From Stealing Books to Becoming a Global Author: Toyin Falola from Ode Aje to Texas: Brief Research Project Description
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Toyin Falola
I was now a few days short of turning seventeen—on January 1, 1970. I needed a job to support myself.
....
I had previously registered as an external candidate for the Ordinary Level of the General Certificate Examinations of the University of London.
…
With one eye, I had been preparing minimally for this examination, spending more time on chemistry and biology, which required separate examinations on laboratory work. I had no access to any laboratory, but I figured out, after studying the examination pattern for ten years, that one could memorize the terminology, understand the steps, and reach the right conclusions. Thus, I understood the outcome of adding different chemicals.
The biology practical was far simpler, at least for me, as all I needed to do was memorize the entire contents of a 212-page book. That book and others, I had to steal, raiding the library of Lagelu Grammar School a few miles away from Ode Aje: A man climbs a thorny tree not because he is bold but because he needs to survive. There was a huge mountain in my path, and I could not sit down wishing for it to disappear. I must get up, climb it to the top, descend to the valley, hit the road to gather the firewood to warm my body in old age, and use my legs to ensure that my pocket is never empty.
( From Toyin Falola, Counting the Tiger's Teeth )
What significance emerges from the writer describing himself, in a personal communication, as not returning the books he stole but made book donations, perhaps to that library, but certainly to various Nigerian universities when he became established as an academic?
The author states, in a personal communication, that he had no money for transport between his residence at Ode Aje and the library, leading to his stealing the books to read at home.
Yet this same person who could not afford the money to visit a library a few miles from his home now jets so frequently from the US where he is a professor at the University of Texas, to Nigeria, amidst travels to other places in Africa and across the world, that he is perhaps the most visible inter-university presence in Nigerian academia, and the most prolific contemporary writer on Nigerian academia, represented by many essays and his book on Babcock University.
I journeyed to the Ode Aje neighbourhood of Ibadan where this book stealing incident took place in the writer's 17th year in order to see for myself this place that plays so great a role in his autobiographies, a place the inspirational influence of which is the launching pad of his scholarly career and found myself reflecting on relationships between circumstance and achievement.
Stay tuned for pictures, videos, narrative and analysis of this journey. The working title for now is "From the Rustic to the Stratospheric: In Search of Toyin Falola''.