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ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (PART Twenty-four)
Rufus could tell something was wrong when he opened the door and saw me. All he needed to do was to take one look into my eyes and he could read me like a book. First, I had been gone all day. All I went do was to drop off Josephine and Gina. He expected that I would be back within an hour, maybe two maximum. The hospital was not that far, maybe fifteen minutes. I left before 8 am, and it was 6 pm when I came back.
Disappointments can be a blessing.
Disappointments can be a blessing.
If Nigeria had not disappointed me, I would not be in Ghana now.
But because the political situation in Nigeria has dampened my spirit with the killing of thousands of people, the daily abduction of ordinary citizens, the lawlessness and lack of judicial repercussion for those who plunder the coffer of the country, I have started shifting my gaze away from Nigeria, and started looking at other African countries for a place to vacation, invest and create.
We are home alone
We are home alone dying to be alive at this silent hour when the trees are…
SIMPLE QUESTIONS?
When I arrived in the United States thirty years ago, I couldn’t call the US a new land.
It might be new to me, but it was not new to those who were born there.
But if the history of the United States were written by me, I would call the United States, “new land.”
That has been the experience of peoples in Africa.
Africans living in voluntary and compelled exile
Africans living in voluntary and compelled exile:
Do we deserve the “comfort” of exile, if we are only concerned about the comfort of our immediate families?
We all realize that a country like Nigeria has become a lion’s den, and many of the citizens feel trapped inside it.
We realize that many of us escaped with nothing in our pockets. I left with only $98 in my pocket in 1992.
PARABLE OF IJAPA and CHILD
PARABLE OF IJAPA and CHILD
There is an old Yoruba proverb that says “The child insisting that his mother must not sleep will also not get any sleep.” (Ọmọ tó ní ìyá òun ò ní í sùn kò ní fojú ba oorun).
Women who nurse babies know the challenge of getting enough sleep while a baby is still unable to understand the difference between night and day. The baby keeps waking up to feed, cry, poo and pee.
The mother must attend to all the needs of the baby during the night. Typically, for the mother, therefore, it is a long, wearying night.
The poor mother gets up in the morning having caught almost no sleep, exhausted and drained physically and emotionally.
Yet she must face another day of sleeplessness and ceaseless labor until the baby grows up.
Now think of the story of Ijapa.