OF What I Miss the Most.

Recently I have often been asked: "so what do you miss the most apart from friends and family?" because of course, you will always miss your friends and family...... then I cast my eyes down like i am trying to spell my name for the first time. 

While it is embarrassing for me, I realized I only did that because I thought I had to give a very "Intelligent" answer rather than what I really felt.

So now I am coming clean, what I miss the most is home, when i say home i mean Naija (Nigeria) in all it's multiplicity and Irony, I miss expressing myself "Nigerianly" if you like, meaning I'd like to talk and end my sentences with words like abi? or shey, or sha -which are only adopted interjections that beautify "our" speech, -without having to explain what it means.
I'd like to talk and chip in some broken english which will elicit replies and remarks that often end in fits of laughter because of a mutual understanding of context, I'd like to exclaim and use abeg o!  I'd like to use pronouns most of the time to talk about somebody I had already established at the beginning of a conversation without worrying that I will lose the partner I am having the conversation with along the line........

I met a real "rasta"  from Jamaica on a train platform on my way back from a very long trip. When the train we were waiting for arrived, we sat down beside each other, he tried to initiate a tete a tete with me, but I was too tired to even engage in conversation, so I struggled to keep a ready friendly smile on my face while he regaled me with tales of his family and the trip he was coming from. 

Most challenging for me though was understanding the stories, because each word ended with "man" and the sentence with "you know" and worse still he spoke English, heavily laced with German! I just didn't know what to do?! but immediately he asked me if I knew Akin and Pawpaw, the notorious duo that feature constantly in hilarious Nigerian comedies, I felt my body relax and I beamed effortlessly while he told me the other Nigerian movies he had watched and how he felt about them, we became instant friends! 

A few days later, I met a "drunk" Cuban on a bus, he wore a beret that had a silver star in front and a hairstyle that looked identical to that of Che Guevara the Argentine Marxist revolutionary who was a major figure in the Cuban Revolution. It wasn't his drunken state that first attracted me to him though, rather it was the fact that he kept yelling Viva Africa! and raising his arm to signify strength. 

There were a number of Africans on the bus, who like me had wary looks on their faces and were also looking for polite ways of avoiding him. At this time, I quickly sought the novel that I always tucked away in my bag, and i paid attention to every word, as I read, so I wouldn't be distracted easily..... It worked, but not for long, because i couldn't help following the Che "wanna be" conversation anyway, when he launched into an account of religion in his country and how similar it is to that of Africa and the name Obàtálá kept featuring in the explanation. As far as I knew at the time, Obàtálá had to be part of Yoruba culture but I became increasingly interested and amused when he further groped for other yoruba words to explain what he meant. I found this very strange and my curiousity was at "boiling point", hence, a few "google" hours later, I found the following Information 

Cuba is home to a variety of syncretic religions of largely African cultural origin. According to a US State Department report, some sources estimate that as much as 80 percent of the population consults with practitioners of religions with West African roots, such as Santeria or Yoruba. Santería developed out of the traditions of the Yoruba, one of the African peoples who were imported to Cuba during the 16th through 19th centuries to work on the sugar plantations. Santería blends elements of Christianity and West African beliefs and as such made it possible for the slaves to retain their traditional beliefs while appearing to practice Catholicism. In the religion of the Yoruba people, Obàtálá is the creator of human bodies, which were brought to life by God's breath. Obàtálá is also the owner of all ori or heads. Any orisha may lay claim to an individual, but until that individual is initiated into the priesthood of that orisha, Obàtálá still owns that head. This stems from the belief that the soul resides in the head.

This revelation was so amazing for me, I mean don't get me wrong, I am not originally yoruba, but sometimes you think you are so different, then all of a sudden something very familiar, no matter how remotely so, jumps out on you, then you realize that the similarities are there, they are just waiting to be discovered!