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The first time I ever heard the name “Yahoozee”
was about five or six months ago when I was going somewhere in the same car
with my boss. We were approaching a Volkswagen bus parked on a street by a
mobile retailer with music blaring from some 250 watts speakers.
My boss hummed the song and asked me: “Is
that Yahoozee they are playing?”
“What’s that?” I asked myself. I had heard
the music before, but I had no idea what they were singing. Not wanting to
betray my ignorance, I mumbled a response which was neither here nor there.
“But what is Yahoozee?” I continued to ask
myself until I got home.
“What is Yahoozee?” I asked my wife.
“Oh, it is that music by Olu Maintain,” she
responded. “And why are you asking?”
I explained to her what happened in the
course of the day.
“Ah,” she screamed. “I can’t believe your boss
was singing that song. It’s talking about taking your money and buying a Hummer
Jeep. It’s a 419 song.”
As a rule, we do not allow dirty songs in
our home, especially because of the children. We decided long ago that it would
be better to guard and guide their growing-up years jealousy so that they would
grow up with as little garbage as possible. But the television has given us quite
a run for our money on this and we seem to be losing it by the day.
The first time I heard my
three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and her two-year-old sister sing “Do Me, I
Do You,” I had no idea what they were talking about. With time I understood the
lyrics of the song and had to explain to them it was not good for them to sing
that kind of song. The problem is: they know a lot of ‘good’ people who sing
it. So why should they not?
Any time I take them to a children’s party,
you can be certain it will not end until they have played “Do Me” and “Yahoozee.”
And my children would look at me with their eyes wide open. I usually
understand the message. In their childhood innocence, what they are saying is: “Daddy,
do something.” But sadly, I really cannot do anything about it when I hear
children sing dirty songs or take amorous or seductive dance steps. And it is
creating problems for me in my relationship with my children.
Do not get me wrong: I do not have anything
against P-Square or Olu maintain. But I do not think “Do Me” and “Yahoozee" are meant
for children. Unfortunately, children everywhere seem to love the music.
You can therefore imagine my shock when I
got home recently and my wife said worriedly, “You will not believe what your
daughter said they were taught in school today!”
“What was she taught?” I asked
apprehensively.
“Yahoozee. And she can even dance Yahoozee
now.”
That was unbelievable! I had taken time to
pick a school for them and had put them in one where I knew the proprietor as
well as the head teacher. To the best of my knowledge, they are very godly
people, and they would never recruit or retain any teacher who has a major
character flaw. So what is happening?
“Lisette,” my wife called out to our first
daughter, “come and dance Yahoozee for your daddy.”
My daughter runs out in disbelief and looked
at me starry-eyed. Then her mother assured her there was no problem; Daddy just
wanted to see if she could dance Yahoozee.
“OK,” she said, “Daddy, let me dance
Yahoozee for you.”
Truly,
she could dance Yahoozee perfectly well now – I mean that dance they dance with
two fingers in the air. More shocking was the fact that her two-year-old sister
could dance it even better.
“Who taught you how to dance Yahoozee?” I
asked her.
“Miss Helen,” she said.
And that is the head teacher who is a youth
pastor in her church - a leading Pentecostal denomination. Maybe I wrongly
assumed that they should know what to teach my children in school. But I do not
pay for my children every term what three generations of the Ojenagbon family
did not pay all these years as school fees so that they would be taught how to
dance Yahoozee. Or is there something about Yahoozee I do not know…before I
lodge a formal complaint?
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Posted by Robot| 12.03.2008 11:59