The Dance of Exile & Settlement: Bayo Akomolafe

Full interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, recorded by SAND founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. Edited portions appear in The Eternal Song; this is the whole conversation.

Bayo moves from his childhood in Lagos to the Orisha who wanted only to travel, from the psychologist's couch he calls too small a space for healing, to the nets slave ship captains strung along their hulls to stop people from jumping. Along the way: why decolonization isn't individual work, why wellness might be a net rather than a cure, what a monster does to a world that's stuck, and the story of a dried African lake whose dust still feeds the Amazon.

Topics

00:00:00 — Introduction

00:12:00 — A recovering psychologist

00:18:30 — The plurality of healing

00:28:00 — The one world worldview

00:36:00 — Addiction, sleeplessness, and dreaming

00:40:30 — Decolonization, monsters, and the cracks

00:53:00 — Intergenerational trauma

00:57:00 — Wellness, and the nets on the slave ship

01:04:30 — Captivity is never total