How I Pretended Not To Speak Yoruba, Used It To Date Twins At School- David Oyelowo

David Oyelowo, the British-Nigerian actor, has recalled how he once pretended not to understand Yoruba at a boarding school in Nigeria, a tactic he used to eavesdrop on conversations about him.

In a recent appearance on the One54 Africa Podcast, the 50-year-old filmmaker said his time living abroad before returning to Nigeria gave him an accent that led many classmates to assume he didn’t speak the local language.

According to him, instead of correcting them, he turned the misunderstanding into an advantage.

“I used to speak Yoruba… I used it as a bit of a weapon because I had this accent going to Nigeria, I went to a boarding school in Nigeria and pretended I could not speak Yoruba,” he said.

Oyelowo described the experience as feeling like “the invisible man,” allowing him to overhear things people never intended for him to hear.

He said around the ages of 12 and 13, he would listen to girls who liked him discuss him among themselves and that was how he ended up dating twins at the same time.

“So, it is like being the invisible man, if people are speaking the language they think you can’t speak or understand everything they are saying,” he said.

“I was like 12/13, for two years, every girl who liked me, I would hear them talking and that was how I ended up dating twins at the same time.

“The day I was leaving the school, I went round speaking Yoruba to everyone and their faces, they were so shocked and I was just laughing.”

Oyelowo was born on April 1, 1976 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, to Nigerian parents. Stephen, his father, is from Oyo while his mother is Igbo from south-east Nigeria.

Source: The Cable

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