The Yoruba have a saying that cuts right to the bone: "A kì í fi iṣé ìgbònsè rán ọmọ ẹni." Loosely translated, it means you do not send even your own child to handle the most intimate of personal duties. Some things, the elders insisted, you must do yourself.
Festus Adedayo picks up this thread of ancient wisdom and follows it somewhere very modern. The chichidodo, a bird said to despise human waste yet survive entirely on the maggots that breed inside it, becomes his central image. It is a creature that cannot afford to be honest about what sustains it.
The tension Adedayo sets up is one many of us recognise quietly. We outsource our discomforts, distance ourselves from the consequences of our own choices, and still expect the rewards those choices produce. The proverb and the bird together make one sharp point.
What the source only begins to open up is the question of where this pattern shows up in contemporary life, in leadership, in family, in the small daily negotiations we make with our own conscience. That is the conversation worth having.
Originally published by Premium Times.