EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT
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.
SIMPLE QUESTIONS?
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.
30th ANNIVERSARY
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.
FORGIVE US OUR SINS
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?
SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME
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.
My first day of classes today.
I am teaching “Africana Women’s Art.”
The class is remote with about fifty students in it.
BEFORE THE BLACKOUT
As I think about my new granddaughter, my daughter and what they know about me, about Africa, and about their tradition, a tormenting thought ran through my mind:
We, members of my generation, stand between the light and the void. And we are the last stand holding up the ancestral heritage. We must mine what is available and keep them in a culture bank, or too much will perish.
ARRESTING MOMENT
Yesterday, my daughter gave birth to my second granddaughter.And I almost got arrested yesterday.I met this police officer at my favorite coffee shop.One of those cops who rode huge bikes. As he got down from his bike, I was parking my jeep.I guessed he came for coffee as I did.
Because Nobody Lives Forever
One may live long
And one may not.
One should share whatever one could to posterity when one is still able to do so.
This morning I decided to share this Odu because it is very important.
FINALLY, I FIGURED IT OUT.
FINALLY, I FIGURED IT OUT: A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream? The time was exactly 01:23 am. “Iya…
WHO ARE YOU?
We often talk of three ethnic groups: Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo.
But in reality we are a lot more than these.
Do you belong to any of the following 371 ethnic groups in Nigeria?
If not write your ethnic group here and tell us the state in which you are classified.
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
When the civil war officially ended in Nigeria in 1970, a different type of civil war began.
It is what you may describe as the asymmetrical civil war: the war by the desperate and poor against all others in the country.