Easter Sunday was a big day when I was a child. I spent many of them in my mother’s hometown of Oke-Odan, under the watchful, musical authority of my maternal grandfather, Pa J.A. Odunfa, who, from as far back as memory serves until his death in 1981, was the organist of St. James’ Anglican Church, Oke-Odan in Ogun State.
He was not just known. He was known known. The kind of man whose house did not need directions. “Ile organis,” they called it. The locals, mostly farmers, handled the “t” the way Lagos handles the “s” in Island.
Straight from church on Easter Sunday, the choir would file into his house. Waiting for them was a feast that could humble ambition. The food, if memory is not playing games, came from the church.
It was there I learned that appetite in the village is not the same thing as that in the city. They are not even cousins. They are different species. Children, only slightly older than me, would polish off portions of eba or lafun that would intimidate a full-grown city dweller.
The soups came rich. Waterleaf and egusi, heavy with eja kika and black ponmo. Or that slimy, lush-green ewedu, with pieces of egusi peering through. Village soup had character. It had depth. It had something our Ibadan versions, for all their effort, could not quite summon.
You could not miss the joy on the choristers’ faces. Soup running down elbows, satisfaction worn openly.
Waiting for them was a feast that could humble ambition. The food, if memory is not playing games, came from the church.
My grandmother, always brightly dressed on Easter days, would arrive home from church already halfway into a song. The one she returned to often was: “Awa o ni fi Jesu sile ka tun lo b’orisa/
O d’ade o/ Edunmare d’ade ogo jingbini.”
It was not one of those songs you heard everywhere. Not on the radio. Not in Ibadan churches. It belonged to that town, that church, that moment. And when she sang it, others joined in.
It was a declaration. Jesus crowned in glory. No going back to idol worship. I do not know if they still sing it in that church. The last time I was there was in 2018, for her burial. Time has a way of moving things along.
May my grandfather and grandmother continue to rest in peace.
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