The ‘Big Church’ and TV Narrator Duties (80s-90s IBADAN)
The tradition in church was that you graduated from the Children’s department in Primary six and then moved to Bible Class when you got to high school. Attending service in the “big church” was reserved for when you were in your Senior high days, but we had a quick-fire promotion.
I started playing the drums while Emeka was playing the piano in church. This meant that we were supposed to go to the “big church” for 15 minutes, play the instruments and then return to our normal classes. Over time, we got more comfortable with listening to hymns in the big church instead of daydreaming in the children’s department about the next mango fruit we would pluck or the football we would play. Because of the exception we had, Uche was allowed to accompany us to the main church.
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One of my roles in church after playing the drums was to fill him in on what was on TV during the week, since Deacon Clement Ojeh, in his heavenly wisdom, had decided that there was not to be a TV in his house. I was the designated human recorder, so I had to keep the details of the wrestling matches I watched on Saturday and the Chinese action movies on Wednesday in my head in preparation for the Sunday download. Our other friend, Remi, was the designated movie watcher. Remi’s family had a functional VCR, which enabled him to watch movies on VHS. He watched movies and narrated them while I watched TV, and then I narrated to Uche.
For the Yoruba shows, a two-stage process was required. First, I had to translate the context of the show before recounting the scenes. The translation of the context of the show was needed, so he could use his imagination to construct the scenes. Back then, there was a police detective show on TV in Ibadan titled “Eleti Ofe.” It was the stereotypical cop show in which individuals with criminal intent created cases for the police to solve. So, I described the show as a TV version of Sherlock Holmes, since that was a point of reference he knew from his love for books.
Some other types of shows, such as Chinese movies, were a lot easier to narrate. Some of the narrations went like “ short chinese guy with a moustache climbed a thousand hills before he could meet master, after he met master, master sent him to fetch water and cut firewood, then bad guys appeared in the temple, master killed all the bad guys with a stick
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