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‘I Didn’t Expect To Find…’ At the Benin Museums in Nigeria, there is a plaque at the base of a tree. It states: THIS STUMP MARKS THE REMAINS OF A BEACON EMPLACED BY MR R.A. WEBB SURVEYOR IN 1907, AS THE INITIAL STATION (IS), THE ORIGIN OF BENIN CADASTRAL SURVEYS. INCORPORATED INTO THE BENIN CITY CONTROL SURVEYS FOR MAPPING PURPOSES IN 1966 WHEN IT WAS RE-NUMBERED BEM 106 THIS PLAQUE WAS UNVEILED BY CHIEF R OLUWOLE COKER DIRECTOR OF FEDERAL SURVEYS, LAGOS ON THE 5TH DAY OF JULY 1972. If you were standing right in front of this plaque, and if you looked to your right, you would observe that this tree stands in some isolation. Bat hunters hardly harass the bats here the way they do other bats on that ground. Its leaves have an emerald hue, arrayed with flowers like pink cupcakes. A few meters away to the left, there is a staircase said to be over 100 years old. It led to the balcony of the residence of colonial representative of the Queen, Mr. Moor. On the days he hung Ologbosere, Usoh, Obarisiagbon and Obayuwana, warriors who ambushed a British party on a mission to overthrow the Benin King in 1896, Mr. Moor mounted those steps, stood on his balcony and faced the row of men waiting to be hung on this tree. The condemned would climb the boulders under a branch of this tree. With a noose around their neck and with a quick nod from Mr. Moor, the executions were carried out one after the other. Before he hung them, one – Obakhavbaye – committed suicide – and the others Moor had held in a post. Residents have no idea this is the post. It is just there – obscure, lonesome and unnoticed by the city. Like a cube, and the colour of the Benin soil, its occupants would have seen the last of what was once their life through cracks on the doors and from an opening near the top of this kiosk. To lie, occupants would probably face up the way the dead prepared for interment lie. As there was no room for that, they may have huddled together or stood like trees until the end came. It was the King the Queen asked his soldiers to hang not his warriors. But after the British overran Benin in 1897, he escaped. Six months after, the King surrendered to the British. Myth has it that he approached Mr. Moor, clad in finery befitting his name and throne. Before he eventually tried and sent him on exile, Mr. Moor stripped him off his finery and replaced them with chains. There is no evidence that the King was held in this same post as his warriors. On the spot he stood as dock, his subjects planted the Ikhimwin tree – the New Bouldia Leavis – still standing there in the form, finery and majesty of a King, and seemingly defiant. Both trees, where the executions took place, and where the King was tried and convicted, are memorials of a people’s history. Even the holding post. But what I didn’t expect to find was the tangled order of this post. While the trees blossomed, this holding post’s more than a hundred-year story is told in pieces of wood, broken plastic and wooden chairs, stones, broken bottles and dust-covered polyethylene littering its precincts.