Yio Leyin: The Aftermath.
If you grew up in a Nigerian home, you know Saturday morning breakfast is either of the following options. Moimoi and Eko; Akara and Oki, Yam, corn beef stew, fish sauce, or egg. It seldom changes, even for selective children like moi. My mother has a high preference for certain things, and sometimes, it seems I took after her. For example, Mummy thinks that the blender does not do good work for moimoi or ekuru, so the rule is to go and ground it.
One of my Aunties, for whatever reason, would always insist on going to ground beans on certain Saturdays. Sometimes she can be gone for hours even though there may not be a queue where they ground beans. Then, when she returned after we might have found something else to eat, she had every excuse to fit into why she was late. One time she went like that, I peeled another beans, used a grounding stone to ground beans, and made Akara so we could have breakfast. My Aunty's excuses always vary from "I went to 7th street to ground the beans because the woman closer ground ogbono in her grinding machine" to "I went to the next town to ground the beans because the woman on the 3rd street was dirty, and I didn't want anyone to have food poisoning in this house".
Whenever she did this, my mother would start singing, "yio leyin o, oro yi yio leyin o". True to my mother's song, one day, in the Nollywood-like fashion that signals that a character is pregnant, Aunty started vomiting. My Mum started singing her song "yio leyin." To be sure, Mum does not believe that teen pregnancy ruins your life. She seems to think that being a teenager is complex in its place; why have a baby when you are not ready. She would say "Ki lo fe fi ikanju la obe gbigbona".
Since the embers of ethnic bigotry have intensified this election, I thought about my late mother's song. "yio leyin." I wonder if the 1953 Kano riots, in which alleged insult of Hausas in Lagos, led to several crises which continue to morph in several ways in Nigeria politics till today taught us any lesson. Why is ethnicity always a sword during electoral battles, yet corruption continually wears the garb of national character?
For someone like me who is often profiled as a specific ethnicity, the first day I spoke Yoruba, some people were shocked. It is why many people constantly ask my egbon, whose grandfather and my father are the same father and mother, how we are related. I am fair in complexion; he is dark. People have severally told me they think I am Igbo; when I speak my rusty igbomina, they are always surprised.
As I think about this increasing ethnic fire that we are stoking, I am reminded of a Judeo-Christian text on several things God hates, including a person who sows discord among brethren(Proverb 16: 9b). It is not like after this election; you will not eat Suya or ask which is the latest owambe in town, or I will not call my Igbo customer Sunday in Idumota for my human hair.
Let us be guided. Nation, not Gastro!
Posted on Facebook on March 14, 2023.
Image used under @ Creative common. Photo credit: Google
