Getting some perspective
You may wonder why I
am writing about the Coronavirus, having written the last in my series of
Coronavirus streets in Manchester way back in June 2024. Obviously, there was
also the minor distraction of dealing with Men’s things, my prostate taking on
an unregulated growth spurt that was trammelled with blasts of radiotherapy.
Then you consider I
was out grocery shopping today and one of the passengers on a bus I boarded had
a facemask on, you do not see that about quite often, though a lady who attends
my church whose full face I have never seen dons a facemask almost as a fashion
accessory, a shade of brown, but quite distinct from her South Asian skin tone.
Saying his prayers
The bus out of the
city centre towards Salford, where I planned to board another to my intended
destination, presented nothing of great significance apart from wheezing and
many with coughs that might indicate something more serious than portends. On
that sampling alone, we are easily a nation of the unfit, the infirm, the
unwell, and qualitatively unhealthy.
However, it was the
bus ride within Salford towards Cheetham Hill that offered much to amuse or
intrigue. It was first an unkempt man sitting on one of the priority seats. In what
seemed like a headbanging the bar in front of him, I soon realised it was an unconventional approach to Muslim prayer as he was muttering, clasping hands, and then bowing in obeisance to the Sallah edict.
The bus was driving
eastward but I could not suggest his heading was facing Mecca, but who am I to
intrude on the religiosity of an adherent faithfully saying his prayers before Goosey Goosey Gander takes umbrage?
The fiery Ijebu wars
At Ade’s Cash &
Carry, of the many designations it has, at the checkout till, there were
conversations going on in Yoruba, the tiller with facial scarification I would
have mistaken for an Ogbomoso indigene, but with the brutal nose strike, so
that might default to Ibadan.
Two tubers of water yam, quite different from
Puna yam, were being weighed
on the tiller scales, but they did not have the hairy fibres one would expect
on that species I was accustomed to. As I voiced my misgivings, an engagement
began about where I was from.
Answering
Ijesha-Ijebu, the man interjected, Ijebu-Ijesha, a different place some 197
kilometres away. That confusion between my village and the other town, in
entirely separate states and they do not remotely speak the same dialect. It so
happened that the customer being served was also an Ijebu-man, he knew where
Ijesha-Ijebu was and began to converse in Ijebu that I have never deigned to
master.
My excuse is that I was born abroad, and I pleaded innocence by volunteering. One of my names is Adetokunbo, and the crown was brought from overseas. That was the beginning of our schism, he is from
Ilishan-Remo and has been advocating the creation of an Ijebu State with Sagamu
as the state capital. Let’s just say as the boundary between the real Ijebu-land
headquartered at Ijebu-Ode and Ijebu-Remo, which is a few kilometres west of my
village, the idea falls on its face with infeasibility.
It is totally
unlikely that the Ijebus aligned to Ijebu-Ode and the expanse of the 16 Agemo masquerades
of Ijebu-land
would subsume themselves to the leadership of Ijebu-Remo that gained prominence
out of the colonial chicanery of divide-and-rule. We would seethe with disdain
and disparage any such advocacy to chop Ogun State into hamlet fiefdoms.
While I would rarely
feel challenged with Yoruba expression, I was clearly found wanting facing a
son of Ijebu soil. Other interesting banter ensued, and we shook hands, and I
left.
The Yorubas have
occupied
On the bus back to
Salford City Centre from Cheetham Hill, I must have been transported to some
place in Yorubaland, I half expected the only Caucasian on the bus to burst out
in Yoruba song as literally every else on the bus was speaking in Yoruba.
One even had a
playback of some Yoruba-speaking event on the speaker of his phone and some of
the narrative did cause stifled giggles without anyone wanting to reveal they
knew what was going on. I could see from my vantage point that everyone was
straining to listen even as one or two mobile phone conversations cared nothing
for the public space they were in.
I sometimes forget
some parts of north Manchester have been colonised by Yorubas; I could be one
of the exceptions that lives in the city centre. Now, that Ade’s Cash &
Carry has stiff competition in Salford on range, quality, and price, apart from
ready-made stews, it won’t be long before these interesting Yoruba engagements
happen closer to home.
The Coronavirus is
still out there, and I had my 7th booster in November before jetting
out to Cape Town. Nine vaccinations and boosters altogether mean we all must be
careful, five years on.
