This cold weather is here again.
This cold weather is here again.
How many layers do I wear just to go and get a cup of coffee from Starbucks?
Six layers.
This cold weather is here again.
How many layers do I wear just to go and get a cup of coffee from Starbucks?
Six layers.
Moyo: When I was 6 years old, I started attending the free primary school that the Western Nigerian government offered.
My teachers were supposed to teach me simple facts: how did additions and subtractions work? What happens when you mix oxygen and carbon dioxide? How do you speak English without committing grammatical blunders? And so on, and so forth.
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.
Iyalode: Before the Invention of Women
My grandmother, Iya Oyo, belonged to the generation of women who didn’t experience what the sociology scholar, Professor Oyeronke Oyewumi described as the “invention of women.”
What Professor Oyewumi means is that nowadays, there are lots of rules and regulations that appear to specify what a woman is supposed to do, and what she is not supposed to be.
I have traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Toronto, Sofia, Beijing, Paris, Athens, Rome, Tokyo and Kyoto.
I have been to several other cities of the West and the East.
Let me bring you something I observed from my travels:
The natives of these places don’t speak Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi, Zulu or any language form Africa.
“I just discovered a river!” Steve announced, breathless, as he ran into the sitting room with enthusiasm. “And it’s just fifteen minutes from here.”
I said, “Mungo Park.”
Rufus, spreading out on the sofa, said, “Where is it?”
“Hidden in plain sight!” Steve said. “I was driving down Ekenwan Street, and there was this dirt road by the side. I decided to explore it.”
“What’s the name of the street?” I asked.
“No signboard,” Steve said.
“There is no Benin street without a signboard,” Rufus said. “Benin people are good with signboards. Even narrow paths have signboards.”
Reminds me of a painting by Parmigianino, titled SELF PORTRAIT IN A CONVEX MIRROR, painted circa 1524 during the Renaissance. In the painting, the convex mirror from which Parmigianino is painting places the artist’s hand at the forefront of the composition, in a manner that exaggerates the hands, thus proclaiming the powerful quality of the craftsmanship within the hand of an artist.