Speaking English

I have a postmate who teaches English at the local secondary school. This is mostly advantageous – my postmate is fantastic. In addition to actively listening with feigned interest to all the mundane things I find amusing, she often cooks for me, she cuts my hair, and brings me my mail from Parakou when she makes the trip up there.

However, her students don’t quite seem to know what to do with me. I’m white, but I don’t teach them any classes. Nevertheless, this does not keep them from practicing their English with me. I’ll be walking home from a meeting at 5 PM and they’ll say, “Goot Mahning, Teachah.” Depending on my mood I find this either funny or annoying – in part because it’s not the morning and in part because I’m not a teacher. With my politically-correct Ann Arbor-native leanings, I try not to perpetuate the stereotype that all white people speak English, so I normally respond with a simple, “Bon soir.” Unless I’m reading through yet another translated work of 19th-century Russian literature, in which case I respond, “Yes a fine morning indeed! Capital!” This usually only confuses them, but the point is that they try.

The Nigerians that I know also try. For many of them, English is a language that they only learned in school. Consequently, for many of them, they don’t speak it very well. I asked my friend Matthew one day if he had gone to play soccer that morning.

“No, I don’t go. My machine do not respond me,” he replied, meaning that his motorcycle hadn’t started. Another conversation I had out at a local buvette (bar), with two Nigerian friends. It went like this:

Friend 1: Do you have these buvettes in your country?
Me: Yes, only we don’t call them buvettes, we call them bars.
Friend 1: (getting excited) Yes! This is same as Nigeria!
Friend 2: Yes! We call them bars, also!
Friend 1: Yes, bar. B-E-A-R.
Friend 2: No, that’s “beer.” Bar is B-A-A-R.
Friend 1: Oh…
(silence)
Me: Yep, we have them.

I am actually fascinated with these new insights into the English language - hearing peculiar words or phrases, seeing how even in countries like Nigeria, where it’s the official language, it’s taken a course all its own. It’s a great reminder that language is in a very real sense a living thing.

A few months ago I met a young man in Ouèssè who was a university student in Parakou on break for the holidays with his family. His English was pretty good, and he was thrilled to have the chance to speak with me. Afterward, I told him I’d call him when I was in Parakou for a conference three weeks later. I called him, but school officials had sent him to a town a few hours south and he wouldn’t be back until later. I called him back later but he was still on the road and I was tired, so I didn’t end up meeting with him.

A couple of weeks ago I ran into him in Ouèssè as I was walking home and he offered me a ride.

On the way home he said, “I knew that day when you call you are very hungry for me, but my people they send me everywhere. But I see you are very hungry for me that day.”

Huh. That’s not how I would have described my feelings. Yet here I saw a golden opportunity to have some fun and at the same time not give anyone the wrong impression.

“Yes, I was very hungry for you,” I said. “Starving, in fact.”
“Yes,yes. I knew, I say to myself that you are very hungry.”
“You’re right, I was very hungry for you.”
“Yes,yes. If I don’t go everywhere that night I would come with you any place.”
“Yes, I know you’d follow me anywhere.”
“Yes,yes.”
“Tell you what,” I said, as we pulled up to my house, “next time I’m in Parakou, if I work up an appetite for you, I’ll give you a call.”
“Fine, fine. Yes. See you after.”
“Yes, take care.”

I certainly don’t get as many chances to speak English here as I do back home, so I take advantage when they present themselves. This also helps me put my French into perspective, making it easier to tolerate mistakes I make in that language while at the same time pushing me to improve. But in the end, stripped of all its décor, it’s all simple communication. They know what I mean, and I know what they mean. It’s one of the joys of this experience, realizing that there’s so much that’s different between us, but underneath it all so much that we have in common, and because of that, we understand.