Feefee Lu Right: Come on, come on, answer the phone. I’m getting nervous here.
Shehu Bungobungo: Hello, hello, wetin gwan man?
Feefee: (Really, really nervous) He… Hello, Shehu Bungobungo?
Shehu: Yes o, dis is me.
Feefee: I don’t really know where to begin… My name is Feefee Lu Right, I’m calling from Canada… I’m your cousin eight times removed.
Shehu: How come I get cousin removed eight times from Canada? ‘Feefee’, you be Chinese?
Feefee: Yes, I’m Chinese.
Shehu: Then, how can you be my cousin? Bola, na you again, right? Look, no call me every time to beg for fish and groundnut oil. How many times I go tell you I no get! Ah-ah!
Feefee: Er… Yes, I know it sounds funny, but it’s true – we are related. I did some work on discovering my roots recently.
Shehu: Dis na Nigeria, not Gambia.
Feefee: Heh-heh, yes. Anyway, I traced an old lady in the US who happened to be a descendant of a certain fisherman from a far away land (what you now know as Nigeria) in Africa. She says one day, his exploitations got the better of him - rough waters swept his fishing canoe off into the sea far away from his home. He was stranded at sea for fifty days and fifty nights, his canoe being carried further and further away. He was eventually picked up by Chinese merchants who took him aboard their ship and, at the end of their ventures, brought him to the land of Sin…
Shehu: To the land of wetin?
Feefee: Sin – that was the old name for China. He settled down there, got married and had two offspring. One of whom was taken off to the Britain’s American colony later on when the British came to China. The old lady was his descendant, but my family descend from the other offspring, a woman, Si Tin Lon. Your family, on the other hand, are direct descendants of that poor fisherman who was swept off to sea.
Shehu: Heh-eh-eh! Pow-wer-ful story. Hmm! Heverybody was-a kung fu figh-t-ting… No wonder! I know I resemble Jackie Chan, so dat is why.
Everyone else agrees he looks like Shabba Ranks.
Feefee: Yes, and I knew I loved African music for a reason.
Her father’s an African-music-freak.
Feefee: So, how are thi…
Shehu: Please, hold on, I’m coming. Oi! Yo, would you blokes mind keeping that noise down, I’m on the phone here. Show some consideration. Ehe, Feefee, you were saying wetin?…
Hmmmh, what a story! Feel like doing some ancestry discovery work?
HIT IT!