By
Obododimma Oha
One of the very sad things that have happened to people who went to school in some African countries and later took "ọrụ oyibo" (white collar job) is that they are severed from their local areas: physically, emotionally, culturally, etc. They tend to like this separation, which is reinforced with the narrative that the local area is not for them, that it is full of wicked practices, that they should just buy a parcel of land in the urban area and build a living house there through a cooperative society. Their pastors also tell them that "problems from home" are after their success in life.
So, they listen to this fear narrative.
They retire from their jobs and die soon after returning to the local areas or live with high walls around their houses where they stay and hardly come out. If they come out, something would devour them. They have to stay indoors to be safe.
Some buy parcels of land near where they worked and build houses to live. But they die soon afterwards and the argument is whether to buy somewhere and bury the bodies or to carry the bodies to the local areas for burial, even though they never lived there.
The wound is deep, very deep.
Simple cultural practices of their people,they don't know or cannot narrate them. Truly, the wound is deep. They are cut off. Cut off from the culture of the local area. Cut off from the ideas of the local area. Cut off....
These days of killings and kidnapping, there is a good excuse for not going to the local areas!
Given that "ndị ọrụ oyibo" hardly visit the local areas, their children do not know the folktales, proverbs, folk sayings, local languages, and relatives.
How can they know the exploits of tortoise the trickster? How can they know the tricks he played to marry the king's daughter?
How can they speak in proverbs when they don't speak or understand the local languages?
In the "ọrụ oyibo" home, what name does the father or husband bear and what names are given to his children? And the language spoken in the home? Is it not the language he thinks has a future?
When do the parents themselves use the proverbs and wise sayings? Is it not a matter of learning from ignorance and lack of knowledge of local ways!
Foreigners and even tourists give them information about their own cultures. They only learn to repeat what they are told and are promoted on their jobs! They are cut off too from thinking about their own life.
Their children are also cut off from their roots. They hardly travel to the local areas and don't know their relatives or communicate with them. Let us not talk about their cultural backgrounds. They don't have any!
The wound is truly deep.
Surprisingly, I do sometimes, see video clips of children who live with their parents and go to school in America or Canada and these children not only bear local African names but can speak indigenous African languages faultlessly! This is exemplary and impressive but it is an exception.
We are talking of being cut off. Is it not also seen in the attitude to whatever is local. That thing is already always inferior to the foreign, especially foreign things from Europe and America. That is the common assumption.
Their ancestors are not thinkers and are not quotable. How can a seasoned scholar even quote ancestors and masqueraders? It's nonsense!
Our person sympathizes with local people! That is great rhetoric! But he is the one to be pitied. He is nowhere.
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