In Gambia now

“Baba Oyo,” I said one afternoon when I was alone with him, “you are very soft, too gentle, with Iya Oyo. You are not like all the other Baba I know.”

Baba Oyo laughed. “What does too gentle mean?”

“I really don’t know how to say it,” I said. “But you don’t…. When you talk with her…. You don’t argue or order her to do things. You speak softly. It’s as if you have to persuade her kind of. That’s not very manly. That’s not how the other Baba talk to their wives. Is it because you are a pastor?”