A Time to Build

In most parts of the British Empire in Africa, the missionaries played a very important part in formal education. In my part of the world, there was competition between the catholic and protestant missions in their educational programs. Invariably there was stiff competition between the pupils from the Catholic and Protestant schools. Pupils competed on the sports field and then retired to the sidelines or the market places to engage in competitions in the fluent speaking of the English language. At these competitions, popularly known as “shon”, the meaning was not the issue. The boy - it was invariably boys - who could drop the longest words with the greatest confidence and fluency was the winner of the competition. Young men scoured the dictionaries for the longest words they could memorize. Some of those who were fortunate to have older siblings in secondary schools that were few and far between had an added advantage. They could scour through their elder siblings’ biology textbooks for fabulous zoological and botanical names that they used to bamboozle their hapless mates with. Nobody cared what the long words meant or whether they constituted anything meaningful in intelligent speech. The audience consisting of peasant farmers and their wives did not know a single word of the Queen’s language anyway. The excitement of the shon was in the impression. In the mid-fifties, in the rural primary school of Pika, there was a brazen young man by the name of Iortswam Nev, Di-Nev to his friends. He was an undisputed shon champion in his school. Since the words in the Queen’s language had a tendency to prove themselves too short when he needed them to clinch a shon competition, Di-Nev decided to invent some of his own. It happened one day when Pika, the protestant school had not done too well on the sports field against Adebo, the Catholic school. They would have to do something drastic in the shon if they hoped to draw any applause that day. The battle lines were drawn in the dry sandy concourse of Akpagher market. Di-Nev found himself face to face with the pesky Orakem, the square-headed weaverbird of Adebo, so nicknamed because of the way he could send intimidating English words tumbling out of his mouth like a chattering weaverbird. If such words happened to be botanical or zoological words couched in ancient Latin that had been memorized from a Biology textbook, well, that was an “insignificant coincidental”. “Cascara sagrada, carica papaya” Orakem opened in double-barreled fashion. “You higgledy-piggledy boy” Di-Nev countered. Orakem waited for the applause to die down then jabbing a finger towards his taller opponent’s nose he exclaimed in his staccato voice: “Musca domestica! Periplanata Americana!” Di-Nev did not miss a beat. Twirling on his heel and waving an expansive hand to the attentive audience he pronounced as one with profound wisdom: “Oryctolagus cuniculus! Hibiscus Esculentas”. As he turned back to face his opponent, he thought he could detect the killer instinct in the eyes of Orakem. As the latest applause died down, Orakem suddenly started pounding the ground with his right foot while he punched his left palm with his right fist as he rattled out a few more words before dropping what would have been the killer word. “Ipomoea! Thoracic vertebra! Caudal vertebra! Medulla oblongata! Antidisestablishmentarianism!” The applause was deafening. Di-Nev Almost screamed ‘foul!’ How dare the pesky sneak! Antidisestablishmentarianism was his own word, from his own Collins National Dictionary, bought for him by his Uncle Benjie who had returned from years of service with the Brits in Burma or some such place. He felt cheated. Since he had got his Collins and discovered that word, it was like he had a copyright to it. Nobody had dared use it before especially in shon competition against him. That is why he was highly sought after by his schoolmates when there was a competition and that was the word he always dropped as a clincher. So far, nobody had been able to stand it. And now, the pesky sneak of a weaverbird had taken it right out of his mouth and used it against him. And that was when it happened. As the applause died down, the word just sprung into his throat. It was by pure inspiration. It started like a growl in his throat and built itself into a crescendo that left him standing with his hands stretched out and up palms upwards as he pulled himself to his full height and felt as if he could touch the sky. “Angerakuzenegezengezong! Tyum tyum matityud! I charge in kwijitiv!” Orakem had no further response. The market broke out in riotous applause as Di-Nev’s schoolmates carried him shoulder-high and broke into joyous songs of victory. “We are the wonderful people of Pika School We are the wonderful people of Pika School If by any chance you don’t know us Better come and learn to know us” Not only had Di-Nev wiped away the humiliation of Pika’s defeat on the sports field, but also he had created a new vocabulary for the shon competition. The word Angerakuzengezengezong with all its attachments had passed into official shon vocabulary from that day on.