Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often though, they hurt. — Anthony Bourdain.
REINVENTION I The rope of distance broke you sat there reinventing Lagos islands got drenched inside us black crows torched our scars the lessons of attraction the avalanche might actually get kinder wandering in all capes but the death of desire is not what you keep hearing about II Soon all this will be memory stitching yourself into a blue sky, an open door that’s what it says in get-aways…
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Prologue [The Dancing House, Prague] On 21 June 2018, after returning from my first ever visit to Prague where I went to attend a conference, Africa, local cosmopolitanisms and the world, I tweeted two pictures I’d taken in that city, with the caption ‘#Prague is for dancers’ and a heart-eyed emoticon. The tweet was inspired by the Dancing House – an iconic building on the Vltava waterfront dreamed up by…
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Title: If Only the Road Could Talk Author: Niyi Osundare Publisher: Africa World Press Number of pages: 126 Year of publication: 2017 Category: Poetry Old, never aged, Once golden apple of an Empire’s eye, London never sleeps (but sometimes snores) Still methodically English, with some brown now In the watermark of its Union Jack… – London (p 106) Of all African poets writing in English today, without a doubt Niyi Osundare…
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I We move out from the park, through a circle of chairs, And pass a sleepy-eyed attendant from whose mouth Igbo language moulds concepts like chunks of meaning. Ikpoba hill Descends on us as a woman seductively unwrapping her dress. The landscape still spells Benin with red sand and Perfervid sun. Suddenly, it becomes green with envy That I am leaving. I too feel guilty that I am abandoning Home for another home…
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The border was as tough as it had been when we passed the previous Saturday, though not the same officials except one. This time the police openly requested 3000cfa before they would touch our documents. Whereupon we interjected that we had almost exhausted our funds and were just managing to get back to our country. Besides, we had paid 6000 cfa when we passed the other day and it was…
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Elubor is Ghana’s border town on the road to Ivory Coast. It is about two hundred kilometers from Cape Coast. By the time we got there around 7.30pm, both the Ghanaian and Ivorian border posts had closed for the day. We had no other option than to check into a hotel nearby and wait for daybreak. Hotel Cocoville was noisy and rowdy with a disco party and a throng of…
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‘Halte!’ It was the voice of a leather-faced Beninois policeman, shocking us to a sudden realisation that we were at the border once again, the Benin-Togo border. We had crossed the Nigeria-Benin border unchallenged. In fact, it had been like a VIP. affair. The place had been busy with Nigerian and Beninois policemen standing on either side of the road. And they had waved us on without stopping our Toyota…
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The National Youth Service Corps is a scheme that was created by the federal government of Nigeria to foster national unity amidst the country’s ethnic, linguistic and religious divides. Since 1973, after Nigeria’s civil war, tertiary institution graduates under the age of 30, have been participating in a compulsory year of service to the nation. They are usually posted to cities and towns far from their state of origin. The…
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a road’s tale the road is a riddle with a thousand answers —Niyi Osundare the road is one trickster of an angel divining destinies at a deserted holy-trinity round: to dawn’s hope a path to noon’s heated light another and the last, to night’s final cry – silence when i wake up in the morning the road lies ahead of me in wait full of prayers – answerable and…
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An early drizzle made a pitched percussion on the airplane window that morning. Dressed in a mid-thigh red gown, black leggings and a jacket of excitement, I smiled to myself as I remembered a friend called it a short, hot, red dress. It must have been the hotness of the red dress, then, that made the immigration officer, seated in a cubicle beyond the area demarcated by a large DEPARTURES…
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