On Saturday morning I had fun joking with Ma Gbeji, Uncle D, Awa, and Aunty Bimbo, who informed me that I would later get initiated into Ma Gbeji's Jallof Rice and Puff-Puff (my favorite food as many of you may know). Before I would do any of that though, I went to visit my Grandfather's very good friends the Odukoyas who live just around the corner. The Odukoyas and my grandparents were so close, in fact, we call them our "other granndparents" and Mr. Odukoya calls my Grandfather his brother.

I had a great visit with them, talking abuot how Mr Odukoya's 80th birthday celebration was, these birthday celebrations that take place on the decade are massive ordeals that are usually as large if not larger than weddings that we have in the States. Even though he's over 80 Mr. Odukoya still looks not a day over 60 and moves around like it too. We sat around and looked at his birthday pictures with his family, talked about how it's such a shame that almost all Nigerian politicians are stealing all the money that should be going back to the Nigerian people, especially no when there hasn't been electricity in Ibadan for about a month. Usually power is intermittent at best, but a month is a long time for anyone in a city to go without power, particularly when that means there is no water power either. Mr and Mrs Odukoya kept thanking God that they have such good traditional family ties (with their own children and my Aunts and Uncles) because they are the ones who support them because the pensions they were supposed to be receiving stopped coming a long time ago.

Then we made a fairly easy transition to reading the newspapers which were all reporting the most recent blantant bout of political theft. The Governor of Ogun State was caught using his cook's banking account to embezzle 400 Million Naira (well over $2 Million) and all of his other servants were coming forward to say that if he tried to pin the whole thing on the cook they would come forward with their own cases. So you can imagine how much money this one Governor has stolen over the years, not to mention all of the other governors, mayors, senators, etc. It's really a shame that in a country with so many smart, generous, and hard-working people, an exceedingly small, and inversely proportionately greedy group of people are truly ruining life for everyone else. The Odukoyas stuffed me full of food, and after a while, Uncle D came by for the second time (they sent him away the first time he came to get me) and brought me back to my grandparent's house.

Back at the house I walked around all of the rooms there, remembering the other tiems I've visited and looked at some of the old pictures of my Father and his siblings, and visited my grandparent's old rooms. It was great, but kinda of sad to see where the used to live and remember the time we spent with them there konwing that they're both now gone. In jsut a short while Aunty Bimbo called me to come make Puff-Puff and Chin-Chin with Ma Gbeji, which made me feel a lot better about my own cooking methods at the end, because mine isn't all that different from hers, except I don't make it in an iron pot over firewood... Everyone had a good time "chopping" (eating) Puff-Puff, which I forgot to mention is really sweet deep-friend dough, and everyone had an even better time laughing at how little I am able to eat.

I ate far too much, even though that was less than eveyone else, so I passed out early so I could see Uncle Seun when he came in early the next morning.