So after a hiatus filled with a crazy summer and crazier first semester, I'm back in blogging action for my return to the motherland. This time I'm in Nigeria, for play, not work like in Ghana.
I believe now is the time to put out there that I haven't been back to Nigeria since '06, but now that I have such close interactions with Africa in two separate occasions, with two quite semi-similar countries, I will naturally have to compare the two. Nigeria by default will always be better simply because they produced an angel as myself. Aside from that, though, I wonder how my posts will change...
So yea, Naija. I flew out of NYC Thursday, landed Friday and now it's Saturday morning in Port Harcourt. This trip started out as any stereotypical flight to Nigeria might. My sister and I met another Nigerian family while waiting in line to check in for our flight and their bags were stacked to the ceiling. Maybe 10 bags for three or four people. They all looked overweight and they were definitely eying our much lighter load, asking if we could take a bag or two for them...Umm...nahhh??. They were stopping in Abuja anyway so it wasn't going to work, but I had to laugh at the situation. Unfortunately, after they tried to check in, we never saw them again...not even on the plane. It's possible that all their load was not allowed on the plane, and therefore, they weren't allowed on the plane. I'm sure it's not the first time for a Nigerian flight, but still kind of sad.
Fast foward past the 15 hrs worth of flying, the 5hr layover in Germany, the worst-then-terrible Lufthansa Airline food, the 2 hr wait for our luggage and the drive back to our house. I'm chillin in the crib, with slightly faulty internet but mad family and BOMB stew and rice to boot. Can't complain about a thing. I think I might try to pick up some pidgin while I'm here make I show am in my posts. O lookie there, I've already started little bit ;). Merry Christmas Eve y'all!!
Showing posts with label Naija. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Naija. Show all posts
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
This Lady Tried to Play Me!!: My Nigerian Accent 5.14.2011-5.18.2011
Guys, I'm Nigerian. If you didn't know that, you don't know me. I'm pretty sure it comes up all the time somehow. But with that being said, I'm really Nigerian-American. Second generation. I haven't spent a majority or a even a significant minority of my life in Nigeria nor do I speak Igbo fluently. BUT, what I do have is a Nigerian accent. Nigerians who do in fact have a Nigerian accent based on the fact that they grew up in Nigeria may disagree with me, but I KNOW that I have a pretty good accent that I can pass with. So, what better place to use this skill than in Ghana? Where I'm close enough that they would actually believe I'm from Nigeria [and therefore not try to play me because I'm American] but not too close that I just see Nigerians all over the place who can refute my accent.
So anyway, this accent helped perfectly when I went to braid my hair. I had planned to get my hair braided but this girl who lives nearby me agreed to go with me to avoid my paying an inflated price. However, due to some miscommunications I ended up sitting alone at a cab station waiting for the girl for thirty minutes (and having some old man hit on me and ask for my number) before I just asked a nearby shop owner where the hair place was and walking there alone. So I get to to Queen's Hair Salon and I'm sitting waiting when I remember that I don't have enough Ghana cedis and that I need to exchange some dollars. So I go to the old lady at front who was apparently the Queen Pin of this little hair shop (with literally 20 girls and women braiding hair; they had 5-6 people braiding one head!) and asked her [in my superb Nigerian accent] where I could exchange money. She told me it was kind of far but she'd have one of her girls go exchange it for me. She saw my twenty though and her look changed; she knew right then was her opportunity to PLAY. ME. So to ensure no one got smart, I told her that exchanging my twenty dollar bill should give me 30 Ghana cedis, which is true, and that's what I expected to get back. Seeing that she couldn't play me in that way, she told me fine, she'd exchange it later, that I should just give her the twenty and she'd give me my change in cedis: 1 Ghana cedi, meaning that my hair would cost me about 29 Ghana cedis. While that's cheap in America, why should I pay more if I don't have to? My friend had told me ahead of time that it should cost around 15 cedis and this lady was going to have me pay 29?! Heeckkk no. So I put a little more power into my Naija accent and told her that I'd heard a different price. She was like o was it 12 cedis? I said, yea something around there, she was like eheh ok that's the price plus the hair, I'll give you 9 cedis back. oooo! So now you suddenly have nearly 10 cedis more to give lady?! Plus at the end she gave me two more cedis back to show that she really, really was cheating me and that she'd changed her mind about mistreating a fellow African lol at least that's my interpretation of how it all went down.
So anyway, this accent helped perfectly when I went to braid my hair. I had planned to get my hair braided but this girl who lives nearby me agreed to go with me to avoid my paying an inflated price. However, due to some miscommunications I ended up sitting alone at a cab station waiting for the girl for thirty minutes (and having some old man hit on me and ask for my number) before I just asked a nearby shop owner where the hair place was and walking there alone. So I get to to Queen's Hair Salon and I'm sitting waiting when I remember that I don't have enough Ghana cedis and that I need to exchange some dollars. So I go to the old lady at front who was apparently the Queen Pin of this little hair shop (with literally 20 girls and women braiding hair; they had 5-6 people braiding one head!) and asked her [in my superb Nigerian accent] where I could exchange money. She told me it was kind of far but she'd have one of her girls go exchange it for me. She saw my twenty though and her look changed; she knew right then was her opportunity to PLAY. ME. So to ensure no one got smart, I told her that exchanging my twenty dollar bill should give me 30 Ghana cedis, which is true, and that's what I expected to get back. Seeing that she couldn't play me in that way, she told me fine, she'd exchange it later, that I should just give her the twenty and she'd give me my change in cedis: 1 Ghana cedi, meaning that my hair would cost me about 29 Ghana cedis. While that's cheap in America, why should I pay more if I don't have to? My friend had told me ahead of time that it should cost around 15 cedis and this lady was going to have me pay 29?! Heeckkk no. So I put a little more power into my Naija accent and told her that I'd heard a different price. She was like o was it 12 cedis? I said, yea something around there, she was like eheh ok that's the price plus the hair, I'll give you 9 cedis back. oooo! So now you suddenly have nearly 10 cedis more to give lady?! Plus at the end she gave me two more cedis back to show that she really, really was cheating me and that she'd changed her mind about mistreating a fellow African lol at least that's my interpretation of how it all went down.
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