Oyekan Owomoyela was born in 1938 in Osun, Nigeria, and he taught at universities in Nigeria and in Ghana, and then became a professor at the University of Nebraska; he died in 2007. In this book he retells 23 stories about the trickster tortoise. One of the best parts about Dr. Owomoyela's style of telling the stories is the way that he weaves proverbs into every story... and no surprise, because he is also an expert on Yoruba proverbs. This website at the University of Nebraska features some of his work on Yoruba proverbs: The Good Person: Excerpts from the Yorùbá Proverb Treasury.
You can also look for Tortoise proverbs there! The site does not have a search engine of its own, but you can search for "tortoise" there using Google Search. For example, this proverb perfectly suits the trickster tortoise: The responsibility for trouble never fails to fall on the head of the tortoise.
You can find out more about Dr. Owomoyela at this "Nebraska Authors" webpage.
If you are curious about Tortoise the trickster, Dr. Owomoyela's book is an excellent place to meet Ajapa and learn all about him!
by Oyekan Owomoyela
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