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My Trip to Nigeria, By Professor Moyo Okediji

Posted by: Benjamin Onuorah

Ayé e Nàìjíríà bí ayé àjẹrọ̀run.
Life in Nigeria is life to die for.
I was in Nigeria from June 16 to July 17: they were the best three weeks I have ever enjoyed in my life.
I slipped in and slipped out like an agile kiní inside tibí.
"Short and sweet," hailed the wife of the dwarf, appreciating her husband.
My visit to the center of the world was short and sweet indeed.
I told nobody I was coming and nobody knew when I left.
What do you want in Nigeria that is not available in abundance--produced locally, green, fresh, and chemical-free?
Iṣu ń bẹ. (Plenty of yams—it’s the season of white, new yams, fresh from the farms).
Àgbàdo ń bẹ. (Corn, maize, call it what you care, it’s amazingly meaty and mouthful, not the sugary premature-textured mush farmed in North America).
Ìrẹsì ń bẹ. (Local rice, planted on the backs of Ekiti hills, and along the loamy waterways crisscrossing the southwest).
Ẹ̀wà ḿ bẹ. (Red, white and black beans, chemical free, land-nourishing legumes grown in the garden behind the house).
Abeg, remove your bread from the table! Aláàárù tó ń jẹ búrẹdì….please, remind me of what Tunji Oyelani said you are eating when you munch on bread.
****
When I got up at dawn in Ile Ife, I browsed on the fresh herbal leaves in the garden, like a goat roaming its owner’s compound:
I chewed a couple of crunchy Ìyeyè leaves, picking up and licking the tangy Ìyeyè seeds that fell from the treetop on the ground overnight;
a single fresh akòko tree leaf, picking the softest one I could find on the plant;
two tiny òrom̀bó leaves, with olive-yellow tints;
a couple of efinrin leaves, with its hot aromatic aroma;
a fresh ẹ̀lú-indigo leaf, which the plants always extended to me as if sworn to spoil the guest;
a stalk of moringa leaves, which I chewed with a famished gusto.
As I chewed the moringa leaves, I plucked one of the pods hanging from the tree, opened it and collected the sweet beans inside the pod.
I reserved the sweet moringa beans for the ewuro bitter leaf, which I chewed together with the moringa leaf, to neutralize the bitterness.
Then I was done browsing on the leaves, a meditative experience during which I beseeched my Orí to shower me with Ire gbogbo for the day.
Did I say that I also gulped down two tumblers of cool water, bottled from the local Mokuro spring?
After this early morning meditation, rising ahead of the sun, a cup of hot cocoa, the beans picked from a local farm and hand-roasted, was in order.
The only thing missing during my stay was ọlọ́mọge.
But what worries an old man like me about such details!
Ayé e Nàìjíríà bí ayé àjẹrọ̀run.
Life in Nigeria is life to die for.
By the way, in transit from Lagos to Austin, I lost all the five oversized bags that I brought with me, between Air France and Delta Airlines.
They are still trying to figure out what happened to my luggage.
But who cares, after the "to-die-for-life" that I lived in Nigeria!
*****
Picture shows some of my studio assistants (all wearing studio gears), and me, as I was leaving Nigeria.
They didn't know I was coming, and were the only ones who knew I was leaving.
They sang for me:
Daddy ò o ó
Wá pẹ́ láyé....
I will return, I promised.

Professor Moyo Okediji