A life, in chapters

Adunni Morenike Oyelaran

b. 14 March 1946

d. 2 October 2024

at rest Ibadan

Chapter I

The life

Adunni Morenike Oyelaran was born in Abeokuta in March 1946, the second of five children, and died in Ibadan in October 2024. In between she taught for thirty-nine years, ran a school for seventeen of them, raised three children, and kept a garden that half the street had a key to.

Her father was a court clerk and her mother sold cloth; the house was full of paper and full of people, and she grew up assuming that both were normal. She read anything with a spine. When the mission school offered a scholarship to the teacher training college at Ilesa she took it without asking anyone, and told her parents afterwards. They forgave her by Christmas.

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Chapter IX

Notes in the margin

You looked at me properly when nobody else did. I grew towards it. Thank you, Ma.

Twenty-eight years in the office next to yours and I never heard you complain once. Rest, my friend. The roof is still fixed.

Our children grew up on your veranda. We do not know what Tuesdays are for now.

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