'Dammy' Adedamola Ilesanmi Oyinloye

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Yoruba Heritage Food and a Life of Service in Medway

TENS-2026-008 | 10 Black Voices of Medway 2026

'Dammy' Adedamola Ilesanmi Oyinloye {Portrait Photography} Chatham - Masumi, M: 2026

Adedamola Ilesanmi Oyinloye, known as Dammy, speaks about heritage through names, greetings, food and the responsibility to help others.

In his conversation with me for TENS, he recalls growing up in Lagos, maintaining connections with Ekiti and making a life in Medway.

His account brings together family inheritance and the work of everyday service. Cooking, volunteering and listening are not separate from the cultural values he describes.

They are among the ways those values continue to be practised.

A name and a family inheritance

Dammy explains that his name carries a connection with royalty. He identifies the Yoruba word element Ade with the crown and describes his great-grandfather as a king. This is presented as his account of family history, rather than as an independently verified genealogy.

What matters within the conversation is how he understands that inheritance. It is part of the explanation he gives when introducing himself, linking a name used in Medway with family knowledge associated with Nigeria. The interview allows that connection to be expressed in his own terms.

He identifies his family roots with Ekiti in southwestern Nigeria while explaining that he was born and raised in Lagos. These distinctions are important. Family origin, birthplace and childhood surroundings do not always refer to the same place. His account holds them together without treating Nigeria as a single, undifferentiated setting.

Respect made visible

When asked what he remembers most strongly from his upbringing, Dammy returns to respect for elders. He describes greetings and the expectation that a younger person should offer practical assistance when an older person needs it. Respect becomes visible through action, including noticing what someone is carrying and offering to help.

He also describes traditional forms of greeting, such as prostration and kneeling. These are practices he remembers within his cultural background. Recording his explanation preserves the meaning he attaches to them without suggesting that every individual or family practises them in exactly the same way.

The conversation shows how values can be taught through repeated encounters. A greeting is brief, but it communicates something about relationships between generations. A small offer of help can make a wider expectation tangible. Heritage, in this account, is carried partly through the habits people learn to notice and repeat.

City life and village visits

Although Dammy grew up in Lagos, visits to the family village provided another view of life. He remembers travelling back periodically and accompanying his grandmother to see how food was grown. Produce that appeared in the city acquired a different meaning when he could see the work behind it.

These memories connect food with land, labour and family knowledge. A vegetable or ingredient is no longer only something available to buy. It belongs to a process involving cultivation, care and the people who understand how to produce it.

The contrast between a busy city and a quieter village also remains important in his recollections. Neither setting explains his whole upbringing. Moving between them gave him different experiences of pace, community and the relationships through which everyday needs were met.

Learning to cook

Dammy describes the early loss of his mother and the responsibilities he encountered while growing up. Cooking became an important practical skill and, over time, a source of enjoyment. The account connects competence with circumstances while making clear that food later became something he actively wanted to pursue.

His educational journey included civil engineering before a move towards hospitality and cooking. That change gives another dimension to the story. The path someone begins does not always remain the path through which they choose to contribute or find satisfaction.

He speaks enthusiastically about preparing food for gatherings and about making available resources stretch to feed others. Cooking provides an opportunity to use a skill in a way people can immediately experience. A meal can welcome someone, support an event or simply show that their presence has been considered.

Service in Medway

At the time of the interview, Dammy describes having lived in Medway for more than fourteen years. The interview summary records a long association with Medway Foodbank, men's breakfast activities at St Mark's and involvement with a recovery group at Kings Church.

These roles are presented as part of his remembered community work. They connect the values discussed earlier in the interview with local situations in which people need support. The emphasis is on offering care and attention, including to people experiencing homelessness or difficulties associated with addiction.

He also supports the community activity of his wife, MJ Praise. Their TENS records remain separate, recognising each person's voice, while allowing readers to understand that some of their work is shared. Family partnership becomes one part of a wider network of local contribution.

What it means to have enough

Dammy's summary includes reflections on finding peace within family life rather than measuring success only through material wealth.

This is a personal perspective, shaped by what he values and the experiences he chooses to describe. It places ordinary contentment alongside the more public forms of achievement that heritage projects often record.

His portrait and interview offer complementary views.

Clothing, jewellery and presentation form part of the photographic encounter; the conversation explains the memories and commitments that cannot be read from appearance alone. Together, they recognise a resident whose contribution includes many acts that may otherwise remain unrecorded.

Within TENS, Dammy's account preserves Yoruba cultural memory as something active within contemporary Medway. A name carries family knowledge, a greeting communicates respect, and a meal becomes an act of service. His story asks readers to notice how the care sustaining a community can be rooted in lessons learned long before someone arrived there.

Recording this account also draws attention to skills that are often treated as ordinary because people use them so frequently. Knowing how to prepare food, welcome a guest or recognise when someone needs help can involve considerable practical experience.

Dammy's conversation gives those abilities a history. It traces them through family relationships, learning and choices about service, allowing the archive to recognise forms of knowledge that may not arrive with a certificate or a public title but remain important to the people who depend on them.

About this collection

An edited account based on the supplied oral-history transcript extract and interview summary. Personal recollections are attributed to the narrator; this article is not a verbatim transcript.

Supported by the Medway Heritage Place Project, with funding from Medway Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to National Lottery players.

Interview, editorial adaptation and project direction by Michi Masumi — Anthropology, Art & AI. Published through the Benjamin Zephaniah Digital Archives & Library, an initiative led by Michi Masumi. Portrait photography by Michi Masumi unless otherwise credited; Leslie Haynes family photographs supplied through Russell Haynes, with original photographers credited where known.