Frankly Dedoyin

We are haunted by the blood of our ancestors. The angry spirits of our gods. I travelled several heavens 'til I was forced into this dank part where the sun never shines. I was born by the river bank in the presence of the celestial spirits of our ancestors while the older women laboured over my mother in the middle of the cloudless night. I remember, now like then, it was dark... eerily dark I started crying. The jetty was dead quiet except for the crackling of weak fire and frogs croaking for their lovers. This place I was told was so named for the abomination it is - THE LAND OF THE WITCHES. Thirty-six they were in their coven; they represented the thirty six clans in our village. For any visitor, one might see an almost disintegrated wooden sign post perched at a corner on the mouth of the riverine settlement. The sign read in an ominously whimsical handwriting - BEWARE! THE WICKEDNESS OF THE LAND. In the village, you might catch a hazy glimpse of a tragic wonder - ...

  Once upon a time in a certain village, there lived a girl named Isha. She was very beautiful and in all the lands throughout the west coast of Africa, everyone talked of what a special beauty she was.   Although she had been born to a wealthy family, she behaved humbly towards everyone. Her beauty and warm nature made the villagers fondly call her ' Priye ' meaning "a god-child.’ Priye was like a great title for someone that is loved by everyone, something royal or with a handsome beauty. Everyone loved Isha and held her in high esteem. As she grew up into a lady, she also excelled in many aspects of life from sports to work.   She was thirteen when her parents set sail on one of their sea travels, being gemstone dealers. Young Isha had been their only child and having no relatives that lived nearby, her parents entrusted the key to their highly valued estate to their daughter. The key had been made of the rarest jewels and shaped into a medallion. On...

by Adedoyin Shobo ‘We are all in one deep shit. A good shit depending on how you see it.’ I thought to myself. I’m Yoruba. I’m in deeply love with an Igbo girl. My favourite buddy Rika is a Northerner. I recall in the early eighties, growing up in my neighborhood had been an awesome experience. Me and my friends from all manner of ethnicity played in the suburb of Lagos in reckless abandon like daisies in their assorted colours . I learnt the ‘normal’ way of life, how to eat, to talk…dress. I learnt to the art of acrobatics, played hard and worked harder under the watchful eyes of all my fathers and mothers. They loved us and showed in no small way. I ate Ofe nsala/Akpu ; drank Zobo and Kunu from my next door neighbours while my friends participated in the popular Lagos owambe parties. We attended each other’s birthday parties like closely-knit family members, quarreled sometimes but made up pretty soon. There and then, I had made myself an oath to cherish a...

by Adedoyin Shobo Last night I went to bed angry. Angry at what? I can't even recollect or understand. I just felt this inundation of negative vibes licking its way through my mind. Emotions that initially seemed to have gone AWOL ages away when I was much younger steadily rising like a scene from a blood-curdling horror movie. I felt fear, indifference, restlessness, burnt out, hate and any other nasty thing the mind can imagine. There in my room, perched in one of the dilapidated blocks in Shagari Hall of Obafemi Awolowo University, under the stupid naked light bulb dangling dangerously over my head, I tightened my eyelids to a solemn promise of a better tomorrow. Suddenly, I’m not sure what woke me up. Maybe the sound of some ecumenical club of fellow students raining fire and thunder at the devil or the grating sound of music from some dude that wouldn’t just use his head that people go to bed late. In midst of this confusion I dragged myself and began mulling abou...

by Adedoyin Shobo I was stopped short in my jaded stride when a figure breezed past and into the bush on my left. It dissolved into another path leading to another part of town. ‘Idiot’ I blustered. I sucked my teeth so hard that I tasted blood on the inside of my lower lip. Stupid riff-raff!!! The man had dashed across my path so fast I could only conjure fragments of images of him. Of course, it was a male. He appeared adorn in a threadbare clothing that showed signs of squalor like someone just out of the gutter. He was also dark in complexion. And yes he ran like his entire life depended on it. At that time, this was my thinking at the time. I was contemplating whether to pursue him for bumping into me like a hit-and-run but I was too weak to change my career home for something that tenuous. *** It was up to five seconds from then… It was as though I slipped into a hazy day-dream. There was a fiery-looking sand storm of angry abominable howling from the storm. ...

by Adedoyin Shobo The people are angry and hungry… You can see it in the redness of their distorted eyeballs when they look at you. You can hear it when they gather in little cell units: in the beer parlours, canteens, newspaper stands and religious centres. There was indeed a natural mystic drifting through this sub-Saharan airspace. The traditional community spirit replaced by an ambition for absolute individualism. The love of money is strongly palpable, even at the expense of the most devious cause. The local monarchy and religious centres were all plagued alike and filled with cutthroats, convicts both serving jail time and in the ruling parties. The poignant wave of crime is worn like eyo (ghost mummers festival celebrated in Lagos) mask over the face of the community. So the people resorted to quick schemes to get out of their perpetual stereotype of poverty. The News feed everyday percolating through town like bad air toting the pathology of urban vices like a...