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.