Evening.
Evening.
The sun is setting.
The night is falling in Ile Ife.
For many years after I arrived in the United States, whenever I slept, I would dream of Ile Ife.
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Evening.
The sun is setting.
The night is falling in Ile Ife.
For many years after I arrived in the United States, whenever I slept, I would dream of Ile Ife.
We went to celebrate the Independence Day of Nigeria at a local bar where they sell Nigerian food, beer and hot Isi Ewu pepper soup.
We ordered swallow food.
After that we ordered drinks.
Please learn from our mistakes.
Do not drink more than one bottle of beer.
We all laughed and chatted heartily after drinking one bottle of small stout and Isi Ewu pepper soup.
“There’s nobody who will see this place and not be afraid,” the two men on the bike said this morning as they stopped and kept looking at our newest installation at the Àkòdì Òrìṣà.
Bí ìwọ́ bá ṣe rere, ara kì yíò ha yá ọ? I wonder where I got that quote from. Is it a Yoruba proverb?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was from the Bible.
The most central building on our school campus was also the building that gave me claustrophobia. It was the school chapel.
Right in front of the building was a stone monument. Within the monument was a plaque, with the inscription, “STUDY TO SHEW THYSELF APPROVED UNTO GOD. 2 Timothy, 2:15”
That, certainly, was not good English, I concluded. Even at age eleven, I felt they needed a copyeditor.
The first report (summer 2018)
Yesterday, July 5, 2018.
ÀKÒDÌ ÒRÌṢÀ
I was arrested by the Nigerian Police yesterday.
To be fair to them, they were angry with my new building, the ÀKÒDÌ ÒRÌṢÀ, in Ile Ife. The police landed in trucks, arms, uniforms, and plain clothes to storm the construction site. There were about ten workers at the site when the police came. The previous day when the police arrived the workers fled into the surrounding bushes, abandoning their tools, unused building materials and the entire construction area.
The construction process at the Àkòdì Òrìṣà proceeds with the building of Ìwòrì-Òdí, an architectural monumentality of the third and fourth programs of the Ifa computer.
The secondary school rusticated me for being part of a riot that the students organized and carried out with meticulous sagacity.
Flabbergasted, I traveled to Ile Ife where we lived, from Oyo, where I schooled.
My father was amused that they rusticated me.
“Did you really participate in the riot?” my father asked.
“I did not,” I answered.