Ilesha, Nigeria – In his early twenties, Simeon Abolarinwa did the grown-up factor of creating a curriculum vitae for the primary time. On the backside of the doc, he listed his hobbies: looking, mountaineering and fishing. In contrast to lots of his friends doing the identical to fill area, these have been truly his hobbies.
Rising up in his native Osun state in southwest Nigeria, he frequently snuck out of the household home to make hooks out of binding wire and go fishing with associates in close by streams.
Today, the 41 yr previous lives in Osogbo, the state capital, working as a community administrator with a college. His favorite place to fish is a spot on the Osun river, lower than a kilometre (half a mile) from his house and some kilometres from the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, a UNESCO World Heritage website.
“I’ve this private connection to Osun river,” Abolarinwa instructed Al Jazeera. “The place will I practise my pastime if not on the Osun river?”
He additionally goes to the grove – the place fishing shouldn’t be allowed – to play with monkeys and watch wildlife. Throughout the lockdown, he took to going to his fishing spot to climb rocks or simply sit and admire nature. “I’ve a lecturer good friend on the college, an ornithologist who I’d go together with to look at birds,” he mentioned.
Typically he goes fishing alone and at different instances, with a bunch of fishing lovers. At instances, they simply admire their catch earlier than releasing it again into the river however, largely, they catch to eat.
On his Twitter profile, the pinned tweet is a photograph of him excitedly grilling fish on an open hearth, a brand new pastime for a person who disliked consuming recent fish as a baby.