Tell Me About Your Heuschma

This is a special report on the communication issues one has to deal with while living in a different country. And since we all know that communication is the basis for living comfortably among other people, we all know that it can get messy sometimes.
You may not realize that even though I’m in an English speaking country that there is definite communication breakdown. I dare not venture to say it’s worse than being completely surrounded by a different language, but it certainly creates a lot of different issues, especially when the whole country has been learning English wrong for quite a while. Then again who am I to actually say what’s right or wrong? Just because I’m good at English doesn’t mean I know everything about it. Anyway, just so you can experience the confusion that comes with accents and regional dialects of English when it’s mixed with native tribal words, I’ve written some observations down for you.
(1) Their questions do not go up at the end, they sound just as much like statements as statements do, so often times when they are asking you something you might not be aware that it’s a question until the 3rd or 4th time.
(2) “Taken” means to them what “eaten” means to us.
(3) I don’t have to adapt such cultural ways of talking like “Ahaaa”, the new suffix –o, and their obsession with “ok, ok!” but it makes things more fun, and more understandable for them. I also adapt an accent most of the time because they honestly hardly can understand me otherwise.
(4) They are often very vague. Maybe they do this on purpose to make conversations longer, but I don’t quite appreciate it like that. “I have taken this” as answer to a question will be shortened to “I have” which is something we are accustomed to, but those of us who are really proper generally add a “yes” or something akin to that. What’s confusing about this is that you might ask them if they have something and instead of saying “yes” (which is a pretty simple answer, by the way) they’ll say “I have.” You have what? Do you really have? I understand… but just finish the sentence! I haven’t blown up about this yet though so don’t worry.
(5) “I’m coming” means they are coming back… sometime. Could be a few minutes, or as soon as they possibly could within the next hour—like Americans would interpret it—or it could be next morning, or a even whole day away. No joke. One time, we were waiting outside a locked building for an hour and a half for a guy who was “coming.” A classic example of being very vague. You might say that this isn’t that bad, because sometimes things like this happen with those of us who use English as our first language too, but the difference is that this is as far as they go in explaining it to you. So if you ask them when they’re coming back, you’ll only confuse them and they’ll repeat “I’m coming.” Which leads me to my next point.
(6) Being direct is not an option. This may sound similar to point 4, “They are often very vague,” but it’s different. They will be indirect to the point of pain. It’s so weird to be listening to a normal conversation about families or something and then finding out when one party leaves that someone got roped into doing something. Really? I thought it was just a conversation about life.
(7) Their scale of well-being is different than ours. “Wonderful,” “awful,” and “awesome” all mean the same thing: full of wonder or awe – often times not in a good way. “Fine” is the best compliment or grade of anything, “Okay” is next, and then “very good,” “good,” “not so good,” then “manageable.” If someone asks you how your night was and you replied with something like, “horrible,” they would probably be so confused they’d be speechless, which probably wouldn’t add to your mood so well since you just had a bad night, and now you had to explain it, so just don’t do it.
(8) Not greeting someone is a terrible insult. And greeting them with the wrong greeting isn’t too fantastic either, but I think they’re ok with me messing up because I’m oyinbo (foreigner aka anyone not dark skinned), I don’t really understand their culture, and they get to laugh at me in the process, and they dearly love to laugh. The reason I say “greet” instead of “saying hello” to everyone is because that’s not really considered a proper greeting. More proper would be “good morning” for any hour before 12:00pm, “good afternoon” from the hours 12:00pm-4:00pm, and “good evening” for any time after 4:00pm, which can be switched with “good night” (even at 4:00) as long as you won’t be seeing that person for the rest of the day. If they are working, if they are eating, if you are eating, if you haven’t seen them since yesterday, or if you haven’t seen them since yesterday when they were working, if you see them once in the morning and then later on in the morning when they are now working, there will be a different greeting for each one, and then many, many more beyond that. So depending on your situation and the other person’s you could easily exchange at least four or five equally appropriate greetings before you start talking about anything.
(9) That being said, once you start talking about something—if it’s not already a part of your greeting—you ask the other person how their family is, and their own health, and their night, if you haven’t seen them since yesterday, and maybe even their home. Then you can start talking about whatever it is you were going to talk about. But even if you weren’t going to talk about anything, those things would be appreciated by the greet-ee each time.
(10) The suffix “ –o” I referred to in (4) is actually the Yoruba word (word, not letter, mind you) for “you”. It is the nice way to say things because it makes whatever it is more personal. For example E kaaro means “good morning” but to be nice, properly you would say E kaaro o, which to me sounds the same, but to them, apparently not. No one cares anyway, as long as there’s an “o” sound at the end of that, you’re good, but I like to draw it out an extra 1/2 a second to really get the feeling that I’m Nigerian.
(11) “Well done” is not a gradient of cooked meat. In fact, if someone happens to be cooking meat, there’s really only one way to have it: the way they give it to you, because if you refuse a gift, that is very very bad. Anyway, “well done” is what you say to someone while they are working. So if you are at all eating meat, you might try saying “well done” to the person cooking it but the only thing you will get is E she o! (which means thank you), and a bite-size piece of some sort of blackened muscle.
(12) The terms used when referring to someone are very important and they have specific guidelines. If you use the wrong one, it’s like getting called a child when you’re 13 and you scream out, “I’m a teenager!” except that everyone feels that way, even without the hormonal expectations that would cause such a grudge from a 13 year old.

Baby – Child who has not started school yet (keep in mind that they generally start at age 3).

Girl or Boy – Female or male child who is within the proper ages to be in any schooling before secondary school (equivalent of middle and high school together).

Auntie or Uncle – Anyone except a boy or girl if you don’t know them, or the term students use toward teachers.

Sister or Brother – Anyone if you’re religious, more seriously those that are the same town or tribe as you, and quite literally those that are born from one of the same parents as you.

Ma or Sir – Woman or man of higher standing than Auntie or Uncle. A visitor would be “Ma” or “Sir”, and more generally if you knew they were over a certain age, or if they have lots of children.

Mama or Mommy, or Baba or Daddy – General terms used toward people you don’t know but you know are older than you. More respectful than Auntie or Uncle

Mama _____ or Baba _____ (insert their child’s name) – What you would call someone in place of a name, if they so wished, generally used among friends or good acquaintances. Especially used (at least by oyinbo) when they have a particularly difficult name to pronounce, or among everyone when they have a child of high standing somehow. For example, someone that works for Belen is called Mama Twins, because she has twins, and twins are a very special thing in the Yoruba tribe. Or Belen is referred to as Mama Joshua or Mama Michaela because everyone recognizes little oyinbo children.
(13) Back to the literary side of things, I should mention that they don’t know how to pronounce “h” or “th”. This creates a series of problems with me as a teacher. One day, as I was covering homonyms (for those of you who don’t know: words that mean different things but sound the same), I was writing down this huge list mostly to just cover “to”, “two” & “too”, and “they’re”, “their” & “there”. But then I came upon “here”, “hear” and, according to the class, “ear” and “hair”. Homonyms for “it” is “hit”, “is” is “his”, and “at” is “hat”. Also the “th” sound is pronounced “d” if that even, otherwise it’s just “t”. So “that” is pronounced either “dat” or “tat” most of the time. Kids are hard enough to understand anyway, so when you add in the fact that they pronounce basic words differently and that they have a much different word choice for many things, conversations should be near impossible. So sometimes students will be telling me things that I cannot wrap my mind around to figure out at all, and some Yoruba someone will have to interpret. Just the other day I had this conversation with a student:

Student: “Auntie, they’ve took my heuschma.” (pronounced heuschma)
Me: “What?”
Student: “They’ve took my heuschma.”
Me: “What is that?”
Student: “My heuschma.”
Me: “You have a heuschma? I don’t know what that is.”
Student: “My heuschma.”
Me: “What is a heuschma?”
Student: “Thank you, Auntie.” (runs off)
Honestly I still do not know whatever a heuschma might be, and even less do I understand how I helped him in any way.
(14) Finally, the last thing I have to say about Nigerian English (at least for now), is that they love to talk about food. Since interesting conversation has to include topics that both sides understand, often times the conversations will be boiled down to weather, religion, teaching, and food. Since we get tired of talking about the weather, teaching doesn’t change much and we do it all day anyway, and religion is just about the same, food is the most talked about subject between me and my Nigerian friends, aka, the teachers. The only reason I really mention this is because if you ever happen to come to Nigeria, and more specifically a place where the Yoruba tribe is, make sure you like spicy food because the first, most memorable, and most confusing conversations all have to do with food, and since you haven’t tried their food, or don’t know what it was called if you have, they will bring you some to eat. Then you will end up like me last quarter, eating Nigerian food every morning and getting addicted to the simple, fattening ways of palm oil, chili peppers, beans and rice (or at least having stomach issues from it).

So I hope you have learned a little bit about Nigerian communication, and possibly their culture, and of course, what I have to deal with every day. It sure has been fun to report.