haven’t changed Mike.” Jane said, examining his muscular frame while touching him.

Mike smiled.

“Ke kwanu ka ulo di?” “(How is your home?)”Jane asked him.

Mike smiling said, “Everyone is doing well.”

Jane rejoined Mike after collecting her bag at the baggage reclaim section.

A taxi pulled in front of them. They hopped in.

Mike’s mood didn’t hide his excitement. Coming home after eight years of leaving Nigeria was one he longed for. He hardly took any vacation while in UK. His little hamlet in Okpu n’elu would provide him those relaxations his missed vacations didn’t give him.

“It appears you have been away for so long?” Jane drew back his attention.

“Yea! Since I traveled eight years ago, I am just visiting Nigeria for the first time.” Mike responded.

Continuing, he said; “It feels good to be home once again.”

“Wow! It’s really a long time. You must be married by now?” Jane asked admiring his looks.

“No! I haven’t.”

“Now that you are home, enwere m olile anya na i ga alu nwanyi tupu ilaghachi UK.”(I hope you will marry before you travel back to UK)” Jane asked him.

Mike didn’t respond to the question. Jane repeated the question the second time, making sure he heard her.

 “I don’t clearly understand what you are saying. Could we please converse in English?” Mike said.

 “Don’t tell me you didn’t understand me! You’ve just spent only eight years in UK and you’ve forgotten your native tongue already?” Jane asked him disappointedly.

Feeling embarrassed and trying to cover up his lapses, Mike quipped in, “Eh! – You know we only communicate in English Language out there and I am used to it since the past eight years. The structure of my life had already shifted having left my people for long, so, it shouldn’t be a crime if I’d to forget some of our Igbo cultures.”

“So, it’s your native tongue you will forget?” Jane queried unhappily.  

Showing greater amazement, Jane could not reconcile Mike’s claim of having forgotten his native tongue being a home boy which she knew him to be. She’d lived in France since ten years now but she hadn’t lost her identity as an African of Igbo extraction. She preferred letting people know she was a proud Igbo woman. She’d usually greet anyone she was meeting for the first time in Igbo – a habit she’d tried to live with –. May be Mike was trying to show off as one who traveled abroad or he was just taking native tongue as inferior and crude.

Growing up in an Igbo family in Okpu n’elu, Mike enjoyed so many bed-time stories and folklores involving tortoise and other animals and believed in all kinds of superstitions and customs. He could’ve let many of them go through the years he was outside Igbo world. But back then he never saw them as odd. As a boy, Mike was fluent in Igbo and enjoyed the company of elders in Okpu n’elu.  He learned much wise sayings in Igbo and was held in reverence. The thought he was saying he didn’t understand the question Jane asked him in Igbo was bewildering. Possibly, he was avoiding to answer that question.

Mike was really happy that he returned home. Stepping his left leg out of the car, his mother caught a glimpse of him and shouted in joy,”Nwa m nwoke Mike a lotala. Onye obula bianu o-o-o!” “(My son Mike has come back. Let everyone come o-o-o!)” She ran and hugged him.

Joy was in the air as every member of Iwuala family gathered to welcome their son.

Palm wine was served. The youngest among the male family members did the sharing. He served every adult male in the family one full tumbler of palm wine each. Mike gulped one full tumbler of the palm wine and demanded for another when he couldn’t resist the sweet taste. The oldest man in the family drank three times from his gourd.  After, he shook the gourd repeatedly before putting it back into his leopard skin leather bag.

He whined and cleared his throat. “Welcome my son!” He said. “It is now that I can see that you have actually returned from your journey.”

Mike stood up to address his kinsmen. His kinsmen had not been to the white man’s land before except him. They don’t know the white man’s culture. He would tell them.

“Cha! Cha!! Cha!!! Umunna m hi!” Some of his kinsmen raised their faces in surprise and looked at him. Believing he was playing, they maintained decorum. He continued.

“Umunna m, you know oruola eight years since I left the shores of Nigeria gaa UK. My people you know na the journey is too far. In fact, my people UK amaka!” He struggled with his statements, trying to choose the appropriate native words but it wasn’t adding up.

He heaved a discouraging breath, giving in to utter despair of not being in control of the moment.  Tension swallowed his entire being as he felt embarrassed before his kinsmen. He lost it. He lost his identity, the very nucleus of who he was years ago and he lost his people – Those he left eight years ago for UK and who knew how endowed he was culturally, especially in the use of Igbo idioms and proverbs –. He imagined how he already lost the vibe he used to have addressing and giving wise counsels to many in his native tongue.

But he would’ve to tell them his story. So, he pleaded with them to allow him to continue in English.

He called to check on Jane. She was standing outside when he drove in. When they entered her father’s parlor, Jane’s father brought kola-nut and asked Mike to bless it.

“Kola-nut is life,” he said. “Onye wetara kola-nut brought li– life!” He stammered, chewing his tongue.  

 Pausing for some seconds, he shook his head; turned and handed back the kola-nut to his host and begged him to bless the kola-nut instead.

“Your loss of everything about our culture is intolerable.” Jane told him when they came out.

“But I am not totally doing badly, I can remember some things we don’t accept as a people but what I am finding difficult is to speak our native tongue.” Mike answered.

“You’ve become something else.” Jane told him.

“That is my worry!” Mike said, avoiding Jane’s displeased face.

Chiding Mike about forgetting Igbo in a short while is not the solution for him to re-live the past in the moment. Apart, the two languages subliminally became a metaphor for different parts of his life. Igbo became his past and everything from those times that was dear to him. It represents his family and the connection to his emotional and moral side.  However, English is the “now” in his life, his connection to the world around him in UK, the world he’d created away from home, from Igbo, in and around English. English is his life source, his life – its function. He work—read, write, and edit—in English, he converse with his colleagues out there in English, and he spend his time thinking only in English.

“It’s unfortunate! You shouldn’t be bold to claim a victim here!” Jane warned him.

“But now that I’d been away, I am fully different. The drift that’d occurred in my life has bled into my eating habits, my approach to culture, to language, and to the world at large. Not only did I lose immediate touch with Igbo: I also have slowly started forgetting Igbo words, spellings and pronunciations.” Mike said.

Looking him dead in the eyes, Jane told him, “you must stay longer on this vacation before going back to UK. That would afford you time to reconnect with your native culture.”

Mike spent extra weeks closely to his family members before traveling back to UK. He however relearned few Igbo words. He became grateful he listened to Jane’s advice. He couldn't help but wonder how life would have been for him in Okpu n’elu if he hadn't bumped into Jane at the airport.