"Let me see oh my gosh"cin gobsmacked.I peep at them sometimes sitting on the adjoining bed for sometimes lengthened banters that leads to the conversation about jony the besaly of hụri my eldest brother and his talent as potential minstrel and feel the surge of love for our family and sometimes Laniyan clan in Ogbomoso.Dad had prayed for a minstrel as son request granted and a passage in the dream was shown him his son is besaly of hụri a great biblical minstrel and inscription had stuck.
I might be in the inner room when their father my uncle comes upstairs to glance at the dailies while I watch at the balcony or dining table giving him space to read until is gone for me to read.He buys only financial times instead and take time to go through my father's copies and cut the teeth of investment much earlier while my father was engrossed in the manufacturing ideology over which the inspiration came as he later set up the softdrink factory.My father consumed a lot of newspapers in those days and I grew up the best current affairs analyst in my school and English my best subject as a vocabularious kid and gangster student in my school.
I look up as uncle watches me guzzle newspapers on the Indian files .It reminds him of a rapturous child consuming every packet of information and intelligence staring him in the face and it never reminds me of anyone in my household than myself.The newspapers are scattered on the bedstead,formerly solington 's bed before he moved to festac in Lagos.I engross myself during the day on the bed adjoining my father's big bed.
I look up at his gaze and sometimes break eye contact unable to concentrate on my intention of readership and probably motivated my staying a distance till he's done checking the papers.I glance away as it continues in circular pattern making envious ocean dim.
I head downstairs to gulp details of yellow paper packaged financial times one brand my patriarch hardly buys.Why do I feel withdrawn from smite of Sharky face to resume my concentration? The moment he left I bombarded the papers a great deal and headed down to my alcove and bombarded the voluminous pages of my Webster dictionary brought down from the United States to our home by my late aunty mummy monilade who studied there.This was evident in my latter writing antecedence and I probably the greatest black jargoniser of English Blackman ever had with the higher consumer of diction black world and beyond ever had.Not even Derek Walcott and Soyinka and the petty household names ever travel that much worst obscurantism in black history as evidence in some of my werks.
"It's a bid deal in the intellectual world as it takes a great deal and a great while to be bookworm turned genius."I grouched
I put down the kitchen knife or washing bowls preparing beans for 🔥 fire to hear the knocks on the door and sometimes entry unannounced.Deola sees it as a drain of time waiting before my response to open the door.She comes early every morning to take keys of my mother's salon where she learns the trade.She heads straight on top of the fridge and picks the keys and vamoose unannounced.Should there be any special informational purposes anticipates mother 's appearance from her bedroom to give her others.For my first twenty years on earth until the early 90s saloon's memoirs particularly one of the most memorable and she is one of the collective prentices of probably a hundred prentices in my mother's care.
There's often certain motivation and enterprising moments in running a hairdressing salon and in particular the send off ceremony and so called freedom party a couple of which I witnessed at the saloon in taki where the shop is located a stone thrown distance from Ogbomoso main roundabout leading to odo ọrụ.
I do fell in love with feeding,songs,speeches especially mother's speeches and the genuflection of the prentice and eventual handover of freedom certificate not the anticlimax anyway but the entire joyous atmosphere.People fell in love with my mother and hardly any altercation whatsoever and some of my best childhood memories.
I learn basic education at the shop and we spend the whole day learning and gulping wisdom from the stable of multi talented grade two teacher who is fond of her training at Ayipatte and ogburo.She gets this disconcerted look when you misbehave as a child and kind of browbeat to smite beyond canes and correct dysfunctional kids.
She sells clothes, electronics,saloon in the same shop and a seamstress of some sort quintessential epiphany.Hardly any trade and handiwork mastered by woman that she did not handle with her ambidextrous hands and a good singer.
Her collection continues to linger from recipe of soft drink production,tie and dye,many stitches and sown garment,paints production,soap,bakables, beautician par excellence,Sunday school teacher, woman leader etcetera what a glamazon!
Did I not complain about uncle's toxic look and did she not tell me you will get used to it.Yet my mother complained long after she stopped teaching decided to return and was shocked her certificate left much behind with the uncle.She decided to enquire and retrieve it to face the worst affront in her career life time 'where is my teaching certificate?"
"You wanted to go back to teaching "mocked my mother because it was common knowledge father 's factory had crashed in an attempt to survive her family and the husband also relied on her salon."You re unlucky I kept it elsewhere but termites eat up ."shocked her to the bone marrow and the salon hadn't been given much income.
"You know we Ogbomoso men don't want our wives to overshadow us"as if saliva drooping from my mouth.
Subsequently mother tried farming and retrieved the vast land at temidire odo oba,a land inherited from her mother's farm and we take to farming to survive aftermath of the factory closure using long bus Mazda to evacuate crops during harvest .
I sweep the remorse away into the back of my brain and lo with passion sunny second eldest child in the family a prayer warrior in those days lifted up the family 's crashing spirit with prayers and fasting a tradition my Father emulated and inspired us much better.He accepted his son's advice and took the bull by the horn and relocated to Lagos in 1995 with millions worth of assets left behind.This is high optimism geared towards the vision to revive the softdrink factory from earlier effort that introduced indigenous softdrink production into Naija and also initiated the introduction of non carbonated plastic bottle into the production of softdrink in the country."
My animal spirit climbed a notch higher than even the mountains of Himalayan and mount Everest combined.Someday I had dreamt of meeting distant mentor in person and none other wole Soyinka the greatest black man ever.Thirty years after in Lagos when he was past ninety I visited his forest in the company of my brother with videos evidence on the trip posted in my you tube channel @kunlemicrofinanceTV entitled "A trip to Wole Soyinka's forest"on march 3,2025 Perhaps the most memorable day of my life as aspiring writer itching to win a Nobel a wild goose chase but not impossible in no distant future.
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