My Mother Tongue!

I grew up speaking English as my first language and I can tell you that is one fact I am not proud about. I remember once when we were much younger shouting out the only Yoruba words we knew as children 'olosi', 'oloriburuku' etc. My grandmother came out of the house hurriedly to put a stop to our foolishness, what on earth did we think we were doing? she asked, our reply still puts a smile on my face 'we are speaking Yoruba' we replied.

My lack of proficiency in speaking Yoruba ( I can write it:) is revealed anytime I speak to my patients. When our conversation is not just me answering in monosyllables, I begin to speak rapidly in my mother tongue but by the end of my first two sentences, I hear myself stuttering and stammering and Im wondering if the patients don't think this doctor is having a sudden attack of catatonia!

My Yoruba teacher in Secondary school summed up my Yoruba speaking prowess to my parents during an open day 'She is a good student but she speaks Yoruba like an Ibo girl'. My journey to vindicate myself from this unfair statement has been a long and arduous one but one that has so far started to yield results.

I went to a Yoruba town for my housejob, Yoruba is the main language and not the language for members of the low income class group. Very few people spoke English and if you wanted to clerk a patient it was yoruba or nothing! Having someone interprete for you was very frustrating as you would spend 5mins explaining what you want said to the interpreter and all you got in return was a speech of two sentences lasting less than 30secs! Of course half of the information you wanted to pass on is lost. Your best bet is to speak the language.

I very quickly picked up the common phrases and terms used when clerking but of course I got things jumbled up a few times. For example when asking a patient to drink loads of water, I would say ' e mu omi yo' which someone explained to me was meant for drunks! The first few times I attempted to hold a full conversation in Yoruba, I was the subject of jokes by the nursing staff and patients ' a dokita yi o gbo yoruba, se omo yoruba ni?' meaning this doctor doesnt understand yoruba, is she yoruba?.

Anyway old things have passed away..... I can now converse in yoruba pretty well, though many times, Im asked if im from the hinterlands with the phrases I choose to use when speaking, at least its better than being told I speak Yoruba with a foreign accent. One thing Im sure about is that my kids will speak Yoruba as well as English and Hausa. They will be real Wazobia not 'kobokoko'!