Despite the frequent reference to the phenomenon, a lot of people know very little about African hospitality. Although romanticized among hotels and travel agencies in contemporary times, the golden age of the phenomenon lies in the pre-colonial past. The sublimity that characterized hospitality in Africa has been eroded by modernity. What exists today are, at best, degenerate copies of what used to be.
Indeed, African hospitality was a core element in social relations in indigenous African communities and some forms of it were unique and unexampled anywhere else in the world. This brief narrative uses a practice called Imousho (making friends) among the Ubiaja people of Esanland, Nigeria to illustrate the extreme dimension and unique shape hospitality could assume. Imousho was associated with some festivals. It flourished in pre-colonial times, with some vestiges surviving up to the early1970s.
In this unique form of hospitality, a family received, accommodated, fed, and entertained guests, mostly strangers from neighbouring communities and even beyond, typically for three days. The visitor was at liberty to choose any house. The only condition to be met was an intention to participate in the associated festival.
He or She could present gifts but was not under obligation to do so. Ubiaja enjoyed a deluge of guests during the period. The more the merrier. It was an opportunity to meet new faces – real and not virtual faces. This was an unbeatable show of hospitality. A friendship struck in the course of Imousho usually lasted a lifetime and could progress into an exchange of visits and even marriage between members of the family involved. I am looking forward to a narrative on African hospitality from your culture.
