ÌMỌ́DÒYE
ÌMỌ́DÒYE
An Akodi Orisa Sculpture
Ile Ife, Nigeria
January 2019
Artist: Moyo Okediji
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Captive No More
Captive No More
1
What you are reading is not poetry. It is not fiction. It is my true family history.
I am an ascendant from slavery. Yes.
It means I am a descendant of enslaved bodies. Yes.
Inside me, they locked iron collars,
leg fetters, and hand lockers. Yes.
Yes. Does it sound weird? Yes.
Slavery was real in Africa. Yes
Africa was the Ground Zero of slavery. Yes.
19 years
I was 19 years old in 1975 and an undergraduate studying painting at the University of Ife when my friend, Augusta Akusu-Ossai, took this picture of me.
The attire I’m wearing in the picture is typical of what I always wore in those days: a long adire (batik) top that I designed and sewed myself, and the baggy pants of that era.
To My Unborn Child
To My Unborn Child Learn to listen Between the lines. Words are nothing but mesmerizing sounds The word “water”Is not wet.
The Odo Ogbe market
I went to the Odo Ogbe market, Ile Ife.
The market women went, “Oyinbo, come give us a hug.”
This world is beautiful.
The First Akodi Orisa
The Akodi Orisa that I constructed in 2011, Ondo, Ondo State, Nigeria. It is the model for the one in Ile Ife.
The annual Egúngún.
One of the most fascinating spectacles of my childhood days was the annual Egúngún.
Egungun means something that is perfect, balanced, or straight, formed from the word gún.
In Yoruba, you repeat something to emphasize it: guńgún refers to the absolutely or superlatively gún element of life.
