Birth Tourism - The Industry - My Worry

Today (23^rd July, 2015) should probably be tagged “baby’s day” for me because everywhere I turned to there was something that had to do with little kids! As early as 6am, one of my BFF (“One of” simply because I have many BFFs!) sent me a personal message on BBM “Bro we have another princess” and I was elated because I shared the journey with her (in prayers). Fast forward to 10 am on the same day I got a broadcast message from another good friend of mine “Join me and praise God, my wife has delivered a baby girl” another yay… my assortment of godchildren just increased :D.

Why are these events important to this post? Here is why, the two women had their (our) bundle of joy in the United State of America (USA) which I suppose has the best maternal mortality rate compared to the rest of the world - or maybe not – it might jolly well be because USA has a great policy that enables a child born on the plane in the US air space become the citizen of Uncle Sam with all accruable rights bestowed immediately through issuance of birth certificates and passports.

This seems to be the new craze for the emerging middle class in Nigeria even though the elites had always practiced this since independence, most of the children of the wealthy Nigerians in the 90’s hold dual citizenship.

Now here is what truly inspired this article, at exactly 5:40 pm, I was done with the most important items on my to-do list, so I jumped into my personal mail to at least act like I have a work-life balance, voila! I see child birth staring me in the face again, this time it is from a populardeal and coupon marketplace website… hold on, Child birth deals? Like will you give me a great wife deal that can give me triplets at once? So I do not have to go through the journey for 3*9 months? O my bad it is an offer of an “Affordable Childbirth in USA”, quite cheap compared to what I know so I clicked on it.

Guess what? It is simply a consultancy service for expectant mothers and fathers who are interested in having the blue passport in the next 21 years (when their kids can decide to make their parents citizens). I mean, just like the numerous consulting firms helping Nigerian students gain admission abroad we now have consulting firms that will tell you to wear a long kaftan for the visa interview to hide the bulging stomach, prepare a tourist itinerary for you to defend, should the immigration officer question your purpose of visiting Texas, and finally arrange for your accommodation, upkeep etc.

Here is my worry, just 4 months ago I came across an article on a major news site about the term ‘Birth Tourism’.

Birth Tourism is the term used to describe this sort of service being offered on the deal site, the FBI was on a mission to crackdown and track Chinese firms making huge profit from this unregulated industry or should I say this industry that has been created due to the absence of a firm law.

Now, why am I ranting or writing about this? Maybe I am just scared that by the time I have “Bae” and decide to join my good friends in exploring the Birth Tourism market, the Republicans or Tea party might be in charge of the USA and their strong immigration views might prevent me.

Or, I might just pretend I am not interested and stick to the argument that says make it big in Nigeria, fly to any country you want to, live in any country you so desire, buy properties in any corner of the world, make yourself a free citizen and not dependent on a free nation… but what do I know? I am just a wannabe birth tourist.

My Yoruba tale...

It was sometime between 2001 and 2012, in my Senior Secondary School days, I was in a somewhat heated argument (well, not exactly – more like making a case) with my Yoruba teacher on why she was wrong and I was right about the way an essay in the examination and subsequent questions on the essay were wrong. The essay in question had a lot of the word “Igbe” which I automatically corrected in my head as “igbo” based on the context in which they were used while I read through the passages and consciously corrected the same word on the question paper and in my sheets while answering the question.

After my ranting and self-elevated speech about my prowess in Yoruba language second only to that of Oduduwa, my Yoruba teacher simply finished me with this statement “Shey o tii gbo ni pa eran Igbe ri? Ta ni o be e pe ki o so igbe di igbo nigba ti ohun dahun ibere na?” She went on to give me zero in that particular question. Now here is the thing, I was right and so was she, the two words were appropriate in the context of the essay presented and questions asked, but the problem was the frequency and context of use of one word in our daily spoken Yoruba viz-a-viz the other. Another issue was the clear difference between spoken and written words, speaking a language is massively different from writing the same language and automatically affects reading a language, it might surprise you to know there are people in America who can speak English but cannot write in English but that is a story for another day. The third issue probably has to do with the fact that the elders are always right in the Yoruba cultural and she just had to shove that in my face lol.

You may wonder why all these epistle and reminiscing, I came across a project spearheaded by Kola Tubosun which will preserve the heritage of the Yoruba language albeit starting from Yoruba names and their meanings, the project is also poised to feature pronunciations of these names, stories behind the names and the oriki attached to the names. It is quite a novel project and one which I am pretty excited about because it reminded me of the incident I narrated above which later made me one of the closest students to my Yoruba teacher in secondary school, it also points to the fact that Nigerians are not being left out of the digitalization going on.

I cannot wait for the websites to launch, my first wiki post will be about the joke I throw around when people ask for me name in an informal gathering, your everyday Temitope becomes “Temitopenitorioluwaloseyifunmi” and the next question that follows is “How did you write Jamb with such a long name?”

To read more about the project please visit www.yorubaname.com and www.orukoyoruba.com or this blog post on TechCabal. You may also contribute to the project financially by visiting this Indiegogo page.

NB:

1. My understanding of "Igbe" was sh*t, thus i translated it to "Igbo" which means "bush"
2. “Shey o tii gbo ni pa eran Igbe ri? Ta ni o be e pe ki o so igbe di igbo nigba ti ohun dahun ibere na?”  - "Haven't you heard about Bush Meat before? Who told you to 'igbe' to 'igbo' when you were answering the question?"