The Punch Newspaper: Surprise as undergraduate Americans teach Nigerians Yoruba

We made front page headlines again…I was standing with my classmates in the Faculty of Arts at UI this morning when one of my classmates told me, “Titi, mo ri oju e ni oju iwe kinni Punch loni. Titi, I saw you on the front page of Punch today.” I said “Enhh? Opuro ni e. You’re a liar.” He said he was serious, so I went to the Student Union Building to investigate. I approached the newspaper table where men (women are never there) congregate everyday to look at the headlines and gossip about news. I pushed my way to the front. Sure enough, there was my face on the bottom of the paper, under election headlines. I paid 150 Naira for the paper and after about five people nearby grabbed the paper from my hands and exclaimed that it was in fact me on the cover, was on my merry way.
::Surprise as undergraduate Americans teach Nigerians Yoruba::
The article is about the program we did at Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls a few weeks ago. It is well written for the most part but, like the other articles printed about us, there are serious misquotes. At least they captured the overall idea of what I wanted to say. I guess the exact words are too much to ask for.

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I am now a white girl with cornrows

Believe it. I have cornrows and braids! The heat and humidity here does not agree with my long, curly white-girl hair, SO I decided to go to one of the many hairdressers here. With the help of my mom we explained what I wanted and now I am sporting a cornrow/hair style called two-step.

Caring for my hair with cornrows and braids is quite different than my typical routine.

1) I cannot wash my hair, or get it wet for that matter.

2) I sleep with a scarf wrapped around my head so the braids stay neat

3) I put this gel along the scalp every 3 days so the braids stay shiny

I will leave the two-step style in for 3 weeks then probably do another cool weave pattern. Having braids is so much easier than worrying about my frizzy mess of a head that I think I might keep it braided for a while. It’s a serious drawback that my head is throbbing with pain right now, and especially when I laugh (which I do quite often) but it should go away soon. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I turn many more heads now that I have braids. Hopefully the requests to marry me don’t increase as well…

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