Two cultures, one dinner table

I came to Houston for graduate school twenty years ago and stayed. My wife and I have three children now: Ifeoma, who is twelve, Obi, who is nine, and baby Chima, who arrived in March and runs the house.

The older two were born here. They sound like Texans. They love football, the American kind, and they think my accent is funny when I am tired. When they were small, I worried that they would grow up without knowing where half of them comes from.

I tried the serious approach first. I bought Igbo language books and scheduled lessons on Sunday afternoons. It did not work. The children treated it like extra homework, and honestly, so did I.

What worked was dinner. We eat together at least four nights a week, and we made one rule: everyone learns one Igbo word or phrase at the table. Sometimes I teach it. Sometimes their grandmother teaches it over a video call from Owerri. Sometimes Ifeoma looks one up and tries to catch me out.

We cook together too. Obi makes jollof rice with me, and we argue every time about whether it needs more pepper. Ifeoma is learning to make egusi soup from her grandmother over the phone, with a lot of shouting and laughing.

Last Christmas we went home to Nigeria for the first time in six years. At my mother’s house, Obi greeted his uncles in Igbo, properly, the way he practiced at the table. My brother looked at me like I had performed a miracle.

My children do not have to choose between being American and being Igbo. They get to carry both. My job is to hand them the second one, one word at a time.