What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Moyo Okediji
Title: What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Medium: Collage
Date: April 2018
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Moyo Okediji
Title: What the MoMA Did To My Momma Series #1
Medium: Collage
Date: April 2018
Friend welcoming me back to the US.
I’ve missed Babylon.
The land of alienation has its consolations.
I thank you all, my friends, for your support.
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.
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Fifteen) Where they sat was a tightly confined space. It…
Those familiar with the Oyo-speaking parts of Yoruba country would notice that these folks refer to sugar as Iyọ̀ọ-Ṣúgà.
If they were strangers, it might confound them, because they would translate Iyọ̀ as salt, and wouldn’t understand why it is coupled with Ṣúgà, that is sugar.
Are you a twin?
Yes, you are.
We are all twins.
Some drag their twin other to the world.
Most of us leave ours back at the source, in the other world.
When we talk to ourselves, we are ritually chatting with our twin in the other world.
In Yorubaland, twin births are frequent.
When young women went to the river to fetch water, they would disappear.
The king’s royal beads even went missing.
People were worried. One of the wise men said, “Let’s approach Ọlọ́run to give us a police boss.”
But who could they trust? One of them must be the thief.
They decided unanimously that the only trustworthy person in the entire community was Ijapa.
Ijapa gave them only one condition: “Nobody should visit my house without letting me know in advance that they were coming.”