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.
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THE RAFTER’S BURDEN—the English translation of Oladejo Okediji’s AJA LO LERU
THE RAFTER’S BURDEN—the English translation of Oladejo Okediji’s AJA LO LERU is out
Three days before his transition, my father, the Yoruba writer Oladejo Okediji, had only one worry: “Akanbi,” he told me, “make sure you work with Sola Owonibi to get Aja Lo Leru translated and published.”
I was suspicious. “We are already working on it,” I said. “You are worried we won’t do a good job?” It was another hint he gave me about his impending departure during that last call. And I did not miss it.
“I’m just saying,” Baba said with a dismissive laugh. “I would love to read a good translation of the novel.”
THE VOYAGE
THE VOYAGE
About 30 years ago, I slept at the Murtala Muhammed Airport for four days.
No, I was not a homeless vagabond.
I had bought the Nigeria Airways ticket to fly to the United States for a one-year sabbatical leave.
But when I arrived at the airport, I realized that my ticket was not honored, though I had bought it legitimately.
Whenever a plane was about to leave Lagos for New York, the NA officials posted a manifest list, and my name was not there.
Now, please watch this one-minute clip after reading my short note.
Now, please watch this one-minute clip after reading my short note.
This morning I went to my usual coffee shop, not too far from my house in Austin, Texas.
It was my favorite hangout before the outbreak of the Covid.
But now, it has become only a drive-in shop, and I sat in my Jeep, waiting for the young woman to take my order.
“Tall coffee and a banana nut bread warmed,” I told her.
“Sure,” she said. “That will be five dollars and seventy cents.”
Farewell
Because I am now always home, I went into my garage and discovered a body of about ten large paintings dating to 1993.
This is one of them.
I just painted and rolled up the canvases, and forgot about them.
What is Male?
What is Male?
Who is male and who is female?
It all depends on time and space, as my father told me just before he joined the ancestors last year.
About two weeks to his transition, my father called me and said he needed to tell me something important.
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.
