There was a song Aunty Lizzie loved to sing to us as children—it was a song about shoes. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but we all got excited when she started clapping her bony hands to the rhythm. Folake, the most playful girl in class would bolt out of her seat, shoulders up, strutting around the classroom; David would drum; the rest of us swayed, following Aunty Lizzie’s lead, clapping our little eager hands to the beat of kpa-kpa-kpa-kpa. A song was always better than reciting the multiplication table anyway, and as much as I wanted to remain the sullen, unhappy little boy in class, I couldn’t deny the catchy tempo. It carried an enticing warmth of optimism and the syntax of the syllables would get any 6-year old bobbing and clapping in a second...