Djelia: Stories, Poetry, Fiction, and Features

By Dr. Ejine Okoroafor-Ezediaro

Just like mud lying in wait
Post torrential downpour
Waiting for whom to trip
You wait, lurking at corners
Your mosquito harbingers hovering
With proboscis ready to pierce
And inject a venomous malaria dose

By Tamunobarabi Gogo Ibulubo

each time we walk
each time we swim
each time we sit down

at the sea side

By Tamunobarabi Gogo Ibulubo

misty and misty sky
a wavy cloudy movement
of water and of water
sharing the colour to black
mixed into a rainbow arc

The autobiography of Princess Sarah Segilola Odulaja was written while she was on a visit to New York, during the months of June and July 1999.

By Sarah Segilola Odulaja

To the Glory of God

I was born in the early morning of January 1, 1924 into the family of my father, Prince Joseph Ojo Alola Folaranmi and Princess Leah Ajayi Sinyanade Folaranmi. My father, Joseph Folaranmi is from the Adeyemi Alaafin ruling family in Oyo. His grandfather, Faleti migrated to Tede here my grandfather was born. My father, Olateju was an Ifa priest. My mother's father was Oba Onitede Olaniyan, Ojola fi gigun s'ayo Igbo fi didi s'ola baba Adedigba Ayo boro tika wa Adu bi aran O t'oba tele k'o too j'oba.

This engaging interview with Carolyn Kumah's mother and her friends was recorded on October 9, 1999. The interview details their upbringing in Ghana, motherhood, and life. It interview features Mrs. Tina Kumah, Mr. Thomas Mensah, and Mrs. Christie Bonsu.

It did not take me long to realize that while I was seeing more blacks in a given place than I had seen on a regular basis in six years, I was still alienated from those I thought of most often as "my people." We did not seem to share the same culture, the same way of understanding ourselves. On their part, there was a great deal of suspicion of me, of my motives, and intentions, which may have stemmed largely from the fact that I was teaching at a school that rarely hired black faculty and that--despite being a "public" institution--was seen by those outside the academic community as white. Many would confess to me later that they had questioned my "credentials" as a black man even to have been employed by such an institution.