Being raised in African has its down side too. One of the most treasured culture there is respect. This is an unwritten code or law as it were...
As a young boy or girl, you are not expected to call your uncles and aunties by name. Not your elders. Its a taboo!
You are not expected also to call the married ladies who may be your neighbours by their names...that is if you happen to know their names...
In most cases, you don't know their names-even if you've lived together for twenty years...
Hence, you will often hear 'mama Tosin', 'papa boiboi', 'aunty Chinyere'...'uncle Emma', etc etc...
Some married men and women even extend this respect(?)... or what should I call it, strange(?), bizzare(?) thing to each other at home...
You hear a man calling his wife by the name of one of their children...'mama so-obscure'(quite mouth full) or 'papa Haruna..'.
This is irrespective of education. May be I should say irrespective of whether they went school or not.
The definition of an educated person is as polemic as the different religions on the face of the earth.
This culture of not calling elders by their names is affecting some us seriously.
When you work in Nigeria, the standard procedure of addressing your boss is 'sir' or 'ma'... as the case may be.
Here,(UK) things are quite different to a large extent.
When I was first introduced to my boss... 'she stretched out her hand and said..."call me Tracy"...
And each morning, it is..."hi so-obscure", and I would respond... "hello Tracy..."
Believe you me, it was not easy at first calling her by her first name just like that...
It was not easy for three major reasons: (a) my African upbringing (b) she is my boss and (c) she's about twice my age...
What beats me hollow is why some married men and women back in Africa do not call each other by their first names.
Why must it be 'mama Sikira' or 'papa Mumu'...?
What if they don't have children...what would they call each other...? And by extention, how would they be addressed by their neighbours- especially the children in the neighbourhood...?
PS:
Lets assume for assumption sake, that Charles Taylor was abducted by criminals from Liberia... otherwise, this is a huge mess and world-class embarrassment.
8 comments:
Woke up to the news that Charles Taylor have nabbed by Nigerian police. Good I must say!
This 'war-lord' should be tried fast as delay might amount to denial.
I find your post interesting but a bit too general. Where my parents come from in Nigeria, people address each other by first names. That is the tradition. Kids are expected to call their parents by first names.
However, it is now uncommon for people to address their parents by first names. Yet, it is still very common for people to call their aunts, uncles and elder cousins by their first names. I and the rest of my siblings grew up calling practically all our aunts and uncles by their first names (including those that were twenty or thirty years older than us!). That's the tradition under which we were raised.
So as you can see, addressing people much older than you by their first names is very African. Just that much of Africa doesn't appear to practice it.
Chippla, I appreciate the correction there...
Most times, and erroneously too, we see our vicinity as the world.
I think I have wrongly concluded that what is obtained in my area extends to other parts of Nigeria or Africa...nay!
By the way, what part of Nigeria is that where children call their parents by their first name... I'm sure many like me are not aware of this...
Though some children call their parents, uncles and aunts by their first names in nigeria, i think this is an exception rather than the rule.
Perched in the North East of Nigeria, by the foot of the Mandara mountain range (which forms the border between Nigeria and Cameroon) is a region inhabited by the Higgi people (a tiny ethnic group). This area is in present day Adamawa State, previously known as Gongola State.
Amongst some Higgi cultures, it is customary to address everyone by first name. Were the average Nigerian Yoruba to visit a rural Higgi village, he or she would be perplexed as five year olds address sixty year olds by first name.
Surely Nigeria is an immensely diverse place. Among some Yorubas, it is improper to address even one's elder brother by first name. If I am not mistaken one has to put the word "egbon" before his name. I've always found this strange, not because there's anything wrong with it, but simply because I was raised under a different culture.
While in Lagos (which is where I was born and happen to have spent most of my life), I noticed that sometimes, when speaking to people, I often referred to my aunts and uncles as "Aunty X" or "Uncle Y". Though cosmopolitan, Lagos is Yoruba in character and people would simply have failed to understand how on earth a ten year old could be speaking about a thirty year old and calling him/her by his/her first name. But once at home, I addressed these people by their first names with no qualms whatsoever. Till this day I address most of my aunts and uncles by their first names irrespective of the age difference between us.
However, neither my siblings nor I address our parents by their first names. The English "Mummy and Daddy" was the acceptable norm in Lagos of the mid and late 70s (as it still is today). But my dad addressed his father by his first name. And it was not uncommon for my mum to state that it was a good thing "our paternal grandfather (of blessed memory) never got to find out that we (the kids) actually did not address our dad by his first name." He would have found it unacceptable. But times change.
papa mumu lol!!!
whao! this is quite interesting.
"Most times, and erroneously too, we see our vicinity as the world"
...i love that!
not in my widest imagination would i have assumed that young people call their elders my name in some regions of nigeria.
However, chippla just englightened me and others of this development.
could the stories we hear from places like Benue and the Tivs be true? That friends can entertain their brothers and other friends with their wives? i am sure some us have heard such stories. but i have always doubted the trueness of these stories. anyone who knows should please shed more light as we are in the dark.
@ignoramus...i believe the tiv thing used to be true...but it was stopped a long time ago...kinda like killing twins in the niger delta area, mary slessor and all that lol
(since i am not tiv, i am not 100% percent sure this was ever true. but whenever i teased my tiv friends about it, they would insist it was a long time ago and nobody did it anymore lol)
well some ppl like my grandparents call themselves mommy and daddy (gross!)
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