“Oh-ee-boh” is the first word that a non-African visitor learns in Lagos. It means “White person” in Yoruba, the language of the Yoruba people in southwest Nigeria. It often applies not only to Caucasians but also to Chinese, Indians, and everyone else who is not dark-skinned.
We oh-ee-bohs hear “oh-ee-boh!” all the time—from little kids playing on roadsides, from men speeding by on motorbikes, from women cooking yams at lunchtime. After seven weeks in Lagos, I still wonder what motivates people to shout, “White person!” at a White person. Do they want the attention of the White person whose name they don’t know? Do they want to alert others that there is a foreigner around? Do they simply want the pleasure of getting me to react?
I found it just as strange when Moroccans yelled, “Black” at African-American Peace Corps Volunteers. Whenever I was with a Black American, non-Black Moroccans would comment, “Black person,” “Africa,” or whatever else as African-Americans walked by. There as in Nigeria, I didn’t understand why people needed to tell others what color they were.
Being White in Lagos has some advantages, of course. We are often treated with deference (we are obviously someone’s guest), and we have more freedom than Nigerians when entering nice hotels and the like. On Saturday, for example, Chris and I simply sauntered past security at the Eko Hotel, the most exclusive hotel in Lagos, with rooms starting at $500/night, and headed to the bar. All we had to show was our White skin and no questions were asked.
Naturally, being White brings seemingly infinite frustrations. People assume that we are inexperienced travelers, and that we have been coddled all our lives. Whenever we do anything like Nigerians do, they are shocked. “You rode on a motorbike?! You went to the market?! You ate Nigerian food?!” We calmly explain that we have experienced far more exotic conditions than those found in Lagos, and that we were not raised with nannies and cooks and drivers—we can actually do things for ourselves.
Also, showing a White face means that the price of nearly everything is doubled. When it comes to taxis, this is most frustrating because taxi fares are high to begin with. A ride anywhere in the city costs nearly $10 because taxi drivers—and every other person selling us anything—assume that all White people are rich.
And on top of this, it is simply annoying. It’s better than the sexual harassment and political harassment I had to put up with in Morocco, but it’s still trying. Especially now that I am about to leave Lagos, I have little patience for the kids who follow me down the street, telling me I’m White.
Since early in our stay here, we’ve played a game that helps us make fun of the entire phenomenon. When we’re in the car with our driver Daniel, we point out all of the White people we see throughout the city. It’s funny to make a big deal out of White people doing things in Lagos, and it’s also pretty interesting to see what the other Whites are up to. So far, we’ve seen:
· Five oh-ee-bohs in an SUV (they were working for Shell)
· An oh-ee-boh girl and her mother at a shopping mall
· The next day, an oh-ee-boh girl and her father in a car (could it be the same family?)
· An elderly oh-ee-boh man in glasses, jogging
· Two young oh-ee-boh men wearing matching suits
· A family of oh-ee-bohs, including grandparents, their daughter, and their daughter’s child, pushing a stroller
All joking aside, it’s nice to be in a position to teach Nigerians about other cultures. My host mother, a successful banker, told me that when she learned that I was coming to the house, she wondered, “What will a White person eat?” That mentality—that all White people have similar dispositions and preferences—pervades this place, even among people who are very educated and extremely wealthy. My host mother was glad to see that I am a pretty indiscriminate eater who actually enjoys Nigerian food.
Not only have my host siblings learned about White people—that we wear sunscreen so we don’t get sunburned, and that sunburn hurts—but they’ve become politically correct about our skin color as well. My eight-year-old sister Timmy tells me that she’s not Black, she’s chocolate-colored, and that I’m not White, I’m cream-colored.
Yesterday the cook, Iyabo, asked me a question in her most proper English possible (we usually need someone to translate between her pidgin English and my American English), and Timmy laughed at Iyabo’s accent. “Why are you laughing?” I asked Timmy. “Iyabo spoke to you differently because you are cream-colored,” Timmy said. I laughed out loud because being called cream-colored by an eight-year old was pretty funny too.
Below is a picture of some of our admirers in Enugu. Can you count how many eyes are looking at my camera? Most adults had turned away when I brought it out, but the kids kept staring. We were perhaps the first White people they had ever seen.
