would have required sending Osifekunde to Britain, which would have been totally new to him. If he found Paris tough, London would have been more difficult.  
But Osifekunde was not passive in deciding his own fate. D'Avezac had convinced Captain John Washington of the British Navy, who was familiar with the experiences of enslaved Africans in the Americas and with British activities in West Africa, to arrange his repatriation. But when the opportunity came for him to be sent to Sierra Leone, he refused the offer. ${ }^{39}$ While scholars have focussed on the excuse that he wanted to return to his son in Brazil, it was worth considering the great distance between Sierra Leone and Yorubaland and the chance of his re-enslavement. Santana cited the war of Iperu as a potential obstacle, but it was not, since it was fought in 1833. ${ }^{40}$ Moreover, Osifekunde's town, Makun-Omi, on the lagoon was nearly 120 kilometres away from the battle zone and protected by water. Any military attack on Makun must be by a naval force, which Iperu belligerents never had. The risk lay elsewhere. Only slave ships sailed between Freetown and Lagos, leaving any traveller leaving Lagos for Makun vulnerable on the lagoon. Another possibility was the connection to the British indentured scheme which began around 1838, and forced many liberated Africans from Sierra Leone to the Americas in a slavery-like regime. ${ }^{41}$  
At the same time, D'Avezac's primary concern was to extract as much information about Yorubaland as possible, so it was no surprise that between spring 1839 and late summer 1840 Osifekunde had to divide his time between working as a domestic for a French wholesale merchant, Jean-Pierre Firmin Barthélemy Vendryès (1776-1848) of Sablonville, in a Parisian suburb, and sitting down with D'Avezac for many hours of interviews. ${ }^{42}$ Be that as it may,  
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