From whence we came
The kind of life my
parents served me created a radically different history and story from the one
they had experienced. More fundamentally, what defined their childhood from the
little village where they made their first friends to the unforgettable
memories that they have rarely shared separates us even further.
Though I have some
fond memories of visiting our hometown and meeting with cousins, grandparents,
and distant relations, I find none of the affinity for the place as one parent does,
and another so thoroughly reviles. I have no such identity with the place except in
the compulsion and diktat of my forebears; I was last there about forty years
ago.
Significantly, these
people who once came out of that town and travelled the world as it was their
oyster and, in the process, became successful professionals of every sort, have
returned to this place to retire enjoying the good fortune of old age and the
misery of watching peers and juniors pass away around them.
Balls on the road
One memory best told
in our dialect of Ìjẹ̀bú, in which I have the most laughable proficiency, if
any at all, finds its best delivery in my faulting but unmistakable
recollection.
My mother was driving
from Lagos to Ijesha-Ijebu with my aunt, who was my dad’s immediate younger
sibling. She was known to us through the name of her first son, and it was evidently
disrespectful of us all, because he is the first and eldest of all our maternal
and paternal cousins.
As we passed from Ikenne
towards Ilishan, on the home straight to Ijesha-Ijebu, the spare tyre in the
undercarriage at the back of the Peugeot 504 she was driving detached and fell
onto the road. Someone called in Ìjẹ̀bú that the testicles had fallen. “Wóró ẹ̀
ti jábọ́ o.”
We stopped and I went
to pick up the tyre, rolled it up to the car and fixed it back to the undercarriage,
securing it properly with the clip. My mum and aunt were out of the car, watching that everything was done properly. As I finished, my aunt quipped in Ìjẹ̀bú,
“Well, the person of whom it has been said their testicles have fallen, now has
them tied back up in the sack.” “Ọni rán fọ wóró ẹ̀ jábọ́, nà tí so padà yẹ̀n.”
In tribute and
sympathy
This remains one of
the lasting memories of my aunt, her great sense of humour delivered dead pan
with such seriousness, yet you could not fail to get the joke, which by happenstance
was also the spelling of her name, meaning who we care for together, she was no
joke, by any stretch of the imagination.
A hardworking, strong,
purposeful woman and a purveyor of wholesale foodstuffs, she was kind-hearted, lovely,
approachable, and ever so considerate. Definitely, one of the best of my father’s
siblings. She was the female leader of the Muslims of our hometown.
I learnt Monday
afternoon that she had passed on, and she was interred according to Islamic
rites on Sunday. Better to rewrite the feelings expressed here, unfortunate as
it seems, each person has their individual issues and perspective of things, that
might never be that well understood.
Inna lillahi wa inna
ilayhi raji'un. (Al-Quran 2:156) “Indeed, to Allah we belong and to Allah we
shall return.”