FROM THE HEART OF A YOUNG NIGERIAN MOTHER - The Culture Conflict

We’ve all been there. As parents, we remember our sense of pride and accomplishment when our child said his first word; as if it was something we did that made it happen. It not only marked for us a milestone in his development, but finally, we would be able to make sense of something he is saying. It heralded the end of our frustration of having to guess and reduced the number of trials and errors.

If we think about it, though, ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ from our little angel’s lips inspires infinitely more positive feelings than ‘mama’ or ‘baba’, unless we don’ speak English anyway and so we really don’t care.

These days I find my contemporaries faced with the same conflict. Ever wondered how your parents did it so that you not only spoke English fluently but your mother tongue as well? I certainly never gave it much thought…, until I became a mother myself and found myself asking my husband how we expected our children to learn Yoruba (our mother tongue) if we and everyone around them (even their grandparents who we rely upon to anchor us to our traditions) speak only English to them.

‘Why does it matter?’ you may ask. In today’s Nigeria, it’s not likely to make that much of a difference outside the home, particularly since our country is distinguished by its ethnic diversity and the only way we can understand what each other is saying is by speaking English (or pidgin English, which is definitely not anyone’s mother tongue, though some people may beg to differ!)

Consider for a moment that if our ethnicity is so important to us, our language is a big part of it. If then the succeeding generations have Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or any of our many other indigenous languages deleted from their education and vocabulary, aren’t we becoming complicit in erasing a vital part of our identity?

Yes, we give our children foreign names. We all have our reasons for that, and it is a good way to celebrate the good in other cultures; and yes, some of our ‘country people’ beyond our shores have not done much to make us proud of our nationality. It doesn’t change the fact that we have a responsibility to not only our forebears, but to that which puts us on the map of the world.

Our children cannot learn it in school from their Yoruba or Igbo teachers who only expose them to the language twice a week. It comes down to us, mummy, daddy, grandpa, grandma and our ethnic community. Learning about where they are from, like charity, can only begin at home.