By
Obododimma Oha
What if we begin by claiming that money is a kind of language? Rich individuals do not have the time for a lot of words. Not that they like spending money – unless that means using money to get more money --- but they often prefer that the long talk is cut short with notes and coins. No long "grammar, " they would say. In that case, poor people are advised in an Igbo proverb to keep a good distance if the talk gets to spending money: “Okwu baa n’ego, ogbenye esere ọnụ” (If the talk gets to money, the poor would withdraw).
Those of us that are teachers are not spared, for, in a jest, teachers are said to measure the kolanut (to be cut off) with the ruler! Of course, that is not true. The teachers’ assumed miserly nature is exaggerated here. But the fact remains that money and wealth generally are where poor people fear to tread. Money is a kind of language they do not like speaking.
As a poor teacher that only measures the kola nut lobe with the ruler, I have sometimes found myself surrounded by rich people and I have had to speak their language, swallowing my cough sputum out of shame instead of spitting it out. When they are talking of millions, somebody should just run for cover. That the fellow stays on is a great risk. He or she would go home crying inside afterwards.
The use of money as a language shows us how all fingers are not equal. Maybe that is part of the diversity in "language" itself, for we talk of it often as if it is really one. I should think that differences and prejudices in life are played out in the various languages in our language. That is also to say: it is one language, but it does not remain one language!
If money is to be understood as a kind of language created by humans, is it not to facilitate existing languages that are involved in transactions? But if it evolves into becoming a separate language because of excitement or admiration, that is another thing all together. If it becomes a kind of shibboleth, it is human prejudice being extended to other things, a smear on life.
Being there to assist human language in transactions is also interesting. Money is value or a value attributed to things. It is a kind of scale on the value of things. Yet, if the palm-wine tapper were to consider the narrative of the encounter he had with flies up in the tree, who would be able to pay for the wine?
But beyond this measuring, it also brings in symbolic expression of value. The coins and notes do this weighing for us and that is all. If people choose to stock or steal the measure and hide the money somewhere, that only shows how idiotic they have chosen to be.
I am also excited at how money as a language has been traveling among colonised groups. European colonizing powers had to introduce "ego oyibo" (White person's money), with some prestige attached to it, so that it became one of the marvels that local colonised people had to get attached to, worship and chase, while the colonizers strategised and took the lands over completely. Ego oyibo was also a colonial weapon; it was presented as being better, more refined and a way of easing transactions. Have powers that give grants, loans, etc stopped showing that dazzling ego is kola nut not measured with a ruler?
Among the local people of our village, ego oyibo talks and its speech is worth listening to. It speaks as mansions and castles in forests, hospitals, schools, tarred roads, etc.
Whenever ego oyibo speaks, everybody listens.
Nowadays, ego oyibo speaks at social gatherings in dollars and pound sterlings. If it chooses to speak as the local bread label, then the speech must translate into millions. The important thing is that ego oyibo is speaking and you have to listen very attentively.
When ego oyibo is used as "uri" (gifts to performers) at social events, that extravagance and wastefulness is part of the display. Ego oyibo is waste and is used in orchestrating waste. Uri demands that your right hand should not know what your left hand is doing. You are simply wasting.
You can see that money has become a language, not just a personal assistant to language.
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