“…nothing to brag about here, but I am bold to unashamedly announce that I am at home, in heavenly bliss when I am within the robust cocoon of the sleepy Fiditi town. The warm embrace of the town is remarkably alluring. Her bosom is large, soft enough to wrap me up entirely in her warmth from here to there. And it can’t be anything else -but super-rich, dedicated and undefinable love. The egregious feel that one is immune from any apocalyptic occurrences is seemingly palpable. As not a wrathful bully was ever bold enough to reach or arrest me in the safe custody of “Mama-Agba”, as a troublesome but fast-footed youth. Fiditi is irredeemably loving like my maternal grandmother, and she’s quickly forgiving like my paternal grandmother. It could be cold, and could be rustic when there are lessons to be learnt from its erratic nature and its ever “dilly-dallying”- and in the customary didacticism of my beloved maternal grandfather. Fiditi is neither male nor female- such that the indeterminacy of its gender matters less to me than the richness of its love and the uprightness of its androgynous mien. The lack of flash and excessive vanity hasn’t dulled its sense of simplicity or that of its bare necessity. And with good, unbridled, non-poisonous air slashing away at the crazy humidity around you; a corrugated roof over your head- waxing staccato-like melody to the slow tunes of unscheduled love making at dawn, noon or night or any other times during the rainy season; good, lushly vegetative scenery meshed into clusters of dwarfish, granite mountains far into the miles ahead- like in Valhalla- in Odin’s own backyard garden; and with a loving, prudent, hardworking population. Wide-eyed folks, intuitively mature to know and fully understand that- respect, love, and brotherhood expand the coast of a community quicker, and far better than the stiffness of some book knowledge- which in their best forms are only good for show, but in their obsolescence- worse to put to play.”- Alhaji Haruna Mejindade, The Life-President Of The Fiditi Butchers Union, delivering a lecture at The FIDITI CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
