Editorial Statement

Abstract

Come and see
American Wonder
Come and see
American Wonder
Iro ni won n pa
American Wonder
Eke ni won n se
American Wonder

Anyone who grew up in parts of southern Nigeria will easily recognize the epigram above. When we were growing up, it was a jingle usually sung by "patent medicine" salesmen with, on occasion, their pickpocket sidekicks. At other times, it was a jingle on the lips of another category of vendors: men who went around with `cinema-in-a-box'. These boxes, which had a hole covered with glass or polyethylene that served as a viewfinder, had stored in them a scroll of pictures of exotic places, including American images. The viewer was charged the royal sum of one kobo to feed herhis eyes. What is remarkable about the jingle is that, in either case in which it was used, the object of the pitch had little or nothing to do with America; and, in the "patent medicine" salesmen's case, nor was the "'medicine" genuine at all. Additionally, the salesmen were not quacks. No, they sold whatever their wholesalers supplied to them. In the case of the roving 'cinema-in-a-box' vendor, he quite often was not misrepresenting the images in his scroll; he did not know better.