Why I love Nigeria? Why I love Africa?
Tell me, where else in the whole wide world can you make a khaki cocktail with big stout and emu funfun?
I love Nigeria I nor go lie.
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ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Nine)
Madam Ngu finally cornered me in the buka.
If I had any inkling she was coming to that buka that fateful day, I would rather have starved than be found dead there. She had been looking for me for weeks. And I had been evading her. I was trying to break free of her influence and she was trying her very best to ensure that she stamped herself into my art, my being, my style of creating, and my idioms of expression. She had studied at the Royal College in London and was trying to make me a master draughtsman who painted in the European fashion. And I was a radical looking for a way to break out of the western mold of painting.
TRADE BY BARTER
TRADE BY BARTER
Our ancestors did not have money, but they traded across the vast continent of Africa, through Europe and as far away as China.
Goods from Africa traveled across thousands of miles throughout the world, even at a time when we did not use money in Africa.
Homesick.
I will close my eyes and transport myself back home, among my friends, drinking palm wine laced with stout, or whatever. Khaki. Or whatsoever friends gift our ancestors.
Àjò ò dùn bí ilé.
It is Thanksgiving week in the United States when people are giving thanks to their ancestors.
When I arrived…
When I arrived the United States in 1992 to start a doctorate at UW, Madison, I had only $98 in my pocket.
My professor, Henry Drewal, quickly came to my assistance. He immediately paid my school fees for the first semester, and gave me $1,000 in cash to start me off. Then he provided me with free accommodation in the posh part of town for the first year of my studies, while I found my feet.
Wisconsin, Madison, 1994. Naming ceremony.
Wisconsin, Madison, 1994. Naming ceremony.
I was a college student.
One of my Nigerian colleagues had just finished his Ph.D., and he returned to Nigeria.
He had no idea that his girlfriend in Madison was pregnant.
When he was contacted, he decided that he was not returning to the US.
The pregnant girlfriend decided she was not going to Nigeria to join him.
When you walk
When you walk, you are telling the story of your life with your body language. The way you move your feet tells others who you are if they pay attention to you as you place one foot in front of the other. I did not realize this reality until after my accident, after I could no longer walk on my own two legs, without the use of crutches.
