taburma
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 16/Aug/2010 21:40, 34 days ago
A really splendid element of Nigerian culture– and one somewhat foreign from my own – is a pretty much total focus on saying it like it is.  It’s the Ronseal – or Cillit Bang - approach to communication.On the one hand, to jaded British eyes, this feels sweetly, absurdly naive: advertising often feels like it’s never heard of Freud’s nephew (what’s his name?), and is still stuck in the moment of carefully explaining to the casual billboard reader why a particular brand is worth your expenditure.  (By contrast, there’s a nice little sequence in ‘Yes Man’ where his game is to say ‘yes’ to any question – but it doesn’t lead to buying anything because British advertising is now too sophisticated to just ask you buy the wretched product.)  From another perspective, it feels brilliantly and almost profoundly direct: our local prison has a sign outside bearing the legend‘we correct the legally interred: accept them on their return’.  Society is this simple– shove that in your pipe, M.Foucault. As a tourist, there’s still something charming and delightful about children and adults alike shouting, with great delight,baturi!oroyibo!when they see you.  Both translate, pretty much, as‘white man!’ (though I thinkbaturiat least is theoretically more specific to Brits).  And the appropriate response is to smile and greet back– as if the ecstatic declaration of a noun counts as saying hello.  There remains a deep urge to shout‘black man’ back (like when someone in the UK calls you a ‘young man’ and you call them ‘old lady’ in return), and one day I just might; I somehow suspect that’d go down better here than in the UK.  But as I increasingly pretend to myself that I’m naturalised here, and confident with everything, and basically indistinguishable from people who’ve grown up in these streets, with this language, living this life, I guess it’ll become annoying: a perpetual reminder of who I am – or, more accurately, who I’m not.Nigerian culture is deeply based on status: who you are and where your feet delicately stand in society’s balances matters deeply.  I’m beginning to think that the immense significance of greetings here – the little ritualistic dance which commences every conversation – might have something to do with the same cultural impetus: ‘this is who we are, this is what we’re doing, this is the level of our relationship’.  I think that naming people, saying what you see, might be an equivalent to what I feel is my European (male?) instinct to write what I see: maps, for instance, are an entirely alien concept here.  And places are described– not by what they’re called – but by what they’re near, or what they look like, or by what they used to be, once.  I’m grasping towards this – straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness – but I think there’s something there, because it’s a fairly fundamental difference.  I feel more comfortable in a relationship where I can feel out the balance; work out what’s what and who’s who; seek out signals and test the water.  And then I can give names to all of the little movements and verbal tics and call it wisdom and understanding.  Here', I feel that people would rather point at someone else, say what the difference is, and get on with things.  I can’t really conceive of a better and worse in that scale, as I can’t in most things (apart from poets: there’s a clear sliding rule for them), but I can – I do – find it both challenging and exciting. (And kinda funny.  When else would you see a finger in your face and hear someone (who’s trying to be welcoming) yell ‘hey, whitey, what are you doing here?!’.  What’s not to like?)