SINCE the death of Olaniyi Ayinde (aka Baba Surveyor), paterfamilias of the Ojebisi clan, things have not been the same in my family. Things have fallen apart, and all efforts to mend every shattered thing and move on without him have turned fruitless. We’re in disarray, like a flock of sheep whose shepherd is suddenly struck dead by a strange force. The family is adrift like a ship that has lost sight of the lighthouse. We’re at the mercy of gusty winds and the elements. The entire close-knit clan, for the first time in living memory, is disturbed and disoriented. This tribute, however, is a chronicle of a death foretold. Baba Surveyor’s death was — and remains– a tragedy presaged by dreams.
Sometime in June 2024, I had a couple of dreams, in quick succession and on two consecutive days. First, I dreamed that one of my lower front teeth fell out of my mouth. I was flummoxed. I picked the tooth from the ground and realised blood had started pooling in the void it left. In vain, my efforts to staunch the flow of blood which had trickled to my tongue.
Disturbed, I agonised over what to do with the tooth. Suddenly, I started running against the headwind until I found myself beside a stream where I dropped the unfortunate tooth. The tooth sank and disappeared into the streambed right before my eyes. There and then, I realised that the straps of the flip-flops I was wearing had snapped in the course of running to the stream. A sensation of loss washed all over me.
Unlike the first, the second dream did not come in the form of a puzzle; it was supposedly more direct. Three of us were seated on a sofa. I was in the middle. Baba Surveyor was to my left, while my younger brother was sitting to my right. As if conjured, my late grandfather suddenly joined us by walking through a wall directly opposite us, smiling. He was neatly dressed in a well-cut danshiki, younger than I had ever seen him while alive. Leaning against the wall, Grandpa beckoned Baba Surveyor over and off ‘Laniyi went. Father and son disappeared into the wall that had served as a medium for Grandpa’s sudden appearance.
I did not narrate these dreams to anyone. I let them seep through my mind and die away for want of utterance. With the benefit of hindsight, I now realise both dreams were a premonition pointing to the imminent death of the patriarch of my family.
By virtue of birth, Olaniyi was my father’s younger brother, a fact that made him my uncle. But his solicitousness and emotional investment in my affairs, particularly after his older brother’s death, qualified him as my surrogate father.
In Baba Surveyor’s exhilarating company, age was no barrier, and our conversations ranged from the serious to the light-hearted; no holds-barred. Through our regular and intimate conversations, he helped fill in the interstices left by my biological father’s premature death. He would dredge up chequered events marking their shared childhood and revive moments out of remote memories. He had an astonishing power of recall. The ease with which he traced the maze of relationships in our ancestry was remarkable, supplying details of births, deaths and landmarks in the family history.
Baba Surveyor was not particularly a raconteur but what he lacked in this regard was compensated for in his tenacity to get stories told truthfully. He was not given to exaggeration or the quirkiness that makes some elders blow past events out of proportion to invest them with specious significance.
‘Laniyi upheld our family values; he treasured them as if they were heirlooms. Baba Surveyor was the most important strut on the family’s framework; he held the disparate strands of the clan together firmly.
To understand the magnitude of his triumph in the struggle against the loaded dice of destiny, one must go back to his background. Farmer-born, peasant-bred (apologies to ‘Niyi Osundare), ‘Laniyi, born in the late 50s, chafed at every plebeian encumbrance very early in life.
Olaniyi couldn’t wait to break free from all hindrances to greatness. He hated the back-breaking farming activities even as a kid. Therefore, at the slightest opportunity, he left the provincial and claustrophobic ambience of his hometown for the city of Abeokuta, where he learned the craft of survey. He would go on to surmount all the odds stacked against him by the lottery of birth and achieve success in his sojourn in life.
By the turn of the 80s, he started building a profile, credible and impressive enough to ratchet him up against the finest of surveyors in Abeokuta; he carved a niche for himself and held his own in the profession till the end.
Survey was his raison d’être, ‘Laniyi breathed the passion for the profession. When it comes to his job, he was meticulous to a fault. Baba Surveyor was a creature of habits. His office embodied a workman’s single-minded devotion to his craft. Everything was well-arranged in his office. Kindred documents were filed away and carefully compartmentalised. They were labelled in his calligraphic handwriting for easy identification. They’re kept in verdant, apple-pie order. This arrangement was geared towards prompt delivery of finished jobs to customers when they called.
In his lifetime, he demonstrated over and over again how honesty and moral rectitude have the power to imbue our smallest interactions with others with significance. Baba Surveyor kept at arm’s length relationships and deals that could do his reputation a bad turn.
He was that kind of father whose children could easily turn to the butt of harmless jokes and would not pick offence but rather respond in kind. Oftentimes, he put a positive spin on jokes intended by his children to shame him out of ways and manners they deemed outmoded.
‘Laniyi conducted the affairs of the Ojebisi clan with unobstructive authority. He was jovial and friendly to all without being facetious. He had an inimitable sense of occasion that would never let you take him for granted despite his warm personality.
Baba Surveyor was a complete family man. He was a man of rules but not a martinet. He was firm but not ferocious. ‘Laniyi was not a disciplinarian per se, but neither was he lax. His children were spared the rod, and they never turned out spoiled. Baba Surveyor’s children are innately tractable and obedient, so he knew handling them with an iron fist would be gratuitous.
‘Laniyi was not a heady intellectual; I never for once saw him engage in heated debates with people over politics and the arts, but he was extremely intelligent and smart. He was one of the smartest people I have ever met. He could smell danger from afar. Baba Surveyor could read with pinpoint accuracy the subtlest of body languages. He was also a handyman who could effortlessly tease out the knottiest of kinks.
A deeply spiritual person, Baba Surveyor was not given to a perfunctory show of piety; he had a distaste for religiosity and performative sanctimoniousness. At heart, however, he was a Christian, though not a Bible-thumping, fiery one or a churchman.
His view of life was steady and unwavering. A man of fearless veracity and refreshing candour, ‘Laniyi loved unsanitised truth and hated glamorised and flattering lies. He was a straight shooter who never gave a damn about who was in the crosshairs of his truth. He, however, had a personable personality, which made him court and cultivate friendships easily. He was extremely loyal to his friends, too.
Nothing captures how Laniyi lived better than the tribute his intimate childhood friend and namesake sent from faraway Sweden during Baba Surveyor’s funeral.
“I’m so grateful to have been Olaniyi Ayinde Ojebisi’s friend in life and will continue to be his friend in death; honouring him in all I do… Olaniyi was more than just a friend. He is a part of my family, my constant companion and a piece of my heart. I remember the countless days we spent exploring the world around us: from the playground to our backyards… Olaniyi taught me the value of true friendship, the importance of kindness and the BEAUTY OF LIVING FULLY (emphasis mine)…” Kingsley ‘Niyi Aderounmu
I suppose living fully involved skirt-chasing, party-going, and booze-downing, they enjoyed everything in moderation in the flush of youth without losing sight of their dreams. Baba Surveyor was not a teetotaler, not a drunk either, but a responsible drinking man. He was a thoroughgoing bon vivant. He loved life and everything that makes it beautiful.
A cultural man and lover of couture. I still see Baba Surveyor in my mind’s eye: I see him donning his trademark panama hat, pressing it to a jaunty angle to make a fashion statement. I see him making his habitual controlled jerk of shoulders and swaggering away after decking out in bespoke buba and sokoto and flowing agbada. I see him exchanging banter with his adorable and supportive wife, who loved hailing him “Baba Surveyor or Baba Blessing’ depending on the occasion.
WHEN I had the two dreams earlier recounted, Baba Surveyor was silently battling against an ailment. Though he was not hospitalized, his concerning poor health was kept as a secret in the fold of the family. However, one afternoon the poor health suffered sudden deterioration and he was rushed to hospital.
That fateful afternoon marked his decline from the sunlit uplands towards the valley of death. But true to his nature, his voice remained firm during hospitalisation. He bore the pains and struggles of his last days with remarkable sangfroid. He even contributed to his own burial, stating where and how he wished to be interred. He was courageous in the face of death.
During his hospitalisation, I had initially felt a warm glow of hope in my heart. But as days wore on and the prognosis revealed direness with a dismal prospect of survival, keeping that flicker of hope alive became difficult. I began holding my breath to receive phone calls from relatives. I feared the worst.
We were frantic with worry. Prayers became a last resort. We prayed vigorously, fervently. We fancied ourselves as shamans. And we wielded prayers like a talisman to coax back to life, our patriarch whose soul had already been hovering around the anteroom of the dead.