Nigeria Content Online

Every columnist
worth his or her onions and tomatoes has written about the vuvuzela,
the non-musical musical instrument of choice for fans at the World Cup
in South Africa. The “others” are finding Africaness difficult to
contend with. The suburbia cannot handle the disturbia. Some compare it
to the humming of a million bees while others say the sound is like an
African elephant charging in the jungle.

They say the sound
is distracting them, making conversation difficult during play –
Omaseo! I have never heard where football is quietly played like golf
in Augusta, Georgia. I really feel sorry for these people; life must be
difficult outside GRAs of their clinical world.

And patiently I am
waiting for the first Lagosian or the average Nigerian to complain
about the vuvuzela, so I can scream HYPOCRITE! Not with the honking of
cars, molues, trucks or okada horns blasting day and night in our
streets.

As for me, the
sound of a vuvuzela is not strange to me one bit. Where I come from it
is known as akala (ours is made from wood), usually blown during the
Esan Igbabornelimin (dance of the spirit). The akala is an essential
musical instrument that whips up the spirit in the masquerade to
perform the magic that makes him spin in mid-air, sometimes with one
leg. The masquerade yearns for the akala sound, without it the dance is
lacklustre, dull, dispirited and sadly un-African.

As a kid, the sound
of the akala also signified the imminent dance, the calling of the
ancestors to come for an earthly jamboree. That experience is ancient
now, the sound of the Esan vuvuzela known as akala is gradually fading
because the masquerades have left the square.

The new vuvuzelic
experience I am having these days is in my Lagos neigbourhood. Day and
night, I hear the vuvuzela-like humming sound from north, south, east
and west of my apartment. My neighbours’ generators (including my small
“I better pass my neighbour”) generate so much noise that what these
vuvuzela Europeans are complaining about sounds like Hugh Masekela’s
Hope album in one’s ears.

The one that really
mimics the sound of one-hundred-and-fifty-million humming bees is the
generator that belongs to the Redeemed Church opposite my parlour. It
is one of those earth-shaking types that give my entire house
earthquake tremors. It used to annoy me, but because it belongs to the
house of God, I have figured out a way to benefit from the booming
sound. Every Sunday morning before I go to my own service, I put on a
track suit, stand in my living room with feet firmly placed on the
ground and I’d grip the burglary proofing on my window, with my iPod
blasting “I have a very big God du o, who is always on my side…” After
about thirty minutes of the generator’s sound shaking me up, I start
sweating like a vuvuzela dipped in water. That is my Sunday workout
regime now, I have found a way to benefit and deal with the sound.

And this is what I
want those complainants to do, find a way to deal with the noise of the
vuvuzela and embrace the “otherliness” in the other. A visitor does not
dictate to a host how to sit on his own chair. For we are Africans, we
bring in the noise and we bring in the funk. It’s a bit surprising and
annoying that the rest of the complaining world actually thought that
Africa would not bring something peculiarly exciting to the World Cup.
What were they expecting, pianos and cellos that buzz like misguided
anopheles mosquitoes?

It also shows none
of these complainants have ever worshipped in an African pentecostal
church. Sad. We don’t hide or control our excitement. When we are
chasing the devil, we scream, blow vuvuzelas and run with agbada and
buba flaying through the entire church. During thanksgiving we roll on
the floor from one end to the other – carpeted floor or dusty muddy
floor, governor or ordinary citizen, because that is how we roll.

My only regret in
the whole anti-vuvuzeling clamour is that South Africans did not know
that the sound of vuvuzela could be used as a Weapon of Mass
Distraction. If they did, I doubt that Apartheid would have lasted that
long. Can you imagine if every oppressed South African or every member
of the ANC party back in the WHITES ONLY days, decided to blow
vuvuzelas day and night in the white supremacist quarters? No weapon
fashioned against them would have prospered. The world would have
witnessed a modern day falling of the walls of Jericho by Joshua’s
vuvuzelists.

Since I am unable
to attend the Mundial in SA (thankfully so, for our perenial losing
Super Eagles would have given me indigestion and a dose of HPB) I
kindly beseech our 62 Senators that have gone to proudly and loudly
represent Nigeria to bring me colourful vuvuzelas – come 2011 Elections
me and some of my vuvuzelous friends might need them.

Don’t worry about what we are going to do with them in Abuja.