AFRICAN DRAMA
KOBINA SEKYI: The Blinkards.
Comment on the comportment of the cosmopolitan club members
Explanation
Members of this "elite" group are a bunch of Africans struggling between two cultures, neither of which they are appreciably integrated into. The club is a motley assemblage of semi-literates and university graduates who choose to adopt, hook, line and sinker, a number of English ways of life at the expense of their own authentic cultural values. The speech delivered by their secretary during the ill-conceived Okadu-Tsiba wedding ceremony sums up all that is ludicrous in their comportment.
The speech urges those aspiring to be gentlemen to abhor all that is African: food, drinks and the use of the mother tongue, a mention a few. To them, the ostentatious use of high falutin words and heavily loaded expressions shows a mastery of the English language. Thus Mr. Nku's speech is ludicrously laced with such jaw-breaking words as "Iachrimosity" instead of "tears", "celibacy" instead of "bachelor" and "hymeneal altar" instead of 'wedding'.
The expression "black skin white masks" fittingly captures the comportment of the cosmopolitan club members. The sharp contradictions in their blindly adopted ways of life expose their ludicrous position between the two cultures.