The Adventures of Cosmic Yoruba
& Her Flying Machines too
In this cosmic space, there is no denying that we love history. Yet history is not just about what has happened in the past, it is also what is being created now. Life stories to me are like time capsules. They are important tools through which women can record their stories in their own words,…
If you thought Ahebi Ugbabe was the only woman to befriend colonial agents and possibly help expand their hold on her community, think again. I present Alaba Ida, a royal wife of Ketu (a Yoruba kingdom in present day Benin Republic) who later in her life became a “queen” to the French. Born around 1854,…
Another fascinating aspect of Fatima Massaquoi’s autobiography is that it gives a glimpse at the lives of West African royalty during that era. I say privileged Africans, I mean people who were wealthy, who maintained relationships with (colonial) Europeans living in their territories at the time. Even if they had the best interest for their…
It seems every couple of years a book about an African woman who lived in such-and-such historical era is released (usually leading to me screaming and freaking out then buying the book). The Autobiography of an African Princess is one such book published in 2013. The African Princess here, Fatima Massaquoi was born around 1904…
Continuing on the badass women of Dahomey, this post will focus on the ahosi. I’ll add that the well-known Dahomey “Amazons” were considered under this category even though I will not be talking about them here. Any dependent of the Dahomean King regardless of biological sex was ahosi of the King. Ahosi is translated to…
I find the high ranking women of Dahomey fascinating (but I find most things concerning West African women fascinating so…) Dahomey was a lot more brutally complex compared to Oyo (in many ways it was a rival kingdom to it). And unlike Oyo which remembered few women by name, Dahomey recorded and emphasised not only…
This an edited version of a blogpost I wrote in January 2013 after reading Nwando Achebe’s The Female Colonial King of Nigeria. I read this at the Queer Vibration panel at the Labs during Chale Wote 2015. The Female Colonial King of Nigeria provides a fascinating look into gender in South-Eastern Nigeria through the life…
An interlude before the post on royal women in Dahomey in which I shed some light on the fascinating subject of women becoming men in Yoruba tradition. In the previous post, we learned that among the ladies of the palace in Oyo, two presented themselves as men and were addressed as “Baba”, meaning father. But…
I’m reading Mother is Gold, Father is Glass for the second time. I bought it first on my kindle and found it so useful I bought a physical copy too. I’ve found that though I’m reading both copies in the space of say two years, it’s the same things I’m highlighting and bookmarking. The most…
I rolled my eyes when I stumbled across a link to an article in which a faux intellectual accused me of promoting prostitution because of these posts on (historical) sex work in indigenous African societies. I refused to click on the link, no point in giving views, but really one post on a tiny part…