FUNKE!!!

One of the funniest virals of all time has got to be the ‘PRANKING MY AFRICAN DAD’ one.

I received this video clip one Sunday morning a few years back….my thoughts at the time were ‘see me, see wahala, so early in the morning?’ It was the Blackberry days and the phone was ‘pinging’ but when I ‘pressed phone’ roll on the credits, 4 minutes later……my chest! I couldn't breathe as I had laughed so much. 

If I was to do a blog post exclusively dedicated to that video we could possibly be talking pages and pages of descriptive writing, you guys would be here for days….It would be a disservice not to start off with a description of that typical African ‘parlour’. We have the all important white wedding photo of mummy and daddy hung up on wall above ‘the settee’, strategically placed above it is another ‘foto frame’ and it goes on….

If you've not been privy to the above video I refer to, you've read the memo folk….‘Google And YouTube are your friend’ Kindly get with the programme! 

The title of my blog post ‘Funke’ refers to the wife of the African dad in the video clip. When son breaks news to dad that he has gotten his 14 year old girlfriend pregnant…dad ‘kent’ deal with this info it's just too much for him to handle, he's about to have a heart attack so what does he do….he dramatically shouts out name of his wife “FUNKE” to come to his rescue. 

He says “No GCSE, no A levels You will end up in 'Mag-donalz' and you are impregnating a girl. Apostle will hear this" 😂

Typical Naija dad right?  

A friend further buttressed point recently, when she told me that anytime her hubby is faced with something too complicated that he can't figure out himself, this could be something as complicated as not being able to boil the kettle 👀…..he will frantically call out to the kids “Where is your mummy?” It's become a household joke, everyone is in on it….except him! Every Naija dad has a ‘Funke’

Anyways ‘yet again’ I digress, I'm not here to play today! Now where am I going with this one?

We’ve all read the memo peeps as illustrated in that video “African parents and the word ‘DRAMA’ go to together like 5 & 6! 

Over the past few weeks there has been this recurring pattern of conversations between me and my homies…we are all reminiscing growing up with Naija parents and their knack for ‘quenching’ any illusion we had about future career paths. Why did they do that?

I was chatting with a childhood friend, she spoke of her teenage years here and being selected to train for the Olympics……fantastic right? Far from it! Her parents went into a frenzy ‘Eh you don't want to face your education abi?…..you want to be gallivanting (another word our parents love!) running to where exactly…they are just deceiving you…they want you to be running from the police abi?’ 🤔

As she had never mentioned this to me before, I was quite taken aback so asked her “Were you THAT good?” And she replied ‘Ola I was small and strong….and really fast. I really don't know why they were so against it’ as I was still getting my head around this, she mentioned further that at the age of 16, her brother was to be signed up to train with a premier league football team here in the U.K. Her mum actually ripped up the contract! Mum and dad weren't haven't that either, their solution to ‘this problem’ was to ship off her brother to boarding school. 

Now let's imagine Papa Ronaldo had shipped him off to boarding school and not let him train for football…. 2 mins silence up! 

Another behaviour of our parents is that they conveniently feign amnesia when we later attempt to bring up the past. When my friend attempted to broach the ‘ripped contract’ incidence with her folk, they just denied it and said it never happened! We both tried to rationalise this and came to conclusion that because a football contract was so insignificant to a Nigerian parent back then…they had genuinely forgotten the event 😢

I’ve had a number of conversations about African parents not empowering us to follow our preferred career paths as we were growing up. There was a bros growing up in Naija, he was such a great artist, you need to have seen the art work covering his exercise books, he made mistake of telling his folk that he wanted to be an illustrator/cartoonist. Family meeting was called, “You want to be an ‘oluya’ if you like drawing why don't you study architecture, you can't ruin your life to do this and disgrace us”

Dad which part of ‘I want to study illustration’ don't you understand? 

Anyway at earliest opportunity this chap had he checked out to The States. Another talent flies the nest!

The thing is a lot of parents just didn't see talent if it wasn’t academic or what they called ‘professional qualification’.  Growing up I had always wanted to study Mass communications, my parents laughed in my face, not happy at all. I remember my dad saying ‘So you want to be reading the news and all those politicians will be chasing you?’ I just wondered at the time, What had politician chasing one got to do with my career choice, I was told ‘You are going to study law…and that was it. The end. ‘Their dream’ was to ‘produce’ A doctor, lawyer and an accountant which they/we (grey area) did!

We had parents living vicariously through their kids, with a mum telling daughter ‘ah o wunmi ko ma se pharmacy’ (I’d love you to study pharmacy) And this daughter was not studying a single science related subject in her GCE’s!! 😩

And the disappointment of being told by daughter that she actually wanted to be a teacher, shock horror, mammy is not having it, so now starts crying while pulling her headtie from head ‘You this child will not give me high blood pressure…ok what about nursing?’ ermmm, isn't nursing supposed to be a vocation, Ma?

Or the much highly sought career, piloting. I chuckle as I recall 2 different parent’s reaction to their son’s telling them they wanted to train as pilots. 

First parent’s reaction was hysteria, she screamed in Yoruba so “o fe ma de fila abi, lati lo ki awon ore to wa ni university?” which translates to “Oh so you want to wear your pilot cap and go visiting your friends in the university, right?” What has wearing a pilot’s cap got to do with the matter on ground? But that's just our dramatic Naija folk for you. 

My other friend upon completion of WAEC he told his older siblings that he wanted to be a pilot, family meeting was called (notice the pattern there, it’s always that meeting) he was asked to stand in the centre of the whole family as they tabled his matter. He was asked to once again repeat what he had told his siblings, when he mentioned piloting, he was told that if he wanted to be lazy good for nothing ‘somebody’ and lacking ambition they would buy a taxi for him! Because as far as they were concerned there was no difference between flying a plane and driving a taxi! End of discussion. 

Now don't get me wrong, I know this reasoning possibly came from a good place and number of us heeded to ‘the career choices’ of our folk and were none the worst for wear. However do you think this was the best thing to have done? Would you do the same?

What were your dreams as a teenager, did you realise them?

On that note, let’s thank God it's Friday. 

Ps. All eyes on Zimbabwe…thought provoking incident of the day was when a naive colleague asked me earlier this week ‘Ola what's a coup?’ I had flash back to Naija with thoughts of Abacha, Gideon Orkar, Babangida, Idiagbon & Buhari and thought to myself… ‘Animal Farm things’. Blog for another day!

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Writer’s Block: When your imaginary friends refuse to talk to you!