Beauty is wild.
Wild in the depth of its meaning.
Wild in the interesting ways it can be expressed.
Wildly beautiful in the diverse ways it can be interpreted and understood by its audience.
Chizuloke Olisaekee, in her 12 years on earth, exemplified beauty in many wild ways.
She exemplified beauty through her love for dance, her art, and her stage performances — Miracle being her biggest and most special performance. She elegantly served many roles during this school musical. As a bookseller, she proudly displayed beauty as she walked across the stage showcasing her own storybook, Shy Sharon. As a ribbon dancer, her beauty radiated as she majestically swung the red ribbon, tall and proud, in many directions.
Chizuloke symbolized beauty as she distributed and read Shy Sharon to older and younger school children in her home country, Nigeria. She embodied beauty as she lived out her fictional story Shy Sharon, when she helped a withdrawn classmate slowly bud out of her shell to make a presentation in class — a classmate who then also began to advocate for her needs to the teacher.
Chizuloke boldly demonstrated beauty in dance, regardless of who was or wasn’t watching. A proud lover of Afrobeat, K-pop, and gospel, she danced to the music of her favourite artists playing in her head as she walked the streets of Toronto, rode the bus, spent time with friends, and even when she lay with her back to the floor as she fixed a broken chair. She magically wooed the audience during her last school talent show when she snuck surprisingly onto the stage, injecting new dance steps into the routine, electrifying the room with a resultant roar.
She displayed beauty as the youngest person in the classic choir in church.
Chizuloke symbolized beauty by embracing her identity, wearing her natural hair — Black and proud — and standing up for her culture and food. For her, food was more than just sustenance. It was an expression of identity, a connection to others which she passionately expressed through her desire to help people understand Nigerian food and culture. Chizuloke proudly cherished her name and its meaning — God is sufficient — in several beautiful ways. She made sure she taught others how to pronounce it correctly and carefully decorated it with flowers and/or love symbols whenever she wrote it.
Through her love for nature — puppies, flowers, and preserving the earth — Chizuloke radiated beauty by prioritizing reuse. In her own small ways, she redesigned used boxes, wrapping papers, and containers that would otherwise have been thrown away.
By seamlessly connecting with people around her, irrespective of age, nationality, and identity, and making sure everyone felt included, Chizuloke expressed beauty. Her love for God, her family, friends, and community, which she willingly gave back to, is a great example of beauty, which we hope to carry on.
Give Chizuloke a piece of paper, pen, pencil, or Sharpie and wait to see the dimension of beauty she will produce. It is no surprise her class teacher always looked forward to her assignments, especially her writing and art projects, as they were laced with passion and creativity! Her beautiful creativity went beyond writing materials; she also expressed it in the unique ways she designed food. She had big dreams of baking unique Afrocentric-designed cakes when she got older.
Though her physical candlelight was tragically blown out, her beauty lives on in its purest and wildest form. The light her beauty lit in the hearts of many shines brighter. She lives on in our hearts and is fondly celebrated in The Varsity’s BHM issue and always.
In loving memory of Chizuloke Olisaekee!
June 21, 2011 – September 5, 2023
