The burden of memory, and the surfacing of an old photograph taken in 2004, has imposed on me an unconscious returning to one of my memorable times on the University of Ibadan campus. I was a student in the final year of Linguistics, and the recently appointed secretary of an international conference of linguistics. It was called the West African Languages Congress (WALC 2004) Conference. As secretary (and volunteer webmaster), my responsibility included receiving and collating abstracts, communicating with conference participants via the internet, and updating the conference website as necessary. Needless to say, it was one of the most exhilarating, fascinating, moments of my student life in the university. For the first time, I realized that I wanted to work in linguistics.

The conference, chaired by Professor Ben Elugbe in collaboration with Alt-I and the Department of Linguistics and African Languages had the theme, “Globalization and the Future of African Languages.” The picture was taken most likely on our way to get palm wine somewhere on the outskirts of the university and the conference venues.

Photo by Olumide Abimbola.