A scale drops from my eyes, and gradually these terrains of the future open out to me.
All around me, I find these characters from the future visiting the present domain.
They are sculpted out of fire.
The fire is brilliant yet it does not scald or burn.
I see characters from chrystals of fire, without heat.
Yesterday at age 79,
Tony Allen, joined the ancestors.
Allen, born in Ghana,
was Fela’s lead drummer and bandleader
for many many years.
But the drummer is typically positioned
at the background of the stage,
and you hardly ever see them.
The singer is always in front.
I could not believe my ears.
“You got pregnant from the rape?”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?” I was making no sense with the question, but the situation was hardly making any sense either.
My throat felt dry. The bottles of palm wine on the table were still unopened.
I had to drink something immediately, I was thinking, or I would suffocate. This Gina was going to kill me.
Rufus froze when he saw Obaseki moving towards our table. His jawline tightened. The grotesque was unmasking. I understood the meaning of that facial reaction. When a cobra flattens its head and its neck while lifting up its body off the ground to the torso level, even a baby knows what that means. We had crossed the red zone. I immediately got up and picked up the tumbler in front of him before it became a scud missile. My movement also distracted him for a moment. This was the climactic moment that had been building up for a year.
I met Antonia at a wedding party in Akure in 2011.
The wedding party was inside a high-end hotel, where the big politicians and rich people stay when in Akure.
My friend who was a commissioner had given me a room in the hotel, because I was writing an exhibition catalog, and needed a place with good internet service and constant power supply.
The Covid 19 era will usher in the fourth stage of the colonization of Africa.
It will be the stigmatization stage.
Pfizer just announced the discovery of a vaccine for the pandemic.
Other pharmaceutical companies will soon follow suit.
They will distribute these vaccines throughout the world.
But you already know the continent they will forget to send the vaccine to.
AFRICA.
Obaseki, looked cornered. He certainly was not anticipating an encounter with me at the restaurant. His shrunken face looked collapsed with fatigue. The anxiety that he was feeling was palpable. His face began to twitch. It was bad enough when he saw me entering the restaurant. But the moment I informed him that Rufus was on his way to join us, his system could no longer handle the tension. He stood up. He patted his pockets.
“What is the matter?” I asked him. “Is everything fine?”
“Oh, I was-was-just checking my—my—my pocket. For my-my-my-house keys.”
“And is it in your pocket?”