New Found Bredeh!

Schiphol is not just amazing; it is an airport with wondrous written everywhere. Wandering around this significant wonder, awaiting my board for Frankfurt, I kept wondering how beautiful it would be to have such a structure in our own Murtala Mohammed International back home. Right beside these thoughts were dark images of wizards hovering in the sky above the terminals reminiscent of a former aviation minister’s testimony that witches and are responsible for the repeated air crashes in the nation! This claim came against proofs of inefficiency and missing fund approved for control towers! I sat down in the middle of the dutyfree area, allowing my imaginations run wild and wide after unseen evil spirits and their witches and wizard friends. I could see them all gathered and planning endlessly to sink more airborne planes! According to them, that would enable them access to more litres of blood to drain and suck and even swim in! Suddenly, all the witches and wizards started flying away as the boarding announcement for my Frankfurt destination was relayed over the PA.

At first I was going to complain that I was the only black man on board this plane till I reassured myself I was going to Frankfurt and not Orile or Oshodi! The plane was noisy with hearty Germans who maybe returning from holidays and couldn’t wait to reach home once more and eat their brötchen with either wurst or käse while drinking one of their over fifteen hundred thousand brands of beer. Standing there on the aisle waiting for happy Germans to store their loads and luggage into the overhead compartments was like waiting for George W. Bush to recall his troops and leave Iraq! I was like in a sea of white Germans, swimming and listening to their loud conversations. It was not much of a great experience especially if you have no idea what they were saying at the same time blocking your access to find a seat. And they were also laughing in German as loud as they were screaming, and I can swear they were also farting in German in between every hearty laughter and screaming altercations. The more I tried to listen to them speak, the more it was clear to me that the German they were speaking was quite different from the German I’d been studying!

How would I know that I bought a German-made-Easy book written (with CD produced) by some Swiss guys? Sooner or later it would dawn on me that the German they speak in Switzerland may sound different from the German spoken inside Germany. Something told me my new friends in the Frankfurt plane were not from Switzerland. I was hoping one of them may say something like Grüß Gott! None said that so it became obvious they were not Bavarians (Bayern) either. None was repeating ge intermittently and no into another person’s sentences, so that made them not from Thuringia either. I sincerely hoped at least one of them was from Thuringia (the province of my final destination) so I may begin to figure how to say stuffs like no and ge? Truly I became worried because as it was, I was the only black man searching for his seat right in the midst of more than 150 very happy Germans (including pilots and crew members) who would neither say no nor ge!

Hold on, I was wrong! Wasn’t that a Blackman sitting over there? Was I so wrong! Sitting quietly deep inside the cabin and effortlessly absorbing all the German dialogue-vibrations that sounded even more than the plane’s engine, was another Blackman! Wow! My heart leapt for joy and for unknown reason my feet got speedier as I raced towards my new brother! You never knew how precious a black man would be till you are in a flight heading to Frankfurt! My sudden behaviour was noticed immediately and the laughter ebbed, the screaming halted and the slapping on the backs kind of suspended. So? I continued by shoving and pushing more people away from the aisle but not without saying “excuse me” and “sorry” for each shove and all the pushes respectively! Sorry German folks, but my newly found brother is right here auch in da house!

I was wondering if he was Nigerian but as I drew closer I saw him properly. His teeth were too white and his glittering skin real dark to be a Nigerian. Please don’t get me wrong! Not that Nigerians don’t have white teeth but the truth is that Ghanaians’ teeth are significantly whiter than that of other West Africans. Does it have anything to do with their thick dark skins? I have no idea! But all I knew was that it was a free-seating flight and Kwame immediately invited me to sit beside him. I knew my brother when I saw him! Sitting and extending my hand for the first handshake I was getting in Europe, I introduced myself and added I was on my way to Erfurt. The alarm in his eyes meant nothing to me because I was not expecting any. “Do you live and werk there?” he cautiously asked. That again is not Nigerian. Nigerians say “work” but Ghanaians say “werk”. Nigerians say “papers” and Ghanaians say “pepers”. Nigerians say “brothers and sisters” and Ghanaians say “bredehs and sistehs”.

“I can see you are from Ghana?”
“Yes, and you are an Igbo man?”
“I am Igbo, but I am from Nigeria just like we both are West Africans. Are you coming from home?”
“Yes, I went home brefly to see my parents and my bredehs and sistehs”.
“So how are your parents and your “bredehs and sistehs”?
“They are fine. What about you? Coming from home?”
“No. I was coming from Montreal. I will take a train from Frankfurt to Erfurt.”
“You live and werk in Erfurt?”
“No, this is my first time in Germany.”
“Why Erfurt? Why East Germany?”
“Former East Germany, you mean? I thought the wall came down sometime.”
“Fuck the wall! The east is still east! They hate black people in the East!”
“Have you ever been to Erfurt, Kwame?”
“My name is not Kwame, my name is Kwesi.”
“I’m sorry but both names start with Kw. It’s confusing.”
“They will kill you if you go to Erfurt! They kill black people in the East!”
“How long have you lived in Germany, Kwame?”
“If you call me Kwame again …!”
“Kwesi! I’m sorry, but how can you believe that former eastern Germans kill black people? You think there is no government in Deutschland?”
“When you get to Frankfurt, before boarding a train to Erfurt, ask anybody about the radicals, the Glatzen skin heads springing up daily and fighting the left wing Zecken!”
“So, does it mean there are no black people in Erfurt?”
“They have killed all the black people in Erfurt! There is no single Blackman in Erfurt. If I were you I’d go back to Canada or come with me to Düsseldorf!”