A FEMINIST AND HER SON

The year 1900 saw the birth of the most badass feminist in Nigerian history. She was known by many names. Some called her Mother of Africa, others called her the Lioness of Lisabi. However, she was officially known as Funmilayo Ransome Kuti.
She was married to the great educator and fiery clergyman, Israel Oludotun Ransome Kuti, and gave birth to some of the greatest men that walked the Nigerian earth. She was the mother of Aunty Dolu, Prof. Olikoye, Fela and Dr. Beko.
She did many great things in her life, most famous of them was being the first woman to look at a car, grab the keys, got in and drove it, paving way for other women to drive cars.
In her early 20’s, she organized literacy classes for market women. That was just the beginning, as she also went ahead to fight for the right of women to vote. In addition, she fought the local Egba authorities and even the colonial masters on behalf of the women folk to stop the arbitrary taxes demanded of them.
When she couldn’t take the high handedness of the Egba Monarch anymore, she led a multitude of women in red-eyed protest to the king’s palace.
Guess what? The Oba japa…he took off! He couldn’t stand the feisty amazon and her horde.
On the international scene, she traveled far and wide, especially to the Eastern bloc, where she rolled with the likes of Chairman Mao Zedung. Consequently, she became a thorn in the flesh of the West.
Just imagine what her home was like because her husband was the famous no-nonsense school principal and preacher. Many a great mind were shaped under his pedagogical guidance and corporal discipline. His cane expelled the haughtiness of a young prince that later became the Ooni of Ife. He was also among other things a great activist and one of the founders of the National Union of Teachers (N.U.T).
Funmilayo founded a nursery school, where her kids and others were first schooled before proceeding to secondary school. She believed and pushed for gender equality, which made her do everything to empower women, educationally, financially and politically.
All her children grew up to become accomplished professionals with enviable ideals.
Of particular interest to this write up was one of her sons, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Fela was an enigma. He was larger than life.
Just like his mama, he was also an activist, who used music as a weapon in attacking the despotic government of his days.
Fela also loved women unashamedly…and they loved him too. At a point, he married 27 women in a single ceremony.
His women spoke highly of him as a fantastic lover. They said he treated them well and even extolled his patience with them and also his sexual prowess. Fela was reputed to be a man who had sex with several women, several times a day.
It is worthy to note that Fela first wife whom he married legally never divorced him…never remarried and never spoke ill of him despite his harem. What a man Fela must have been!
Despite being the beloved son of a badass feminist, and lover of many women, Fela voiced his views about the African woman, just like he voiced his views about bad governance and Pan-Africanism. He sure did not believe in total gender equality.
Fela released the popular song “LADY” in 1972.
Here is an excerpt of the lyrics:
"...She go say him equal to man
She go say him get power like man
She go say anything man do himself fit do…
She go want take cigar before anybody
She go want make you open door for am
She go want make man wash plate
For am, for kitchen….
African woman go dance
She go dance the fire dance
African woman go dance
She go dance the fire dance
She know him man na master
She go cook for am
She go do anything he say..."
In 1978, when Fela’s Kalakuta Republic was invaded by “unknown soldiers”, his great mother, Funmilayo was with him and she was thrown out the window. She died months later in a coma resulting from the injuries of the defenestration that she suffered.
This mother loved her son, despite some differences in their views. And Fela mourned his mother in both words and songs until the end of his life.
Question: How will today’s feminists react, were they to have sons like Fela?
Kunle Omope

NA DEM, RUN (A POEM)

1.
When you jam dem, run.
Don’t be like the sand
Who lamented about the wave
That while she was sprawled at home,
Basking in the sun,
To get the best tan for him,
He was busy traveling
Through many lands,
Only to rush back home,
To give her a pat on the bum
Leaving her incomplete
And taking a part of her with him.
when dem dey do like wave,
na dem, run!
Run far far. Make you no come back, lai lai.
2.
When you jam dem, run.
Don’t be like the tongue
Who complained about the teeth.
And how they all ganged up against him
And drew his blood
In a quest for survival
For a meal that belonged not to him
Or any of them.
But, he, the tongue would still endure
A gang bang of the ruthless 32,
Yet nestling in their midst
Healing while awaiting
Their next assault
When dem do like teeth,
Na dem, run!
Run far far. Make you no come back, lai lai.
3.
When you jam dem, run.
Don’t be like the tree
Who said of the Wind
“He smashes my head with blows
My leaves take leave of my face,
Then, he bends my neck
With his strong fingers
But I keep coming back to him,
Even though he walks away every time”.
When dem do like Wind,
Na dem, run!
Run far far. Make you no come back, lai lai.


KUNLE OMOPE

UNTITLED

Hello people. My name is Kunle Omope, let me tell you a story.

He lay in bed with his back turned to her.
He vowed never to let her take advantage of him again. Never! She had cost him his sleep and peace of mind.

She was so demanding…so selfish. Always wanting him to turn her on…to touch her…to give her all of his time…to take him away from his family. He promised himself that it was going to stop!

His mind was made up. He must ignore her if he was going to keep his life from being ruined.

The room was dark and although he had his back turned to her, the temptation was strong and overwhelming.

But she was quiet, which made him somewhat glad that his plan was working out. His freedom was near.

Again he wondered aloud,

“How could I have let her trap me in the first place?”

“Was it her ever beautiful makeup?”

“Could it be the sexy way she sang?”

“Or was it because it felt good to have her in my grip?”

“Nothing should trap a man”, he whispered to himself.

Then his eyes gradually closed. Finally, he was feeling sleepy. Joy filled his heart.
The mere thought that he could sleep off beside her without touching her assured him that he was finally free from her wiles and seduction.

Soon, he heard himself snore. He was winning…or was he really?

She beeped once, then twice…then thrice.
He rolled over, picked her up and ran his hungry fingers all over her body and face.

For the hundredth time, he broke his resolve, and fell in love with his phone, his lover, all over again.

The end.

OYIBO DUSTBIN

My name is Kunle Omope, I’ll like to tell you a story. During the mid-’80s to ’90s, as kids living in the Police Barracks, Ikeja, we used to have a lot of exciting adventures. Let me tell about one that we called “OYIBO DUSTBIN”.

At about the period in question, a lot of White People used to live in G.R.A. On weekends and school holidays, we’ll walk in groups like a gang of scientists. Just after Archbishop Vining Memorial Anglican Church, we’ll begin to rummage through the trashcans that were behind the fences of these Oyibo’ houses.

I remember their houses were mostly solid bungalows built by PWD.

Let me digress a bit. It was not until my senior secondary days that I got to know the real meaning of the acronym PWD.
PWD is an acronym for Public Works Department, but all through my childhood, my mates and I were told that PWD meant People Work and Die. And we believed this name to be true. Why? Because the houses they built had walls so thick that nails could not bore through them, no matter how hard the hammer worked. You had to use a drilling machine to make a hole to hang your photo frame on. So in our young minds, we felt those that constructed buildings that strong must have died while working, hence why, they were referred to as People Work and Die – PWD.

Okay, back to the story.

As we searched through the OYIBO DUSTBIN, we’d find all kinds of treasures, mostly toys. From toy cars with missing tyre(s), to dolls with missing arms or legs or eyes. Some very lucky ones amongst us will find complete toys and still looking very new.

When we returned from our adventure, we’ll begin to fix the broken toys, replacing plastic legs with wood; missing toy car tyres with our own tyres made from bottle covers stuffed with foam from damaged slippers. Dolls with missing eyes got transplants of eyes made from a single bean.

With engineering carried out and surgeries done, we enjoyed our new creations- a creative combination of Oyibo starting and barrack sense finishing.

The exploration of OYIBO DUSTBIN went on for a few years until we got to a point when we felt we had gotten enough inspiration to create our own stuff. So, we progressed to fabricating a lot of toys from scraps of any and everything.

We made toy cars, helicopters, dolls, airplanes…anything our minds conceived, our little hands created. Some of us became ‘genius engineers’, while some supported, but everyone contributed to our collective happiness.

We even created our own casinos using milk tins and agbalumo seeds; musical instruments with torn balloons stretched over hollow plastic cans. During festive seasons we took one look at those Christmas decorations and made ours from paper designed with crayons. Some of these decorations were so beautiful that our mothers were proud enough to hang them up in the sitting rooms.

At a point, we were so high in our creativity that our excitement flew into the air in the form of our paper and nylon kites with long tails for balance and beauty.

I am sorry reader, my story does not have a high point or climax…it ends with a question:

Why do we as a country still pride ourselves in rummaging through OYIBO DUSTBIN? Only now, it has new names like Tokunbo, Okrika, Akube etc.

The End.

THE SHORT CUT FILLED WITH TEARS

Hello. Have you ever heard of the word” Egbere”? They are dwarf-like spirits that live in the bush. They carry mats over their shoulders and are always crying.

My name is Kunle Omope; let me tell you a story about “Egbere”.

Greg was this super brilliant teenager who lived with his not-so-rich parents somewhere in Lagos. In his neigbourhood were many Yahoo boys. Although Greg lived a sheltered life, the Yahoo boys found out about his uncommon intelligence from his former classmates. So, a gang of four Yahoo boys cornered him one evening when he was taking a stroll. They sweet-talked him into joining them, with a promise of making him so rich, that he would save his parents from the clutch of poverty.
After, a little resistance, he agreed. They nicknamed him G-boy, from his name, Greg.

Just a week into always sneaking away from home to learn about Internet fraud from his guys, G-boys parents asked him to leave for Sango-Otta to spend some time with his grandpa.

Grandpa was pleased to have G-boy around. In the mornings they would both leave for Grandpa’s small farm not too far from the house.

One morning, Grandpa was too tired to go to the farm, and G-boy offered to quickly rush down to bring home some of the harvest of sweet potatoes they had uprooted the previous day.

On his way to the farm, G-boy heard the disturbing cries of a person. Slightly afraid, he hid behind a tree. To his shock, he saw a small human creature of about three feet in height. He couldn’t make out the face of the creature because it was partly covered by dry grasses.

As the creature came closer into view, G-boy noticed it was carrying a silver mat that gleamed in the morning sun. That’s when all his late grandmother had told him about Egbere flooded his memory. He remembered grandma telling him many tales as he sat with her in the evening while eating a delicious snack of roasted coconut seasoned with pepper and salt. Grandma told him stories about “Egberes”. How the small creatures were always crying for no reasons, even as they wandered about the bush.

The most interesting thing he remembered was that his grandma said whoever could get an Egbere’s mat would become very rich after 7days.

G-boy gave this last memory a quick thought, and bravery welled up in his heart. Slinging the small bag of potatoes across his shoulders, he sprang out from his hiding place behind the tree, and ran after the crying Egbere; snatched the mat from its arms, after which he took off, running as fast as his legs could carry him. The Egbere ran after him, but its short legs could not match G-boy’s fast and powerful strides.

On getting to Grandpa’s compound, he hid the mat behind some banana trees, before entering the house with the small bag of potatoes.

For the rest of the day, G-boy felt uneasy. He got up from a lunch of roasted potatoes and palm oil several times to go check whether the mat was still behind the banana trees- it was there.

In the evening, he could take it no more and feigned a fever, telling his grandpa, that he had to quickly go to his parents’ home. After promising to return in a few days and making a pretense call to his parents through his grandpas badly functioning mobile phone, he secretly recovered the mat and was bus bound back to town.

While in the bus, a million thoughts crossed his mind, but all he was concerned about was the wealth the Egbere’s mat would bring to him and his new friends.

G-boy’s friends laughed at him in comical disbelief when he arrived at their flat and showed them the mat. No sooner had they began to laugh that G-boy unfurled the mat, and a bright glow enveloped the room. The mysterious light stopped their laughter, and they suddenly believed in its powers.

G-boy didn’t go home to his parents; he wanted to surprise them with millions of naira after 7days, so he and his friends kept vigil over the mat.

At 12midnight, while they slept, G-boy was awaken by some scratching sounds just by the windowpane. He stood up, took a look, and was horrified to find the Egbere behind the window. He quickly woke his friends up and they all went around the flat, making sure every door was properly locked and every window bolted.

Then it began…Egbere started to cry relentlessly,

“E bami gbe eni mi o, hu hu hu hu, e ba mi gbe eni mi o” (Translation: Give me back my mat).

The boys shut out the noise from their ears and compassion from their hearts. Egbere cried from midnight until dawn, then it left as mysteriously as it came.

In the midnight of the second day, the Egbere came again, and resumed its crying…but this time, the crying sounded like the cries of a hundred Egberes.

The boys endured. They couldn’t step out of the house because of fear, but they were determined to be rich, the cries would just be for a few days, after all.

On the third night, the crying voices had increased to a thousand.
The fourth night, they heard ten thousand crying Egberes.
The fifth night, it was a million crying voices.

By the sixth night, the boys were walking like zombies, the deafening noise from the crying had messed their minds so bad that their eyes saw spirit creatures…their noses were filled with the strong stench of the forest…their dry tongues tasted soiled earth…their lives were filled with misery.

On the seventh day, their dazed minds couldn’t take the crying voices that had now multiplied to hundreds of millions. It seemed all the Egberes living in all the forests around the world were now at their window.

Finally, they gave up and returned the shining mat. They threw it out the window and immediately the voices reduced to one lone voice of a crying Egbere. They watched it through the window as it picked up its mat. Lifting it over its shoulders, it walked slowly away, crying. But it was too late as the boys ran out of the house and followed the Egbere.

They cried along as the Egbere led G-boy and his friends into the bush.

It’s been 14years now, and the Egbere is still leading them in a slow march further into the forest, while they all cried together, “E bami gbe eni mi o, hu hu hu, e bami gbe eni mi o.

The end.

KBOY AND KGIRL

Hello again. My name is Kunle Omope; I’d like to tell you the story of Kboy and Kgirl.

On a Saturday evening many years ago when there were no mobile phones or Internet, Kboy would take a deliberate shower with Imperial Leather soap. Taking his time to scrub his body and especially his face so as to get every trace of Nixoderm off it. Every boy of his age battled with pimples and Nixoderm ensured their faces looked a bit presentable.

After the almost one hour bath, Kboy would generously massage his skin with Stella Pomade and apply some Brut Aftershave that was left over in the bottle his dad asked him to dispose off some days ago. Sniffing himself and being assured that he now smelled like a man, he’d get dressed in his red corduroy trousers…the type that was sold for 20naira at Yaba market and any young lad that had a pair was as cool as Boyz 2men.

Kboy would then complete his fashion ensemble by throwing on a T-shirt that slightly hugged his body, which he felt confident in because he had been doing push-ups.

Finally, he’d wear his black Kito sandals, and embark on his journey.

A large hole on the fence beside New Block 2 in the barracks where he lived, led to a short cut he was well accustomed to. Crossing the road and walking past the Customs Office while admiring the well-trimmed grass and new trucks through a slit by the massive gate, he’d hear the faint gushing of water from a broken pipe that ran under the main road and served as a pool of clean water for some guys that set up a car wash beside the road.

At the end of the Customs road, he’d take a right turn into Toyin Street. One clothing shop on the left side of the road had a name he always found a bit difficult to pronounce, some name that was spelled as KIOZADHOIKS. Reader, don’t try pronouncing it, especially if you have just had a peppery meal to avoid a bomb blast in your throat.

Sorry for the digression, okay, back to the story of Kboy and Kgirl.

Kboy would continue his love journey past St. Leos Catholic Church, and slow down his pace to enjoy the melodious Latin Prayers, that was usually punctuated with the refrain, “The Lord has answered my prayers, I will sing praises to him, ANSWER EH EH, EH, ANSWER EH, EH, EH, Amen.

With the brief musical interlude over, 16yr old Kboy would trek past Abiola Crescent, wondering in his young mind, how the acclaimed richest Nigerian- MKO, lived. On getting to the junction that led to Allen Avenue, he’d hasten his steps just after taking a quick backward glance at OSHOPEY, a large magnificent shopping plaza.

Then, on to Awosika street with Chrisland School to the right and an uncompleted 3storey building to the left. The uncompleted building housed all sorts of people, from Ghanaian women on the ground floor, selling Donkunu, Kenke, Wanke and Macaroni with a black peppery stew plus fried Titus Fish, to the cobblers, labourers and a host of other miscellaneous ‘hustlers’ that occupied all other floors.

Proceeding to Opebi bus stop by walking in front of Skymit Motors would take a long time, so Kboy would just walk behind the uncompleted building and pass through some corner corner to arrive at Opebi, his destination, and Segun’s house.

Now, Segun was Kboy’s buddy, who had free access to Kgirl’s home because they were neighbours. Like the good friend that Segun was, he’d go to Kgirls’ house a few blocks away. Greeting Kgirls parents, he’d pretend to watch TV, while giving Kgirl the sign that Kboy was around.

Kgirls’s head would get giddy from love and she’ll remind her mum of an errand she wanted her to run earlier in the day, advising Mama that it would soon be dark, and she was ready to go now.

Kgirl’s mum would thank God for her daughter’s wisdom and send her on the errand while Segun would sit and watch Voltron half-heartedly.

As Kgirl hurried out of the house, Kboy would have been waiting on an agreed spot. The two lovebirds would hold hands and meander through corners to avoid the curious eyes of amebos and aprokos, exchanging sweet nothings and shy glances. Their hearts would race, beating fast to love songs only known to them, even as nervous sweat formed between their clasped palms.

The whole love stroll will just take about 8minutes and Kgirl would have to hurry back home after receiving light kisses on both of her cheeks. They’ll wave affectionate goodbyes to each other, and Kboy would walk many miles back home with a fulfilled spring in his steps, and a determination in his heart to visit Kgirl again next Saturday.

This is the story of teenage love. This is my story. I am that Kboy.

The end.