FORTUNATE TRAVELLER

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Non-fiction

Ilé-Ifẹ̀: A Cradle in Crumble by Isaiah Adepoju

Ilé-Ifẹ̀ begins with a boulder, then a crevice. It splinters at the lap, opens into legs, into toes, then rejoins at the hair, the nape. Ilé-Ifẹ̀ rolls and rolls in a way Ibadan doesn’t. Metallurgic: the perfect linguistic alchemy to describe Ilé-Ifẹ̀. From the adjoining road that leads to Ondo, you remember that this place now embodies the migration of the ancient people of Ilé-Ifẹ̀; that this present location of…

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Non-fiction

Postscript: The Last Act of Transaction by Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè

Now, thinking about my travels as an art of movement and transaction, I recall the Argentinean author, Luis Jorge Borges, who had a habit of visiting libraries in his childhood to read encyclopaedias. Travel, for me, is another way of engaging in this kind of learning. I often imagine travelling is like browsing through a huge library where many books on different subjects are opened before me all at once. This infinite immensity was the constant imagery in my mind as I rode in a van across landscapes, as I travelled in a speedboat, even as I sat in a plane meditating the brilliance of clouds. 

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