Echoes of Great Benin

Description

A renaissance book about Benin, Edo, Echoes of Great Benin invites you into the quaint world of probably the greatest living traditionalists of this part of modern Nigeria, the Edo. As she struggles for relevance in a country much of which she had ruled before the coming of the British, she is as the proverbial butcher of carrion. Her fingers are slimy with decayed flesh and they stink. She cannot use them to scratch her itchy body. Her art treasures, artifacts and much of her history, she lost to the British in 1897. Her famous dry moat, Iya, has decrepit sections of it left. Ibota, the aural source of Benin stories I knew, now belongs in the past. The people of Benin, the Edo, now speak Pidgin English in their homes. Indeed, Benin is gradually effacing her history and etching out a life of anonymity. Please read on for a peep into a bit of her present and a greater look into much of her past!