By
Obododimma Oha
One of the memorable experiences I had of my late father was his use of ancient Uri dịalect once in instructing one of my sisters concerning the palm-oil we were preparing to go and sell at Onitsha at the end of Nigeria-Biafra War. He told my sister that she should put leaves of "ujiri" into the palm-oil boiling so that it would taste good and would not "sleep." My sister went and put leaves of "ugiri" instead and the palm-oil tasted very bitter. When she pointed out that she thought that he meant "ugiri," my father was horrified. The palm-oil was ruined and could not be sold at Onitsha as planned.
Whose fault, you might ask. But part of the training we should be receiving as humans is about language. Children have to be taught that language changes from time to time and from place to place. That means that they have to be told that context and language go together.
Thinking that language is just one or same, that there are no varieties, can lead to terrible and regrettable consequences. Again, imposing one variety on people who are used to another variety can have terrible consequences.
My father was not giving instructions to Uri ancients who knew what "ujiri" was. He was giving instructions to a post-war Igbo who knew "ujiri" only as "oroma," the nearest in sound being "ugiri", which was the "agbọnọ" tree. In that case, it wasn't my sister's fault. It was my father's fault for using temporal dịalect outside its setting. If my father had known that his language would be misinterpreted, he would have been more careful in his diction. So, punishing my sister was ruled out.
That means that outside a given context, we could be misunderstood. It is then necessary to be mindful of this and to realize that our listeners have a lot to subject our words to, actually weighing and refining and testing, even "tasting" and starting all over. Anything could happen to interpretation along the line.
But let us consider it this way. Many discoveries in life can come with great price. In the narrative, the oil was bitter and could not be sold. But the experience was a great lesson. It wasn't just about the variability of language as discussed above. It was also about discovery and its pains sometimes. The spirit of discovery now tells us that if we put ugiri leaves into oil, the oil would turn bitter after some time. That means we should avoid such for oil that has to be sold. Maybe it can cure an illness, who knows. But that is a different matter. So the scientific spirit is for discovering what can be added and what cannot. I hope that my father and my sister saw this angle, instead of apportioning blame.
The war that just ended had thought us a great lesson on self-reliance and resourfulness. I hope that we hadn't forgotten that. We needed to continue showing that resourfulness and continue learning. What can we achieve from our confusion? What can we learn? Is our daily bread baked and sliced by the angels of God? So, ujiri confusion was asking us to start thinking. We don't have to immerse ourselves like Archimedes in a public bath to recognize the eureka in that understanding of "ujiri" as "ugiri."
Another thing is the little tricks that words that resemble in any language can play on us. Linguists call such words "minimal pairs" and these are some examples : "but" and " bat," "seat" and "sit." Of course, the boundaries in words are still there, but recognizing them is the real tricky part!
But, I missed a golden opportunity of learning more ancient Uri words. The old man is now the same with the soil and words like "ujiri" joined the soil with him. Maybe if I had humbly asked for more, he would have volunteered them, instead of my thinking that my "modernity" was preferable and the only reality.
Many times we have claimed that parents are the first professors that their children have. This case is one example of the nature of such professorship and how to manage it. I had talked about making more enquiries about the chronological relatives of "ujiri." That is just one of them. Perhaps, the overriding is setting learners upon a task. This task involves varieties of language and problems they could create. Can the learner identify possible problem areas and discuss how they could be managed?
Another thing is partly contextual. This confusion occurred in a task involving children at the end of Nigeria-Biafra War and survival is primary. It is therefore potentially a class on self-reliance and resourcefulness. The children were also being shown how to enlist personal skills to survive, even when opportunities are limited. In that case, the failure of the oil project is significant : when pursuing such tasks, it is necessary to check possible forces waiting to make it fail and handle them.
The "Ujiri" experience was an important learning session. Among the lessons is that "Ujiri" is not the same as "Ugiri." It is noteworthy that they belong to two different temporal contexts.
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