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Peter Adetunji Oyawale - ten years on - update February 21, 2011

Hi David (and readers of my open letters at http://dadamac.posterous.com  - open letter readers - if I have relevant background information I will drop it in for you as we go along)

Ref the ten year tribute idea for Peter Adetunji Oyawale         http://dadamac.posterous.com/ten-year-tribute-idea-for-peter-adetunji-oyaw

Thanks for your positive response in the comments box. I replied with another comment below yours, but I don't know if you will have seen it yet, hence this email.

I heard back from Chief and from Fola. Chief says he will write something, and also he was planning to go to Okeho and said he would let Victoria Adetona know about the ten year tribute idea.

Fola has let me know that the financial contribution I sent him, via John, towards the cost of doing a video recording at Ago-Are has arrived safely so he and PD plan to get started.


I am aware that I have various video recordings here too relating to Peter and his legacy, including ones with Peter in, but I don't have the skills to extract and present what would be relevant in a fitting way. Maybe, if we all tell bits of the story as we know it someone else will come along later who can help us to pull it together - and then some of the video may get used as well.

We will just see what emerges. I am not really trying to direct anything specific here - we are all too scattered to make that a realistic proposition. I am simply putting the idea around that, as it is ten years since we started to pull together the scattered fragments of Peter's vision, it is a good time to look back and reflect and share our various viewpoints and experiences. I think it is fitting that we do that. It is also like a kind of de-brief, so we can consider what we have learned and all the things we have to thank Peter for. I think it is right to take some kind of action this year to bring everything together in some way - to gather together evidence that his work did not die with him - that part of his vision did survive. Maybe we can even go back in our minds and share what his original vision was - maybe there will be other activists who would like to adapt it to their own circumstances.

Do you remember that when you first came to Ago-Are you were invited by the chiefs in the name of the "Oke-Ogun Community Development Agenda 2000 plus committee" - later shortened to OOCD2000+ and then OCDN - the Oke-Ogun Community Development Network? Do you know that there really was an agenda - and somewhere, buried in all my papers I probably have a copy of it. Somewhere too I have a copy of the speech that Chief Adejumo made  at Peter's funeral. I have the video of that funeral too, and the ones that Peter took during his trip, in the weeks before he was killed, and even the video of Ago-Are that his friends and family made to send to him and his new bride to celebrate their wedding in the UK. Agnita got multiple copies of them all to give to each of the children when they were older, and she gave me a set too.   Maybe I have already told you this - but it is all crowding into my mind again.

I know we are close to the date of the funeral, because it is half term for the schools around here - the week long holiday that always comes at the end of February - and in 2000 I went to Nigeria during that holiday to go to Peter's funeral. I was teaching and I was only able to go away because it was half term. Maybe I could work out the exact date from that. I came home on the Monday - too late to get into school for the staff training day - but as I was only on a temporary contract the headmistress gave me permission to miss the training. I had a long wait in Charles de Gaulle airport in the early hours of Monday, so must have flown out of Nigeria on Sunday night. I remember a meal on the last day - lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Ibadan. We were early and they were not really ready to serve customers, but they did open for us. We were very grateful as we had driven from Shaki and the hotel owner there had refused to serve us with anything for breakfast - I have no idea why. Perhaps just because it was not a very well equipped hotel. ( I remember having only three matches for my kerosene lamp - although I needed to light it in the morning as well as at night.) We certainly only stayed one night there.

At the start of my journey I had flown in to Lagos, where Ade met me and we stayed with his friends, then to Port Harcourt for a couple of days with him and his family, then back to the South West with him and his wife - to Lagos again I imagine, but I don't remember. I know he had arranged to borrow a car over there. The next thing I remember was the police station in Ibadan, where we went to try and get Peter's belongings released to us - so I could bring them back to Agnita. By then Peter's brother Kola was with us.

We were there for hours and hours while the police made things as difficult as possible - for the usual reasons.   (Ade didn't want us to have to stay in Ibadan any longer than necessary because of the circumstances of Peter's death there, but he didn't want to drive on the road to Oyo after dark either - so I remember very clearly how we were kept waiting until well after night fall. We had arrived at the police station in plenty of time - but it was late when we finally got Peter's things and set out on our journey again, and it was very late by the time we got to Oyo - with some memorable incidents along the way.)

We only stayed one night in Oyo so the funeral must have been the next day - the same day that we slept at Shaki. Ade wanted us to be in and out of the area as quickly as possible because of all the uncertainties, although we did manage a few quick family visits - to his family and Peter's.

Before we left someone gave me a video tape they had taken of the funeral and I brought that back for Agnita - along with others that we had claimed at the police station.

It is such a long story, and so much has happened in the the years, I am not at all sure what I should focus on. Maybe as you and I discuss it, it will become easier to decide. At least I think I have recognised that it would be unrealistic of me to think I could do anything with the videos - although at first that was what I had in mind. I am too emotionally involved with the content to make a good job of it even if I had the skills.

What do you think you will do? Will you tell the story? Or will you look at what you learned as a result of getting involved? - or tell the stories of some beneficiaries? - or what? Or would you rather simply write - or say -  a very few words acknowledging that his work did continue - without giving much in the way of detail - maybe do it as a brief video for youtube. Maybe we should be looking forward as well as looking back - it is a tribute to Peter that so much is still going on that would never have happened without him.

Sorry this is so long - but I need to rub minds with someone about it. I look forward to hearing from you.

Pam