After my Ph.D., I returned to the roots to learn from the source.
These iyas who have no university degrees taught me things none of my professors knew.
Here I posed with one of the Iyas who taught me indigenous Yoruba painting, Iya Egbeyemi Akingbade, 2003.
ÀMỌ̀TẸ́KÙN: No kidding
The Yoruba forests have already lost too many animals to local hunters who spare nothing with life in the bushes.
And the Yoruba language has lost too many words to the brainwashed indigenes who refuse to speak the language or pass it down to their children.
It is not a good time to ask for the meaning of Àmọ̀tékùn.
The meaning is totally lost, to be honest with everyone.
Wisconsin, Madison, 1994. Naming ceremony.
I was a college student.
One of my Nigerian colleagues had just finished his Ph.D., and he returned to Nigeria.
He had no idea that his girlfriend in Madison was pregnant.
When he was contacted, he decided that he was not returning to the US.
The pregnant girlfriend decided she was not going to Nigeria to join him.
Kally Ozolua, the art editor of The Nation Newspaper has a good story on my arrest by THE NIGERIA POLICE.
Now, please watch this one-minute clip after reading my short note.
This morning I went to my usual coffee shop, not too far from my house in Austin, Texas.
It was my favorite hangout before the outbreak of the Covid.
But now, it has become only a drive-in shop, and I sat in my Jeep, waiting for the young woman to take my order.
“Tall coffee and a banana nut bread warmed,” I told her.
“Sure,” she said. “That will be five dollars and seventy cents.”
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.
Artist: Emeka Okoro
Title: Portrait of Moyo Okediji in His House
WHO CAN MAKE LOVE WITH ZOOM?
The Covid 19 scourge has created opportunities and challenges.
It has confined me to my house for the last 200+ days.
I doubt I would even know how to interact with people any longer. The only time I go out is to buy groceries.