Esu sleeps in the courtyard; the courtyard is too small for him. Esu sleeps in the bedroom; the bedroom is still too small for him. Esu sleeps inside the kernel of a palm nut; now he has room large enough in which to sleep.
First of all, I must acknowledge my profoundly humbling and pleasing delight, for nothing prepared me for the scale and the depth of the outpouring of good wishes and tributes. Though I normally never celebrate my birthdays, the only one I’d ever celebrated – my 60th – had not prepared me at all for this second one, my 70th. I suppose that this was why it took me quite some time to absorb the meanings behind my surprise and my delight. But once I did so, I allowed myself to carefully register and store in my consciousness and memory these meanings for I know only too well that by this time next week, all the wishes and tributes will be over and life for me will resume its normal course…
I don’t know if all celebrations qualify for this particular “meaning”, but I know now that birthday anniversaries constitute a personal and collective rededication to the small and great values that sustain life and at least for a while keep the worst of its fears, anxieties and terrors at bay. This is true as much for he or she that is honoured as for those bestowing the honour.For in sum, this is what both the celebration itself and those that organize and participate in it are saying: for as long as the celebration lasts, we will concentrate only on the achievements, the good qualities, the things considered admirable or memorable in the life and person of the honoured one. In other words, this is what the community of friends, family, acquaintances and sundry well wishers are saying to the one honoured:we are not only happy that you are (still) alive, we hope that henceforth it is all the things we consider wonderful and special about you that we will experience from you; and for our part, we shall rededicate ourselves to reciprocating all the pleasing and wonderful things that we have experienced from you in the course of your life.
I think that this mutual pact is the ritual side of birthday celebrations. The essence of social and cultural rituals is the fact that it is an emotional or psychic passage through which all those who participate in it come out renewed and made stronger in the bonds that both connect them and make life potentially richer for them. If that is the case, what I and those who have participated one way or another in this thing that was dubbed “BJ@70” is a ritual process in the most profound meanings of the phenomenon. At Ibadan on January 5 in my beloved alma mater, the University of Ibadan, this ritual process reached its climactic, numinous moment when Kongi presented me with some gifts whose meanings were at the same time deeply symbolic and transcendently generous; at Ife-Ife on January 21, at the equally beloved institution where I became the kind of teacher and person I had always tried to become – the Obafemi Awolowo University – the ritual climax came with the entrancing performance of dance, singing and oral poetry by the schoolchildren of the Sunshine Nursery and Primary and Primary School, Ile-Ife…
I acknowledge and accept the implications and demands of this mutual pact of rededication. After all, these past few weeks I have been the chief celebrant and communicant at this ritual process of “BJ@70” events. In this present context of these first or initial reflections after the events, I cannot, indeed should not name all those who made this possible because as the list is very long, I am sure to leave out some names. Moreover, there will be time enough to express my thanks and appreciations all around.Nonetheless, at the very least I can say to them – I thank you; I hear you; I cherish your affection and I am deeply humbled by the honour you have bestowed on me. I shall try to live up to your expectations and prayers – to the extent that some of your wishes lie in my power and willingness to meet, while some could be said to be subject to happenstance andayanmoare subject to the benevolence of forces beyond my control…
This talk of ayanmo or fate will no doubt surprise many reading this piece, definitely many among my readers who know of my intellectual adherence to the historical materialist view of human life and the history of our species. For this reason, I admit that I have invoked the principle of ayanmoin these reflections quite deliberately. I do not know what my ultimate fate or ayanmo is and quite frankly and sincerely, I neither worry nor think much about it. This is not only because ayanmoseems to have such fascination, such grip on people because its power lies in the fact that it rather unfairly has the last word on human life after a person has died and has no say in the matter anymore, but also because ayanmo is very often extended to aspects of personal and collective human life for which it has nothing of value to add and from which, in my opinion, it should be rigorously excluded. For instance, it is not our collective fate or ayanmo as a people, as a nation, to be so badly and heartlessly governed that in a land blessed with vast human and natural resources, seven out of every ten Nigerians live below the poverty line, with specters of bleak and insecure futures staring at the vast majority of our young people, the largest and fastest growing demographic group in our society.
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The deepest intimations of celebration as collective rededication to sustaining human life in and with justice, peace and dignity that I have had at the “BJ@70” events have all come from this radicalanti-ayanmo dimension of my philosophical beliefs and – I hope – of my work as a teacher and activist. Against the discursive backdrop of this assertion, let me now admit that nothing has pleased and deeply inspired me more at the events in Ibadan and Ife marking my 70th birthday celebrations than the acknowledgement of this dimension of my life, my work, my person. Let me restate this carefully: for all of my adult intellectual, professional and activist life, I have been motivated by this belief that there is absolutely nothing in our destiny, in our ayanmo that condemns us to being ruled by drove after drove of looters, with their entrenched ramparts of legal and juridical self-protection from justice and the anger of the people. I knew that many who read this column know and appreciate this aspect of my work but it has been enormously pleasing and humbling for me for this fact to be acknowledged and publicly expressed by my teachers, colleagues, friends, family and students.
It is of course not enough to be radically anti-ayanmo in our thoughts, feelings and actions as citizens, activists, progressives, patriots; we must tirelessly organize and strategize to find the best means available to us for wresting control of our lives and our natural resources from the looters and their minions. In this regard, I must here make a special declaration. Here it is: I never personally mark my birthdays because I am quite frankly not sentimental about the matter at all. In the two times when my birthday anniversary has been celebrated – my 60th ten years ago and now my 70th – it has been others who have taken up the initiative and the burden of making them happen. During that earlier 60th birthday celebration ten years ago, my anti-ayanmo and Talakawa liberation philosophy and activism did not go unrecognized, but neither were they made central and defining to the celebrations as in the more recent “BJ@70” events. I am not only deeply gratified by this, I in fact take it as a portent: the forces of progress, justice, peace, unity and dignity for the vast majority of the peoples of our country, our continent and the world are massing in their hundreds of millions, their billions to take their destiny in their own hands. This is the dimension of rededication that has been most present in my mind and my projections beyond the aftermath of the recent celebrations. With all the eloquence I can muster, I wish to state here that the celebration of one life, or of one’s life can only and truly be an act of rededication if the one becomes the many, if beyond the person, beyond individual merit or achievement, there is cause for collective liberation from the forces that degrade and impoverish human life in our society and in our world…
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In the epigraph to this piece, these reflections, Esu, the trickster god finds capacious space in which to sleep not in the vastness of a courtyard or a bedroom but in the more infinitesimally small space of the kernel of a palm. This riddle, this enigma is easily explained: in the kernel in which Esu sleeps, his being will be sown in new spaces in which they will bear fruit and multiply. All who are fortunate enough to have their one single, individual life celebrated communally must hope that their beings, their life’s work will find the kernel in which to bear new fruit across diverse times and spaces.
NATION
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