Moscow/6

“I beg make una stop dis una Ngbati and tok in English!” Ugo exclaimed to the two guys after we had come back to the room from the beryozka. The guys, Seyi and Ayo, had been talking loudly in Yoruba as if completely oblivious of the fact that we were in the same room with them. So Ugo had told them to stop talking in Yoruba and to speak in English and had used the word “ngbati” an Igbo term for the Yoruba language. “Abi na only una dey for dis room?” he continued asking them if they thought that they were the only people in the room.
“And why must we talk in English to pleasure you?” responded the bigger of the two guys. His name was Seyi, a bespectacled young man who was as tall as Ugo. His complexion, which was not as dark as mine belied the stereotyping of Yoruba’s as very dark people. ”English na ya papa language?” he asked whether English was his fathers language.
“English no be my papa language, but since no be only una dey dis room una for show us some respect” Ugo was arguing that though English wasn’t his fathers language that they should at least be considerate of the fact that they weren’t the only people in the room.
“Listen, I don’t have to talk for you to understand what I am saying. If you have a language, why don’t you go ahead and speak it and stop showing how brainwashed you have become by the Oyibo man!”
“Anyway, I don’t blame you. You're just a village man!" Ugo responded "Because I have a lot of friends from your place, who understand basic social etiquettes, so I won‘t waste my time arguing with the obstinate fool that you are.“
“You’re the fool!” Seyi said hissing and said something in Yoruba. And dismissing Ugo, he carried on with his conversation with Ayo in Yoruba.

Ugo said something to me in Igbo along the lines of this being the kind of things that perpetuate tribalism, but not wanting to be drawn in to the discussion I muttered something in English.

It is so difficult not to start thinking along tribal lines when you are in Nigeria. I was thinking as I lay on my bed later that night. It’s there all around you, no matter how broad minded you try to be. Somebody will almost always provoke you into going on the defensive or alienating you into seeking refuge with your own kind; your tribe. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that because I realised that there is a world beyond the stereotypes that we use to limit ourselves in Nigeria; a world that I wished to escape to and which I had hoped I would start to experience by having travelled on that 9 hours journey to the USSR.

And as I lay there contemplating on the bonds that had just been broken in our room because of the exchange of words between Ugo and Seyi, I wondered whether the friendship that was developing between Ugo and myself was based on our identical ethnic origins or whether it was just an accident that we just happened to be Igbo’s; would we have become friends if he had been Hausa or would he have gravitated more towards Musa, who was the only Hausa person in our group. And who had remained to himself, for the duration of our flight from Lagos?

While I hoped that it was not just because we were from the same tribe and that we would have become friends all the same, given that we lived in the same area in Owerri, I realised that to any outside observer the most obvious conclusion would be that Ugo and I were drawn together because of the tribe thing. I felt uncomfortable about that thought. And wondered if friendships among Nigerians in the USSR and abroad are built predominantly on tribal affiliations. And I hoped that over the next few days, that we did not start forming subgroups based purely on those primordial sentiments.

Fortunately, that did not happen. Instead we ended up with two groups of guys having personal squabbles with each other; Ugo and Seyi continued to have personality clashes that was built on the argument, which they'd had on that first night. While Musa and Eddy...the guy with the goatee who had fallen out with Musa at the airport...continued to have pseudo-political debates that always ended up with both of them hurling insults at each other. The interesting thing was that Musa and Eddy also shared the same room.

Over the next 3 days we had to be screened for different infectious diseases, which we could have arrived with from our third world countries…including a mandatory screening for what the Russians call SPID. None of us was sure what SPID was at the time. But it was clear that it was an incurable viral disease that had come out of Africa.

Those few days flew by like a haze as I found myself preoccupied with thoughts about that beautiful dark brown girl with her long Senegalese braids whom I had seen in that Beryozka on our first night in Moscow. Everything else…the petty tribal arguments, the tests…whizzed by in a surreal blur; like one long grey dream, in which an inconsequential part of me was party to, while the real me lived on in the reality of the image of those lovely eyes engaging briefly with mine; and the sound of that infectious laughter, floating on the edges of the Russian music that played softly in the background. And for the next three days I had searched for her…hoping that I would once again catch a glimpse of her…but it was as if she had disappeared out of my life the same way she had appeared; like a fleeting apparition that is destined to haunt me.

On the third day those of us who had been deemed medically fit, were now ready to move on. Some of the students had to get medical treatment before they could be posted out to their various schools; one of the Nigerian student who came with us was said to have Tuberculosis and would need to be in hospital for several months; two had Malaria and needed to be quarantined for a few days. But nobody in our group was sent back.

We were now ready to be posted out to the cities where we were to travel to for our language preparatory course. Rumours had been circulating about which cities where more friendly to foreign students; It was said that those cities that were more favourably disposed towards Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika were also a lot more progressive and easier for foreigners to live in than in the others. The rumours had it that the worst cities for African students to be were places like Tashkent, Baku, and Rostov-On-Don.

And as I waited for my name to be called so that I could receive the slip that stated what city I was going to, I was very anxious that it wasn’t going to be to any of those 3 cities. And certainly not Baku or Tashkent since Ugo, Eddy and Seyi had already gotten their posting and were unfortunate to be going to Rostov-On-Don. This meant that I would at least have company there if i was unlucky enough to share in their misfortune. I also heard that the lovely Portuguese speaking girl, had also been posted to that city. So while i waited for my posting to come out I started to secretly pray.

And my prayer was answered. On my little slip was written in English the city; Rostov-Na-Donu.