![a post showing Moyo OKediji art piece](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/JAN-25.jpg)
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![Our ancestral heritage.](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/NOV-14.jpg)
Our ancestral heritage.
It was very cold last Saturday when we celebrated our annual Egungun Festival. But the òtútù did not deter us from celebrating our ancestral heritage.
Next year we will still be here to celebrate again.
![Àkòdì Òrìṣà Artists](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/JAN-9.jpg)
Àkòdì Òrìṣà Artists
Many models would give an arm and a leg to look as fit as these artists at the Àkòdì Òrìṣà, Ile Ife, Nigeria!
Now, look carefully at this picture.
You will see the Àkòdì Òrìṣà artists pounding clay with pestles in a mortar. Do you notice that the mortar is upside-down, as these orisa artists are pounding the clay?
![They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria.](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/SEP-7.jpg)
They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria.
The Yoruba people are agitating to be free from Nigeria.
They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria, but they lose a lot by remaining in Nigeria.
I ask, “Why do they want to move away from Nigeria?”
They say they are concerned that northerners are invading their villages, abducting their women and children, polluting their rivers with illegal mining, driving cattle through their farmlands—and making legislation (with the assistance of the few Omo Aale among them), to strip their lands to build the north.
I teach now by Zoom.
I teach now by Zoom.
It feels weird to sit in the studio, talking to a screen, wondering if you are not crazy.
The computer tells me the names of everybody logged into the class, listening and watching me.
But who else is with them, also watching and listening? How far will the recording of the session travel?
![POLICE CHECKPOINT, BENIN CITY](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/JULY-1.jpg)
POLICE CHECKPOINT, BENIN CITY
It was in 1980, in Nigeria, when this police encounter occurred.
I will start by swearing
in the name of Ogun
that this event, strange
as it sounds, actually happened
in the middle of the night.
They say when you want an African to tell the truth, make the African swear to an indigenous divinity—not to the Bible or the Quran. Those two books are just books. The real book that they believe and consider real is not written. It is oral, and tied to the indigenous divinities.
![TEETHING TROUBLES](http://moyookedijicdn.gbefunwacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MAY-31.jpg)
TEETHING TROUBLES
“Come here and swear, you this adult, that you never were a troubled youth,” Iya Oyo said, when I told her the story of my friend, Gift Krani-Rijal. Her comment is a Yoruba proverb that says, “Àgbà wá búra péwe ò ṣe ọ́ rí.”
Being young is probably the most dangerous thing anybody could experience.