Today is Thursday and
its time again for another episode of Throwback.
By the way, I hope your week has been fruitful? No annoying
boss making you feel like wielding a gun or turning in your resignation? No
overbearing team mate freaking you the hell out? No much workload making you
feel like you hate your job?
I hope not!
Well, I have been thinking of something and I decided to
share it on Throwback Thursday since it has a great deal to do with how things
were done yester-years.
When I watch all these romantic movies, I wonder how it was
back then in Nigeria. Now, we practically show love like our counterparts do in
the western world; well except we are not big fans of flowers and chocolates. But
we go on dinner dates, picnics, kiss and the rest of it.
Am thinking of say our great grand parents… If a man loved a
woman, does he get to show it like Nollywood portray in movies? You know, by
going to the forest, catching a grasscutter and bringing it to the woman he
loves? Or by sitting in bushes and singing to one another? Did they write
letters…well I doubt that.
Did they even kiss? Not like kiss on the cheek o! I mean,
KISS! Well, even the kiss on the cheek thing, did that happen?
Love is a feeling that has existed since the beginning of
time and will never cease to exist; so it is absolutely thinkable that our
ancestors played love somehow…. How? I just don’t know.
Do you have an idea?
I keep thinking and only very naughty and hilarious thoughts
cross my mind. They sure wouldn’t be plucking leaves and giving to their lovers….nah!
English Language has made it super easy for us to pour out
poems to our loved ones with their easy to express words, but take for instance
a ‘toasting’ scene in a certain village in Igbo land….
Boy: Nne, kedu ka imere?
(Baby, how are you?)
Girl: Adim mma ( I am fine)
Boy: Nne gin a Nna gi kwanu? ( What of your parents?)
Girl: Ha dim ma…
Nna m agala ugbo; Nne m gara ahia ( They are fine… My father has gone to
the farm; My mother went to market)
Boy: Nne, okwa
ima na ihe gin a amasi m? ( Baby, I guess you know that you interest
me?)
Girl: Kedu otu owu? ( How?)
Boy: Ahuru m gin a anya ( I love you)
Girl: Biko kwa ( Please o)
Boy: Ihere ona eme gi? ( Are you shy?)
Girl: Biko anaba gom tupu Nne m na Nna m achoba m ( Please I’ll
be going before my parents start looking for me)
She probably races away and the boy goes home to plot
another strategy to win her. A poem maybe?…
It will be really fun to read a romantic poem composed
entirely in Igbo without the usual sprinkle of English language in it.
If that were English ‘Toasting’ in this day and time, in
that number of seconds the exchange lasted without any reasonable gist so to
say, a guy would have recited at least three poems and if he wows the girl, by
the time the exchange ended, she would have decided how to proceed.
You know, the 60s, 70s and 80s must have been interesting times!
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