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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I went to the Odo Ogbe market, Ile Ife.
The market women went, “Oyinbo, come give us a hug.”
This world is beautiful.
They gave us an assignment when I was an undergraduate taking a Yoruba class.
We were asked to find five proverbs on mental illness.
I was in luck because Iya Oyo and Baba Oyo were visiting us in Ile Ife at that time and I found her at the back of the house, lounging.
That was easy, I thought.
Does anyone see the map of Africa on this detailed picture of the moon?
Doesn’t it seem even more realistic of the true image of Africa than the one cartographers plot?
It shows Africa as it appeared before the West separated it from the rest of the world with the cutting of the Suez Canal in 1869.
Madam Ngu looked at my most recent painting and from the expression on her face, I could see that she did not like it.
She sat on the big chair in the center of my studio in the Ekenwan campus. I had arranged my paintings around the wall as she requested, ready for her critique.
“Muyo,” she said, “you need more life drawing classes.”
“Yes, madam,” I responded.
On my 64th birthday anniversary, I celebrate my mother, the one person most responsible for who I am today.
She does not even know the date of her birth.
But she keeps mine so close to heart.
My father, Oladejo Okediji, is the known one. He is the famous author, who wrote novels, plays, poems, and essays. When he passed last year at 90, nobody even mentioned my mother once, as they poured deserved eulogies on him.
As the Chinese launches successfully the second wave of the colonization of Africa, after learning from the techniques of divide and conquer that Europe used for the first wave of conquering the continent, it became necessary for me to do this painting.
I also want to refer to the poem I wrote a couple of months ago, titled, “My Teacher Taught Me Nonsense.”
The burial ceremony was brief.
There were many more people than I expected. It was the first burial ceremony I ever attended in my entire life. Scores of nurses from the school of nursing were in attendance. All of them wore dark glasses and white uniforms. They looked like angels. I didn’t know many men were in the nursing profession. They stood together in the blazing son, men and women, some wiping their faces with handkerchief, others lifting up their glasses and dabbing up tears.