In this online interview with insideoyo.com, Femi Owoyemi, who is the brain behind the popular social media page- Awa Ti Ibadan, a platform used in telling ‘stories of regular, everyday people in Ibadan’, talks about how it all started. Excerpts:
THE BEGINNING
The inception of Awa Ti Ibadan did not begin with the project itself. The story goes back to my writing days. Growing up, everyone who came in contact with things I wrote always felt that there was something in writing, especially fiction, for me. So, after I graduated from the University, I chose to devote the next few years of my life to honing my writing skills. It was crazy because instead of getting a job, I chose to improve a skill. Writing. I set a timeline for myself and I decided I would walk away from writing when the time came. By 2016, I knew it was time to leave writing and get back to using my certificate.
MOTIVATION
There was however one major lesson I learned all the while I focused on writing – I witnessed the raw power of telling stories. It was always awing to realize how a reader could be touched and transformed just by a story. How a man can go from high to sober just because of a story concocted by a writer in the corner of his room. Above all, I had been touched myself by the power of stories. They made me laugh. They made me cry. They left me mangled and left with no desire to do anything. Above all, stories gave me hope. Being rejected is an experience that one gets as a writer and sometimes they can be torrential and unending. However, all through the years I was writing, the success stories of others around me always kept me going.
When it was time to say goodbye to writing, I began to wonder how much of difference it’d make if we told real stories of ourselves – our successes, our downfalls, our struggles, our doubts and our beliefs. I decided to give storytelling a shot. This time I wouldn’t just be cooking up stories on my bed, I’d be sharing real stories of regular, everyday people in Ibadan. I chose Ibadan because that’s where I am from and it is where I had lived all my life. Though inspired in some ways by Humans of New York, I never wanted to be Humans of New York. I just wanted a storytelling community that will organically grow into its own. I wanted to name the platform “People of Ibadan” but then I wanted it to be a tiwa n tiwa thing. I thought that would be cool, hence Awa Ti Ibadan.
IT FINALLY BECAME REAL August 1, 2016.
A few days before August 1, I decided to open a Facebook account but I had so much doubts that I decided to not post anything. I like to think that my doubt was legitimate. Ibadan is a very large geographical entity and even though I was from the city and had grown up in it, I had grown only in my small, tiny corner of the great geography. I had doubts that people would want to talk to a total stranger about things which they considered personal and dear to them. I was afraid that I didn’t have money to run something like I had envisaged, not even money for data. I had fears that somehow, people will not appreciate the idea of a storytelling, experience-sharing platform and that the whole thing will wither away. It was a long list of doubts and fears.
On July 31 2016, I sat myself down and asked what I would have done if I wasn’t afraid and full of doubts. Then I decided to do it. I put up the first official post and that was the beginning of the journey. One story at a time, the platform began to grow. In October of 2016, I had begun to get requests and suggestions from people to open an Instagram account especially because not everyone would be Facebook-people. After dilly-dallying, the Instagram account was opened and we began to share stories through that outlet too. The most fulfilling thing about the process for me was that very often, I got messages from people about how a story had touched them or had inspired them. Those messages, those moments built my faith.
