An African home coming...A visit to the land of our fathers...

One of our member families, the Ogunbis, 

went on a trip back home to Nigeria 

for a family wedding event in Abuja. 

They wanted to share pictures of their 

adventures and experiences .

 Experiences that were particularly poignant 

in that they invited back to Nigeria

 with them a couple of African American families who had never been

 to Nigeria before. 

They took them to many places including

 even visiting our Chairman of the board 

in his Abeokuta residence, who opened up his home for the entourage to stay...

They experienced a full traditional yoruba wedding, complete with aso ebi!

All our visitors were given yoruba names. 

They enjoyed it so much that they plan to go back. 

One of the families

 insists that they are moving back to Nigeria...

They visited Olumo Rock...

They made it to Badagry to visit the 

Baale of Badagry

 and even visited the point of no return, 

where the slaves were last held,

 before being shipped off to a life of slavery 

and a new foreign world...

 This was reportedly very emotional 

for our visitors...

The visitors and our members participated

 in a health fare at the 

ministry of finance in Abuja as well!

A very busy and full visit for our member family and our African American friends.

Comments below.

F. A

Yodaai Members at the 52nd Nigerian Independence Day Party

O le ku o, Ija ore!

Yodaai members were out in full force celebrating our country's 52nd independence anniversary in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a celebration organized by the Nigerian-American Community of Central Alabama on Saturday, October 6th, 2012.

In attendance were several members including both our President, Dr Adediji and Vice President, Mrs Popoola and their families.

*I apologize for the grainy cell phone pictures - they are all I have.

Dr Adediji was the key note speaker,  giving a speech titled (click on this link in green) Nigeria in the Global Arena (it's a great speech, please follow that link to see the full text of the speech), speaking about how far we have come as a country, balancing it with how far we still have to go. Great read.

                  

Yours truly was also there with the family in tow dancing the night away. Engineer Odutola and Mrs Babatunde, board members, Dr and Dr Mrs Ogunbi, Engineer Latunde Addey, our auditor, and Prof. Lekan Ayanwale, chairman of our board, also graced the occasion with their presence. 

There were many cultural dances for the enjoyment of guests and as usual, rice, soup very plenty!

Well done to the Nigerian American Community of Central Alabama of Montgomery for a great celebration.

And now, a gentle reminder to see you all at 2pm, saturday the 20th in auburn/opelika for our Yodaai picnic of fun and games. Get ready to rumble for the prizes!

Race time 2.15 sharp, no delays. 

Fun, train rides, games and real medals / real prizes and plenty of food to follow...

Funke Abolade, M.D.

Social/Publicity Secretary.

Welldone to a Yoruba Literary giant, Prof. Wole Soyinka.

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

*If you subscribe to Newsweek Magazine, then like me you would have been pleasantly surprised to see a two page article in this week's copy -  pages 26 and 27 by Prof. Wole Soyinka. The subject is sad. Heavy even. Titled the "Butchers of Nigeria", it talks about the corrupt Nigerian government that has allowed, maybe even fostered the growth of Boko Haram, a sect terrorizing the country currently. Please feel free to visit newsweek.com to read the article in its entirety. Well done for bringing the attention of the international community to what is going on in Nigeria.

This article is not about terrorism or corruption in Nigeria. Those are discussions for another day and another place.

This is just to highlight "one of us", a celebrated Yoruba literary giant, having an article in this week's Newsweek magazine, a small feat when you realize the man has also won a Nobel prize. A literary giant. Or at least that's what's he seemed to be to the child that I was in the '70s and eighties.

He was born on the 13th of July 1934. A writer, poet and playwright, some consider him Africa's most distinguished playwright, and maybe Nigerian's foremost dramatist,

 as evidenced  by him winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 for his groundbreaking works that fuse literature and politics, Western and African traditions - the first African so honored.

 Prof. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family, specifically, an Egba family in Abeokuta in 1934. Soyinka’s passion for the written word stems from this childhood in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria, where he was inspired by his “long family of word-spinners” from whom he also “imbibed” his sense of justice. He received a primary school education in Abeokuta and attended secondary school at Government College, Ibadan. He then studied at the University College, Ibadan (1952-1954) and the University of Leeds (1954-1957) from which he received an honours degree in English Literature. He worked as a play reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London before returning to Nigeria to study African drama. He taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ife (becoming Professor of Comparative Literature there in 1975).

Prof Soyinka has played an active role in Nigeria's political history. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War he was arrested by the then Federal Government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring parties. While in prison he wrote poetry which was published in a collection titled "Poems from Prison". He was released 22 months later after international attention was drawn to his imprisonment. His experiences in prison are recounted in his book "The Man Died: Prison Notes" He has been an outspoken critic of many Nigerian administrations, and of political tyrannies worldwide, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. A great deal of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it".  His play, King Baabu (2001) satirises African dictatorships. “If the spirit of African democracy has a voice and a face, they belong to Wole Soyinka,” said the New York Times.

This activism has often exposed him to great personal risk, most notable during the government of the Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha (1993-1998). During Abacha's dictatorship, he left the country on voluntary exile and has since been living abroad (mainly in the United States, where he was a professor at Emory University in Atlanta). When civilian rule returned in 1999, Prof. Soyinka accepted an emeritus post at Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) on the condition that the university bar all former military officers from the position of chancellor. Soyinka is currently the Elias Ghanem Professor of Creative Writing at the English department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and the President's Professor in residence at Loyola Marymount Institute at the University of Los Angeles, California, US.

In the field of literature, Prof Wole Soyinka is a household name. His books are used in classrooms everyday worldwide. He has left a footprint by encouraging youths that want to go into literature that they have a future. He has played a great role in the development of literature in Nigeria. He is also a mentor for the Rolex "Mentor and Protege Arts initiative" hence the photo shot above.

  

Soyinka’s latest work, You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006), depicts his adult life and opposition to Nigeria’s corrupt regimes. The memoir follows on from his autobiography, Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981), and a long string of masterpieces written over a half-century.

PROFESSOR WOLE SOYINKA

'As remote as the moon once appeared to mankind, Peace remains the ultimate yearning, even in the furnace of conflict. Every initiative by individuals, institutions, even governments in pursuit of this prize is a leap of faith. It transcends even the pioneer astronauts'  "one small step for man", its optimism the starting block towards the crowning "giant leap for humanity.'

Prof Soyinka says to the aspiring writers amongst us that the greatest lesson he can share is to "just sit down and write",  it will all come together in the end... 

And so I write...

*This article was put together  by me from multiple sources including the current Newsweek magazine and the internet. Please let me know of errors/omissions and I'll be glad to rectify it.


 See the "comments" or "post a comment" section in green down here? Go on! Click on it and see what happens. Join the community. Leave a comment! Even anonymously. You don't have to have a google account to leave a comment. 

Funke Abolade, M.D

Social/Publicity Secretary 

Ajodun n' bo l'ono...

Here we are thinking about our Ajodun and the end of the year is approaching fast...

AJODUN OMO EGBE YORUBA NI ALABAMA

• It got me thinking again of home and what the end of the year would usually bring - a big celebration involving lots of family and food.

You see, it's my father's birthday on the 31st of December and on that day, all the cousins and extended family would gather around. An agbo (Ram) was prepared and there was merriment usually all around. It was Christmas, end of the year, birthday party and new year's eve all rolled into one.

We got sparklers and ran around saying "Ina oluwa ki i jo yan", which is not true really since if you got touched by those sparklers you knew they burnt! Ahhhh. We exploded "knockouts", shaking the neighborhood with excitement and the anticipation of a new year approaching, may be a new beginning for all...

Moving here to the United states is a new beginning for most if not all of us. I dare say we could all tell stories on how and why we came here.

 We won't be preparing an agbo but we will be doing something equally meaningful, which is to each bring of ourselves, an offering to share with others at the Ajodun. I guess in my mind what we are trying to do is to re-create that sense of extended family and kinship for our children, and for ourselves,  if I may say so, who miss that "Je le n ke"  in Nigeria of days gone by...

So on we go. Planning our Ajodun with intensity and loaded meaning, for ourselves. Hope to see you there. It will be here sooner than you think....

Funke Abolade,

Social/Publicity Secretary.

A homecoming...

E ku ile o.

A week ago today, we made the 11 hour non-stop trip from Atlanta to Lagos, back home to the land where I was born, the land of our ancestors. My fatherland.

Murtala Mohamed Airport, Lagos, Nigeria.

And what a homecoming it was, both for us and the children, for whom it was only their second time - a return visit for their paternal grandfather's 80th birthday celebration, and an opportunity to see my parents..

Grandpa on his 80th birthday with Tobi & Tomi in Ikirun

Grandma Ibadan (above) and Grandpa Ibadan below with writer 

Writer & kids and brother in law,  Ikirun.  Osun State

Tunde, Tobi, Tunde's Uncle, Dejo and Grandpa Ikirun.

I won't go into all the cliches about Nigeria ( re: water, electricity, transportation, security, etc) - they remain all true and a long discussion for another day. My comment and focus really is on the seemingly indefatigable, optimistic spirit of our people, who soldier on, despite the odds stacked against them, and the odds are legion.

On they go, about the business of existing in a society such as ours. When you ask how long it might be for the traffic to start moving again, they say cheerfully "why, look - it's already showing signs of moving up ahead!" - (not the reality that you are looking at and it does take another hour to move.) Power shortage? " Ah, ko nii pe de ni isin yi" (i.e it won't take long for the power to come on again, meaning anywhere from hours to days - an eternity when you are sweating buckets & mosquitoes are having a feast at your expense.) The car is making an explosive sound and sending out noxious plumes of carbon emissions that put the entire state of california to shame? "A a lo wo ta ba de ile, Ko si ohun to se motor, se bi ohun l'on rin yen. E ma worry"

It is a "glass is half full" view of their current situation, about which they are powerless to change much, at least not in that instant that you are asking the questions. It takes some time & thought to understand why the human spirit sometimes resorts to seeing things in that light. It is one of nature's built-in protective mechanisms. You know why? The alternative view - "the glass is half empty" variety, is a harsh reality that most can not withstand on the daily basis that they have to deal with it, i.e a reality in which the answer to the question "when will traffic start to move again?" is "who knows, we might be here for hours". Who can go on indefinitely against those staggering and depressing odds? i.e without carrying around a heavy bag of optimism, and the prayer that "things will be better in a minute, you wait and see..."

So. I return to my adopted home, glad to be here, yet wistfully longing for the best to come to pass now, for the place I once belonged...



See the "comments" section in green down here? Go on! Click on it and see what happens. Join the community. Leave a comment!

Funke Abolade

Social/publicity Secretary

Efo Riro, Reminds me of home...

*This is from an email from our Vice President. The original email is from the Ijesa Ladies Union International to the "Nigerians in Diaspora", another umbrella organization for our people. They are marking up an effort to fight childhood obesity in our children, a leading cause of adult onset diabetes, by encouraging us to go back to the basics of home cooking using fresh vegetables and minimal preservatives in our food - much like our mothers of old did. Enjoy!

HOW TO PREPARE EFO RIRO:

Eba and Efo Riro, Obe a je, pon 'nu la, hm, hm, hm!

Have you ever thought of using a portion of that little flower bed in front of your house or even using small plastic containers with some potting soil to plant some tomatoes, pepper and efo tete organically? I do that most summers with my teenage kids as our past time and the joy that planting gives when they start to come to fruit cannot be quantified.

If  you cannot plant, then go to your neighborhood store to purchase the fresh ingredients below.

Ingredients:

I bag of  fresh or frozen greens of  your choice ( tete, spinach, collard green, ewuro (bitter leaf), water leaf etc).

Fresh tomatoes about 5 lbs, 

One big bell pepper

Half medium sized onion.

2 cubes of maggi and seasonings of your choice

Fish, beef, saki, abodi, snail, panla or assorted whatever you like.

small teaspoon of salt 

Iru (locust bean) if you like it

Cooking Directions:

Wash and cut your meat (beef, goat meat, bushmeat, snail, fish,  panla etc)

Wash, cut and blend  the tomatoes, pepper and onion  with just enough water to keep them from getting stucked in the blender.

Pour the mix into your cooking pot  with the meat, cover  and bring to boil  for about 10 minutes or until the meat is  tender enough, brown and free of any red spots. Note FOR BEEF ONLY: If you are cooking the beef first before pouring the ingredients, do not add  water, it will generate its own water to boil it.

Add maggi, your seasonings  and  salt to taste.

(Optional) Add about 2 serving spoons of oil (ororo or epo pupa) ( If you have high cholesterol, you do not need oil, the beef will generate enough and it will taste equally great).

Add your cut,washed  and strained  greens  to the mixture

Bring all to boil for about 5 more minutes.

Your  highly nutritious efo riro free of unnecessary preservatives is ready in minutes .

Can serve 4-5 people.

Call your family to the table and serve them with Eba, Iyan, Amala, Rice, Eko riro, Lafun, etc. and a bottle of drinking water or fresh juice (not soda or fanta). The eating together itself also has its own advantage of bringing the family closer, another way of encouraging healthy living.  

Original article authored by Ms Olugbemiro Odunmbaku.
*Edited for posting by the blog editor. 

Thanks to Mrs Popoola for forwarding this.

Funke Abolade

S/P/Sec