Ifa Says Respect Women!

This past week was my last working with the Araba in 2010, and it was honestly one of the most interesting. It started out on a sad note as the Akoda of Ode-Omu (a good friend of the Araba, and a very knowledgeable Babalawo) lost his younger brother. So on Monday we went to visit him and give him some money to help with the funeral preparations, and didn’t really do much else. I felt pretty bad for him, not just because he lost his brother, but also because he had told the Araba the week before that he didn’t have any money and I think he is expected to finance most of the funeral. He’s a really nice guy, and he kind of reminds me of what a Yoruba Santa Claus might look like because all his hair is white, he’s a little portly, and he likes to laugh a lot.

Whenever I hear about problems that people are having or have had here, I like to try to think of an Ese Ifa that would address that problem to imagine which sign would have come up for him/her if (s)he were to have come to a Babalawo, like the previous governor of Osun State and Irosun-Agbe. The next day the Araba taught me another Ese Ifa, Idin Yeku, that foretells immanent sudden death, which I thought might have been a possibility since the disease that killed the Akoda’s brother was very sudden.

Sometimes for some of the more incredible Ifa messages, I ask the Araba if he has even cast them for someone and what happened, and I did that for this one. He told me that about a year or two ago, he cast it for two brothers in the neighborhood, who didn’t believe him and said that he just wanted to eat the goat that was prescribed in the sacrifice (along with white clothing that is currently in the person’s house and two wooden statues, and some money). To make a long story short, both of the brothers died a few days later in an accident with some kind of machine on the street and the Araba showed me the spot where it happened. It was pretty scary stuff!

I learned about a few other interesting ones that the Araba cast as well. I think the most interesting one was Irosun-Opinmi which contains a story about a man named Sasore who’s destiny it was to become king even though he had to struggle to realize it (the story is pretty fascinating and reveals a lot about the Yoruba concept of Ori [destiy] and how it can and cannot be changed). Anyway, the Araba said he had cast it twice, once for his friend who is a cripple, but was able to become the king of Ode-Omu even though many people protested because of his disability, and the current Ogunsua, or King, of Modakeke who also had to fight a lot of rivals before taking the throne. There is another one about infidelity that warns the person to stop cheating with someone else’s wife (or husband/significant other) because he will soon die as a result of it most likely because of Magun, a medicine you can make if you think your spouse is cheating on you. The Araba told me he cast this one for a guy who enjoyed “pleasurable company” too much, and when he warned him, the guy got mad and stormed off, and a few weeks later he died while in the process of doing what Ifa warned him not to do...

We didn’t get to finish all of the Ese in this Odu (Irosun) but in all of them, except for the last two that I haven’t learned yet, Ifa has something to say about women’s issues. I think about 10 or so have to do with having babies, others are about taking care of children, most of the stories contain female characters and/or are about the issues listed above. One of my favorites is Irosun Okanran, which explicitly prohibits the client from touching women inappropriately or forcing them to do anything against their will. The explanation the Araba gave for it’s meaning was incredibly unforgiving and contained serious worldly and supernatural repercussions if the person does not heed Ifa’s warning. Another one that I found really interesting prescribed monogamy even though traditional Yoruba society is very much polygamous (The Araba himself has 5 wives, I think...). The way Ifa described it was fascinating; it says that this person will only be able to have one wife, but he can chose the way that happens. He can either marry one woman and treat her well, or he can try to find a second, and one of them will leave. It used the analogy of light and darkness and says, “When light enters the house, darkness must flee.” I think if I keep doing work on Ifa in grad school I might have to write a paper or something on this section of Ifa because it is very clearly focused on women, while it’s hard to identify a specific focus of any of the others.

So far I have studied exactly 100 chapters of the 256, sometimes when I try to think about all of them it makes my head spin a little bit. About a month ago, the Araba told me that it would take about a year for a Babalawo in training to reach the place that I had then. Since I'm not memorizing all of the verses word for word, I get to move much more quickly, but it has made trying to memorize the meaning of the messages very difficult since on some days like Thursday and Friday the Araba and I went through about 8 chapters or more per day with at least 2 verses per chapter. I have typed them all up on a Word document to help me study, but it is now about 20 pages long single spaced, and is only the shorthand notes that don't contain the full sacrifices, stories, songs, etc. I'm going to try to use this next week to catch up on all of the verses I haven't completely memorized yet, but we'll see how far I can get.

In other news, I’m in Ibadan right now, and I’ll be going to Lagos early tomorrow morning. Aunty Bimbo came to pick me up from Ife yesterday, and we’re just hanging around my grandparent’s old house on Agbeka street for the day because the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is really terrible on the weekends and Sunday in particular. When I get to Lagos I’m going to buy a whole bunch of fabric to start making clothes because there’s only about a week left until I come home briefly for Christmas! I think it’s going to be pretty weird when I come off the plane because it’s bee over 80 degrees every day here and the sun is really intense, so it’s tough for me to imagine something like snow...

I(fa) Told You So

The biggest news around Osun State right now is how the current governor, a member of PDP of course, has just been found guilty of voter fraud and stripped of office! PDP is by far the most powerful party here and everyone has always kind of known that they weren’t quite playing by the rules, but for whatever reason just recently people have been calling them out. Osun State is just the latest in a group of 5 states (Edo, Ekiti, Anambra, and one other I just forgot) that have ousted their PDP governors. When the ruling came out over the radio, people were running out on the streets and honking horns, it was great. The funniest part about the whole thing, is that there were tons of PDP candidates who had spent lots of money on the coming election in 2011, but since the ACN Candidate won this court case, he is going to serve his term of 4 years, which means no election and a lot of money wasted by those guys. Every time I see their billboards I chuckle a little bit...

I also think about a few Ifa verses like one in Iwori-Aate/Wole that warns the person not to abuse the great power (s)he holds even if it will provide a short-term benefit. In the long run it will come back to hurt you more than you were able to gain from it. Mostly I think of a story from Irosun Agbe about the bird who got too cocky and greedy and started to do things he wasn’t supposed to and ultimately lost his power (I think I wrote something about it a few weeks ago...). Anyway that got me thinking about how people like to look down on politicians who patronize Babalawo, and to be honest a lot of it is making charms to hurt rivals or enemies, and of course I don’t support that, but I can’t help but wish that some of these guys would let Baba Araba cast one of those figures for them and see what happens. It might not be such a bad thing. On the radio today, I heard something about a man who was running for a position in the local government, and the Araba stopped what he was doing and told me that he had come to him not too long ago. He pulled out his record book and showed me his name and the figure he cast for him. I forgot to ask him if Ifa said he would win or not, but I will do that tomorrow.

A few days ago a guy I had never seen before came by the Araba’s house for divination and Baba did his usual thing while I was putting something away, and when I came out he asked me what the figure he had cast was. I recognized it as Oyeku-Ogunda, but then he asked me for the meaning because it is one of the about 80 we have studied, and to be honest I was a bit lost, but after a little while I remembered its alternate name, Oyeku-Ojo (k)o da, and that triggered everything. I told the Araba that in that Odu Ifa tells the story of Orunmila and Ikun or Vulture and how someone or some people have abused this person but (s)he needs to be patient and not retaliate. The person in question needs to take the matter to Olodumare (or God in Yoruba) in prayer because vengeance belongs to Him alone. If this is done, justice will be served, even if it takes up to 16 years (which figuratively means a long time in Yoruba). After I finished the guy was a bit surprised because apparently it was spot on and the Araba started to laugh and recited everything for him. I’m still not sure exactly what had happened to the guy, but I think some people had cheated him and were treating him really poorly and he wanted to find a way to get back at them, but I think he’s doing as Ifa said now.

I have a friend here, a Muslim guy, who sells DVDs and CDs who has been telling me all about how he wants to hopefully get married next year and maybe move into a bigger apartment and/or expand his business, but money is pretty tight. Just this week he asked if we could go see the Araba and see if there was anything he could do for him. So the Araba cast Ifa for him and said that he’s having trouble advancing in his business, and that for the amount of time and effort he has put into it, he should be further along than he is now. He said part of the problem comes from people in his family, perhaps because they ask too much of him. That all sounded about right to me because he’s not old, but he’s been working for a while and doesn’t have too much more to show for it than when he started and since he is the oldest child in his family, he carries the most responsibility even though he isn’t the most financially secure. So the Araba made a sacrifice for him today and we’ll see if business begins to pick up for him.

This past weekend I went to visit Kyle in Ibadan and we had a good time watching Arsenal put on a show at Villa Park, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching my favorite player Robert Pires come out of retirement, even if he was a bit rusty. The coolest thing that happened in Ibadan was that I was able to find a really nice Ayo board! Ayo is a Yoruba board game that uses the same board as Mancala but has some different rules. I had been looking for one for several years now, and I found a great one carved in the shape of hands praying, and the best part was I used the J+ genes from my father (Ogunnaike joke courtesy of Uncle John Orife) to pry it away from the seller for about $10! I have been trying to resurrect my Ayo skills, but it has been a while since I played and I’m not quite where I would like to be, but it’s been a great way for me to take a break from staring my computer screen when I’m trying to type up notes, stories, edit videos and all that good stuff.

One last funny anecdote from here is a story the Araba told me about some medicine he made for someone once in his hometown. We went to his village of Ode-Omu on Monday and as we were coming back he pointed to a little grove by the side of the road and started to tell me about how he had made medicine there, and then he started to laugh and turned around to take me back there. When he pulled over he showed me two charms that were stuck on sticks and covered to keep the rain off of them and he told me they were for protection and told me the story about them. He had a friend who wanted to plant some plantain trees but didn’t have land to do it, so the Araba made these charms for him and they planted them by the road in the bush. The charms apparently prevent people from stealing and keeping anything near them, and so when somebody from the town took some of the plantain when they became ripe, the Araba said within two days he went to the house of his friend and just handed him the plantain and said, “I stole these.” I thought that was pretty hilarious and I wish I could have been there. The Araba told me about some other ones he knows how to make that make thieves go blind or not be able to walk until the owner of the thing they stole gets it back. I would really like to see it in action some time, but we’ll see if that happens...