Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>: Jan 05 09:22PM +0100
*The
Migration of the Iroko*
* Ayo Olukotun
Returns Home*
[image:
Prof-Ayo-Olukotun.jpg]
Ayo Olukotun
Image from Intervention <https://intervention.ng/27743/>
Oluwatoyin
Vincent Adepoju
''Gracefully, does the mask regain its grove at the end of day
gracefully...''
from Wole Soyinka's *Death and the King's Horseman*
Some hours before Toyin Falola announced on the USAAfrica Dialogues Series
Google group where Ayo Olukotun had often electrified people with his
superb writings on the Nigerian condition, that the great writer had died a
few minutes before the announcement, it occured to me that Olukotun could
be in danger of not surviving after the very sensitive operation he had
recently successfully undergone.
Why did I think that, even though I knew little about the operation and
about his condition?
Knowledge of his age and the challenges of health that come with age, the
potential brittleness of the body as certain negative accelerations emerge
once one enters into the world and gather further momentum when certain
biological thresholds are crossed, developments that can only be delayed
but not arrested?
The cells that make up the body are dividing and recombining every minute,
but each time they do so they become a fraction less effective than before,
if I recall correctly what a health specialist once told me.
In a colony of rabbits run by a farmer whom the rabbits never see, a rabbit
disappears from time to time, a situation inexplicable to the rabbits since
they have no idea why that should happen, their universe and field of
perception not extending beyond the pen where they live.
In order to cope with this inevitability of tragedy, of recurrent loss of
loved ones which may occur at any time, philosophers and artists among the
rabbits composed reflections and expressions meant to help this race of
beings manage this shadow ever looming over their lives, from what I recall
of English writer Richard Adams' novel *Watership Down.*
A man visits Death and asks, ''what is the secret of eternal life?''
Death is adamant. ''Ask me for anything else'', he urges. ''Women, wealth,
long life, children, I will give you, but please spare me from having to
answer that question'', he pleads.
The man insists, arguing that all those aspects of existence will pass
away. ''What is undying?'' he demands to know, as this story goes in the
Indian classic the ''Katha Upanishad.''
On a fateful day, the Reaper of Men arrived at the door of Everyman. ''Get
ready, brother, tomorrow you go with me to where all go when their time is
up.''
Everyman was frantic. The summons was unrepealable, no appeal would have
any value to the messenger. Who could follow him on this terrible journey,
he desperately wondered.
He cast around frantically, seeking companionship on the journey from
intimate family, to no avail. Close friends, of no use. Everyone was too
busy, had something urgent to do that could not be postponed, or simply
pointed out to him that they could not go with him beyond a particular
point, since those who were not summoned are not allowed beyond such a
spot, as legend claimed about such a situation as the one in which he now
found himself.
Failing human companionship, what could he take with him to give him
comfort on the journey and at the destination to which the journey led? The
fateful day having arrived, he was informed by the messenger that no
possessions were allowed, as this story may be modified from the English
poem ''Everyman.''
''Who, among you deities, can follow his devotee on a distant journey?,''
Orunmila asked his fellow deities. The fierce Ogun, his tunic covered in
blood, the magnificent Oshun, magically beautiful mistress of arcane
powers, the dreadful Soponna, who resides in devastating diseases, master
of suffering, these and more of the deities insisted they could follow
their devotee on a distant journey, until they were asked what they would
do, if after travelling some distance, they were offered along the road the
delicacies most sumptuous to them, the most exquisite soups, the most
delicious foods?
''After eating my fill, I will return home joyfully,'' they each declared.
''You cannot follow your devotee on a distant journey,'' Orunmila
concludes, in Wande Abimbola's translations of Yoruba oral poetry,
*Sixteen Great
Poems of Ifa*.
Some Buddist and Hindu rituals operate on a principle akin to imagining
surrendering each part of one's body to the elements until nothing
physical remains. Frequenting of cemeteries and cremation grounds is
undergone by some schools in these spiritualities to remind one of the
inevitability of death and the need for urgency in seeking that meaning
that transcends birth and death.
''Everything is on fire'' the Buddha proclaimed, after reaching what he
describes as life's ultimate meaning. ''The eyes, the mouth, the nose, the
tongue, all are on fire with desire''. ''But everything they desire
passeses away. What may not pass away and how can it be found?'' he asked,
having been galvanized into these questions by the shock of observing old
age, illness and death.
All that Everyman is able to take with him on the final journey are his
good deeds, from my imperfect memory of that account. No other deity,
except the deity that is the Self, can follow his devotee on a distant
journey, Orummila eventually concludes. At the intersection of the
individual self and the Self at the heart of cosmos, immortality is found,
beyond the body, beyond time, Death finally responds in the *Upanishads*.
By the standards of the great sages across time and space represented by
the composers of those stories and spiritual disciplines referenced,
Olukotun has discharged himself admirably as a member of the human race,
empowered by consciousness and physical force but constrained by mortality,
penetrating beyond the Earth but unable to decisively answer the question,
''where are we coming from, if any, and where are we going to?''
What can such a creature do? Do his best with the time available to him,
time the scope of which is unknown to him.
Some claim, however, that the human being is a traveller from a region
unknown to most people, a wayfarer who has forgotten where his
journey began, a person who left home for the market only to lose his
memory, thinking that the market is the beginning and end of his life, but
the home keeps calling, and when the person finishes selling and buying in
the market, they return home, as this perspective from classical African
thought goes.
Even then, various efforts are made to prolong the time in the market as
long as possible. After all, this other fabled home exists for many only in
hope, not in knowledge, with the sights, sounds and relationships of the
market being what is most accessible to most.
If I had sent a prayer for Olukotun when that thought occurred to me, could
that have helped? Could powers responsible for mediating between life and
death have reached out for help through my thoughts without my
grasping what was going on?
The iroko tree is a traveller between dimensions, between the physical
universe and the zone of ultimate origins, the African belief goes, fed by
accounts of iroko trees described as disappearing from their known
locations only to reappear there after some time.
Seekers after the secrets of such interdimensional journeys would keep
vigil at the base of the iroko, hoping to be transported along with the
tree, hence the movement of a great achiever, of a bold journeyer in
worlds of enterprise,
from the physical world to the world beyond the material universe, came to
be known as the migration of the iroko, in this account of African thought
concocted by myself from the fame of the iroko as a superlatively powerful
entity existing uniquely at the crossroads of matter and spirit.
I saw Olukotun once, some years ago, bustling with life, genial and
venerable. His restlessly powerful intellect and compassionate wisdom came
alive for me in his writings, as this consummate patriot tried to make
sense of the social, economic and political forms of chaos threatening to
swallow his country Nigeria, perennially hopeful as he was even in the
midst of searing realities.
He has left us behind in the world of space and time but left us a gift-his
work, his vision, his palpitating creativity, his call to action to redeem
the humanity of his fellow countrymen.
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