By
Obododimma Oha
This was an experience I had in Accra, Ghana. I have had to narrate it to my students in Nigeria in teaching all kinds of make- belief like novels, films, etc. I have tried to make them understand the difference between fiction and reality, imagination and actual happening. I don't know if I have succeeded or if I have further consolidated the feeling that the differences have been erased. I hope that I have not consolidated the poor judgment.
Are the differences not actually erased or at least threatened in real life?
Let me just continue with my story. I boarded a taxi and was headed for my hotel at Legon. The driver of the vehicle was friendly and cheerful. His car was clean and well-maintained. I could see that. Somehow our talk shifted to Nigeria and he got to know that I was a Nigerian. His attitude to me immediately changed: he became unfriendly and even voiced out as follows : "You Nigerians are horrible!" But I was calm, to my own surprise. I asked him, "Friend, why do you say that?" He exploded: "Look at all the human ritual in your films. The slaughtering of human beings like cattle! Terrible!"
I burst out laughing. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.... He was surprised. It was his turn to become surprised. He asked me: "What is wrong? Is it my English? My grammar? OK, teach me. What did I say wrongly?" I told him that his English was good. That I was laughing because he misunderstood the films. "The films are just fictions! Those things never happened!" It was clear that he did not believe me. He felt that I was cleverly defending Nigeria. Creating the basis for Nigeria to escape blame easily. "No way! I know the trick. You Nigerians shed human blood like anything, hoping to make money." How do I convince this difficult man?
We argued and argued. And he thought that I was patriotically but cleverly defending Nigeria, the great killer. "No way," he concluded vehemently.
Do I now have the courage to argue that killing people is only a make- belief in films? No killing in other spheres? It is only human ritual that involves a make-belief! These people roasted in houses or the shocking images of hands cut off are make-belief. Who is fooling who? I hope that my education does not say one thing here and another there.
Anyway, back to my story. We reached the hotel and he parked. I paid him and he just reversed and drove off fast, as if to avoid getting a plague from this from the Republic of Death! He just ended the conversation or didn't even end it. Only God knows the way he would treat people from countries that kill human beings in money ritual. Their money? Ritual money! Even though it's Cedis! "How are we sure the money was not vomited in a shrine?"
This encounter with a Ghanaian who saw Nigeria through the films set me thinking. How very close fiction is to real life in our mimesis. It is even possible that what is fiction here may be real there! Trouble, especially when immigration borders are crossed. Crossers could be told that they are horrible. They may be re-filmed as too horrible to be welcome as they could spread this horrible life.
It is the same Black Africa but some Africans can be seen through their films. The same Black Africa but some Africans are just horrible, very horrible in the way they slaughter human beings and hope to get rich through it. The same Africa, different regards for human life!
What do I hope to teach again that is free of controversy? Nothing. Especially if I am from a village where human beings are slaughtered for money!
"You Nigerians are horrible." How many labels are there and how many are stamps? I dare not answer that. I am worried about that adjective, "horrible." I have checked all the dictionaries that I could find, including those online. They say nothing good about the word "horrible." So, that taxi driver used a description that wrote off Nigeria from any good book and needed to be re-educated. But I failed woefully in trying to do this. He felt that patriotism stood between sincerity and me, holding a big cane! Teaching, sometimes, is not that easy, especially if minds are made up.
"You Nigerians are horrible," for your films speak about the spilling of human blood as if it is ordinary water and you later argue in my sanctified taxi and tell me that it is nothing but ordinary imagination!
"You Nigerians are just horrible", " for you feel nothing and treat serious tragedy as a mere joke! No wonder your lives are upside-down. No wonder you laugh when you should be weeping.
"You Nigerians are horrible," and one could see it clearly in the way you dress, talk, eat, walk down the street, and sit down.
"You Nigerians are horrible and should be unequivocally told so.
I fell on my face!
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