Kings and Queens

My parents are forcing me to write this post.

It's more of an educational school project kind of thing than my regular ones. It's about the Kings and Queens of Nigeria. Yeah, there are full-fledged monarchs here like the Queen of England. And we've visited a few of them. You see, we've gone to a lot of their houses and talked about different things. I don't really understand how, (I'm guessing that there are many different groups, that's why), but there are many, many different monarchs here. Like we met one King yesterday, but we met a Queen a few weeks ago. She was a little crazy. Religion had gotten to her head, and she has this mission of hers to destroy all of her native culture's art and...well...culture. Sad, right? That's what I think too. She thinks that all of these beautiful art pieces and everything are works of the Devil, and that they should be destroyed. That's her culture that she's trying to destroy! And a whole lot of smart people have said time and again that without knowing who you are or where you come from, you are completely, totally lost. Maybe she's never read their qoutes. But, seriously, there are many people like her all over Nigeria, and we've met a few. You can believe in a religion, without destroying somebody else's! Anyway, I was talking about Kings and Queens. Well, most houses that belong to them look like this: the waiting room, with a throne for the King or Queen to sit on (it's usually the King who sits on it), and a whole bunch of potraits around the room of themselves, and other relatives, or presents given by different people. A lot of the potraits say, 'his majesty the king' or 'her majesty the queen' on them, and the date of the time the picture was taken under. Then, the King would sit down on the throne and we would talk. And talk. And I would have nothing to do. Other than having really big cars and traveling to the UK and back every five seconds, Kings and Queens don't really order people around anymore. They definitely have money, but they don't really have that much power over the people. There is this one king who is really special: The Ooni. I don't know if that is the correct way to say it, but anyway, the Ooni is descended directly to the very first people of Ife, our town. And the very first people lived thousands of years ago! Can you belive that? I'm not kidding! I bet, that if he did a DNA scan, it'd be really true. He and his spouse are really well off. Most of the time, they're in England, but they do come to Nigeria. I think he's in his 80s, so he's been around for a long time. He's also like a millionaire. In dollars, if I remember right.