Family Meeting

This essay was first published in Ake Review in 2021

Ake Review 2021

Namse Udosen

We lay on raffia mats, waving cardboards, exercise books and plastic plate covers over our sweaty bodies. The world cup draws was on the plate for consumption. Nigeria had been drawn together with Argentina and England.
“We will beat Sweden and manage a draw with England”, Anom was very confident.
The air was thick with our voices, as permutated the games. The beep of dad’s phone sliced through our boisterous conversations.
“It’s uncle Nse from London!” A burst of excitement enveloped us. We hunched forward, almost like we wanted to get into the phone and hug Uncle Nse. Uncle the other cousins are here oh! He put the phone on speaker mode.
“Ndito ete, abadie?” “How are you my children?” His Ibibio was sweet and flawless.
Uncle we are fine! We chorused in English.
Uncle Nse had lived in London for over thirty years yet his Ibibio never left his tongue. He wondered why we always spoke English to him whenever he called. He was not alone. Most relatives who visited us turned up their noses at our spoken Ibibio. How can children with excellent Ibibio speaking parents have such terrible command of the language?
Unfortunately the generation of our parents have not come to grips with the variance between the homogenous community they suckled in and our multi-cultural present abodes. I wonder how they lost track of their economic emancipation sojourns from the homeland to cities far away. The journey that has produced these “foreign” children.
Our conversation turned to the world cup draws. In a moment of mischief, I asked him who he would support when the Super Eagles took on the Three Lions. He scuffed and told us his family dilemma. He always supports Nigeria but all his sons were rooting for England.
“That’s not patriotic!” One of us yelled into the speaker.
There was a silence that accompanied the crackle of static waves.
“My sons are very patriotic British lads.”
The irony of the statement is bang on my mind. It floods me with questions. How can sons of an Ibibio, Nigerian, and African be patriotic British lads? Uncle Nse never turned his back on his Ibibio or African heritage. He spoke better Ibibio than all of us who has lived in Nigeria all our lives. He had for years hammered on our parents to make us speak the language. Now he is telling us his sons are patriotic British lads.
I and my siblings were born and raised in Lagos. We lived in a compound with four flats of three different ethnicities. I went to schools with children from diverse backgrounds. I was fed with content from different continents. Tupac, Nas, Wutang Clan were my hommies. I drank from cups of mixed liquor daily, there is no way I would belch in Ibibio like my father.
Time rolls me into a different space. I also question my identity? Am I Ibibio or Nigeria or African? Can I be all three or more? I have melted into a world of experiences that makes my concept of identity more complex than that of my parents’ generation. My younger brother has a child and we adorn our finest garments to name him.
His name is ‘Zichat’!
Uncles and aunties don’t get it. Dad is furious. “What kind of name is that?”
My brother decided to name his son after a childhood friend from Kaduna. He argues that the child’s identity is within him. It’s a difficult ball of eba to push down the gullet for daddy and his brothers. I remind them that if they can have a nephew named Inyang who is British, they should be cool with having a grandson named Zichat that is Ibibio.
They rant about how the children are losing it. Uncle Udoh laments about his son abandoning the family hotel business for a career in digital content creation. Aunty Ukeme whips out her phone and fumbles with the buttons. I stifle a giggle.
“My brothers, my problem is with Adiaha Nmi (my first daughter). She and her husband are putting their naked pictures on the internet, look here”, she waves her phone in their faces.
“Aunty, they are not nude na!” I smile at the images of my cousin in beach wear.
They filled the air in the compound with clichés and rhetoric of bad behaviours spanning; social media use, weak husbands, lazy wives digital careers, nudity and me.
Dad reminds me of my ‘Lebanese’ friend, Antanios, who always got knocks when he turns down momsie’s delicious Afang soup because he is a vegetarian. He rubs it in my face that the white boy claims to be Nigerian.

“How can he be Nigerian but does not eat swallow and meat? How can a white man be an African or Nigerian?”
My aunties and uncles laugh.
I tell them the world does not revolve around their prejudices and how my friend speaks Yoruba and Pidgin English fluently. He knows more Nigerian villages than most all of them combined. To Uncle Udoh, I break down the earnings of a digital content creator. I peel the layers of coding, programming and digital products creation. He still doesn’t get why his son would make more money from that than from running his run down hotel.
It’s a recurring debate that never goes away. Anytime the family gathers for an event, we go through the motions of how the world has evolved from their time. It usually ends with “so that is why you don’t want to marry?”
That’s the cue to take the sparing to the next level. They shut their minds to my emotional and financial instability for marriage explanations.
“At your age, you should be married. Are you not a man?”
After years of battle, I have decided not to pay heed to their shenanigans. The family meetings are merry-go-round trips of discordance.