Mfana Ibaha: The Many Meanings of No Problem

Part 1

Some words are too deeply rooted in culture to be adequately captured by their dictionary meanings. They carry history, temperament, memory and an understanding of human relationships that only reveals itself through context. Here, Crispin Oduobuk explores such words, “Mfana Ibaha”, which is served in parts.

This is an Ibibio expression commonly understood as “no problem”, but one capable of carrying meanings ranging from reassurance and composure to acceptance, restraint and the quiet recognition of consequence.

Long before 2Baba popularised the phrase and turned it into a hit song, mfana ibaha was already one of those sayings that could mean one thing in one context and something else entirely in another. To his credit, 2Baba made it a national, if not continental, anthem.

On the surface, mfana ibaha, like hakuna matata, means no worries. No problem. Yet the same expression can carry a meaning far removed from its literal translation. It can be an assurance that all is well. A declaration that a situation is under control. A way of telling someone not to fret because whatever needs to be done will be done.

But there is another mfana ibaha.

This one comes with a different tone, a different pause, sometimes even a different look. It may be uttered after someone has wronged you, you have asked that the matter be redressed, and the person has decided that your grievance does not deserve attention.

Mfana ibaha. No problem. Except that there is a problem.

Or, more precisely, there was a problem. You raised it. The other person declined to address it. And now you have decided that there is no longer anything to say.

This is where the beauty, and subtle menace, of the expression lies. The words themselves remain innocent. It is the circumstance that changes their temperature.

Sometimes mfana ibaha means, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Sometimes it means, “It’s all right. Let’s move on.”

And sometimes it means something closer to: “So that is your position? Fine. I’ve heard you.”

The rest is deliberately left unsaid. That unsaid portion may be the most important part of the expression.

The grammar of calm

There is something in the ordinary use of mfana ibaha that speaks to a preference for composure.

Someone brings you a difficulty. You hear them out. Perhaps you already know what needs to be done. Or maybe you don’t. Either way you’re not going to panic simply because a problem has presented itself.

Mfana ibaha. There is no problem.

What you’re actually saying is: I understand. I’m not alarmed. Leave it with me. It will be handled.

There is confidence in it. Self-possession. Also, an acceptance that not every difficulty deserves to become a crisis.

This aspect of the expression sits comfortably within a certain perception of the Ibibio character, though perceptions of one’s own people are often as revealing for their exaggerations as for their truths.

The Ibibio have sometimes been accused, not entirely without justification, of being too easily satisfied with what life offers. There is an old cultural joke about making do with little, and even a more recent, rather unflattering expression, “Etuk Syndrome”, used to describe a tendency towards small expectations or an excessive willingness to settle for what is available.

There is a generosity in such contentment. There can also be a limitation. Contentment is a virtue until it becomes an excuse for not demanding what is deserved.

Yet there is another side to the same sensibility. The person who can say mfana ibaha when confronted by difficulty is not necessarily indifferent to what is happening. He may simply refuse to allow the difficulty to determine his state of mind.

A people can be content without being incapable of ambition. A person can accept the circumstances of a moment without accepting everything that another person does to him.

This is where mfana ibaha begins to acquire its second life.

When “no problem” becomes a verdict

There is another mfana ibaha, and it is harder to translate.

An offence has occurred. You raise the matter. You expect an apology, an explanation or some form of redress. Instead, the other party refuses. Perhaps he dismisses you. Perhaps he insists he has done nothing wrong. Maybe he simply does not care enough to make amends.

You have said your piece.

Mfana ibaha.

This time, the expression does not necessarily close the matter. It closes the conversation. And that is a very different thing.

The phrase can now carry an unsaid sentence: Since that is your position, I’ve heard you. You will see what comes next.

It is a subtle form of power because the speaker does not surrender the power of interpretation to the listener. Nothing is explained. Nothing is threatened. Nothing is promised. The ambiguity is the message.

This is why tone matters so much. A warm mfana ibaha can put a worried person at ease. A cold one can make a perfectly confident person suddenly wonder whether he has miscalculated.

The words have not changed. The circumstances have.

Every culture has versions of this. “It is fine.” “As you wish.” “Leave it.” “We shall see.” Such expressions can be completely innocent or carry a meaning that everyone in the room understands without anyone having to spell it out.

Language is rarely only vocabulary. It is also context, relationship, history and timing. A dictionary can tell us what words mean. It cannot always tell us what they mean when one person looks another person in the eye and says them.

That is the territory occupied by mfana ibaha.

My mother’s lesson in the unsaid

I was reminded of all this by something my late mother once said.

We were in the sitting room of our flat in Uyo. I cannot now remember what had led to the conversation. Memory has preserved the sentence but lost its occasion, which is perhaps appropriate because the sentence has come to mean more to me with time.

She said it in Ibibio. What follows is my best recollection of the meaning in English:

“I am not saying something should happen. But if something should happen, I would put the church to one side and enter the ground for whoever made that thing to happen.”

It stopped me. This was not the woman I expected to hear those words from.

My mother had been trained as a nurse by missionaries in the late 1940s. By the time I went to university in the 1990s, she could still quote Shakespeare she had learned almost half a century earlier. She retired around 1986 as a senior matron and, in the years that followed, became deeply involved in church activities.

And yet there she was, in our Uyo sitting room, reaching for something older.

She was not, as I understood it, advocating violence. What startled me was the vocabulary of the sentiment: the idea that there are circumstances in which the civilised self, the Christian self, the educated self, may find itself standing face to face with something more primordial.

The church could be put to one side. One could “enter the ground”. And whoever had caused the thing would discover that there were consequences.

I have thought about that sentence many times since. Perhaps because it raised a question that has no easy answer: how much does education actually change people?

My mother’s education had carried her into a world far removed from the one in which earlier generations of her family had lived. Missionary schooling had given her another language, another literature, another faith tradition… to be continued