Black History Month = Yoruba History Month!

What better way is there to celebrate Black History month in February than a game of identifying our own Yoruba Giants in History - our heroes? Prizes for the first correct identification of this original son of the soil below, another "one of us"...


Sooo who am I?

"Mine is an unusual story of a slave boy with a happier ending. I was born a free man in the earlier part of the 19th century, originally egba in my ethnicity. At the age of 12, I along with my mother, Uncle,  toddler brother and entire village was captured and sold into slavery.

As luck would have it, the British navy, who were trying to abolish slavery boarded our ship before it set sail. The ship was redirected up the coast of West Africa where I was later released in Freetown, Sierra Leone. I was converted there to Christianity and educated there by the missionaries who gave me a different first name. I learnt to speak english and was later sent to England to be further educated.  There I got another last name but I kept my original first name.

When I came back, I became one of those chosen to go on an expedition down the coast of West Africa spreading Christianity and seeing to it that slavery was abolished. I was ordained the first African Bishop of the Anglican church. It would take another 60 years to see another African so ordained.

I commissioned and later saw to completion, the translation of the Bible to Yoruba, "Bibeli Mimo" and also saw to completion, the first Yoruba Dictionary. Who am I?"

Happy Black History (or in our case, Yoruba Heroes) Month!

Funke Abolade, M.D


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