It is a late June evening and I am driving along Third Mainland Bridge with my Uncle Amah. We are headed to my brother Nosa’s place in Lekki for an introduction to Uncle Amah’s prospective in-laws. I was surprised when

Uncle called me two days ago to say that he was coming from Warri, that he would stay with friends (to which I said no, my home is your home).

“Na, for Rosan marriage,” he said. “Her fiancé papa and mama wan’ make we meet, and instead make they begin travel come Warri, I say make I come Lagos.”

It will be a first meeting for both families, and it is a sign of our growing up that my brother and I will be de facto hosts. Rosan, who lives in America, is our baby cousin. Uncle Amah is my mother’s younger brother.

The drive itself is uneventful. There’s traffic on the other side of the expressway, as drivers make their way home during the evening rush hour. June sunsets are colorless, and the light skids off the damp tarmac. We pass an accident between a danfo—a minibus—and a bus advertising brake fluid. Uncle Amah, ever the wit, says, “The driver na big fool. Make he carry tarpaulin cover the brake fluid adverts quick-quick.”

It’s a funny scene in that about-to-break-into-a-fight way that only Lagos traffic trouble—wahala—can be. We soon leave the ring road that surrounds the islands and turn into Ikoyi. At the Ikoyi-Lekki link bridge, the lights are up on the tower: blue, red and gold shimmer off the marble.

…

My name na Eghosa Imasuen, but everybody dey call me Doctor, medical o, not PhD. I dey stay Lagos. I park come around 2013, but my family no join me until August of 2015. I dey talk say I be economic migrant, as na hustle carry me come this crase city. (My name is Eghosa Imasuen, but everyone calls me, Doctor, medical, not PhD. I live in Lagos. I moved here circa 2013, but my family did not join me until August 2015. I always say that I am an economic migrant, as it was the hustle that brought me to this crazy city.)

By way of an introduction, I could do better. Even then, it is not altogether accurate. I lived in Lagos for three years between 2003 and 2005. I had just completed my one-year service with the National Youth Service Corps, and although working in Warri, where I lived since childhood, or even Benin, where my father was from and where I went to university, were possibilities, I decided to move to Lagos. Why? It seemed bigger, and in truth, I was thinking of working as a doctor overseas. At the time, we joked that Lagos was next to London.

Lagos is an urban conurbation, a sprawling tangle of suburbs, high-rises, shanties and high-end homes, a series of formerly distinct cities and towns that have become one massive, interlocked metropolis. And with Nigeria’s peculiarly-mandated lack of mayoralties, the governor of Lagos State is the effective mayor of the city. Lagos does not have a true uptown or downtown area, but there is a consensus that people live on the mainland and work on the islands so one can roughly predict rush hour and on which side of the road traffic will be on. Along the coast of the lagoon, the city is named for its islands: Epe and Lekki (strictly a peninsula), Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Eko (old Lagos). The islands are connected to mainland neighborhoods by three bridges: Apapa/Surulere (the Eko-Apongbon Bridge), Ebute Metta/Yaba (the Carter Bridge, the oldest of the three) and Gbagada/Anthony Village (Third Mainland Bridge, the newest and what we always like to remind visitors is the second longest span in Africa). From these bridgeheads, you can find your way north to Ikeja, the capital of the state (and on to Ikorodu, which Fourth Mainland Bridge will connect to the island when they get around to building it), west to Festac Town, which was built for the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977, and onward to Badagry and the border with Benin. Just remember to use the bathroom before you leave your house.

Lagos traffic is legendary. In the car, I tune the radio to Wazobia FM 95.1, the Pidgin English station. The drive-home show is on. Nigerian radio left people’s homes decades ago. Prime time is now in the mornings and evenings, during rush hour, when the audience is in its cars. The radio announcers offer advice on traffic, and the news is read by a man who affects a thoroughly dense, and thoroughly fake, Pidgin accent. The singsong is just a bit off, the neologisms have not had time to ferment in the public imagination, at least not long enough to become actual words, and the broadcaster is using them too freely. It is performance, not meant to actually convey information. Uncle asks me to switch to another station when the reader announces the Federal Minister of Youth and Sports as the Oga pata pata of small pikin matter and play-play—for the uninitiated, the correct translation from Pidgin is the Minister of Youth and Sport. I tell my uncle to be patient, that my favorite host, Diplomatic OPJ, will soon be on his show, Evening Oyoyo. “He speaks proper Pidgin,” I say.

…

The history of Pidgin English is intricately tied to my mother’s people, the Itsekiri. This ethnic group speaks a Yoruboid language, an isolate in Nigeria’s delta region. Legend has it that they come from two peoples. The earliest were settlers from the Igala who were led by a man named Jekri. This earlier group combined with the followers of a Bini Prince, Ginuwa, the first Olu. They were among the first to trade with the Portuguese. They even had a prince who went to study in Lisbon in the early 1600s. He left early, however—some wahala with a Lisbon judge; there’s correspondence between him, the bishop and the king of Portugal explaining all the brouhaha—and returned home with a Portuguese wife. Dom Domingos would eventually become Olu Atuwatse, and he fathered a line of “mulato” kings.

When the British replaced the Portuguese, the Itsekiri also traded with them. The language of the marketplace changed, and a new portmanteau language developed: Pidgin English. It was a mix of maritime English—that sailors’ language popularized by pirate films—words from coastal languages, Portuguese and Spanish. I still watch pirate films, the old and the new, and I do a double take when I realize that Jack Sparrow and his crew speak to each other in Pidgin English. Watching films, and traveling, I have found it intriguing and strangely pleasurable to hear Sierra Leonean Krio, South Carolinian Gullah and Jamaican Patois spoken in their most unadorned forms and recognize that these people are speaking the same language that I did growing up. Unu, the Igbo word for the second-person plural, you all, is found in one form or another in all three examples. In truth, it is found all over the West African coast and the Caribbean. I hear many versions of pikin, the Pidgin word for child.

The regional versions of English in the United Kingdom in the 1700s seemed to have had more of an effect on the developing language than the Queen’s English. I have found that the old colonies may be the only places that still use words like verandah, palaver and jalopy in day-to-day conversation, so much so that I grew up thinking they were Pidgin words. One of the most common words is sabi, which means to know. It comes from the Spanish and Portuguese words for the same verb. The word transmission went both ways. My mother tells me that more than a few Itsekiri words are from Portuguese.

The sweetest, most lyrical Nigerian form of Pidgin is spoken in Warri, where the Itsekiri live. Is it a creole yet? The rule being that a creole is a new language that children learn as a first language, versus a Pidgin that they learn to communicate with in the proverbial marketplace. The definition suggests a progression, and it is more complicated than this. We learned both ways. As long as I can remember, I have spoken Pidgin English. And when I am most upset, or want to say something heartfelt, proper English just doesn’t seem to work. It can’t do nuance as well.

…

We are in Nosa’s place. He and his wife are not back from work yet, so we sit with the children. Nosa and Isoken are both engineers in the oil industry, one with the government’s oil company, the other with a private multinational corporation. We see that our hosts have already ordered food from a party planner. There is a beautiful spread on the dining table: finger food, jollof rice and chicken. There is beer in the fridge, so Uncle Amah and I have one each. We watch a Nigerian comedy show and wince at the comedian as he mangles our language.

The language of Nigerian comedy is Pidgin English. The accent is Warri. I remember when I first lived near FESTAC Town in 2003. I did not understand why people laughed at everything I said. I quickly understood that they were laughing with me. They thought I was being funny when I spoke. It was the accent: a brogue, ululating into a weird falsetto with emotion. But the problem with being the language of comedy was that some comedians thought that, in order to succeed, they had to affect a Warri accent or tell Warri-based jokes, riffing on the city and its famous Enerhen Junction. Every time I watched Night of a Thousand Laughs, a series of taped live performances produced in the 2000s by Nollywood director Opa Williams, I applauded and laughed a thousand times when performers like Gandoki took the stage. This was a Warri boy, who lived near the real Enerhen junction. He just told stories; they were funny and true. It was the same with I-Go-Dye, another performer who was actually from Sapele, a sister city to Warri. I heard about what happened when the comedy tour came to Warri. It must have seemed like a good idea: our greatest performers are from this city; let’s go perform there. Even Gandoki bombed. The audience found him too familiar to be funny. Wetin he dey do? Na just story he dey talk. Wey the joke? (What is he doing? He is just telling us stories. Where are the jokes?) The audience asked these questions sincerely. It is difficult to make your own people laugh, I suppose.

…

Nosa’s house is full of cousins. Uncle Amah had this all planned out. If prospective in-laws are coming to visit, you should put your best foot forward. His nephews and one niece—those who could answer the abrupt summons—are all here. My cousins are a veritable cornucopia of Nigeria’s complex demographics. At least seven different ethnicities are in Nosa’s living room this evening.

There is the cousin who owns two businesses in Apapa. He is the scion of a large family, the son of my mother’s sister. Another, the youngest of the group and son of my mother’s sister, has just started a retail distribution and delivery business for pharmaceuticals. Uncle Amah’s own son, Rosan’s younger brother, works in a bank and arrives late. Another nephew is a fashion designer. He is angling to dress the bride for the eventual wedding. And yes, he is the son of another of my mother’s sisters.

Uncle Amah’s only niece who could make it works for a telecommunications firm as a supervisor on the customer care call center. She is a daughter of my mother’s sister.

And there is me: former doctor, now novelist and publisher.

Sometime later this evening, the in-laws will ask the question, “So many men, in-law. Are there no women in your family?”

Uncle will answer, “Oh, these are all my sisters’ sons. There are women in my family. Mostly women. My father had fourteen daughters and five sons. But, oddly, all my sisters have had mostly boys themselves.”

And when we get together, things get noisy fast. It is good to hear home again, even in Lagos. A cousin has come from Olodi Apapa. He used to work as a production assistant in an independent music studio in Ajegunle. We tease him about his dreadlocks, or rather, his lack thereof. Which time you remove am?

“O’boy, I tire for police wahala, so I cut them off,” he explains.

…

Pidgin English and art have always been intricately linked in Nigeria. Frowned upon in schools as a broken language, it may be the most widely spoken language not yet with a formal orthography, although several have been developed, one giving it the name Naija, and another developed recently by BBC Pidgin, to help formalize its broadcasts and web articles. Then there is the Pidgin that you read on government posters, mostly to inform the public on health, public safety and elections. I find them unreadable and have come to one of two conclusions: either I am illiterate in my own language, or these people do not know what they are doing. But while the schools hated Pidgin English, the artists used it. From street art on the tailgates of trucks—Naked man no get pocket to put hand; Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop; If life show you pepper, make peppersoup—to theater and music. When I was growing up, there was a famous song used in the run-up to the 1983 elections. Bendel State (now split into Edo and Delta States) was governed by the UPN opposition, so we could watch opposition music on the television. Wole Soyinka’s Pidgin English song, I Love My Country, I No Go Lie, performed by Tuni Oyelana from the play The Beatification of Area Boy, was used to poke fun at the Shagari government.

I love my country, I no go lie. Na inside am I go live and die. I know my country, I no go lie. Na him and me go yap till I die.
I wan begin with history, that war we fight in recent memory, wey music wey come from barrel of gun…
Me I think I get cancer for me eye, that’s the reason why. Cause when I look, na two I see. Make I explain I think you go gree…

My mother’s favorite song to sing to us was Nico Mbanga’s “Sweet Mother.” And, of course, there was Fela. Fela Anikulapo Kuti sang in Pidgin. It was the weird Lagos version, which does not do justice to what the language is capable of, but we can forgive him. And this tradition has continued. My favorite songs by TuFace Idibia are sung in Pidgin. And please, please, dear reader, go look for Rule Clean’s Na Wetin I Want, I Go Get. That song should have become the anthem of a generation.

I recently read Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women, written in the voice of a 19th century Jamaican slave woman. The language was so like Pidgin English that it sent me down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, right-clicking on blue links, opening tabs that I would read on West Africa Pidgin English, Sierra Leonean Krio, South Carolinian Gullah, and all the languages that evolved from this language.

…

The in-laws are here. Uncle Amah hands the phone to Nosa so he can direct them to a parking spot in the compound. They have been in traffic driving in from Ajah. They are a handsome couple: she is dressed in green ankara, her hair unadorned and in a perm; he has a brocade kaftan with a matching Yoruba fila gobi on his head, turned to the right, indicating marriage. If turned to the left, it means a man is single and searching. They are middle-aged and around my parents’ age; it is their youngest son who is getting married.

We spend the first few minutes introducing ourselves. Uncle takes pride in the roll call, ending each introduction with “He is my sister’s son.” The new in-laws take to us immediately, listening as we jostle in Pidgin. They ask the question about why so many boys, and they like Uncle Amah’s answer because it implies that his daughter will birth their son many sons. Boys as successful as the ones they are looking at. Boys from Warri, who can come to Lagos and make a success of themselves. Who speak Pidgin.