I will not need to wield a pen like William Shakespeare or scream at the top of my lungs at the summit, before I can tell you that in my part of the world, people are moulded with loamy soil as masterpieces and we cling tightly to the past. Here, where we are richer than Elon Musk in melanin and born to be kings and queens because our hair grows upwards and sits on our scalps as crowns; we hold the foundations our forefathers’ built delicately.
Our forefathers are no longer here but their principles still lord over our lives. My mother often said to me, “Your knees were made for kissing floors” and not a day passed without her reciting it as though she read it from an invincible placard that she held high above her head like Aisha Yesufu did on the streets of Lagos during the End SARS mass protest against police brutality. That bitter past still reverberates as echoes.
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My mother buried the roots of tradition underneath my head and watered them more than rains could have, so they would sprout and yield the healthiest of fruits when she taught me to greet at age five. These knees completely lose their will when an older human is sighted and they proceed to act on impulse. Now, if you see me greet the old woman across the street, you need not ask what language I speak. From the way my knees caress her rug, you can tell I’m a young Nupe woman.
I bear marks on my face that lie on both cheeks and although these marks were born from blades, fires, and herbal concoctions, they were put there to arrive before my speech like a woman’s breasts preceding her chest. You get to know my scars more than you’ll know me.
At twelve, I was put down between my mother’s thighs and scarred once, twice, and finally a thrice. When one cheek was done, my mother made me turn the other but unlike Jesus, I turned the other in tears because the pain that latched unto me overwhelmed my twelve-year-old-self. You might like to think of my forefathers as wicked but now when you see me from a distance, like how I see the streets of Paris from all the postcards, you need not ask of my name. You can tell I was born from a strength laden Nupe woman and fathered by a gallant Nupe man.
When I dance, I tie a strap underneath my buttocks so that when I’m at it, your eyes are also at it. I shake my waist, left and right, up and down to rhythms produced by the hands of the drummers that only the angels are capable of pulling off. If you got a front-row seat at one of our traditional weddings, you would witness more than a dozen young women swaying their hips as though God gifted them newly greased ones, free from rust.
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Serve me a plate of fried rice and I will thank you, but serve me a plate of tuwo rice with bean soup and I will worship you as it was the food my grandfather and grandmother dined on Christmas days. You see, it transcends from generation to generation because on the days my family and I are gathered at the dinner table and tuwo rice is the only food on the menu, we inherit the same Christmas joy my grandparents shared. My elders taught me to say things that hold water and so I would like to support my claim with a real-life experience.
I remember at the beginning of my junior secondary school that culture was a critical topic in Mrs Kwaghsende’s Social Studies class and we were tasked to bring in our native foods, explain the method of preparation, and dress in our native attires. The day my turn arrived, at the sight of my social studies teacher, I dashed into the toilet to change into my Buba and wrapper. I then power walked. One foot followed by the other, steadily gracing the floors of my class with my bare feet and started to present. The teachers stared at me in awe, like a chilled coca-cola bottle on a scorching, sunny Wednesday. I served my teachers a meal that they could bet their last Naira on; a meal so sumptuous that I watched them throw shame out the window as they rid their fingers of soup that stuck to them, one lick after the other. Aside from the full 30 marks I got awarded in that presentation, my classmates and teachers grew angry that I did not bring enough food because food that good shouldn’t be eaten just once. It is a pleasant coincidence that what I write with ease at nineteen would further stitch to my memory what my mother made me memorize a million times over at twelve.
As I said at 2:00pm standing before all twenty-four of my classmates in Mrs Kwaghsende’s Social Studies class, I sit now and pen thoughtful lines at 2:00am on this white canvas. In every stroke, paragraph, and syllable, my pen dances to the melody it finds in the distant croaking of frogs. Lucky for you, I am a Nigerian native. Lucky for you, it is about my culture that you read today.
This article was published in the July 2022 edition of the WSA magazine.
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