Ọkàn náà níláti ní gbogbo tirẹ̀ kí ó tó lè lọ déedée.

(The spirit needs to have all its parts in order that it can do what it must.)

The hole in my soul is slowly filling up.  The journey back to Yorùbáland is a long but moving one.  I had a very memorable conversation—in Yorùbá—with one of my fellow countrymen at the Independence Day parade in New York.  The content of the conversation was not necessarily profound, no.  However, it was the first time that I can remember, since beginning to learn the language, that I held a complete conversation with someone who wasn’t testing me, questioning me or my authenticity, or teaching me the language.  Quite naturally, the brother approached me, asked where I was from, and commenced speaking to me in my language.  I understood every word he said.  No anglicisms.  Quite naturally, I responded fully in Yorùbá.  It felt amazing.  By the end of this little nothing conversation that changed my whole world, it felt like I had just come out of Yorùbá puberty and become a Yorùbá Woman.  When people speak of the vibration felt when speaking this language, it is truly no joke.  Yorùbá is not like any other language.  Definitely not comparable to any european language.  You can feel it in your bones, in your skin. Your soul gets goose bumps- when you feel it.  The ancestors raise hairs on your arms.

An entire world has opened up for me, and will for you when you get to understand what people are saying to each other in this marvelous language.  It is like finally being able to peek into a door that was before locked unto you.  At least now you can see what is going on behind the door, though you may not get the full meaning of it all.  A light is shined on it.  And people are smiling and laughing, enjoying.  You’re glad you finally get to watch them, but you really want to know what they’re laughing at.

It can be hard though, being on the in-between; when you understand some, but not nearly enough.  Not nearly everything.  And when the thoughtless make fun of you, and blame you for your parents’ mistake, you might smile it off, but it does hurt.  It may at times feel like a constant cloud over your head.  But of course, it is simply motivation.  And when they compare a six-year-old’s Yorùbá to yours and pick yours apart, it can be frustrating.  But just enough for you to get your books out and study some more.  The things you learn, they blow your mind.  Gaps are filled in.  Gaps that you didn’t even know were there.

‘Yorùbá’ is actually not a Yorùbá word, but is derived from the Hausa word Yaariba, what they originally called us.  In the Yorùbá language, the people are referred to as Ọmọ Káàárọ̀ o-ò-jíire, or Ọmọ Odùduwà; and the language èdè Káàárọ̀ o-ò-jíire.  The translation of ‘Káàárọ̀ o-ò-jíire’ means ‘Good morning, did you rise well?’  As we love to greet—there is a greeting for every occasion, every situation you can think of owns its own greeting—hence the name of our language and our people is very telling.  ‘Ọmọ’ means ‘descendant of’.  Odùduwà is the common ancestor for all Yorùbá people; thus all would be his descendants.  The Yorùbá Nation is cross-continental, numbering approximately 40 million people from Yorùbáland (Western “Nigeria” and portions of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Sierra Leone) in West Afrika to Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad, and even St. Lucia.  The Yorùbá religion, Ifá, is practiced to varying degrees in all of these places, and in parts of Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina.  The vast majority of the Yorùbá nation outside of The Continent was cruelly displaced to their current locales during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but there is of course also the significant immigrant population of the U.S. and other countries throughout the world.

Of all Afrikan languages, Yorùbá is second only to Swahili in its popularity among Diaspora Afrikans seeking to return to their roots.  The Yorùbá religion, Ifa, is by far the most popular religion among this group of people, recognizing that Lukumi, Santeria, Orisa are all rooted in Ifá.  Being that the overwhelming majority of displaced Afrikan peoples were abducted from West Afrika, it is probably safe to conclude that an indisputably sizeable proportion of Diaspora Afrikans have their roots in and around modern day Yorùbáland.  The depth, breadth and beauty of the Yorùbá language are astonishing even to native speakers, often less likely to appreciate its genius.  Of the fluent population, a small proportion can read and write the language.  Of those who can, an even smaller proportion can use the correct orthography.  Anyone who schooled in Yorùbáland, “Nigeria” past elementary age has heard ‘dòremí’ before.  But how many can break it down for you?  How many can teach it?  What is the real reason that Yorùbá people lose patience when seriously trying to teach the language?

Yorùbá is a powerful language.  Both the spoken language and the culture are born out of the religious tradition.  Why do we kneel to greet our elders?  Out of respect?  Why do we not give and receive with our left hand?  Respect again?  But where did these norms originate?  The Yorùbá people have existed for thousands of years, right?  Was the religion alive back then?  Absolutely.  Was the culture alive back then? Absolutely.  Was the language?  Yes.  Is there a trinity?  Is it possible that a people’s culture can precede their religion?  Or vice versa?  Is it even possible for one to precede the other?

The idioms, the metaphors, the proverbs.  They are powerful.  The depth and breadth of proverbs alone rivals that of the Christian Bible and The Koran.  We should be grateful for the ones that have been written and recorded without forgetting that there is still yet much left to capture.  Yorùbá people don’t just say ‘wedding’, we say ‘ìgbéyàwó’, the carrying of a wife.  Or how about ‘E ku ijọ́ mẹ́ta’, I greet you for three days (of not seeing you).  The english would just say ‘long time, no see’.  My favorite is ‘inú mi dùn’, ‘I’m happy’.  Really it is saying ‘my insides are sweet’.  Poetry.  One of the first proverbs my mother taught me: ‘Bí ọmọdé ba l’așọ bí àgbà, kò lè l’ákísà bí àgbà’, teaches that if a child has as many clothes as an elder, he can never have as many rags.

The language is living.  Every language is its own organism.  Yorùbá, as any other language, requires a certain amount of attention in order to maintain.  She requires even more attention to properly grow and develop.  Language naturally changes as the people use it, picking up new words, dismissing some, misusing others.  Language lives in culture, culture lives in language, and one upholds the other.  The two are inseparable.  Especially in a culture like ours where so much history lives within the oral tradition.

Anglicism is defined as when words like ‘skuulu’ (school), ‘Tusidee’ (Tuesday), ‘keresimesi’ (Christmas), ‘sobujeeti’ (subject) are described as “Yorùbá words”.  Such “words” are derived from anglophone languages and historically snuck into daily use with the Yorùbá people.  To someone like me, they may have once been a blessing because they were the secret to figuring out what my mother was talking about.  When you pick out enough english words, you might be able to more easily deduce some of what is being said.  However, when such words are used in place of the actual Yorùbá words, the language dwindles down to a barebones skeleton held up by its anglicisms.  Most of the time, there is a Yorùbá word that can be used; it may just be too much of a mouthful.  “Mo n try” is an anglicized “I’m trying”.  But how many of you would use “Mo ń gbìyànjú”?  You should try.

Other than the spoken word, languages develop in their written form.  The Yorùbá language can certainly boast of a body of novels and written work, however in order for these works to truly affect the spoken use of the language, my people will first have to learn to read.  Ṣé ẹ lè ká èdè yín?  Pẹ̀lú àwọn àmì náà?  Ṣé ò le o?  And of course this body of work is in need of a “freshness” injection.  How about more of our writers writing in their native tongue and contributing beauty and depth to it in written form like today?  Not that the language is lacking in either, but as a people we must continue to deepen and strengthen it.  On paper.

Learning the language has been a hell of an experience.  For a greedy, hungry knowledge-seeker, the realization that no one can know everything about the language is an itchy and annoying one.  But you come to terms with this, especially when you can’t seem to remember that group of vocabulary words that are all spelled the same but pronounced differently.  But the beauty of the language makes you hunger and thirst for more.  When “what does that mean?” turns into “kíni ìtúmọ̀ yẹn?” and “how do you say…?” becomes “báwo l’a ṣe ń sọ…?” you start to feel good.

There is an impatience that is born in the process, the distance, because you look forward to the day when no one will believe that you ever didn’t speak the language.  To the day that you dream and think in it and she reinstates herself as your mother tongue once again either after 16 years, or 160 years.  For a poet, a language with so many built in idioms, so much metaphor, so much melody, so much story, analogy, history, depth- is simply irresistible.  For someone spiritual, a language with so much prayer, so much blessing, so much praise, worship and power will take you to a place you hadn’t known existed for you, in this life.  So much story, so much music, so much wisdom, so much love, so much family, so much love, that you just can’t stop.

So you get to class early, and you stay late.  And when your teacher, a Puerto Rican Babaláwo with more depth of knowledge on the language and people than probably the president himself, tells you that you pronounced something correctly, well then you start to smile.  And your alighted spirit is finally happy that you are actually getting it and enjoying it and decides to take you dancing around the room, all smiles.  And your ancestors decide that they’ll help you even more with the language, so that things will begin to stick even faster…then the hole in your soul begins to fill…the completion of your spirit makes everything else okay.  And you’re counting the minutes to your next class, studying note cards on the train, talking to yourself in the language like a madman and laughing all the while, saying I’m actually learning Yorùbá!

'A kì í gbàgbé ibi tí a ti bẹ̀rẹ̀ nítorí a kò lè gbàgbé ara wa; a kò lè gbàgbé ibi tí a ń lọ'

(We don’t forget where we came from so that we can’t forget who we are and where we are going)

Written for Omo Naija Magazine, Winter ’08  (omonaijamag.com)