Written by First of all, a note on the word. For a long time after the school started there was a policy of admitting only three foreigners each year: two boys and a girl. And a lot of the early expatriate students were from Bangladesh and thus the term “Bangi” became slang for, especially, South Asians: Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans. And in our batch we were quite a few. Your current correspondent joined in Form 3N. So that should answer the question one classmate reminded us of when I joined the WhatsApp group for the 85 Set: “…All the people wey dey fight for Bangi don hear Bangi dey call Bangi ‘Bangi’…” Yes, we Bangis did not at all mind being called that. In fact, in a lot of ways that, being a South Asian that grew up in Nigeria is our ultimate identity.
For, even as we dispersed to the winds in later years, we African-born and/or -bred expats took much more of Nigeria with us than we realized at the time. Personally, I am of South Asian (Pakistani/Awadhi) heritage and was born in Sokoto itself. When I speak Hausa, it is with the specific dialect of the Basakkwace. And I do.
When I moved to the United States, I was reminded that the roots of a huge proportion of African-Americans lie in Nigeria and the west coast of Africa, not in East or South Africa. I do not have the history, or the skin color, or the experience of growing up black in America. And I am definitely not looking to appropriate anyone’s place or culture. But I do have a sensibility that is shaped by being, on the one hand, the only non-black kid in an African classroom, and being the non-white guy trying to get a job in America. And I cringe every time Americans–even a lot of African Americans–talk as if Africa is a country. Or as if the relevant African American culture starts with Swahili, an East African language that has little to do with African American roots.
When my son started First Grade, and come the start of the first African-American History Month (an American “celebration”), he coolly informed his (predominantly East and South Asian) classmates that his otherwise very light-skinned, Pakistani-looking, and -sounding dad “is an African-American”. I do not remember ever having used that phrase within earshot of him. But he knows that I was born in the same region of Africa that is the origin of most of the people who came to this country as slaves. And he just put it together in his head realizing that I came to this country as an African-born grad student much like Barack Obama Sr.
Then when he joined Junior High School—about the equivalent of Form 3—I pretty much browbeat my son’s English teacher (she’s Irish) till she included Things Fall Apart in their 9th Grade curriculum. My niece had read it in High School, too. Her father (Farasat I. Ashraf) is also an FGCS Alum. ‘80 Set; Niger House, like me. Rare for a Bangi, he was actually a boarder from Form 1-3. My son says that as he read that book, he could “hear the Nigerian accent in his head” because he had heard my brother and I sometimes switching to Nigerian accents, Broken (Pidgin) English and Hausa – especially when screaming at each other and old friends.
So, yes, we, your Bangi schoolmates have enough of that formative influence too and we have passed some of it on to our children, making them aware of their “African heritage”.
–Sabahat Ashraf, Niger House/Day Scholar