De Nada (You are welcome)

I failed yoruba and french, but spanish was love

The time is 01:02 AM; ideally, I should be sleeping. I’m helping my friend move in the afternoon, have leg day in the morning, and I’m meeting with my supervisor later in the day. Still, I’m here thinking of how we often overcome limitations we’ve grown accustomed to in pursuit of watching happiness bloom in the hearts of the people we love. While I feel friendship is the greatest form of love because it has no hard-coded commitment that inspires fidelity. We do it out of our own volition, I’m talking about romantic love — eros.

Learning a new language has always been my Achilles heel. To put this in perspective, I failed Yoruba and French in my Junior WAEC, and when it was time to pick a subject for senior WAEC, my Yoruba teacher wished we could skip the compulsory language bit, because it was certain we’d all fail. I do not know why it was hard for me to learn, but every language class felt like I was being put through a meat grinder, reassembled and put through the entire process again. Sounds like hell? It was. So imagine the shock on my guardian angel’s face when I downloaded Duolingo in December of 2020 to learn Spanish, not for an exam, not for money, but because a girl I loved would respond to how are you with “estoy bien, ¿y tú?” or thank you with “de nada.”

It was not a calculated decision to be proficient in the language by any means. I knew my limitations, but I was not going to let that hinder me. I pictured the look on her face when I’d respond to whatever she typed, although sparingly, and that was motivation enough to keep going. It took a painfully long period of time to learn to answer. Still, I kept at it for as long as was necessary simply because I felt like this was something that could be our thing, a web we could weave our lives around, and a pole we could entwine our feelings on until they brought forth the fruits of love. At that point, it did not matter that I was thick in the head with languages, as Maranatha will say, the walls around my heart performed a Jericho. In the sight of love, my weaknesses are like those who wait on the lord.

The entwining of self:

It is no news that curiosity is the greatest form of love, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so when I selected Spanish on Duolingo, I made a declaration saying: I want to know why you love this language, and I want to show how deeply I admire you by doing the things you do. In my very short time on earth, it’s getting longer every time I use that phrase, I’ve come to realise that we find ways to entwine our lives with the people we love. People who knew me in those years, when the only thing that came out of my mouth regarding Amala was foul, were quickly taken aback when I wrote a piece about loving it. I said, if I remember correctly, “I had Amala today, and it was nice because I thought of you.”

In love, the incumbent frailty you have towards anything gives way to enthusiasm. Your taste bud morphs and bitter becomes sweet, your tongue twists and turns until you are bilingual, and you listen to Anendlessocean for the first time, and he just makes sense, because the one you love says his songs are nice. To love is to merge. No wonder there is reviling of the mind and the heart when the clock ticks and it’s time for goodbyes, because depending on them has made you self-sufficient. Separation has now become a kind of death.

Why is learning easy with love?

I will not stand here with a mace and speak on this as if to say I have methodologically mapped it out, but one fateful day, it made sense to me. We were on a group call with a bunch of friends, and we spoke about names of endearment, and while everyone else fooled around and jokingly suggested names like: “alaye”, “boss” and every non-romantic name you can think about, I said, “mi amor.” Now, this is not some profound breakthrough in any way. The guy who collects money from conductors at the bus stop probably knows the meaning of mi amor. From the phone, I could hear her smile as she shouted yessss and repeated the phrase with a ravishing glee. This is why we do it, right? For the joy set before us, we enjoy the pain of conforming to hear a smile-ridden yes.

I had failed French and Yoruba, but at that moment, I had passed the language of love. I was fluent. Taking more lessons from that day was easy; the yes echoed in my head, and all I desired was to elicit that response in whatever form it would take the next time. It is why we learn to make good pancakes, because they love it, and we someday hope that ours becomes the best one they’ve ever tasted.

All joy:

My friend is a theology buff; it gives him great pleasure to discuss and debate matters of faith. His wife signed up for a bible school so that they could have that in common. Cute. I think it’s necessary to say that we do not need to have a hand in every soup our lovers make, but maybe one or two; it’s a way to strum the strings of the heart. I think it’s a thing of joy to do something that reflects to them that you see them and they are worthy of the inconvenience of breaking yourself out of the way you are set in. It would be great for them to look at you, all you do and say, “gracias,” while you, in return, finally have the proficiency to respond with “de nada.”