All over the world, differences exist between man and woman only by their sexes, but in the Ubang community in Obudu Local Government Area of Cross River State the dissimilarities have transcended genital organs, as the men have different words for communication from their women counterparts.
Call it the land of impossibilities both in tourism and in all facets of life and you would not be far from the truth. To some, it might be a mystery, to others a fairy tale, because you would not believe or have imagined that a community in Nigeria, which prides itself as the only one in the world have its people speaking two separate languages, the men speak separately from the women.
The beauty of it is that the man and the woman understand each other without inviting an interpreter, but the law is, the man must not be caught speaking the same language of a woman, vice-versa.
With no concrete documentation to how it evolved, some of the residents in the Ubang community, who spoke with Channels Television, appears to be proud of their ancestral heritage which according to them is as old as the community itself and it is second to none in the world.
According to them, this tradition, which they cannot challenge or change, forbids women from speaking the same language used by the male counterparts, is like a law which the people must obey at all costs.
In other words, in a home, the husband must speak a different language from the wife, while a man must find a way to communicate with his daughter and vice versa.
The Village head of the community, Joseph Aleinyang said in spite of the language dissimilarities amongst his kindred’s Ubang since its inception has remained one of the most peaceful in the state, promoting communal living and are also the food basket of the state in terms of cocoa and other agricultural produce, but has remained in abject poverty due to its bad road network to transport its produce for better sales to the outer communities.
There is also a major challenge of employment among its youths, lack of access to portable drinking water as the only source of water supply to the entire community is a stream which requires long distance to access most especially, during the dry season.
There is still more mysteries that lies in the domain of the Ubang community which needs to be harnessed, one of the Ubang Mountains called Okwe Asirikwe, a gigantic rock bearing a supernatural foot print, which no one has been able to unravel the source, no human being living or dead had the size of the foot print, which makes residents believe that it was the foot print of God.
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