Free I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey by Stephen K Amos Page B

won’t bother about you when they want to go home. We will have fun tonight. And don’t go running off chasing women.’ So I spent the rest of the night with Auntie Yomi and her DJ friends having a blast. She was so cool and full of life that to be honest I may have even had a few more mouthfuls of palm wine before the evening was out.

6
    M UM ’ S FAMILY DIDN ’ T HAVE any electricity due to a corruption scandal, which meant that only half of the town got wired up. They were in the wrong half, but Mama Bunmi’s daughter was in the right half. So even though they only had a small apartment they at least got to enjoy fans, lights and television. A few days into January, after everyone had got over the excesses of Christmas and New Year, I went to visit Mama Bunmi and she took me to see the sights of Abeokuta.
    We visited the famous rock after which Abeokuta is named. Olumo Rock is a huge system of interlocking rocks and caves and it looks prehistoric, a bit like something out of The Flintstones . Abeokuta grew as a town because the surrounding villages were being pillaged for slaves by other tribes. People chose to live ‘under the rock’ because the rock and cave systems were easier to defend than the wide open plains surrounding it. We climbed the rock and, from that vantage point, we could see the first cathedral built in Nigeria, St Peter’s Cathedral, and the other great building of Abeokuta – the Alake Palace, the home of the Oba (king).
    Mama Bunmi may not have been as wealthy as Mum’s family but she was worldly and friendly and well connected. When we got to the Alake Palace this humble old woman went straight up to the guard on the door, curtsied, and asked right there to have an audience with the King. The guard laughed at her because she’d been there many times before and knew the King well. Nothing happens fast in Abeokuta and we were told that the King would see us in an hour but that until he was ready we were free to look around the palace.
    Nigeria has a lot of kings and a lot of princes. Loads of Nigerian last names start with Ade-, which means ‘king’ or ‘crown’. So if you know an ‘Ade-something’ then you know that they are descended from a king. That’s not too difficult because in the olden days Nigerian Oba could have plenty of wives and plenty of children. If, when I say king, you start thinking of some kind of National Geographic-looking guy wearing leopard skin then forget it. This guy didn’t have any real political power in Nigeria, but he was the most respected figure in the community, who wore tailored suits and had sent his son to be educated at Harrow.
    The Oba’s palace is built in a very grand fashion. You go through a big archway into a courtyard with an east wing and a west wing. Mama Bunmi took me around the palace, which she obviously knew pretty well. The rooms were huge and, with their high ceilings, they kept cool in the tropical heat. It didn’t look as if anyone lived there, but although the rooms were completely unfurnished, on every wall hung pieces of traditional West African art. Some were normal painted pictures, others were random bits of acacia and mahogany with burned-on etching. The King had plenty of wooden and iron sculptures and there were a lot of wood-carved masks with coloured material and feathers adorning them. There was one figure that seemed to be represented a lot. It looked like a huge spider. Sometimes the spider had a man’s head or sometimes there would be a man riding on the back of the spider.
    When the Oba came down to see us, he greeted Mama Bunmi warmly. He was wearing a linen shirt and trousers to combat the heat of the tropical midday and black leather shoes, but he wore a traditional round Nigerian fila cap on his head. He was very old but seemed to have lots of energy and he was so tall that he had to stoop to embrace Mama Bunmi properly. When I saw him, I