The Audacity of Memory

Five years after, we met again this was 22 years after we left school ,in 1986. We had met about five years ago at the lagos murtala muhammed Airport, when he came home briefly. I once again hooked up with my fav school mate and brother, Olumuyiwa Ojo alias ojays. I had been junketing round the States inthe past two weeks, and came to Chicago-enroute DC. We met at the Chicago-Ohare airport, he came with his second child, Tobi, a tall, gangling beautiful young man, who has the very face of his father. Really what Tobi looks like today was the very face Muyiwa had at the time of our graduation. Now here is the catch, Muyiwa is one of those chaps who will never aged. He still has the youngish 17ish look save for the face hairs, which i suspect he must have deliberately kept to stress on his correct age. When i saw the two men walking towards me, i felt a strong sense of nostalgia. I recalled very much the bonding that was between me and Muyiwa. Aside being his schoolmate, i used to go hang out in his parent's modest home at Agodi... it was my second home in those indigent days at Ibadan. The parents acepted me, just as his two siblings --Yemisi and Niyi (Niyi was indeed like a son in my hand; he felt very comfortable in my presence)... that reminds me that i have to lacate where the youngman is in Nigeria).
I couldnt have been happier today when i met Ojays and his son then. We spent time catching up on old times, with me revealing to Tobi some of the extraordinary exploits of his father as a dance and choreography student at the University of Ibadan. Tobi was all laughter as he listened to tales about our many pranks, especially my games with our dance teacher then, Inacyra dos Santos.
This night, Ojays terrorise me with more rememberings sending me images from our graduating days; check out the one we took immediately we climbed down the stage after the presentation of his final dance project, Asedaaye, in which i played Sango.

* Some cast members of The Man Who Never Died (the heavily bearded was Kolosa Kargbo, a very knowlegeable impressive character, who had been on exile from Sierra Leoone based on his writings that was the thorn in the soul of then crazy rulers of the country. Nobert Young is the fine yaoung man at the extreme right, while left was Akin Okitika (now Akin Oluwamuyiwa, curently the On-Line editor of The Guardian)He scored an alpha in that project.. it was such a spectacle. even i recall the baeuty of the night. he alos sent me the image we took after the performance of the Man Who Never died directed by Joel Adeyinka Adedeji in 1985 in which i played judge Rowes. My past is catching up with me; i am glad.
Here is something i had written about Muyiwa Ojo is a talk i gave to members of the Guild of Nigerian Dancders a few years back:

While thinking about the issue of dance and the dance artiste, I had called on my school-mate. Mr. Muyiwa Ojo, who studied at the University of Ibadan between 1983 and 1986. Popularly called OJays, out of a class of about 30, Ojo was the only one that eventually decided to turn a professional dancer. He used to run the Youth Palace in Ibadan and had a stint with the veteran dancer, Zulu Adigwe — before he left Nigeria in 1992.


* Ojays current work in Australia

While at the University of Ibadan, Ojo, Isiaka Egunbunmi, the diminutive bata drummer, actor (now a filmmaker) and myself, we used to run two separate weekly dance programmes on NTA Oyo and BCOS Orita Bashorun. But as at the time we were graduating from the department of theatre arts, Ojays was the only one who graduated as a Dance major. After sometime, Ojo left for the USA. We did not see him and I thought he had given up dance. But when he came home recently, I met him and we had time to reflect on some of the complex movements and dance formations he created, with which we made some great shows at the theatre department then. He laughed and told me he had actually been dancing all his life. He never stopped for one day. And he has been teaching dance at a University in the USA.