Happy Valentine’s Day
Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends. I love you all minus none.
Me, here, painting away on a beautiful Valentine’s Day, seven years ago.
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Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends. I love you all minus none.
Me, here, painting away on a beautiful Valentine’s Day, seven years ago.
Michael Harris
My brother, Michael Olonade Harris, has transitioned.
This loss is enormous.
He was my inspiration, critic, supporter, strength, teacher, collector, promoter, everything.
I knew.
Iyalode: Before the Invention of Women
My grandmother, Iya Oyo, belonged to the generation of women who didn’t experience what the sociology scholar, Professor Oyeronke Oyewumi described as the “invention of women.”
What Professor Oyewumi means is that nowadays, there are lots of rules and regulations that appear to specify what a woman is supposed to do, and what she is not supposed to be.
GENDER WAR
You naw go commot road? Abi you naw see?
Na ya papa road?
See trouble o! Becos dem buy you cellphone nau, na im make you come tanda for highway dey take call?
Na only where I stand you wan pass? You no see road everywhere?
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1982 (Part Forty-Three)
“Hey, Moyo,” Hilda yelled. “Are you alright? Are you with us?”
“Yes, I am,” I responded. I pulled myself back to the moment.
The traffic was light and the road excellent. The Lagos to Benin expressway was the best road I had ever driven on. The bus zoomed along on it effortlessly.
“You went so silent and looked so vacant, I could have sworn you were not here,” Steve said.
“I was here alright,” I answered.
“Thinking about Gina?” Hilda asked.
How easy it is to degenerate into a beast when you enter the jungle!
Yesterday I vowed to myself:
1. I will always calm down.
2. Though the okada bike riders are driving me crazy, and all the drivers are treating me like the road belongs to them only, I will refrain from calling anybody names like, “Were (lunatic), olori buruku ( crazy heads); eranko (beasts), etc.”
PLEASE HELP US
Junction9: #sorosoke
In the first week of January 1968, at the tender age of 11, I was torn from my mother’s warm bosom and tossed into a boarding house.
That was the day my depression started.
And it continues even now, more than fifty years later.
I am not alone. It happened to my entire generation.
My depressive experience is typical of all of us between the ages of seventy-five and fifty.
This depression is typical of all of us who are the “elites” of Nigeria.