The Adventures of Cosmic Yoruba
& Her Flying Machines too
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know “mud” buildings can be majestic. But more needs to be said about the royal architecture in precolonial Africa. Enter “Yoruba Palace Gardens” by J. B. Falade published in Garden History (Vol. 18, No. 1). I must have read this journal years ago and I suspect…
Imagine a home where one man has several wives. You’d be mistaken to think that the man is the “head” of the household if this home was among the Ekoi/Ejagham. Historically, the head of the household is the chief wife among the Ekoi, she called the shots and encouraged her husband to marry more women…
Every once in a while, I get emails. Recently Dupe asked for resources to help understand the lives of Yoruba men and women in the 19th century. From her email; I’m especially interested in understanding the lives of Yoruba women and men in the 19th century. How gender relations worked. Childcare practices. Practices of farmers/traders.…
I’ve read and written about bori but it’s something else to see it in action. Below is a video excerpt from a longer documentary I’d like to watch. You’ll also see some old school “booty shaking” here.
Back to Hausaland and fascinating things I learned reading “Baba of Karo”. We’ve covered marriage, divorce, and cheating spouses, now it’s time to talk about sex. Disclaimer though, tsarance kind of isn’t sex and tbvh, I found the institution slightly disturbing when it hit me how young the girls who participated in it were. In…
Moving away from “Baba of Karo” and Hausaland, last month I read “In the Shadow of the Bush” by P. Amaury Talbot. He was District Commissioner in colonial Nigeria and wrote anthropological texts on people of the South-South region. His work is extensive and covers not just culture and society, but jujus, witchcraft, flora and…
When people around me are going on about how divorce is such a problem in “our generation” and modern times, I’m quick to object. 🗣🗣🗣 Divorce has always happened! Basically, wherever women had the right to divorce, they took it. In the region that is now Nigeria, it was easier for women of certain ethnic…
One of the reasons I started writing about history on this blog is this; I wanted to really show young Nigerians that the ancestors were more or less the same as we are today. Nothing is new under the sun, and stories like this one from “Baba of Karo” really illustrate this point, read more…
Friends can make or break you and one of the major themes in “Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa” is just how important bonds between women are. Baba gives us a glimpse into the complex social constructs that went into these bond friendships, there’s jealousy and betrayal, but there’s also support. Kawaye…
‘Who was…?’ a series that explores the African women who pop up in history yet remain mysterious. The quote below this image says enough, “A warrior woman near Kambole insisted on fighting with the men”. Abeg, what’s her story? Image source, USC Libraries Digital Collection via Tumblr I did a quick search and it seems…