FORTUNATE TRAVELLER

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Benin City

Poetry

Owerri Revelation by Michael Akuchie

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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Non-fiction

Of Secret Loves and Gods of Flesh by Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke

      The loves we share with a city are often secret loves. – Albert Camus; ‘Summers in Algiers’ from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. The beauty of a city is ascertained at night; a night is a beautician which costumes and, most of the times, prettifies its landscapes. When the fussiness of transaction is laid to rest somewhere in the pulse of a city and the last spatter…

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Non-fiction

Benin City: Half of Everything Once Whole by Dare Dan

When you are riding in a public transport in Benin city and you want to alight, you don’t say ‘Owa o’, ‘E Dey’ or ‘Abeg I Wan Drop’ like you’d have said if you were in Lagos – no, not any of those clichés. In Benin city, you just say ‘Stop!’ The first time I heard someone bellowed ‘Stop’ from a back seat I was shocked until it dawned on…

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