Nigeria: Tolu Ogunlesi

Available for over a year

ABEOKUTA by TOLU OGUNLESI This is where we played the final match. The birds and the pollen are gone. But the goal-post stones stand, tombstones unmoved by time, or grief marking the places where life became mere air and bruised skin became earth, and where the future has become a lighter version of the past. Tomorrow, or the day after, I'll drive by our Wembley, beneath the mango tree that will still continue to bear fruit, long after those it fed have moved on to feed children and worms. In time footpath and grass will learn to banter and haggle, and the footprints that insisted on a back-and-forthing amongst the bungalows will learn to carve new paths to the world to the sea to the cemetery to a future that has forgotten the past, or is perhaps merely a new past, wiper of the old.