Ose Meji

This week went by really quickly, I think partially because I’ve gotten into a real groove with the Araba. Every day we try (we don’t always succeed) to cover 4 Ifa chapters. He usually tries to think about them the day before after I have left, and sometimes has them written down already. For each chapter he usually tries to come up with at least 2 verses and I write down the words he has memorized and he explains what Ifa is trying to say through them. Most often the verses just record the name of a Babalawo and the client for whom he divined and that’s it. Sometimes there’s a long story that comes along with it, but not always. The names of the Babalawo are almost like riddles themselves and often contain the lesson from the verse. These names are very esoteric in nature. I’m not sure if I have this name exactly correct, but one of them was the rich man is never guilty in the court of the king, but the poor man doesn’t loose his water in court. I think the obvious message from this name is that money is power, but the real lesson to take away is that this Babalawo most likely had something to do with a case brought before the king in which a poor person failed to repay a loan from a rich person (since a rich person has no need to break a rule or has no excuse for needing to break a rule). Furthermore even though the poor man is guilty he should still be treated with respect and the rich man cannot be given everything the poor man owns IE his water since that is most likely the least valuable of all of his possessions.

Anyway, since the Yoruba can be tricky and the lessons are often obscure, the Araba tries to explain them to me, so by the time he’s done I have the text and an interpretation. I made a word document with what Ifa says for each sign/chapter and I’m going to try to memorize them if I can since I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to memorize around 20 verses in Yoruba a day. I’ll try for the English interpretations and see how far I get. Right now I have reached Ogbe-Odi/1.3 or the 18th Odu/chapter of 256 so I still have quite a ways to go.

I have also gotten good with the videos I’ve been recording. I split them up into my little archiving system and put them into the folder for each chapter, and for the verses which have songs associated with them, I’ve been extracting the audio from the parts where the Araba is singing. I put those in the chapter folders too and I have an iTunes playlist of them on my computer now too. Some of them are really cool, there is one I like in particular about a lady who had trouble with money and business, but after consulting some Babalawo she wore expensive clothes and sat on a cushioned chair in the market.

This Friday I went with the Araba to his hometown of Ode Omu because one of his uncles died there last week. On the way there some policemen stopped us, waving their AK’s around, and expecting to get a nice bribe I’m sure. After they pulled us over they asked Mr. Ajayi (another Babalawo who lives in Modakeke who helped me a lot with my thesis last year since he is both a Babalawo and a Muslim!) where he was going and what he was doing, and another one came over to me and did the same. He was a little surprised when I answered him in Yoruba and he asked to search my bag. I’m glad I didn’t leave anything valuable in the main pocket (I had my recorder and a few other things in a small somewhat hidden one). When he saw a book I have on Ifa he looked even more surprised and then asked what we were doing exactly, and Mr. Ajayi told him that we were Babalawos, were not happy about being detained, and that the Araba was right behind us. Fortunately that did the trick and they let us go and started harassing the next people...

I went to Ibadan on Saturday morning to visit Aunty Bimbo since she has been staying at my grandparents’ old house there for a while. It was really nice to see her up to her usual tricks making fun of everyone and bossing them around. I impressed Mr. Toyin, Aunty’s driver, Mama Ibeji and some of her kids by reading my Opele for them and telling them that the Odu of this post (Ose Meji) is the Odu that was cast on the founding of Ibadan. Kyle also came Saturday afternoon after taking a trip to Benin City. We couldn’t stay too long and left this morning so we could be ready to start the week. That’s all for now, but I’ll try to write another update soon!

Ifa-filter

I’m trying to upload the song I recorded last week about the salve Eji Obara bought, so I hope it works, but we’ll have to see...

Today I recorded another not-so-funny Ese (verse) that used equally clever wordplay in Odu (Chapter) Ogunda-Di. In this Ese, Ogun knows a woman named Adi in the biblical sense. In Yoruba the most important part of the verse is the sentence, Ogun do Adi (Ogun slept with Adi), which is pronounced Ogun d’Adi, which is practically the same as Ogunda-Di. These guys are really clever, and the Araba gets a kick out of it when I put the pieces together for myself and start laughing.

I have noticed that for a lot of Ese the Araba has to go into his room and pull out a huge stack of mis-matched papers he has to check the names of some Odu and some details of the verses. I’ve read in a lot of books that the Babalawo now don’t know as many verses as they used to, and don’t know them as well, most likely because of technology like radio and TV. It reminds me of this quote from Black Elk that goes something like, “One day people’s minds will be so weak they won’t be able to remember anything without writing them down. Since the Araba can lean back and spit out 15+ minutes of literature at the drop of the hat, I don’t think his mental faculties are weak, definitely much stronger than mine, but it did make me feel a bit sad that it has become more difficult to keep these Ese in modern times. Then I thought that maybe technology could help to, since that is exactly what I am trying to do; preserve verses like that one in Ogunda-Di or 9.4 as I call it.

I recently devised my own method for archiving Ifa verses since I’ve never seen one. Since there are two figures in each Odu and there are 16 total signs that can take each of those two places, with the first being the most important and the second acting almost like an adjective and modifying it. So for Ogunda-Di I have been using the number 9.4 because Ogunda is the 9^th sign and Odi is the 4^th. The only tricky part about my archiving system is that the chief Odu are the one’s that are repeated, like Ogunda-Ogunda or Odi-Odi which would be called Ogunda Meji and Odi Meji respectively. Since they are more important, I just call them 9.0 and 4.0 and leave the positions they would otherwise take (9.9 and 4.4) empty. It makes finding the verses on my hard drive infinitely easier.

I went to the market today and bought another soccer jersey from a guy on the street. After we agreed on the price, he asked me if I was Nigerian, I think because I bargained with him almost exclusively in Yoruba and made him give me half of his original price and told him I knew it was still 100 Naira too much. Usually people just ask me where I’m from assuming I’m not from around here. He flipped out when I told him I was studying Ifa, and he wants me to come back sometime soon so I can cast Ifa for him even if I can’t tell him what his future holds! I’m going to study up some more and see what I can do.

Even though my market skills have gotten better, I haven’t been completely happy with how fast I’m learning Yoruba, so I think I’m going to go a bit extreme and just stop speaking English unless it is absolutely necessary because I know the key to proficiency is learning to think in the language. So if I stop using English, soon I’ll stop thinking in it, I hope at least...

Tomorrow I am going to try to visit my friend Dr. Saah, a really nice professor from Cameroon who teaches French here. He just stopped me one day and was really surprised when I could speak French to him. I usually see him at least a few times every week to try to keep my French up, and he said he might bring me to a few of his classes. He also told me that I should try to make some time in the spring to visit his village in Cameroon, which just so happens to be the village of my new favorite soccer player, Alexandre Song! If we actually make it, that would be awesome!

No Ifa Censor

I’m trying to upload the song I recorded last week about the salve Eji Obara bought, so I hope it works, but we’ll have to see...

Today I recorded another not-so-funny Ese (verse) that used equally clever wordplay in Odu (Chapter) Ogunda-Di. In this Ese, Ogun knows a woman named Adi in the biblical sense. In Yoruba the most important part of the verse is the sentence, Ogun do Adi (Ogun slept with Adi), which is pronounced Ogun d’Adi, which is practically the same as Ogunda-Di. These guys are really clever, and the Araba gets a kick out of it when I put the pieces together for myself and start laughing.

I have noticed that for a lot of Ese the Araba has to go into his room and pull out a huge stack of mis-matched papers he has to check the names of some Odu and some details of the verses. I’ve read in a lot of books that the Babalawo now don’t know as many verses as they used to, and don’t know them as well, most likely because of technology like radio and TV. It reminds me of this quote from Black Elk that goes something like, “One day people’s minds will be so weak they won’t be able to remember anything without writing them down. Since the Araba can lean back and spit out 15+ minutes of literature at the drop of the hat, I don’t think his mental faculties are weak, definitely much stronger than mine, but it did make me feel a bit sad that it has become more difficult to keep these Ese in modern times. Then I thought that maybe technology could help to, since that is exactly what I am trying to do; preserve verses like that one in Ogunda-Di or 9.4 as I call it.

I recently devised my own method for archiving Ifa verses since I’ve never seen one. Since there are two figures in each Odu and there are 16 total signs that can take each of those two places, with the first being the most important and the second acting almost like an adjective and modifying it. So for Ogunda-Di I have been using the number 9.4 because Ogunda is the 9^th sign and Odi is the 4^th. The only tricky part about my archiving system is that the chief Odu are the one’s that are repeated, like Ogunda-Ogunda or Odi-Odi which would be called Ogunda Meji and Odi Meji respectively. Since they are more important, I just call them 9.0 and 4.0 and leave the positions they would otherwise take (9.9 and 4.4) empty. It makes finding the verses on my hard drive infinitely easier.

I have also noticed that after collecting quite a few myths, there is a large number that I will definitely not want to put into a children's book because many of them are really graphic. I think at least half of them involve sex in some way shape or form, and while I could write a way around it in some of them, there are some that are just a bi too explicit. Then there are some like another one I collected today that involve cutting off heads and other kinds of violence, which makes sense within the context, both of the verses and the use of Ifa in general, but renders a fair number of these verses a little bit out of the Walt Disney age-grade, so I'm going to have to be a bit discerning in choosing myths and even more careful about the way I write them up...

I went to the market today and bought another soccer jersey from a guy on the street. After we agreed on the price, he asked me if I was Nigerian, I think because I bargained with him almost exclusively in Yoruba and made him give me half of his original price and told him I knew it was still 100 Naira too much. Usually people just ask me where I’m from assuming I’m not from around here. He flipped out when I told him I was studying Ifa, and he wants me to come back sometime soon so I can cast Ifa for him even if I can’t tell him what his future holds! I’m going to study up some more and see what I can do.

Even though my market skills have gotten better, I haven’t been completely happy with how fast I’m learning Yoruba, so I think I’m going to go a bit extreme and just stop speaking English unless it is absolutely necessary because I know the key to proficiency is learning to think in the language. So if I stop using English, soon I’ll stop thinking in it, I hope at least...

Tomorrow I am going to try to visit my friend Dr. Saah, a really nice professor from Cameroon who teaches French here. He just stopped me one day and was really surprised when I could speak French to him. I usually see him at least a few times every week to try to keep my French up, and he said he might bring me to a few of his classes. He also told me that I should try to make some time in the spring to visit his village in Cameroon, which just so happens to be the village of my new favorite soccer player, Alexandre Song! If we actually make it, that would be awesome!

Guarantee Trouble Bank!

Sorry it took me so long to put up another post. The internet modem I bought went south a little over a week ago and I’ve had a real adventure trying to replace it. Damini wired me some money, but my bank (GT Bank) wouldn’t let me take any of it out! In Nigeria you need people to fill out reference forms for you before you can set up a bank account, and I filled out the two they asked for, but apparently they didn’t like either of them, even though they didn’t tell me. So I had to go find two other people to fill out new forms for me, but since those people had accounts with other banks they said I wouldn’t be able to get my money for at least 2 weeks, so I got more people to fill out forms for me, but they didn’t like those either so I just kept going to and from the bank trying to track down people with certain kinds of GT Bank accounts all day until they finally accepted them. Even then I had to give them more trouble the next day for them to finally let me have my money. If I hadn’t gone through all the trouble already I would have taken my money out and put it somewhere else, but I’m too tired for that now.

Jesse, a PhD student from Stanford came last week with my new Flip camera, which is working really well so I’ve been able to record a whole bunch of Ifa verses and songs, even though I missed about half a weeks worth of interviews because of the bank/internet problems. I’ve also had a lot of fun watching the people who come to see the Araba. One man came, and I’m not sure why, but he wanted a charm to protect him from bullets. I wrote down all of the steps required, and it was pretty fascinating to watch. The guy had to eat gunpowder after it was all done too. There have also been several politicians who have come because the elections are coming up, but I haven’t seen any of them asking for charms or medicine or anything. So far they’ve just been asking for support or advice, but the Araba really doesn’t like dealing with them. He says they aren’t terribly honest and since it’s so hard to figure out what they really want, he prefers to just help people who are sick, but he doesn’t have much of a choice.

Today two boys from OAU (Obafemi Awolowo University, where Dr. Ajibade teaches) came to see him, and one of them got a bit nervous because he recognized me from campus. I didn’t know the other one, but apparently he does 419 (those sketchy e-mail scams Nigerians send out to people asking for bank account details so they can “give” you millions of dollars). The Araba wasn’t a big fan of him either, but he said he could make Ifa for him if he wanted, but since the guy is greedy he doesn’t want to pay the money for it. The other student who recognized me was a much nicer guy, and I was pretty impressed with how well the Araba was able to help him.

The way the divination process works is that the person coming for advice either whispers the question to some of the divination instruments or just holds them up to his/her head and says them silently to Orunmila. Then the Babalawo cast the Opele or divining chain and recites verses that accompany the sign that comes up. Then there’s another process for answering yes or no questions to resolve any remaining issues. In this guy’s case, without knowing what was going on, the Araba told him that he’s trying to get money from someone, or someone is try to send him some money or assistance of some kind, but they are having trouble with it. Then he told the boy that the problem is on his father’s side of the family because there is someone there who is actively trying to disrupt their plans. I was impressed by how specific it was, and I have to admit even a bit more surprised that the Araba was spot on. He said that he was indeed having that problem and that there was some quarrelling going on his father’s side of the family. He said he would come back later to see if there was a sacrifice he could make to resolve the issue and investigate it further since he didn’t have a lot of time. I’d like to be there for that part too if I’m lucky enough.

Most of what I have been doing with the Araba now is going through each one of the 256 Odu and recording him explaining what it generally means if it comes up in the divination process, reciting some of the verses and lessons to take from them, and then his favorite part (and mine too I think) are the Kiki or songs that accompany them. I think I’m going to try to extract the audio from the interviews so I can make a playlist of the kiki for each Odu that I could maybe include with the book.

Sometimes understanding/translating the songs and verses can be pretty tough because of how vowels elide and words combine in Yoruba, but the songs and verses are really clever. One of the ones I recorded today from Obara Meji is about one of the sons of Orunmila (named Eji Obara) who was a king (oba) who bought (ra) a slave who gave birth to a son, thus making his slaves two (meji), hence the name Oba-ra Meji. You could also read it as O (he) ba (should) ra (buy) meji (two), which is exactly what the Babalawo in the verse told him to do. I’ve never been huge on literature, but some of the wordplay in Ifa is really fascinating.

I’m going to try to memorize the lessons that accompany each Odu so when I cast the Opele myself I can tell what each sign means, even though for me it will be completely random since I’m not a Babalawo! I’ve been pretty busy this week especially, but if I get some time this weekend I will try to extract one of the songs and post it here since my new connection is infinitely faster than my old one, but I learned that in Irosun Meji that if there may be good things in store for you, but you always have to wait patiently and work slowly for them to come, which has definitely been true for me so far with just about everything!

Ifa says a lot!

Hi everyone, things have been moving along pretty quickly here for me this past week. Fortunately I’ve been able to use my digital camera to record some Okiki (songs derived from Ifa verses) from the Araba and I must have collected somewhere around 20 myths so far. Every one of them is really fascinating and carry great lessons. Today I learned several myths that taught me not to belittle anyone because you never know if that person may be able to help you or be more powerful than you, that the character of human beings is in constant decline (kind of like entropy in the laws of thermodynamics, thanks Dad!) and Olodumare (or almighty God) changes his interactions with us as a result of that, and a whole lot about destiny just to name a few.

I have also noticed a lot of similarities between the Bible and some of the Ifa verses the Araba has been reciting for me. I think I mentioned the similarities between the creation stories before, but there are also verses about how people used to live to be incredibly long like Noah and Methuselah because they were so close to God, and that everyone used to speak one language until they started misbehaving so God confounded them and created many different languages just like the Tower of Babel. I don’t think the Araba is aware of those similarities, but I might bring it up with him tomorrow to see what he has to say about it.

It’s pretty amazing how the Araba can rattle off these complex verses once I get him started. Sometimes I’ll just ask him a general question about something, like “Why do people die?” for example. Then he will think for a few seconds and say, “Ifa says that...” and then tell me the Odu (Chapter) and rattle it off. He’s even more efficient than me having an encyclopedia because it hardly takes him any time to come up with relevant verses. It’s sometimes hard to believe how much information he has stored up in his head. It honestly makes me feel pretty small because I haven’t memorized anything like that ever. I can’t even remember my phone number here!

I have learned a whole lot about the Araba over the past week too. He’s building a new house and took me to visit it today and it’s really nice in a more quiet part of town. I asked him if he was going to sell his current house once the new one is completed, and he told me that he’s just renting the one he has now because his previous house was burned down in the most recent war. Although things are very calm now, the people in Ile-Ife and Modakeke have had a series of wars stretching back about a hundred years since the people from Modakeke came to the area to escape wars further north. The Araba was very active in these wars, which is why the Ife attacked it and burned it down! On Thursday he showed me a vest he made with a series of charms that made it impervious to bullets. Apparently it worked because he said despite his house being attacked and him being one of the leaders in the war, he’s never been shot once! Apparently it’s cheaper than Kevlar, but you need a Babalawo to make it for you, not DuPont...

For the past couple of days he has also been doing some prayers for someone in Germany with a continuous fire in a small bowl of palm oil and some other things. He told me that he has clients all over the place, from Chicago to London to Sao Paulo to London to Berlin. This particular person had a messy divorce in which his wife ran off with their child. The Araba has been making these prayers on his behalf so that he’ll be able to find his wife and bring her to court to see if they can work out custody. Apparently he has been working with this man for years, and I think it was right after the Araba made some other kind of prayers for him that he and his wife had their child.

In other news, I think I have found a football team. I played with a bunch of medical students on Saturday who told me that I should try to go pro, but we got kicked off of the field early because some guys wanted to play cricket there. It was pretty fun watching them all get heated and argue over the patch of dirt we were using. I also played a game with the team from Dr. Ajibade’s church. They gave me a trial run for part of the first half of a game on Sunday, and ended up giving me a full 90 minutes and a spot on the team, so it looks like I’ll be playing with them every weekend from now on. The guys are pretty fun and funny so I’m looking forward to it.

Well all the football and moving around has made me pretty tired, so I’m going to go to sleep while there’s still electricity to power my fan!

They Drink Schnapps, I Drink Schweppes

Sorry for the delay since the last post, we didn’t have power for about two days here, and I ran out of credit for my internet modem. The guy who sold it to me forgot to tell me that I need a special code to start adding credit to it, and didn’t answer his phone for a while so that made life a bit more difficult after power came back, but that’s Nigeria.

I’ve started to get pretty used to my routine here, and a lot of the people around have gotten used to me too. There’s this one Al-Haji who begs for change right by where I switch busses to do to Modakeke who always gets excited to see me because I usually give him some change, or at least say hi to him everyday. Some of bus drivers recognize me and love it when I can say a few sentences for them in Yoruba. There are also these drummers who are always sitting outside this house close to the Araba’s who really get a kick out of me giving them traditional greetings. Then there’s this lady who sells all kinds of drinks by the busses. She’s not very nice, but I’ve been buying schnapps from her pretty often because the Babalawo like to drink Schnapps before reciting Ifa verses. I recently met another lady in Modakeke who is much nicer and agreed to sell me the same thing for less money, so I think I might take my business there instead from now on.

I went to play soccer with all the boys this Saturday and did pretty well. I joined this group of about 9 boys playing on a patch of dirt in the athletic complex (there are groups of people playing all over the place), and I think I surprised them by dribbling someone and nutmegging the keeper on the first play! It was a lot of fun, but after only about an hour and a half everyone has so tired because the sun gets pretty brutal by about 9 am. After it was all over I stuck around with a few of the boys to work on tricks and dribbles before I got an Okada driver to take me back home since I was way too tired to take the 30 minute walk back to the boys quarters.

Since I memorized all of the signs for the Odu Ifa so quickly the Araba likes showing me off to the visitors he always has coming to his house. I think he really likes showing everyone that he has someone from the US coming to study with him, and that I’m learning a lot. Most of the people who come for his help are amazed because they usually greet me in English and then he tells me in Yoruba to cast the Opele and I tell him which Odu it is and then speak back to them in Yoruba (well only as much as I can...). I’m really lucky to be working with the Araba, he’s a celebrity in Modakeke. Every time I am out on the road with him, every other person stops him to say thank-you for something or just to greet him since everyone seems to know him. He is also always picking up leaves and bark that honestly all look the same to me, but apparently all have different medicinal and spiritual purposes. Just today he drove all the way out to some obscure river to pick some plants that can only grow in streams and help people remember things. I have no idea what the botanical name is, but he calls them Ewe Eleyeye.

Yesterday this lady came by apologizing to the Araba for something saying that her son was feeling ok, and thanking him for his help, but I could tell the he was not happy with her. After she left he told me that her son had come to him about 2 years ago for help with some sickness or paralysis he had in his back that the hospital couldn’t treat but the Araba was able to remedy. He said that the guy was supposed to pay him 6000 Naira, but he hadn’t seen a dime since he got better until his mom just now brought 1000. He told me that this isn’t uncommon and complained that nobody treats the hospitals like that.

Even though my video recorder doesn’t work, I have been able to record two myths on my camera, and they were really interesting. The first one was the origin of the world, which I thought I knew, but I found out that I didn’t know the entire story. The Araba told me that almost nobody still remembers it in its entirety, and he only knows because he jut happened to learn it from his grandfather (who was also an Araba) right before he died. In short, the commonly known story is that Oduduwa (the first person) came down from heaven on a chain with some sand and a rooster. Oduduwa put the sand down on the water since the world was completely covered in water, and had the rooster spread the sand out all over the face of the water to create the land we have today. Apparently that was actually just the third time the earth had been made, and God had created it and destroyed it twice before that in a manner pretty similar to the story of noah and the flood. I thought it was pretty interesting that almost every culture has some kind of flood story, and that the earth at the very beginning is almost always described as completely water.

The second story that I heard was about how white people came to the earth! Apparently three gods who were having trouble having kids were destined to have some amazing children who couldn’t eat hot pepper, wouldn’t like doing hard labor, and would go off to live in a more prosperous land across a big river. Sure enough when they had children they weren’t black like everyone else, but white and went far away and became prosperous and wealthy, and eventually came back, but let all the black people keep farming for them. I thought this one was pretty funny, and the whole version of it is actually pretty fascinating. I think I will definitely want it to be one of the ones that makes it into the book.

Oh, I forgot, while I the Babalawo drink Schnapps, I have been drinking Schweppes Bitter Lemon like it’s my job. Unfortunately it’s really cheap, just like puff-puff, which means it might also become a bit of a problem, just like puff-puff. I’m going to buy some chewing sticks to make sure my teeth don’t rot...