The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,38
he met Arabs who had come to northern Nigeria with the trans-Sahara trade. These Arabs were teachers and missionaries. They translated the Koran into Yoruba, and they also preached in Yoruba. This was much easier for Adesina’s father and he converted to Islam. He always wished after that to be a good Muslim; he didn’t think Adesina was a good Muslim, and so he didn’t eat in Adesina’s house. But he was open-minded. He let people in the family read the Bible and he liked to debate with friends who were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It seems from this that religion had become a kind of intellectual activity, perhaps the only one, in the newly educated house. Adesina’s father’s younger brother stayed a Christian, while the third brother remained firm in the traditional African religion. Adesina, growing up, had the full range of available Nigerian belief to choose from. He was technically a Muslim, following his father, but he liked the uncle who practised the traditional religion because this uncle was a great one for sacrifices and in that house Adesina was always given meat from the sacrifices to eat. His parents disapproved and beat him, but still he went to the unconverted uncle’s house. He would go and watch the sacrifices, eat his meat, and come home to a beating.
It was a hard childhood. He had to get up at a half-past five, wash and go to the mosque. Then he went to school; when he came back in the afternoon he had to go to the market to sell the foo-foo his mother had made. Foo-foo was a local food made in the main from pounded yam; people thought it was easy to make, but it wasn’t. His mother made it well, in her own way, and Adesina had no trouble selling what she had made; but he had to stay in the market all afternoon. He was back home in the early evening, and by eight-thirty they were all in bed.
When Adesina was ten—this would have been in 1958—his father lost all his property. The reasons were political and very Nigerian: the family tribe was accused of using charms to kill a powerful man from another tribe. Adesina’s father called the young boy and made him sit down and talked to him like an adult. It was the Yoruba tradition. The family houses are all built around the main house, and whenever there is something to discuss the extended family gather in the compound and talk. Everybody, from the youngest to the oldest, has a say. Adesina’s father told him that they were now poor, but there was hope for the family if Adesina worked hard enough and said his prayers. Adesina understood; because of these family discussions he knew the history of his family.
During the week he worked on the family farm. At weekends he went to construction sites and worked as a labourer, carrying bricks, mixing cement. He learned a few things; he got to know, for instance, that a bricklayer with two helpers could set one hundred bricks or blocks a day. He saved the labouring money he got; he liked going to Christmas and New Year parties and he needed to buy clothes for himself. His parents didn’t like that. When he came home from the New Year party he was beaten. But when he was fourteen he was able to give his mother five pounds. She needed the money for an operation; and after this they got on much better.
He didn’t go to a secondary school. He took private lessons. He bought books and read them at night by the light of a lantern. He was helped by his old teachers. They taught him English and Calculations (Arithmetic) and he studied history to improve his English. He was attracted to accountancy, and especially to the sound of the IAA, the International Accountants Association. He did three parts of the accountancy course they offered, but his English boss at the firm where he was working said the course was not recognised in all countries. Adesina gave it up and began to study to be a chartered accountant. He was encouraged by his boss, who told him that if he studied diligently for three or four hours every day he could achieve whatever he wanted.
He was thirty-five when he became an accountant. For all the years of his study he worked at other jobs. Some were menial; he never minded. His father had told him that he