As people took turns playing double Dutch and as Batman strutted around in Times Square, a Nigerian chess master, Tunde Onakoya, began his quest to break the Guinness world record for the longest chess marathon.
Onakoya, 29, in New York City for the first time, aims not only to break the world record of 56 hours, set in 2018, but also to raise money for the Gift of Chess and Chess in Slums Africa, organizations that aim to use the game to lift children out of poverty.
“I’m playing for the dreams of millions of children globally without access to education,” read a message from Onakoya on a sandwich poster near the tables set up for his game. The goal was to raise $1 million over the next three days, said Russell Makofsky, a co-founder of the Gift of Chess.
At any given point, Onakoya was in the middle of two consecutive games, including one against Shawn Martinez, a national chess master who coached Tanitoluwa Adewumi, a boy who lived in a homeless shelter in New York City and became a chess master.
“I think it’s been really great so far to see how, like, he’s obviously able to simultaneously tackle two opponents,” said Kemi Adesunloro, 28, who was among those gathered to watch the games on Wednesday.
Yemi Okeniyi, 40, from Brooklyn, also looked on, as “Last Last” by Burna Boy, a Nigerian singer, sounded out from a nearby speaker. Okeniyi said she had learned about the event from her sister, whom she had dropped off at the airport to head back to Nigeria earlier that day.
“She said, ‘This is historic — we need to actually support our Nigerian brothers,’” Okeniyi said, adding that she had come straight to Times Square from the airport.
“I am really terrible at chess — I’ve tried — so everybody that can play chess is impressive to me,” Okeniyi said, adding that the cause was important. “They have helped and changed the lives of several Nigerian children, so I hope they can support more children.”
The Gift of Chess started in New York City during the pandemic, in December 2020, and the goal was to distribute 10,000 chess sets to children who were socially isolated to help them reconnect, Makofsky said. He met Onakoya after The New York Times ran an Opinion article about Tanitoluwa, who is known as Tani; Makofsky ran the program at Tani’s school. The group began to distribute the chess sets in African countries and globally, with Onakoya’s help.
“We believe that we need to reimagine education beyond the four walls of a classroom,” Makofsky said.
The honking, music and crowds of Times Square did not affect Onakoya’s game, said Emmanuel Abiodun Oke, the chief operations officer for Chess in Slums Africa. Instead, it was the temperature of 61 degrees; it was almost 90 degrees in Nigeria. Onakoya requested gloves and a sweater. But he still won the matches he played.
One player he beat was Jules Bula, 36, who lives in Washington, D.C., and learned of the event through an Instagram post while he was visiting New York City.
“He’s definitely a master at the game,” Bula said after his match, which he said had lasted around nine minutes. He was able to secure just one of his opponent’s pieces.
Bula said he felt inspired but also humbled. “I thought I could have won, but I think I need to practice some more,” he said with a laugh.
Weather
Expect showers with temperatures in the low 50s. At night, there will be a chance of more showers, with temperatures in the high 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Tuesday (Passover).
Ahead of Earth Day on Monday, a number of organizations will host events to celebrate the planet, including SEED Brklyn, a store in Brooklyn that will screen a documentary called “Farming While Black.”
The film, an official selection of the 2024 New York African Film Festival, features two sisters who help lead a farm in upstate New York. Soul Fire Farm was founded in 2010 by their Black-Jewish family, and its programming reaches more than 35,000 people each year. Around 25 families receive free food from the farm each week.
I spoke with one of the sisters, Naima Penniman, about the documentary, the farm’s work and techniques farmers can use to fight against climate change.
What is this film about?
Naima Penniman: “Farming While Black” is a feature-length film that really explores the historical plight of Black farmers in the United States as well as the rising and returning generation of Black farmers.
The storytelling spans the evolution of our work here at Soul Fire Farm, which is an Afro-Indigenous community farm on Mohican lands in upstate New York.
We grow an abundance of food and medicine that we distribute at no cost to our community. We’re also a training farm, and we teach thousands of people every year how to farm regeneratively.
What is regenerative farming?
Penniman: Regenerative farming speaks to the practices that help to heal the land, the soil, the climate and the ecosystem as opposed to extracting it. And unfortunately, the majority of the agriculture in this country is really rooted in an ethos of exploitation and extraction.
The practices that we use at Soul Fire are really rooted in the African diasporic traditions of farming in a way that creates really life-giving food while also giving back to the land that feeds us.
What role do Black farmers play in fighting against climate change?
Penniman: I really want to lift up some of the founding fathers of regenerative agriculture like George Washington Carver and Booker T. Whatley, who were professors at Tuskegee University, the first Black agricultural university in the country. In the South, they were able to convince a whole generation of Black farmers to help heal the soil that had been so deeply degraded from mono-crop cotton production and cash-crop tobacco production.
Black farmers are really innovating on, what are the ways we can reclaim these ancestral technologies to support in not losing precious topsoil and precious crops in times of climate emergency?
It’s really important we use our both personal and institutional purchasing power to support Black farmers and operations instead of investing our money into fast food and commodified and corporate foods that are rooted in this lineage of industrial agriculture. That is not fair to the farmers; it’s not fair to the earth.
METROPOLITAN diary
‘Heaven’
Dear Diary:
I was walking on Sixth Avenue in Midtown listening to music with my headphones on. The Talking Heads song “Heaven” was playing, and I was whistling along.
Suddenly, I thought I heard the lyrics coming from outside the headphones. Listening more carefully, I was sure I heard the lyrics coming from outside the headphones.
For a second, I thought I was losing my mind. Then I glanced to my right and noticed a man walking alongside me and singing. He had clearly recognized the song I was whistling and had joined in.
