Obari gomba biography channel

I just read a blog post by my cousin, Mimi titled ‘Drink Air.‘ and it brought memories. In summary, the term ‘drink air’ is from a Tiv expression, ‘ma ahumbe.’ It is a literal translation. In our context, it is a term that was popularised by her mom, my aunt Mbatomun and my Dadi, Mr. Charles Ayede. They would be deliberate and just make time out for us to go out, take aimless drives around town or anywhere, or long walks. Sometimes, it would even be a celebration because — no good reason. Just, live. There was that time in the village, Christmas 2009, when we went to the village with Dadi and a battalion of several families to just enjoy our tradition, acculturate and have fun. Truly, it was one of the best Christmases ever and I hope to replicate this some day, if Fanen does not beat me to it.

But, on the issue of drinking air, we were talking of this on our group chat and Ngodoo, my big cos, reminded me of one time, about sixteen years or so ago, when Dadi got us to go on a road trip with him from Makurdi to Obudu in Cross River to get ‘bamboo.’

We were in the Benue State University (BSU) at the time, three of us – Ngodoo, Henry and I – studying for different first degrees at different levels, myself being the youngest of the crew. Dadi made us wait for him for about seven hours, claiming he was on the North Bank bridge. Get this, he drove in from Abuja which is about four hours and just for that small stretch of the North Bank bridge to the BSU gate which is a two minute drive, we stayed an eternity. I became the sentry at the designated spot, waiting because woe betide you if Dadi got the spot and did not meet anyone waiting. Long story short, we made our journey by 7pm or so and moved to Obudu where we got to visit Mr. Abellagah, who was Dadi’s classmate. We had fun, did crazy stuff on the road, visited people and importantly, somehow did not get to buy any bamboo or a

Citation preview

Chinua Achebe’s Legacy

Illuminations from Africa James Ogude (ed)

Achebe Book.indb 1

2015-10-14 01:19:07 PM

First Published in 2015 by the Africa Institute of South Africa Private Bag X41 Pretoria South Africa, 0001 ISBN: 978-0-7983-0490-0 © Copyright Africa Institute of South Africa 2015 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the copyright owner. To copy any part of this publication, you may contact DALRO for information and copyright clearance. Any unauthorised copying could lead to civil liability and/or criminal sanctions.

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