My name is Leke Alder. It’s a name given me by my father. The surname was a name given him by HIS father. That name, “Leke” is a piece of history, not of me but of my father. It is his perspective on my birth. The full name, Oluwaleke literally means “the Lord overcame.” It is a Yoruba word from the west coast of Africa. It is a narrative of the difficulty of my birth. It enunciates the brutal warfare between the forces of darkness and light as propounded in Christian theology. It’s actually my middle name. My first name is Samuel. Curiously I had adopted the name in response to my search for identity as a 16year old African. But both my middle and first names are two expressions of the same difficulty. In Shakespearean lore I was not born of a woman. I was born by caesarean section. It was a most difficult birth and for my mother it would be the first and the last. The name Oluwaleke is therefore a proclamation of victory. […]