The Ability To Even (Collegiate Chronicles)

Slowly Killing, Slowly Living

I am contributing to the death of my culture.

English flows out easily, in speech, in writing, uninhibited, only the sheer flowing of my thoughts and my words. Igbo. I have to translate Igbo in my mind. Then haltingly, slowly, mistakenly bring out the most basic of sentences can barely write, I look around and English: My dog sniffs curiously, trying to figure out what my mom is doing in the kitchen while I sit here, typing quickly on my laptop.

In Igbo. Nkitam ne-eba. Nne no n ime kitchen. M ne use laptop-m.

DO I even know the names of the week (Eke, Afo... what else), colors, people, surroundings, traditions, festivals, songs, love, family, community, tribe, culture.

They killed it slowly.

How do you break a people that are known as proud, that bow for no man, who do not even have kings? By punishment I suppose. You steal, you kill, you destroy, you set rulers they have never had, you scheme, you bomb, you shoot, you burn, you take their children, you disconnect them from their roots, and ensure that they believe your lies about them and themselves and their families and their lives and their people and their language and their foods. And you make sure they believe this is the only way forward in the world you have sliced.

My high school Math teacher, called Igbo, our language, the language he uses to gossip with the Physics teacher, dead. There is nothing you can do with it he said. It cannot take you anywhere.

I will not kill my culture.

I am learning slowly. The way a child learns, by observations and questions, by talking and receiving. And I read the histories and words those who know: Chinua Achebe, Flora Nwapa, Elechi Amadi, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Christopher Okigbo, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cyprian Ekwensi, Buchi Emecheta, my father, my mother, my family, my people, their knowledge, our language.

My children will learn about my culture.

- KC