Foluso
Akodi Orisa resident artist, Foluso.
painting, architecture, textiles, terracotta, performance.
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Akodi Orisa resident artist, Foluso.
painting, architecture, textiles, terracotta, performance.
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-Seven)
“So whose panties are those?” Adolo asked, pointing at something.
She had just finished wiping down my feverish body. She sat on the chair. Felicia sat on the table and Steve stood, holding on to the open door of the wardrobe.
I didn’t know what Adolo was referring to.
“What panties?” I asked.
“These ones,” She said.
Steve looked in her direction, and answered, “Gina’s”
I was weary and in a dreamlike state. The fan whirling above was noisy, and as it blew the air on my wet body, I felt bone-rattling shivering spells.
I really wanted to cover my body with the blanket.
“She must have left them there when she was here,” Steve said.
“Gina?” Adolo asked. “Who is Gina?”
“Guess you may say Moyo’s new girl,” Steve said.
“Moyo? He has a new girlfriend?” Adolo asked.
If you got up early enough, you would catch Anti Toyosi bathing at the back of the Face-Me-I-Face-You building in which I grew up in Ile Ife. Her husband, a sign-writer, would still be fast asleep.
But Anti Toyosi always got up early to prepare rice that she sold to school students as breakfast before they went to school.
It saddens me.
It saddens me a lot that the southern people are not able to understand the urgency of the situation they are involved in.
Those you call the Fulani herdsmen, or the Fulani people—they are the Taliban.
Please read the last line again.
Those you call Fulani herdsmen are the Taliban.
Ẹyẹ: Bird I told Iya Oyo that I was scared when a couple of birds perched on top of the large tree in front of the house and were making loud sounds, one calling and the other responding.“You are afraid of birds?” Iya Oyo asked me.“Yes,” I said. “My playmates told me they are witches, àjẹ́.”
Steve quickly realized that it was a bad idea to take off his shirt to enjoy the breeze. He hurriedly wore it back. He had complained about the heat, which was one of the reasons we left the house.
Steve, finally, decided to take us to a place not too far from the house to show off the body of water he said he discovered. He had been raving about it, but we were unable to go and see it, distracted by the various things happening in such rapid succession.
Prominent on the list of my to-do-things was a visit to River Steve.
He almost made it into 2019. I wonder what stopped him.
The last of the soft kleptomaniacs and kleptocrats?
In his days, politicians stole in hundreds of thousands of naira. Or a few couples of million naira.
They were soft kleptomaniacs and kleptocrats.
Now we have hardcore kleptomaniacs and kleptocrats.