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.
Woman: Ọmọ Ọlọ́mọ
Iya Oyo had a woven basket full of unshelled melon seeds on one side, and on the other side, she had a bowl into which she dropped the shelled melons, as she worked rapidly, automatically, her fingers moving so rapidly they formed a blur if you pay attention to them.
The third stage of colonization is now in progress. This is part of a ten-stage program of total obliteration.
At the onset of the first stage, the colonizer attacked us violently and mercilessly, killing our leaders and taking our land.
At this first stage, they directly rule us and live on our land, openly displaying their weapons of destruction to threaten us and remind us that they are capable of obliterating us and willing to wipe us off the face of the earth at the slightest provocation.
ÌMỌ́DÒYE
An Akodi Orisa Sculpture
Ile Ife, Nigeria
January 2019
Artist: Moyo Okediji
Too many people don taya for dis obodo Naija, I swear.
Our suffer don do!
Kole Omotoso wrote JUST BEFORE DAWN in 1988.
Just before dawn, people say, it gets really dark.
It is now nearly forty years after Omotoso thought the dawn would break on Nigeria, but no, it gets darker every second in Naija .
His ordeal began with a brief phone call.
“Hallo? Hallo? Honorable! Are you there? Your mother. She was stolen from her house.”
A sharp pain pinched him in the middle of the chest and traveled slowly down to the bottom of his stomach.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” he thought.
For the past week he had been nursing an ominous feeling that something beyond his control was going to happen. Somehow his mind kept going to his mother.
He was thinking of driving to the village this weekend to visit her.
“Hallo? Hallo? Are you still there?” the voice asked again.
Baba Allah-Dey in 1930 lost to Oba Adesoji Aderemi (wearing black, seated in the middle of the picture) in a strong tussle between the two of them for the throne of Ile Ife.
Allah-Dey’s real name was Baba Coker Olawoyin or Baba Coker Adewoyin.