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!
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