By: Chief (Dr.) Oyin Eyeku, President, Itsekiri Association of Northern California

Date: October 15, 2026

Ẹwẹ r’ọghọ. Ọmọ Ọba. Ọmọ iwere.

It is with a heavy but grateful heart that I inform you of the passing of our beloved elder, Mama Roseline Oritsetimeyin (née Omadeli), who transitioned peacefully on October 12th at her home in Hayward, surrounded by her seven children, nineteen grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. She was 94 years old.

To many in this association, Mama Roseline was simply “Mama Rosie.” But to those of us who had the privilege of sitting at her feet, she was something more: the last living repository of the old Itsekiri village songs—the lullabies sung by women while pounding yam, the work chants of the fishing canoes, the teasing verses exchanged between in-laws at weddings. She carried a century of our oral tradition in her memory.

Mama Rosie arrived in California in 1985, having never finished formal school in Warri. Yet she spoke four languages: Itsekiri (fluent with the old Uderewuje dialect), Urhobo, Pidgin, and English she learned from American television. For thirty years, she worked as a nanny for three families in the East Bay, raising other people’s children while her own became doctors, nurses, and teachers.

In 2019, at the age of 87, she came to our IANC cultural festival and, unprompted, performed a fifteen-minute Omoko praise song for the Olu of Warri that she had learned as a girl in 1943. None of us had ever heard it. She laughed and said, “I thought I was the only one who remembered.”

She was not wrong.

With her passing, that song has gone silent. But Mama Rosie leaves us a challenge: to learn, record, and transmit whatever fragments remain. In her final conversation with me, she held my hand and whispered in Itsekiri: “Oyin, the songs are not mine. They are the river’s. Do not let the river dry.”

Funeral arrangements: A joint Itsekiri-American service will be held on Saturday, October 22nd, at 11:00 AM at the Chapel of the Chimes, 32992 Mission Blvd, Hayward. Traditional Itsekiri burial rites will follow at 2:00 PM at the IANC Community Center. Attire: Black and white lapa or any respectful dress. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the “Mama Rosie Language Preservation Fund” at IANC.

The proverb says: “Ọnọ r’eghọn k’ọn si n’ọsẹ, omi r’ọtọ kpọn r’a.” (The elder’s voice does not disappear into the ground; the entire community is washed by it.)

Mama Rosie, you have washed us. Go well. Go back to the river.

Yours in mourning and gratitude,

Chief (Dr.) Oyin Eyeku
President, IANC
On behalf of all members