What Is History?

On the morning of September 30th 1998, I was one of fifteen scared Journalism students standing outside a Cardiff University meeting room nervously waiting for our seminar tutor to arrive. We had been introduced to the group of postgraduate students who would be taking the classes during our welcome lecture the previous week. We all agreed that we would not mind which tutor had been assigned to us, as long as it was not the fearsome looking man who had been sitting in the front row of the lecture theatre, wearing the full national costume of Nigeria and making notes faster than the lecturer was actually speaking.

I think you can guess what happened next.

Distant footsteps could be heard further down the corridor. We all looked in the direction of the sound. At precisely this moment, a leg covered in the most luxurious Nigerian silk appeared at the corner. It was then followed by another. If the theme tune to Reservoir Dogs had started playing at that moment, I wouldn't have been surprised. Better yet, the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Yes, it was Eghosa.

He walked down the corridor towards us, seemingly in slow motion. His eyes pierced into us and he seemed to be smirking, as if thinking "I'm gonna eat you alive."

After what seemed like an hour, he arrived. He uttered not one single word, but simply reached into his pocket and pulled out a key (good to know that national costume can still be practical). He unlocked the door and walked in. We continued standing outside. He looked at us, still not speaking, and it seemed as if his eyes were now acting as magnets drawing us in to his world. Or at least, into the room.

We each took a seat. At least three of us fought over one at the back of the room, aiming to be as far away from Eghosa as possible. Unfortunately, I lost that battle - not a good omen - and I soon found myself sitting next to the man himself.

After taking an eternity to unpack his briefcase (which seemed to only contain his copious notes from the previous lecture and an apple), he arose from his seat and walked to the white board. Picking up a marker pen, he wrote something illegible on the board. Then he spoke.

"My name" he bellowed "is Eghosa Aimufha."

We all stared at him with a nervous look. Partly because we were all scared of him and partly because nobody wanted to tell him that he had written on the board with a permanent marker.

"You will notice that there is a 'G' in my name" he continued. "May I please inform you that the 'G' is silent. SI-LENT!"

Nobody spoke. He looked pleased with himself.

"Now that we have cleared that little matter up, I have one thing to say."

We waited nervously.

"What is History?"

No replies were forthcoming. Partly because we were not sure if the question was rhetorical and partly because we wondered how he would manage to teach us Journalism if he didn't couldn’t even grasp the basics of History.

"Are you people deaf? What is History?"

I was seriously contemplating using the excuse of "yes, I am deaf" at this point. Anything to break the silence. But then he proceeded to break it himself by tapping loudly on the white board and pointing in the vicinity of his illegible writing.

"Maybe you cannot understand my accent" he barked "What. Is. His. Story?"

Nobody had spoken for ten minutes and there were no volunteers to be the first to break that trend.

"This is getting silly, man" he said, as if he had learnt English from watching one too many episodes of Desmond's. "Won't somebody tell me the answer?"

Then he pointed at me.



"You - tall boy!" he yelled, not even caring about my name. "You can tell me about History!"

I cleared my throat and tried to remember the definition that I had learnt off-by-heart when I was at school.

"Well, Eghosa" I began, sounding the 'G'.

"Tut, tut, tut, man" he responded. "The 'G' is silent. SI-LENT! It is E-hosa, E-hosa, E-hosa. Say it with me. E-hosa"

Soon, a group of fifteen first year Journalism students were chanting his name in a very eerie fashion. We did this until the end of class and he never did get his answer.

The following week, I was not looking forward to the second seminar. I already knew that these weekly meetings would be the low-point of the course. I had been to other seminars during the previous week and they had been led by the most lovely, understanding postgraduate students you could imagine. They played games with us to help us learn each other's names and understood that we were the new kids on a very strange block.

But Eghosa was different.

Maybe that's why, ten minutes before our second seminar was to begin, I was the only person waiting outside the meeting room. I began to feel nervous. Had I memorised my timetable incorrectly? Should I be somewhere else? And then the big one hit me.

Am I going to be alone with Eghosa for an hour?

My fears were allayed a little with the arrival of T, who was also from Cardiff, and C from Bristol. The three of us stood there in fear. We knew that nobody else was going to arrive. Why didn't we have the sense to stay in bed that morning? Just as we were debating whether to leave and go to Starbucks, the unmistakable sound of footsteps was heard and Eghosa's theme tune started to play in my head. We were trapped, and he was coming towards us like an ant to a crumb.

The same routine applied. He unlocked the door. We walked in silently. He unpacked his briefcase. The only difference was that he didn't have to write on the white board - his question from the previous week was still there for all to see, along with a comment that somebody had added that read "which idiot did this?"

He looked at the three of us. We were huddled together in the corner.

They hadn't told us about experiences like this in the prospectus.

"Hmmm. It seems that there are one or two people absent" he said, looking in the direction of an empty chair as if somebody was sitting in it.

We hoped that he would send us home. But this was Eghosa.

"Not to worry. Now. Where were we?"

He was actually going to teach us?

"What is History?"

Does this man have eyes?

"You - blondie!" he said, pointing in the direction of C and still not caring about names, "what is History?"

"Well, umm, it's, err, complicated" she stammered.

"Woman! There is nothing complicated about History" he shouted.

We couldn't believe what we were hearing.

"For the last time. What is Heeeeeee-storreeeeeeeeeeeee?" he screamed.

By now, the three of us were sat in each other's laps, clinging on for dear life.

"Man. You guys. Do you not listen in class? The definition of History is simple. It is His Story!"

We looked at him, hoping for more of an explanation. After staring back at us with an accomplished grin, he picked up the permanent marker and wrote something else illegible on the board. As before, he tapped impatiently.

"Now. What is Censorship?"

If we had been characters in a comic strip, the word "thud" would have been written above our heads as we collapsed to the ground.

By now, my stories about Eghosa were spreading throughout the Journalism department. Other students, who didn't have to endure the suffering each week, thought that he sounded hilarious. They all had lovely seminar tutors though. One person who did understand the problem was R. He had experienced Eghosa first-hand in another seminar. In fact, it is partly thanks to Eghosa that we became such good friends in the first place. We bonded by telling stories and showing off our Eghosa impersonations. Although we also had a mutual appreciation of Alan Lancaster-era Status Quo, so that helped too.

Our favourite stories involved Eghosa's great talent for getting television programme titles wrong. His habit initially led to confusion. He made references to "Scott In Antarctica" when we should have been discussing Scott Of The Antarctic and referred to "A Countryside Practice" rather than A Country Practice. However, it soon became natural to hear these slip-ups and the new titles somehow sounded even better. Indeed, I still can’t get used to the current trailers for the Sex & The City movie, because I always expect them to refer to “Sex And The City Life”, as Eghosa used to say. Of course, this always leads to disappointment, but when a newsreader recently slipped up and referred to Jessica Sarah Parker, I did wonder if Aimufha had perhaps taken up a new career as a television scriptwriter.

Perhaps the funniest thing is that nobody ever corrected Eghosa. I remember during one lecture when Eghosa got a little confused about Professor Tulloch’s Bell Theory ("every time a bell rings in A Country Practice, somebody is talking about AIDS"). On this occasion, nobody really blamed him.

From the back of the theatre, we saw Eghosa in the front row raising his hand.

"Excuse me" he yelled, interrupting Professor Tulloch mid-sentence, "could you please clarify your theory about 'A Countryside Practice?'"

Tulloch looked a little confused (not to mention a little flustered), then did as he was requested. However, he didn't correct Eghosa. Instead he started referring to "A Countryside Practice" himself for the rest of the lecture. It was such a strain on him that he broke out into a coughing fit so vicious that he had to send his female co-lecturer out to get him a jug of water. She was clearly not too pleased about that.

As the weeks went by, it became clear that nobody was ever going to turn up to Eghosa's seminars apart from me, T and C. I'm not entirely sure why we continued to attend, to be perfectly honest. Probably due to some mutual fear that the very week we didn't turn up would be the exact time that Eghosa would finally remember to take a register of attendance (that's the only way that all the absentees got away with it - no member of staff was even aware that they weren't turning up). Knowing Eghosa, he probably would have still yelled questions at an empty room.

By now, R and I had re-named Eghosa as "Jose Muffy" because of the way that he always emphasised the "Hosa" and "Muf" parts of his name. In fact, R had even written "Jose Muffy" on the official end of semester Tutor Evaluation form and no member of staff even noticed.

In addition to this, we had created a fictional world in which we envisaged Eghosa living. A world where he called everyone "man" or "woman", where every sentence began "What is..?", and where, when he wasn't speaking, he would walk around saying "Aaayyyy!" like a Nigerian version of The Fonz.

It is hard to picture this without smiling, which is why it was probably not the best idea to let my imagination run riot during one of Eghosa's seminars.
He was asking his usual questions and offending C by calling her "blondie" for the umpteenth time. I was miles away, thinking about how funny it would be if Eghosa was a character on Emmerdale ("Hey man, what is farming?"). I was awoken from my daydream by Muffy banging on the table in front of me with a thirty-centimetre ruler that had "Nigerian National Bank" written on the side.

"Hey man, why you always smiling?" he asked.

I said the first thing that came into my head.

"You just make me so happy, Eghosa!" I replied.

"Man, you is a strange boy. And it's a silent 'G'. SI-LENT!"

I must admit that I felt a tinge of sadness when Eghosa was replaced after the Christmas break. Apparently, he had received such heavy criticism in those end of semester evaluations that it was decided that he may be better off returning to his research duties.

However, Eghosa is still at large in Cardiff. The last time I saw him was in the Tesco store on Wellfield Road (or is it Albany Road? I always confuse the two). He was interrogating a sales assistant at the time:

"Hey man, how much are these eggs?"

I felt a strong urge to go up to him and say "that's a silent 'G' Eghosa. SI-LENT!" But I was in a rush for a bus and he would have kept me there all day.