The first time people hear the name Opobo, they think I’m Nigerian, when it should be a known fact that I’m not Nigerian. And my beef here is really with those people who just won’t let go, the ones who will literally try to force you to accept that you’re Nigerian when indeed you’re not. “…you’re Opobo, are you from Nigeria?” they will ask you in an usually probing manner. Sometimes, the tone is rather accusatory: “You are called Opobo? I now take this opportunity to formally charge you with being Nigerian. And you, the accused, stand guilty as charged.” That is what it means for someone’s tone of voice to be accusatory. There are those that are more democratic in their approach: After failing to force you to accept that you’re Nigerian, they offer you a few more options from which to pick: “ … you’re not from Nigeria? Which means you must be from Ghana. Or Senegal. Or West Africa. In fact, you’re from West Africa.” But since the issue of my nationality is a well known fact, we shall let it pass because we do not have time. Besides, no need to hoard all the space on this page from Miss Sophie Kamya and that guy who is ever angry and therefore goes around hating on everything. Which brings us to the next puzzle, and that is; why is it that whenever I mention the name Ogopogo (the Kimihurura-based pub) to anyone, they wind up by asking if I own it? It’s not easy to own Ogopogo. And all I know of the place is that the name has something Nigerian and Ghanaian and Senegalese and West African combined. And do you really want to know what Ogopogo sounds like? Ogopogo is the sound you hear when a police patrol truck speeds on the cobbled stone roads in Kimihurura and Remera and Sonatubes as the patrol cops do their night shift. But cobbled stone roads aside, Ogopogo also sounds like some slow, gentle, seductive dance from Nigeria or Ghana or West Africa. In the same way that Ogopogo makes me think of a seductive dance from that part of the continent, the word umudugudu is something I thought meant a seductive dance from Rwanda. In fact, for such a long time, I associated umudugudu with the Intore dance, which is such a shame. Similarly it took me a while before I could start to distinguish between Nyarutarama and Nyirangarama. When I’m too tired and stressed, I sometimes mix up the name of the place, Nyirangarama, with that of the restaurant, Ikimaranzara. The two words sound similar, just like my name and that of some drinking place in Kimihurura.
