I am catching up on the postings on this subject and was interested to
see the Nigerian chromatographic example cited. I know the creator of
these scripts, Aba Ota (although he would probably prefer to say he only
'revived' an ancient tradition or that a new one was 'revealed' to him
by the oracles). He used to visit the African Studies Center at Boston
University regularly and I received (and today retain) his periodic
updates of his "Colour College Digest", issued by his "Colour College"
(he was the lone employee of this college). Only he could read what he
wrote and what he colored (sometimes he provided a transcription, but
usually only a translation). Since I was a regular subscriber to his
digest, he would fax a copy to me if he couldn't deliver it in person,
which meant I couldn't 'read' the colors. After about 6 months of
deliveries (by mid-2000) he seemed to have given up the chromatographic
aspect of his scripts - at least this was the case for the popular
distribution of his Colour College Digest - because the fine point color
markers he used were becoming expensive to continually replace (he
worked through them fast) and he could not afford to make color copies
of his work. Money was an issue since his livelihood depended on
donations from subscribers to his digest. Maybe his switch to black
ball point pen had something to do with the time investment with all the
coloring (but he certainly never complained about that aspect of his
work). He must have had 10 different scripts - all shared the fact that
they were revealed by the oracles. His most common script for the
digest was color coded and syllabic.



I lost track of Aba Ota, the self-styled 'Oka of Ururu Esan' - around
the beginning of 2002 when I moved from Boston to New York. Some months
ago I contacted some colleagues at BU and UMass-Boston who knew him and
no one knew his whereabouts. I still have a folder full of his work,
which I keep with a handful of details on other invented Nigerian
scripts (but none of them chromatographic!). If anyone knows his
whereabouts, please tell me.









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