Funmi Iyanda

I woke up as usual at 5am and l cannot get the images out of my head, l sense the stories, locked behind the eyes, some dead, some weary, some angry but most vacant, just blindly vacant silent orbs.

I cannot rest for l feel in my soul a need to ask the story, a need to know the story and wrenchingly, a fire to tell the story with humanity, with understanding but with unflinching truth.

I worry, do they want to tell these stories and should these stories be told?

I stumble a little at the thought; can l afford to tell these stories? Even as l think this l hear Opeyemi’s voice, and l know that l will be less the human l am meant to be, less the soul my material body is encased around and certainly completely unfulfilled and unaccomplished as an entity if l didn’t.

I confront in my core the probability that the journey to functionality as a human group, a society of people and a nation perhaps lies in telling these stories and telling them with honour, understanding and truth.

I am aware of the belief that we have a culture of silence, but lately l have begun to question that as l question many other such “facts”. The more deeply I think about them, the more it appears that like many other issues of mass hysteria, mass inertia and mass dogma, the truth of it is only in a paper thin layer waiting to be peeled away to reveal the many layers of sound, voices, experiences and truths.

I find that l cannot rest unless l play my part in that unveiling.

I also find that l must get up now from my computer and start a day that will not stop till afternoon tomorrow so l implore you to have a little patience, l am going to make sense of all of the above.

I ask in the meantime that we all examine our being, what is the one thing, one story, one question, one statement l would make ask or tell if l didn’t fear indifference, futility, reproach or ridicule?