She said she was Ibo
And spoke with a fake accent
Wanna’s and gonna’s
Littered her speech
Not a trace of Igbo, in her exotic accent.

She smirked boldly
As I answered my phone
Greeting my friend natively
In a lavish of deep expressions
So deep, only Ndi Igbo can share.

With a ****** passport
She spoke better than most Britons
She was born in her village
Yet all she knows is “bia”
She thinks she’s cool, I think she’s lost!

The whole point of wooing her
An “mgbe-eke” from the east
Was so we could regularly, take a break
From all formalities and English
And bask in mother tongues…

I might as well be yoked
With a foreign damsel
For the whole purpose of looking within
Is defeated if your tongue is white
And we can only commune in “oyibo”

Call me tribalistic
Call me uncivilized
Call me superficial if you will
But what you call vernacular
The same is my root. I am proudly Igbo!


© Raphael Uzor