Naka on Wood

Mom when she learned I was reading Chimamanda Adichie’s, “Half of a Yellow Sun.”

*”The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria. Biafra was inhabited mostly by the Igbo people (or Ibo^[1]) and existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970. ”~wiki

My Little Brother asking me a question in reference to some of his uninformed friends and what they ask him when they learn he’s from, “Africa.”

We are from Nigeria, a country colonized by the British.  A side effect of this colonization is the adoption of English as the nation’s lingua franca.

Nawal al Saadawi from “Exile and Resistence”

I can not even begin to speak of how I identify with this. Although even in my identification with this, I still find myself falling short. Because both languages, I speak, are not my mother languages. Arabic is a product of my “arabisation” in language -as a “southern Sudanese” (and I am losing profeciency because of many years in the U.S.). So now I speak english, yet I always feel like I can never capture the essence of anything I am trying to say. Speaking either language leaves me with a strange emptiness. I say strange because I was never taught my mother tongue (the language specific to my ethnic group), so why am I feeling emptiness where it never occupied me? I always feel that my tongue is not part of my body. I am always left dissatisfied whenever I attempt to express myself.

This is why sometime I find myself painting with so much intensity. It’s the only language that feels absolutely true to me. I can construct my own meaning. My own language.

(via daliya)

I can relate to this too.  Growing up in the States and going to high school in Nigeria, I never learned my mother tongue, Igbo, ‘til about 15. And even then it was still a little disconnected because I didn’t understand how significant it was to be speaking the language of my ancestors til after I left Nigeria.  With each year that passes I feel like my Igbo gets a lil worse and I feel like I’m losing my connection to home. It’s a weird feeling.

Back home in Naija we’d do praise and worship as a family or at church after mass and I can’t even describe how wonderful it felt to pray in my language. It’s silly because God hears even our silent prayers so, of course, the language we speak to Him doesn’t matter.  Yet whenever we lifted up praises in Igbo the feeling of joy that swept over me was real.  I don’t think those prayers were holier or better or anything like that.  But I do know that I loved the way they rolled off my tongue…straight to God.