Reminders

By

Obododimma Oha

There was a time that educated people used to keep diaries. They wanted to be faithful to others and to be seen as people who kept their words. They wanted to be reminded. They were also mindful of time and were monitoring their daily activities to make sure they were (properly) executed. Diaries, especially those inviting users to document their daily dealings and commitments, were a good store of memory, or helped memory. These were manual means of remembering, but later came the electronic means, which greatly enhanced and eased off remembering.

From email reminders to other apps that remind, reminders in general call us to order. They ask us to be orderly. To manage our lives neatly and to make checks here and there. Electronic reminders take over, but do not have to take over our lives entirely. We have to be able to live our lives. It is good that technology is helping in this regard, but we should not hand over entirely to it.

Reminders also remind us that we are created to be human beings. As humans, the real reminder is that we should not wait always to be reminded. To wait to be reminded always is to turn to a cart that stops wherever it is pushed. The Igbo put that unfortunate attribute as Abụkwala nchi a na-echetara ịta arụ (“Do not be the grass-cuttter that is reminded that it should bite”). Imagine waiting to be reminded to bite the enemy or to fight back an assailant. It is shameful.

Nevertheless, I like reminders. They bring back narratives, inserting narratives into narratives. I like reminders that help us to see our lives as a network or connected narratives. Reminders that connect the past and the future, or seek the meaning of the present in connecting past with future, thrill a lot. We see that in the Facebook reminders in which we are still given the choice to keep sharing our thoughts, our lives, if we like.

But reminders of old are particularly special. They help the person reminded of an obligation and of the need to live a planned life. It is not worth it to live casually and to take anything that one sees in life.

By the way, do you remember those diaries in local Nigerian languages, with market days? What were their makers trying to achieve? What were they reminding you about concerning those indigenous ways of naming days? What were they reminding us about memory of local wyas, or of the local ways meeting the modern? Or was it all about erasure of our ways and an institution of European ways of remembering?

This also reminds one about how those great old folks remembered. They had great memories and remembered their ancestors, their past, and their lives. They also remembered narratives that were fantastic, especially the exploits of mbe nwa anịga and the leopard, agụ, in obodo Iduu na  ọba.

The remembrance of those many stories was their telling. Frequent telling and re-telling. Narration before an enthusiatic audience. The stories journeyed from lips to lips. These days, who remembers to remember them? It is only  being glued to the privacy of a device. Worse still, those stories may be grossly distorted!

The great ones are reminded about other ways of telling these stories, when they hear it from the lips of tellers. They become animated! O nwere akụkọ m ga-akọrọ ụnụ! (“There is a story that I will tell you!”). And the audience would respond, begging the raconteur to tell it! Call that a special performance? Has the raconteur not become inspired to tell the story and to fulfill an important role in its transmission?

This about reminders. Others can open their mouths and indirectly remind us.When we are reminded, we do something to justify being reminded. When we are reminded, a narrative has been fulfilled.

I like reminders. They bring up obligations and look towards accomplishment. So, reminders are good for our lives. Reminders represent an education. One cannot claim to be educated if one cannot remember and do not care about being reminded.