But Who Was Godden – The Perils of English As a Second Language

This is the question that vexed my mind when I was a little boy growing up in an African country where English was the official language by virtual of having been previously colonised by the British. I was an inquisitive child who sought to learn everything, but this one proved to be one mystery I couldn’t crack, until it receded to the archived section of my memory bank. From time to time this question popped up in the random access memory of my brain but as quickly as it did, it was re-consigned back to where it belonged. I simply didn’t have an answer.

It was not until I was an adult that the great mystery was solved and I can report that I laughed at myself when, one day, the answer came straight to me like some almighty revelation! The whole time the answer was right there staring at me and I just never saw it! My brain was at that stage not flexible enough in the queen’s language to accommodate variations and accents from wherever.

I was reminded of this once-upon-a-time vexing mystery the other day while walking to our local shopping village just up the road from where I live. I noticed a group of boys no more than 10 years old walking in formation, neatly dressed in their khaki shirts and shorts and the distinctive scouts scarf with the scout master ahead of the group. Then on my way back I saw the same group sitting around a camp fire in a little forest strip between our suburb and the nearby main road. This took me to a time and place many years ago when I was around the age of these little scouts. Except that I was never a scout in the sense of being in an organised scout camp. You see that privilege passed me over to my elder brother. By virtue of my brother being older, it meant that, for some things, he had the first go. And sometimes this meant that at that time that door was shut for me. Part of it had to do with bigger brothers not wanting to mingle with their pesky little siblings.  Sometimes it just meant that at that point in time the little sibling was excluded because of age or some other qualifications to participate. It was the same even in the most beloved game of football when I could never be on the same team with my big brother. It is not that older siblings are necessarily selfish but rather when you are young, your level of maturity physically and mentally is more stark over a small age gap. Of course, as you grow older that gap reduces and effectively disappears. But at age 7 to say 10, that difference is very real. And so it was that my brother became a scout at Woodlands camp, Lusaka and I couldn’t be one at the time.

But me being inquisitive and determined, I did not let this little accident of birth stop me from achieving the dream of becoming a scout. And if I couldn’t be a scout in a scout camp  and wear those fancy scarfs and khaki clothes, I was going to be a scout in any other way. Who cared about the khaki uniform and the scarf, who cared about going to jamborees, I still was going to be a scout any way! And so, I embarked on learning everything there was to learn about boy scouts. I learnt most of the things mimicking my brother and reading the scouts little handbook. I learnt things like how to tie different rope knots like the reef knot. I learnt and practiced with my mates how to walk through the bush and not get lost by leaving clues to help us trace back to our camp.

I learnt the Scouts’ motto which we used to sing:

“Boys scouts, BE PREPARED is our motto.”

All things considered I learnt as much as I could about being a scout without being a scout.

You might still be wondering what all this has to do with the title of the story - “Who was Godden?” Well you see I also learnt and memorised the Scouts oath:

“On my honour, I will do my best

To do my duty

To God and my country and to obey the Scout Law…”

In the case of scouts in my homeland the ‘my country’ bit was replaced with “Zambia.”

And so the oath was “…to God and to Zambia…”

And that is where the confusion in my mind set in. You see in those days we spoke our mother tongues in normal conversations and only started learning English in Grade 1 of formal school. The learning process itself was very elaborate where we were schooled in what passed as the “Queen’s language” speak with proper pronunciations with the syllables and intonations being as exact as it was for formal English learning. We learnt the “a, e, i, o, u” vowels and there was a clear distinction between ‘a’ and ‘e’. As part of the learning process we were compelled to speak English in class, and speaking what was called vernacular (local language) was punishable. It was not uncommon to get a smack from the teacher for speaking vernacular in class. And so, we embarked on the life quest of reading, speaking, singing and writing English in the proper “English” way. Needless to say, we learnt to sing English songs even if we didn’t understand half of what we were singing. For example, we sung the national anthem at every school assembly with much enthusiasm although we hardly understood the meaning of much of what the words said.

“…Zambia praise to thee

All one strong and free…”

And so, it was with the scout oath, though not quite in the same way as I understood the meaning of every word in the scout oath – so I thought. The only problem was that I kept wondering why the promise was to “Godden to Zambia.”

“Zambia”, I understood – that was my beloved motherland. But who was Godden?

The revelation came to me, many years later. Suddenly it was as clear as daylight on the African savannah - there was no such entity or person known as ‘Godden’ to whom the scouts made their oath. What I understood to be “to Godden to Zambia” was actually to “God-and-to Zambia.” Saying this in one breath and throwing in what I suspect was an infiltration of the South African accent just threw me off tangent. For those who have travelled to South Africa, one thing you pick up is the distinctive way black South Africans speak English. You notice things like how ‘a’ is pronounced as ‘e’ - for example bag is pronounced as beg, happy is pronounced as heppy – a distinct departure from what we were taught where ‘a’ was the apple sound, while ‘e’ was the hen sound.

And so for years my little mind was vexed with this eternal question “who is Godden”