For the Love of Igbo and Igbo Culture

"Igbo Child in Finland" by Adebanji Alade

I recently recalled a conversation I had with a good friend of mine some years ago. I had expressed a desire to study Igbo (language, literature, culture, anything) at the university level but my friend immediately dismissed it as a "stupid" thought. "What? Are you crazy," he asked me in utter disbelief. He had not understood why people go to the university to study English language, much less French, he said. And there I was expressing an interest in Igbo language. I must be crazy, he concluded.

Thank goodness I'm as sane as they come. My sole insanity is my passion for a culture that I love so much--its language, its history, and its people. I remember an equally great passion and pride with which the likes of Nigeria's literary giant, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, and celebrity journalist, Bashorun Dele Momodu (who actually studied Yoruba in the university), speak of their Yoruba culture. I remember a similar fervor with which the 17th century English playwright, William Shakespeare wrote about English culture and by so doing preserved it for posterity in his plays. I remember a comparable enthusiasm that prompted a group of French men in 1883 to found Alliance Francaise "to promote French language and culture around the world." I remember all this and I wonder at my good friend's disdain for the study of his own culture.