KING CHARLES:
The light is awful! Ha! who comes here? Are my eyes seeing double? What is this strange object in our bedroom? Camilla, do you see what I see? Are you for real? Speak, you apparition, trying to scare a new monarch!
EGUNGUN:
Ayam Egungun, the Ancestral Spirit of those your ancestors named Southwest Nigerians.
KING CHARLES:
Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil?
Queen Elizabeth did not wait for my arrival in 1956 before she returned to England.
She arrived Lagos by air January 28, 1956, and returned February 16, 1956.
I arrived Lagos by birth February 25, 1956.
I was disappointed when I arrived and was told she already returned a week before I landed.
Like the comb (ÒÒYÀ)moves smoothly through the knotty hair
may you move without wahala through your days.
Ooya comes from yà, meaning to open up.
Eye witness account, we looked at this work in class today.It is part of much larger door panel carved by a Yoruba sculptor called Dada Arowoogun.He is one of those we refer to as a “traditional” African artist.
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.
Today, exactly thirty years ago, I arrived the United States.
Also, it is exactly thirty years ago I was in a plane crash.
It was the Nigeria Airways. Thirty odd years ago, and the memory is so vivid it feels like it happened yesterday.
A plane crash is not like a car crash. I’ve survived a couple of car crashes. A Car crash feels like a slow-motion movie.
A plane crash is different.
When are we going to have orisa legislations in the southwest Nigeria to prosecute blasphemy against indigenous Orisa and Irunmole, with the imposition of death penalty on anybody who blasphemes against our indigenous holy names?
For example, should there be a death penalty imposed on anyone who calls Esu “Satan,” as believers do in churches and mosques daily in Yorubaland?
If you were given the choice as a parent to produce just one child in your life, would you rather have a boy or a girl?
Traditionally we would all say a boy.
Now take a look at the pillar that these Amazon women are building.
It is made of steel inside, and it is covered by clay.
I have traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Toronto, Sofia, Beijing, Paris, Athens, Rome, Tokyo and Kyoto.
I have been to several other cities of the West and the East.
Let me bring you something I observed from my travels:
The natives of these places don’t speak Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi, Zulu or any language form Africa.
My first day of classes today.
I am teaching “Africana Women’s Art.”
The class is remote with about fifty students in it.
The child is highly valued in indigenous Yoruba culture. As I look at the images sent…
Do you know why people say Ọbá wàjà (the monarch climbed the rafter) and not Ọbá kú (the monarch died)?
You will find the answer to the riddle in Ìrẹtẹ̀ Méjì.
Orunmila was a monarch, who gave birth to several other monarchs including Alárá, Ajerò, Ọlọ́wọ̀ and several others.
You will also find out in Ìrẹtẹ̀ Méjì why Yoruba people (ọmọ a yọ orù bá wọn tọ́jú) do not die, but climb the rafter.