When did the issue of climate change get personal for you?

It got personal when my mother, who sells plantains to the people in my community, couldn’t make profits from her sales because the plantains were rendered minuscule by little rainfall, in a season it’s supposed to be opulent. 

There is a strong presence of nostalgia in your story. Could this sense of nostalgia be of loss or hope? 

It’s a loss. Like the theme, it’s as though many luminous things were left behind. Like my friend’s brother who was swallowed by the sea, he knew well—a tragic event induced by the rise in the sea level. Like when my mother promised her customers fleshy plantains because she believed a rainy season was near, but it didn’t rain well for corpulent plantains to emerge. Instead, tiny plantains grew again. My mother lost everything. She thought she knew everything about the climate.

What inspired your story for The Green We Left Behind nonfiction anthology? 

Everything affecting the climate, and the aftermath of these things, inspired me. 

As an artist, how are you able to merge beauty in language with such a dire theme on climate change? 

As an artist, inspirations for stories like this become concrete; the things that inspire such stories become something that could be grasped especially when one is a witness to the events that bring about  the stories.

As you release your story to the world, what is your wish or hope for the story?

I’m hoping the world worships nature, not the performative worship, or one worship done to avoid any sanction or arrest, but indispensable worship, something absolutely necessary (the connotative meaning of ‘worship’ will be known when my story is read). 

Aside from writing, how else do you intend to contribute towards curbing climate change?

As a promising young speaker, I’m willing to speak against every ‘atrocity’ committed against Nature, anywhere there’s a gathering of people, in my neighborhood, in schools, and at seminars. 

Ifenaike Michael Ayomipo is a Nigerian writer whose works have been published or are forthcoming on The Quills, The Transit Lit Magazine, Naija Mad Hotstars, Kalahari Review, IceFloe Press, CovidHQ Africa, Shallow Tales Review, Whetstone Magazine, Institutionalized Review and elsewhere. Also, he’s a promising Educationist and public speaker.