Happy Birthday: Dr. Michael Afolayan
Toyin Falola
Baba Michael Afolayan is older today!
The older you get in Africa, the closer you are to the ultimate efficiency—the ability to ask others to do things for you. When you call two, four will answer! May today bring that efficiency favor to Dr. Afolayan. Ase!
He is a man with complete fulfillment in his life, both private and public. He enjoys touches of humor—of the medium ones—and he has the grandeur of humanness. He is a spiritual leader—he writes scriptural messages for his local newspapers. He has shown me some drafts to read, like inviting a Satan to a seminar on Jah!
He is a devoted family man, married to my great friend, Precious. Indeed! While Precious can marry my friend, only Patience can marry me. Precious and Patience have interacted severally.
I once created an informal meditation network, and when I stopped, Baba Afolayan was not happy. Our friend, Vik Bahl, my Bhagavad teacher—as if Esu is not enough—has pressured me to collect those pieces into a book of wisdom, forgetting that when you need wisdom, you lack them; and once acquired, you need them no more.
Dr. Afolayan received education for living, not for degrees, and he lives well. A man gifted with the Bible and Ifa simultaneously, his collage is a blessing, spiritually useful and offered in multiple societies. I once proposed to dele jegede, that talented artist with the beard of Moses but without the rod that split the sea, to move to Austin. I wanted to create a cluster of retired Africans living together. I had the same idea for Afolayan.
Wale, the manager of Pan African University Press, asked me two days ago, "Why do you like Baba Afolayan and Baba Dauda so much." I said I could not answer the question. Friendship must reach a state of unconsciousness to have meaning. The anecdotes are many, but the retelling must await another day.
Happy birthday, great man.
TF
Wale Ghazal
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Femi Segun
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Adeshina Afolayan
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
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Ojogbon Afolayan,
Congratulations! Hearty, Happy Birthday! I wish you many happy returns of this day in robust health and prosperity.
Bayo Oyebade
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2020 10:16 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Happy Birthday: Dr. Michael Afolayan
Baba Michael Afolayan is older today!
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Vik Bahl
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2020 12:00 PM
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Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Happy Birthday: Dr. Michael Afolayan
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Ezinwanyi Adam
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Nimi Wariboko
On Dec 15, 2020, at 6:42 PM, Ezinwanyi Adam <ezii...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Farooq A. Kperogi
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Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso
Bayo Omolola
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Ademola Dasylva
(Professor of African Literature, Oral Poetics & Performance),
Department of English;
Coordinator, Ibadan Cultural Studies Group (ICSG);
Chairman, Board of TOFAC (International);
Recipient, 2009 Distinguished Africanist Award for Research Excellence, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Recipient, 2019 Asante Award for Outstanding Research in African Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, USA.
Rm. 68, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
+234(0)802 350 4755
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Michael Afolayan
IT is my joy in life to find
At every turning of the road,
The strong arm of a comrade kind
To help me onward with my load.
And since I have no gold to give,
And love alone must make amends,
My only prayer is, while I live, —
God make me worthy of my friends!
When a man with a large brain is endowed with a large heart, our world is enriched and empowered beyond the scope of mediocrity; such endowments make our universe large enough to contain all of us without lurking our wings against each other. You are just too kind; you are a gift to humanity – a talent on loan from God! I appreciate you indeeed.
I gravely apologize for my late response. As some of you may know, I have been overwhelmed by current events around me in the last two weeks. I serve on the international funeral committee for the late mentor, true genius, sound intellectual and renown diplomat, Professor Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yaï. Indeed, we spent quality travel time together today with the delegates from Republic of Benin, who came to traditionally break the news of Yai’s parting to both the Ooni of Ife and the Akirun of Ikirun in whose monarchy, Ojogbon Yai was chieftained Ààrẹ Aláṣà (theGeneralissimo of Culture) of Ikirun Land. I am also involved in the funeral of my childhood friend, Gbade Akande, to be buried in Ibadan in two days’ time. But I promise to reach out to each one one-on-one.
As a quick but relevant digression, I was born in the village, and at least for the first 12 years of my life I lived and grew up there. And so, even if anyone like me were lucky enough to know one’s exact date of birth, the idea of a birthday was non-existent. As an adult, therefore, my birthdays are days I have dedicated as my “God’s chosen fast” and opportunity for sober reflections, a prospect denied many of my peers. I fast on that day. Anyone would be free to eat on my behalf, but certainly, not me. I volunteer in, and give to, nursing homes (if in the US), and to an adopted orphanage (Ilé Àbíyè) when in Osogbo, Nigeria. It’s my attitude of gratitude to three individuals:
First, to God, who made it possible that I was born at all, and insisted I must survive in spite of all odds. Believe me, those odds were so slim that pregnancies were not announced and the phrase “Ká ṣì máa wò ó” (Let’s wait and see) was the common but cautious expression in reference to a woman being pregnant. It was an appointment with death that could be doubly delivered – and so when the most common announcement was made, “The water spilled but the calabash did not break.” This meant the baby died but the mother survived. It could be “the water stayed but the calabash broke.” It meant the mother died but the baby survived. The most dreaded but sadly fairly common was when theannouncement was made: “The water spilled and the calabash broke.”
Therefore . . .
I owe God my ultimate appreciation for making the calabash inside which I was to stay unbroken that scared. day of reckoning, and the water that I was, to stay intact, unspilled, unruffled.
Secondly, this day is always my veneration to the Calabash, my late mother, who gave birth to me at a time when, I learned, more than half of babies born in the village were stillborn, and half of that half would die before their fifth birthdays, and more than half what is left will see their 40 and beyond. We were all àbíkú (born-to-die); only a handful of us were àbíyè (born-to-live); and so our mothers in the village in somber and cautious optimism, conscious of the efficacy of a self-fulfilling prophecy and the sacred power of the word, referred to themselves and to each other as “Ìyá Àbíyè” (Mother of one born-to-live). As I have noted elsewhere, no doubt, our mothers were indeed the red flags upon which the price of our freedoms were (and still are) indelibly written. They deserveevery compensation imaginable. Sadly, when I was adult enough, established in the American shores, and excited to start paying my mother back, I just. Finished teaching a summer class in thee. afternoon only to receive the couriered news of her sudden death class - checking out of this wretched world with little or no notice. Alas, I was too farther away to even attend her burial, thanks in no small partto the American immigration restriction of that time. I was in shock, and could not mourn, questioning God for many years. Indeed, it would be exactly ten years afterwards when I finally saw my mother’s tomb and the first opportunity to mourn her, and mourn her, I did. Unconsolably! Even to this day, 31years after, I still could not watch the video of the funeral service hand-delivered to me by the late Professor Akinwumi Isola. Why then should I not make my birthday her own birth day? She defied every rule of conventional wisdom. I am eternally grateful!
Thirdly, and as represented by Dr. Abel Oyelakin Afoláyan “Daddy Osogbo,” as we fondly call him, I dedicate the day to all those who have acted in loco parentis for me ever since my (and my siblings’) fatherless day of June 13, 1964. May we all live to fulfill our days, number those days, and give our hearts unto wisdom.
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segun ogungbemi
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Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2020 11:49 AM
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Cc: Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>; Yorubaaffairs+owners <yorubaaffa...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Yoruba Affairs - Happy Birthday: Dr. Michael Afolayan
Pamela Smith
Amen! Amen! AMEN!
L’agbara Olorun! Amin!
A ku ojo ibi o, Aburo mi atata!
To my fellow Saggitarian brother, our “Mother’s” last born
(me on the 10th and you on the 15th)!
Igba odun: odun kan o!
Ire ni o!
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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