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The Aboke family of Ibadan, like every other families in Yorubaland, has its peculiarities as regards culture and tradition. One of such peculiarities is the Aboke Soap (Ose Aboke or Ero Aboke). The soap is made of black soap and other local ingredients known strictly to the Aboke family. And it's highly potent for the treatment of Measles known in Yoruba as 'igbona', 'tita' or 'olode' (which explains why it's called 'ero Igbona') according to testimonies of those who have experienced its efficacy. This is a soap that has, for decades, attracted huge patronage not only within Ibadan but from other places across the Yorubaland and even beyond. It's a magical tradition that has been passed from generation to generation of the Aboke family. There is no true son and daughter of Abo̩ke who doesn't know how to prepare this soap. Outsiders are not allowed to be trained on how to make the soap. "We don't train outsider", representat

Have you ever read Heidi Holland’s Dinner With Mugabe? It was published in 2012 by a Zimbabwean journalist and columnist who worked with Illustrated Life Rhodesia magazine. The book is a very penetrating portraiture of Robert Mugabe. It is a psychobiography of a freedom fighter, liberal lawyer and revolutionary who later became, first Prime Minister and later, President of Zimbabwe. The book’s title was a product of a 1975 sudden call from a Holland friend. He wanted her to arrange dinner and meeting with a friend she had no idea who he was, in her home in Salisbury, now Harare, then capital of white Rhodesia. “It wasn’t until we stood under the veranda light and looked up as we greeted each other that I recognised him. It was Robert Mugabe,” she wrote in the Preface to the book. “He swaggered awkwardly as he does still. His shoulders were stooped a bit and he looked lean and agile, as if ready to sprint.” Mugabe had a train to catch that night and intermittently looked at his wrist-wa