One of Nigeria’s accomplished broadcast journalists, Funke Treasure Durodola, will present her debut book Memories of Grandma to the public on Friday 30th January 2015 at the Freedom Park (Old Colonial Prison), Hospital Road, Lagos.
To be reviewed by Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Prof. AderemiRaji, the public presentation will be chaired bya former Minister of Housing and Urban Development,Hon. Chief MrsMobolajiOsomo. Special guests of honour include: Chief Mrs. Bolajoko Doherty (Proprietress Bola Immaculate Schools, Ibadan); His Eminence, Dr. Samuel K. Uche (Prelate, Methodist Church of Nigeria); and Dr. Eddie Iroh (Former Director General, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria).
Tried and tested
Currently the General Manager of Radio One FM (103.5), Durodola has had a consistently shining career in Nigeria’s media terrain. Over the years, she has worked extensively on health, women, children and youth-related projects. She has held appointments as Country Producer&Trainer with UN IRIN RADIO on a five-nation project along the West African Corridor. Durodola has also worked with UNICEF and other NGOs in Nigeria advocating for children and better participation of women in politics amongst other interests.
A Certified Media Trainer and recipient of national and international media awards, including the Nigerian Media Merit Award, Durodola has also been a finalist in the CNN/ Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Awards. In 2008, she won an International Fellowship from Radio Netherlands Training Centre and the competitive CBA/Thomson Foundation Fellowship on International Broadcast Journalism three years earlier. She is a fellow of the Thomson Foundation (UK) and a semi-finalist of the Yale University World Fellows Programme and earned a second degree in Journalism and Media Studies from Rhodes University, South Africa.
A Literary Tribute to anEndangeredCustom
Durodola is one of the fortunate few who enjoyed that rare privilege of meeting all their four grandparents alive and subsequently bonded with them. But of the quartet, it is Durodola’s maternal grandma who helped to nurture the middle-class town girl into a culturally aware adolescent.
Memories of Grandma are the author’s recollections of a noteworthy childhood lived with her parents in Ijebu Ode and vacations spent in Ode Omu, her maternal grandparents’ rural homestead. Written from the point of view of a curious teenager, the book shows Durodola’s journey of cultural immersion in a world far removed from the westernized settings of a conventional school and one in which her grandma is the ever-willing tutor and coach.
More than anything, however, Memories of Grandma is a literary tribute somewhat to the no-nonsense approach to child rearing in the 20th century, especially in Nigeria’s southwest region, in an era when the disruptive pair of Information Technology and globalization had not reared their heads.That’s the world Durodola was raised in.That said, Memories of Grandma will make you long ever more passionately for the good ol’ days, when a stern look from a parent was all a child needed to stop any wrongdoing; and that, it saddens to admit, is a world today’s kids are likely never going to experience.
