Adventures in Coffin Making
“What leads a man to transact with death for his daily bread?”
We pass by houses with obituaries plastered to their fronts, tiled graves on the verandas. I am thinking about death when we arrive at the garage. We are headed for Osogbo, the town of my childhood. We take the back seat in a rickety bus, I take the window seat. Nimi asks if I know how to tell this story. “The coffin makers will lead the way,” I say.
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
It’s alright if we open the coffin and climb in.
The money opens many doors. That of the coffin, among other things.
Adams Adeosun is a student of Architecture in a Nigerian university. His work has appeared in Brittlepaper, Lunaris review, This is Africa, and Litro magazine. He is a participant of Goethe-Institut’s Nigeria-Cameroon Literary Exchange workshops.
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