Updated: About Blogger, Tola Adenle

Photography by Keiko Oikawa

 

EMOTAN magazine days

Top to Bottom:   Some past issues used as decor for a bedroom partly furnished with Yoruba Aṣọ Òkè, Courtesy Comfort and Samuel.

The public presentation at the University of Ibadan Trenchard Hall, July 1977 by Late Mrs. Fola Akintunde-Ighodalo, Nigeria’s first female Permanent Secretary.  Others, L to R – Late N.K. Adamolekun, first Nigerian to head Nigeria’s premier university, the University of Ibadan. [Blogger’s older brother]; Blogger; partly covered, Justice Titi Mabogunje, a retired High Court Judge. [Photo Credit:  Depo Adenle, Canon AE1 Camera]

Dr. Adenle & Blogger, at Black Beauty Expo, Washington, D.C. 1978.

Blogger at a Lagos outing, 1981.  [Photo Credit:  Depo Adenle, Canon A.E.1 Camera]

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The Clan, Xmas 2011

 

Xmas 1999, 2010 & 2011

 

Xmas 2013                                                                   

 

Xmas 2013

RELATED:  http://emotanafricana.com/2015/01/01/from-my-family-to-yours-christmas-and-seasons-greetings-tola-adenle/

 

I am a wife, mother of four, grandmother of six, born during the Age of the Dinosaur who was dragged to blogging by one of her kids but has been helped by all.

Trying to drive an old VW Beetle on the outside lane of the Info Highway has been a mistake from the beginning of my blogging adventure, including having to start a new blog.   You started a new blog due to a mistake on another blog? Yeah, because I could not sort the monster error out.  I survived it and the blog, emotanglobal, did run for some months and can still be viewed through wordpress.com; it won’t be for much longer because materials from it and my first blog, emotanafricana.com are now united here under same now with which I started blogging.

Eons ago before all of the above and before the Information Age, I was born at Iju, a small town in Southwestern Nigeria’s present-day Ondo State where I spent my first twelve years of life in bucolic surroundings among zillions of siblings, cousins, close and distant relations many of whom I would not realize our closeness till well into adulthood.  My father planted cocoa and while I hated farm work, I have fond memories of those times: when the first of cocoa pods started ripening, it must be the beginning of school’s “third term” – towards September which meant farm work only on Saturdays!  I must have eaten tons of the cocoa seeds at harvest time; we also loved to eat the dried ones.   To this day, when I give myself treats of dark organic chocolate to get that nostalgic taste of dried cocoa beans, it’s heavenly!  When the work of cotton harvesting is behind – my father planted a little of many things apart from the main cocoa farm – Easter, with all those beautiful hymns was at hand.  You would not be wrong to guess I was a chorister who still sings beyond the shower.

At the village school, I loved the ordered and orderly environment: the paths lined with rocks painted white by the school boys, the flowers – croton, bougainvillea, rose perinwinkle, marigolds and bachelor’s button, and I love school, especially after discovering the world of books in the last year of elementary school, thanks to an older sister who was already in Nigeria’s second best-known girls’ school of the past who passed down an old copy of  Jane Eyre.

I cannot figure it out to this day because even though I hated the never-ending cycle of farm work, I do enjoy the hard work of gardening these days that goes into producing an environment that replicates (a little bit) my early life of seeing wild flowers on the way to the farm and on the farm.  There are few sights prettier than when our little cotton patches came to life, clad in a sea of yellow flowers.

That early life shaped who I am.

A croton deviant – kitteh-pawz.deviantart.com

 

When my family lived in arid Las Vegas for several years, I would step out of the house and smell moisture so pungent on the very rare occasions when rainfall was near and would announce assuredly and gleefully to my Significant Other who is near zero in farm experience beyond the school farms of old: “the rain’s going to fall; take that from a farmer’s daughter”, and it would within 24 hours!

Still about where I come from, I have been a teacher both at elementary and secondary (high) schools; a secretary at  British Petroleum, Lagos and the University of Ife, Nigeria – now Obafemi Awolowo University in the late 60s, and at the World Bank in the 70s although the designation at The Bank was a bit of a stretch as I was more of a go-fer who worked for food and my college tuition while spouse attended grad school.  There were also two babies who needed to be fed and nurtured!

I cut my journalism teeth at Nigeria’s now rested Western Nigerian-owned The Daily Sketch where I served the mandatory National Youth Service for college graduates. I would later found Emotan, A Woman’s Bimonthly which ran from 1977 to 1985.  From 2002, I contributed weekly essays to [Nigeria’s] The Comet on Sunday of The Comet group, a paper that metamorphosed to The Nation in which I continued writing for the Sunday edition till December 26, 2010 with a swan song, “A Letter to my niece: the writing life & saying ‘goodbye’  –  http://emotanglobal.com/2014/11/11/a-letter-to-my-niece-the-writing-life-saying-goodbye-tola-adenle/

This is an ad-free blog except when I have a charity to promote.  I even pay a little amount to keep ads out.  It is a leisurely hobby I graduated into to store my old newspaper weekly essays and now that I’ve used most of what I’d like to share beyond the Nigerian borders in this blog, I’m still working hard as I did for emotanafricana.com and emotanglobal, and will continue to do not just to keep the brain busy but to continue to have a ready outlet to share my thoughts, and commentaries by others on my favorite subjects.

If you are just discovering me, welcome to my world of sports, politics and social commentaries; you’ll also get arts & culture.

I’ve always kept my blogs very clean: what I write, visitors’ comments as well as contributions by others. I take out those that are not. As I’m no fence sitter, I make my stands on issues very clear through the responses to comments or the additions through lead-ins to posted essays not written by me.

In addition to using my own essays, I use  contributions by a few, and I post stories from the web that I enjoy and would like to share. In all, emotanafricana.com had not less than 40% of the 1500+ postings I had in 3 1/2 years before it was suspended in September 2014, written by me. Pardon my being the one saying so –  not bad for an Info Highway Student Learner [BUT] whose driver’s license application stands no chance of ever being granted. Reason: I look out of the Beetle to change lanes not realizing the vehicles the kids and a few middle age drive have devices that show behind and surrounding vehicular activities right INSIDE their vehicles!

As can be noted, I love Yoruba’s Aṣọ Òkè, and I particularly love the very old ones of which I’m a lucky owner of a few.  In fact, the run-away winner of attracting the most views on emotanafricana.com has been Yoruba Engagement Aṣọ Òkè which has attracted more than 12,000 – twelve thousand viewers.

Aso Oke is from the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria where my roots run deep in more than one state.  There are many pictures of me wearing various styles and weaves of the textile on this blog, a situation that arose once I discovered I would need money to attract models – pro or amateur – to pose.  All I did was pull out my old photo stacks and pick and choose; newer ones were photographed as needed.

Yoruba’s Aṣọ Òkè has many sub-categories in this blog, including the three great Classics – Sányán, Àlàárì & Ẹtù. As can also be noted, I am no gèlè  (head tie)  specialist; I just run them around my head whichever way, and off I go.  In Yorubaland these days, there are “artists” outside event centers who, for a fee, would turn my type into stars!  The categories are being developed into a book, and while I’ve been working on it for over two years, the end is still – hopefully – about a year away.

Welcome aboard, and to my old friends, thanks for taking my blogging to enjoyable heights for me.

 

TOLA ADENLE

UPDATED:  Thursday, March 26, 2015.
THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2015.  5:40 p.m. [GMT]