GULF SHORES, AL - Ibiyinka Olufemi Alao just asks, please, don’t kick his donkey.

The U.N. Ambassador for Art from Nigeria delighted locals here on Pleasure Island during a six-plus week stay visiting schools, churches libraries and putting on demonstrations in public forums and private residences.

“This island is no longer the same, those students are no longer the same,” Jerry Johnson said. “He has been everywhere teaching his message of love, forgiveness and art.”

Johnson, an Orange Beach councilman, was speaking at a Gulf Shores work session on Feb. 1. He and wife Yolanda served as tour guides of sorts for Alao during his stay.

At the council meeting Alao stood to give a farewell speech and thank the city and the George C. Meyer Foundation for purchasing one of his original paintings to display in the city to commemorate his visit.

Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs in the city, Grant Brown, said the idea for keeping one of Alao’s painting came from Pat Ward of the foundation.

“She said we, the city, needs a piece of his original art,” Brown said. “So the George C. Meyer Foundation generously purchased an original piece of art of Ibi’s to remain here with our city.”

In a theme Alao says he used in numerous presentations he used the analogy of a Gulf Coast staple, the oyster. His painting, “A True Miracle,” is how the oyster turns something bad into something good.

“As we know about the life of an oyster, an irritation gets into its shell,” Alao said. “The oyster doesn’t like irritation. When it cannot dispose of the irritation it chooses to do the most marvelous thing an oyster can make. It makes a pearl.”

With the painting, he said, he hopes to inspire people to take the frustrations of everyday life and make them into a pearl.

“For the irritations in our lives there is only one prescription: To make a pearl,” he said. “Always make a pearl. If we learn to especially to forgive people who do bad things to us we are making pearls out of them. All things in our minds we can turn into pearls.”

For this particular painting to remain in Gulf Shores, Alao said, is an honor and thrill for him personally.

“So to have it stay here means so much to me, especially here in Gulf Shores,” Alao said. “I hope in this town you try to make pearls out of any irritation.”

As for kicking his donkey, well, that’s a cultural learning experience all its own. Alao learned what has meaning in Nigeria can have a far different meaning in the United States.

“Because sometimes I use American slang to talk to friends and family back home,” he said. “They think I’m cool because I am talking like an American.

“Unfortunately for me, the first word I picked up was a vulgar word which I wasn’t supposed to use at all.”

Unknowingly he continued to use his newly found phrase.

“I started using it a whole lot and nobody told me what it meant,” he said. “At the end of the day when I was told what it really meant I was so ashamed and embarrassed because I had said this so many times.”

In the end the ambassador, who was here to teach about different cultures and peoples and respect for one another’s lifestyles, took home a lesson himself.

“I just thought they were joking about ‘I’ll kick the donkey,’” he said to an amused audience. “I never thought the expression ‘kick the donkey’ meant ‘I’ll kick your ass.’”