About book

Before my mother died, she used to tell me old Yoruba folktales while we huddled around the lower platform heating vents or waited in line for rations. As with all good African stories, they were always garnished with proverbs. That’s the unique thing about our stories, isn’t it? The proverbs. Well, that and the tortoises. But there is more. Even though as everyone who as ever read Achebe knows, proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten, sometimes it’s the palm oil that stains your clothes that stays with you long after the hunger had passed. My point is, many of those proverbs stuck with me long after I forgot the stories she told me. Some even stuck with me long after she died. But one of them will probably stay with me forever. It goes; Ọ̀nì ní ojú máa ńti òun láti gé nǹkan jẹ, tóun bá sì ti gée jẹ, ojú máa ńti òun láti fi sílẹ̀.Ọ̀nì ní ojú máa ńti òun láti gé nǹkan jẹ, tóun bá sì ti gée jẹ, ojú máa ńti òun láti fi sílẹ. What that all means, once you manage to translate it, is something like this; “The crocodile always says it is shy to bite, but once it has bitten, it is shy to let go.” And that was exactly what happened to me....