7.9 Obara-Egun Tan

Sorry I didn’t post an update last week, but after I explain the Odu Ifa for the past two weeks (and also the last one!) it will all make sense. I chose Obara-Egun Tan because in this Odu, Orunmila leaves Ile-Ife and goes to take a bath in a river, and enjoys himself so much he looses track of time and actually almost drowns! Fortunately I haven’t drowned (although to this day Babalawos aren’t allowed to enter that river for that reason), but since I have been at my grandparents’ house on Agbeja street in Ibadan with very little to do everyday, I have lost track of time just like Orunmila.

Last week I picked Kyle up from UI, but Aunty Bimbo still had some things to do in Ibadan, so we’ve just been here whiling away the time. I’ve been using this time to finish transcribing all of the Odu Ifa that I hadn’t gotten around to yet, and also compile and edit all of the stories I have learned. I have finished a draft of the first book, about all of the major gods, goddesses, and important Yoruba stories, and even though I’m a bit sick of reading it right now, I think it’s pretty good! The other book, which contains practically all of the stories I have learned from Ifa chapter-by-chapter, is much, much longer, and since electricity is scarce, I haven’t been able to finish that one yet, but hopefully soon.

I also thought about choosing one of my favorite Odu, Owonrin Dagbun for this week because it contains a story about Orunmila and the Yoruba game of Ayo (very similar to Mancala, just with different rules). I bought my Ayo board in Ibadan a long time ago, and since there isn’t light most of the time, I have played a lot of Ayo with Mama Ibeji’s kids, especially Bidemi, the youngest. Since I still have some Naira left, I decided to go out and buy another Ayo board for her so she could keep playing after I left. The interesting part of this story is the man in the neighborhood who sold me the Ayo board is also named Ogunnaike and went to the same school that my grandfather attended! He couldn’t believe that I bore the same surname, but since he is also Ijebu, I couldn’t get him to give me a discount on the Ayo board... Like they say, it’s easier to get blood from a stone than money from an Ijebu.

Since the tailors in Lagos are more expensive and all seem to take forever to finish sewing clothes, Aunty Bimbo put me in touch with Uncle Seun’s tailor here in Ibadan. I went with Kyle to buy a ton of fabric for myself, Damini, and some friends, and the tailor came by to collect it all. Since a full outfit for a man here takes 4 yards of fabric, and they only sell this type in 5 or 10 yards, I had an extra 2 years of several different colors left over. So I asked the tailor to make some dress shirts for me out of the remaining 2 yards and I also asked him to put some of the Odu Ifa that govern my life on the sleeves. He’s bringing the clothes back today, so we’ll see how well they turn out, but if all works well, they could be really nice. Since the divining chain or Opele has two “arms” each with one sign for each Odu, I put the sign for the right “arm” of the Opele on the right sleeve, and the sign for the left “arm” on the left sleeve or arm of the shirt. I think I may have frightened the tailor a bit when I started drawing the Ifa figures and reciting their names, but I think I paid well enough that he didn’t mind. The colors also have something to do with each sign, and weren’t chosen randomly, but you’ll have to ask me about those if/when you see me wearing one.

To come full circle, in Obara Egun Tan, Orunmila gets out of the river, but he decides to go back once more and meets his wife Olokun there. She loves him so much that she begs him not to leave here again, so he says farewell to everyone in Ife and leaves to be with her since he can’t stand to see her so sad. I hope I’ll come back to Ife at some point in the future (and some people say Orunmila did come back as well), I’ll be crossing bodies of water not swimming in them, but I will be meeting my own Olokun in Israel this coming Thursday.

This is the last post, at least for this adventure, so I want to say thank-you to everyone who has been following what I’ve been up to here. While I’ve been looking back through all of the stories I’ve learned (and everything else as well), it’s difficult for me to believe that I knew none of it just 9-10 months ago. It has certainly been a great, fascinating, and of course legendary experience for me from treating crazy people, to witnessing traditional euthanasia, to being paid to tell someone’s future, to hearing the voice of a god, and much much more, and I hope I was able to convey at least a little bit of that to you. Also don’t forget to get a copy of the book when it comes out hopefully in the next year or so! You’ll have the inside scoop on the origins of all of the stories and how they came to be there!

3.0 Iwori Meji

The Odu Ifa for this week is Iwori Meji because in that Odu there’s a story about how Orunmila left Ile-Ife for heaven because of something one of his sons did, and since I’m leaving Ife, I thought it was appropriate (although I’m in Ibadan and not heaven, and I don’t have any sons who can upset me...) Kyle came to visit me for about two days from Ibadan and we just went around campus, and on either Teusday or Monday we helped the Araba get the wheels rolling for some work he wants to do in Brazil.

A few years ago, a man in Brazil who runs a temple for the worship of various Yoruba deities brought the Araba to Sao Paulo to do some work with them, casting Ifa, initiating people into Ifa, making sacrifices, and they really loved him. The Araba made over $5,000 or about 8 million Naira while there, but the Yoruba guy who took him everywhere and did all of the translation for him stole the money and disappeared! So since then the Araba has wanted to go back to Brazil, but he doesn’t speak Protuguese so it was impossible to communicate with the people in Sao Paulo. So last week my friend Wale said he knew someone on campus who had lived in Brazil and spoke portuguese fluently, so I arranged for us to meet and call the Araba’s friend in Sao Paulo to see what could be done. The first time we tried on Monday, we couldn’t get a hold of the guy in charge, so I set up another day (this past Thursday) to try again. That morning the Araba cast some kola nuts after feeding Ifa and asked what was going to happen, and Ifa said that that day we would get to talk to Leo (the man in Sao Paulo) and that we would start the whole process of going to Brazil. Fortunately Ifa was right!

I was worried we might not get him because when I bought some credit for the Araba to use his phone to call, the network was terrible and we couldn’t call an number at all, but right before we tried to call Leo, it opened up, and no more than 5 minutes after we were done talking, the network went bad again. It was really wild. So now Leo is trying to get a group of people together who will pay for a ticket to bring the Araba to Brazil to do some more work for them, and apparently Ifa said that the Araba will also do some work with some other groups in Brazil because they will like what happened with Leo so much. The Araba was very very happy about all of this because it’s been bugging him for a long time that he lost so much money, and that it would be so easy for him to make some more, especially now that he needs it to finish building his house.

On Thursday I believe, I witnessed a traditional version of a pregnancy test! Someone I know had been having trouble with his girlfriend and went to talk to the Araba about it. Apparently it had happened a few times before, and the Araba told him that there was no need to go to the hospital to get a paternity test done because Ifa said that he was the father of his girlfriend’s baby. The poor guy just wanted to be sure, so he kept asking Ifa, and Ifa kept saying the same thing( by “saying” I mean the Araba would cast Ifa and the message on the opele was always the same). I found it to be very fascinating, and certainly cheaper and more private than a paternity test would be. At any rate, Ifa told my friend that everything would be ok, and that his girlfriend would come back, and she called him about a few minutes after we left baba’s house. I hope everything works out for them, but it sounds like that’s what Ifa said would happen.

A few weeks ago when I was with the Araba one of his “aburos/junior brothers” who I think is actually his nephew, or maybe just a friend in Abuja called to let him know that his refrigerator had been stolen when he took it to be repaired at a shop. The Araba consulted Ifa while they were on the phone and told him that the fridge was still on the premises, and that the people who said it was stolen were not exactly lying because they were the ones who stole it. He then told the guy that Ifa said he would get it back, but he might have to make a sacrifice to do it. Unfortunately the guy was dragging his feet about paying the Araba to make the sacrifice for him, and since the Araba really wanted to do it, I gave him some money to get it started. Just this past week, the man called back to say that someone had told him that he saw the fridge in the security office of the shop, and he got mad and barged in. Sure enough, his fridge had been there all along. The guy was so happy and promised to send the Araba more money.

On Thursday I went back to Osogbo to do my last round of interviews, this time on the god my great-great-grandfather used to worship, Ogun. Wale, of course, knew the head Ogun priest, so I met up with him and we went to the Ogun shrine there so I could ask some questions. While there are still a few gods/goddesses that have proved more elusive than I had hoped, I think I have a very good grip on the major myths about them now, because for the past few interviews, whenever I was told various myths, for many or even most of them, I already knew it, if only in a different form. The differences are often as interesting as the stories themselves, so I’m always happy to hear different versions, but it was reaffirming to know that all of the information I was receiving wasn’t terribly foreign. After it was all over I bought him some beer and gave him some money, and he was so thrilled, he kept thanking Wale for bringing me to him.

After it was all over, since I don’t know when the next time I will be in Osogbo will be, I asked Wale if we could go to Osun’s grove since it was only a few minutes away. The grove is wonderful, and I wish I had made some more time before to go all around it, but I’m glad I made it there all the same. Since everything inside the grove is believed to embody the goddess herself, people aren’t allowed to cut the trees or kill the animals, so there were monkeys running all over the place and eating the food people had used for sacrifices. It was really interesting for me to see some of the places explained or described in myths and Ifa narratives there, and while we were walking around I was telling Wale how certain statues came to be in certain places, in whose image they were made, and in which Odu it came be found.

As yesterday was my last full day in Ife, and was conveniently also Ose Ifa (the sacred day of Ifa in the traditional Yoruba week), I went to the Araba’s house for the last time to give him some schnapps and akara to give to Ifa and he said a bunch of prayers for me and my whole family. Then I just hung out with him for a few hours, and took him out to a bar to buy him a bottle of Heineken (his favorite beer) one last time. Maybe it’s because I have gotten so used to coming and going to his house, but it didn’t really feel real when I got up to go finally and rode off. Somehow I think I still expect to go back there after spending the better part of each day with him since September 2010! Who knows, maybe I’ll see him again sometime soon! Well, actually, Ifa probably knows, but I know I don’t.

I had to pack up all of my things this morning because yesterday everybody and his brother wanted me to come see them to say goodbye, and by the time night fell I was really beat. Shortly after noon today, Mr. Toyin came to pick me up at Dr. Saah’s house, I said my final goodbyes to his family and we left for Ibadan. Before we left, I stopped by the store of my Igbo friend Stem because he was really sad to see me go, and he kept telling me that I had to come back. Now I’m with Aunty Bimbo and Gbebemi in my grandparents house on Agbeja street, and I’m not sure exactly when we’re going to return to Lagos, but my guess is Monday or Wednesday since the last round of elections is on Teusday.

Right now my plan is to keep transcribing some more Ifa verses and also start piecing together some of the stories I want to put in the book. I’ve been looking forward to this part because I think I must have learned well over 200 stories about 20 gods/goddesses and more about different people, towns and animals and seeing them all (or most of them) together in the same will be very interesting. I still have about another two and a half weeks to do so, so I’m sure it shouldn’t be much of a problem. That’s all for now, I hope everyone has a happy Easter!

4.14 Irosun-Rete

I just got accredited for voting! I went to my polling place to get accredited to vote at noon here, so in just about an hour I’ll leave to do just that! I’m really looking forward to seeing how the whole process works and who gets the most votes (although I don’t think I’ll need to ask Ifa to know who will win). I chose Irosun Agbe for this post because there is one former senator here in Osun state who really did nothing but steal and has been paying people to vote for him, paying other people to intimidate other people into voting for him, and a bunch of other things too, but he was beaten very soundly last week by the opposition candidate. This is more or less what Ifa says will happen in that figure if you are greedy and have loose morals, a lesser known or smaller person will take your place even though you hold a higher position.

On a more personal note, I am very close to having everything I need for my book! This week I went to Osogbo a few times with Wale and also did some interviews here in Ife. I had a lot of fun with the Babalawo in Osogbo because whenever he would start telling stories from Ifa, he would ask me if I knew the Odu from which they came and almost every time I could tell him the answer. I found that even when I knew the Odu and the story as well, when he told it to me, it was always different from the one that I knew. This kind of confusion happened a lot in Ife, and one day in particular one woman told me that a woman named Moremi was married to another Yoruba mythic/historical figure named Oranmiyan and that she never had to sacrifice a child, and later on another priest told me that she didn’t marry Oranmiyan and that she did sacrifice her child. Both swore vehemently that if anyone says otherwise, (s)he is lying.

That has made figuring out which versions of stories to include a bit difficult, but it has made me pay more attention to the stories to try to understand them and their messages better since I believe these stories were mostly modeled on real events but created to convey a message or teach a more universal lesson or truth. I think next week if I have time I am going to try to sit down and try to piece together all of the stories and sort through all of the various versions I have heard, because honestly many of them are a bit of a jumble in my head! I also don’t want to just mix stories together because I think most of them are told in a certain (or divergent) ways because of the meanings that they carry, so I wouldn’t want to dilute, mix, or confuse any of the symbolism in them.

I have also come to realize that even if I stay here for another year, I will never be able to be able to write a completely comprehensive book on all of the Yoruba deities because the more I learn about these gods, the more gods I learn about! Also, even though many people may know about a certain deity, sometimes I have quite a bit of trouble finding anyone who can speak with a good level of certainty about him/her, how (s)he came to earth, how (s)he left, what (s)he did, etc.

The guy who has been taking me around to see all of these people, Wale, is a real character. Everywhere we go, there seems to be a woman who is upset with him, and his phone is always ringing because he has always promised someone that he would be somewhere an hour ago even though he might never actually get there. The other day we left the shrine of Oluorogbo in Ife (I never knew this, but apparently this deity created an indigenous form a writing a long time ago!) and right after the priest was trying to convince me to make a sacrifice and take a title from him, this woman ran up to the car and started yelling about how Wale hasn’t been calling her. Then the next day we drove past another one, and he kept getting calls from yet another one who was begging him to come to her house. He says women are going to kill him, and I think he could have a full-time job just trying to manage that aspect of his life. It all made me very glad that I haven’t let any of the women who have asked me to marry them get too close. Speaking of which, I had another record broken yesterday. I had a marriage proposal from a 50 or 60 something year old woman propose to me, which is definitely the oldest yet. Most of them usually aren’t much older than 35. At any rate, thanks to Wale, I know I am going to keep that part of my life under control!

Eji Ogbe (Part Two)

It’s tough for me to imagine that everything that happened this week actually happened in just one week! I guess the biggest news here is that the elections got pushed back again, so the senatorial elections happened yesterday and not a week ago as planned. At first when the elections got moved back to Monday, I thought it was because the INEC (Independent National Election Committee) knew about some plans certain politicians had for disrupting the voting in certain areas (I know one candidate in Osun state who has been paying people 50,000 Naira each to intimidate voters, snatch ballot boxes and that kind of thing), but when it got pushed back again to this Saturday, I’m beginning to wonder if there really were just some logistical issues. At any rate, the elections happened yesterday with only a few reports of violence in some states, and at least here on campus the guy everyone knows to be a rogue got less than a tenth as many votes as his ACN opponent, which gives me some hope. We’ll see what happens next week with the presidential elections!

So this week instead of working with the Araba, I have been going to Osogbo with a guy I know here to collect more stories from some priests there. The first place we went was to a priest of Osanyin (the god of herbs and medicine) because Osanyin is popular enough that I’ll want him in the book, but not so common that you can find his priests everywhere like you could a babalawo. Anyway that interview was one of the most wild things that has ever happened to me. Since he is a priest of Osanyin he “has Osanyin” in a corner in his room (there are two myths about why that is the case, but you’ll have to read the book when it comes out to find out why), which means the objects that embody and represent Osanyin are put there. The amazing part about it was that the priest put on a special necklace and was asking Osanyin some questions, and when he shook a rattle, everyone in the room could hear Osanyin answer him! It wasn’t a regular human voice, but a kind of high-pitched squeaky kind of voice, and I could almost pick out the words it was saying in Yoruba. Apparently Osanyin said it was my destiny to do this project and that the priest should help me with it. I can’t really give any explanation for how we heard the voice because there was nothing “alive” in the corner, and the priest couldn’t have been making the noise because sometimes they were both talking at the same time. It was a bit freaky I have to admit, but definitely fascinating.

I also went to interview a priestess of Osun at the palace in Osogbo, but she and her brother got really greedy when they saw me and wanted me to give them a really exorbitant amount of money, so we left them alone and went to see another babalawo that my friend Wale knows really well. It made me think of a time way back in September when the Araba told me that I should stay close to Ifa because Ifa was going to look out for me and make sure I got what I needed because this guy is amazing. I of course give him something for his time, but unlike the other guys he never asked for a cent and knows infinitely more than the priestess did. He helped me out so much that the plan now is just to go back to him and see how far I can get with him, because he might be able to tell me everything I need to know.

It has been very interesting hearing more stories and Ifa verses from Olaifa (the babalawo in Osogbo) because many are similar but slightly different from the ones I have learned from the Araba and elsewhere. He said something really insightful that I think will probably put in the introduction to the book. Roughly translated he said, “If you were to ask about me from 4 people in the neighborhood, none of them would lie, but they would all tell you something at least slightly different about me. If you took what just one person said, you wouldn’t have a great idea of who I am, but if you took what all of them said together then you’d have a much more complete picture.” I’ve always been very interested in this kind of contradictory but conciliatory aspect of Yoruba culture and it was really neat to hear him say that.

I went back to visit the Araba on Friday and he showed me the developed pictures of him and me on my “graduation” along with one of all of the babalawos who were there too. He is really proud of them and hung them up on his wall already. Maybe it was just me being self-centered, but I hadn’t completely realized how much having me around had affected the Araba. I think I was so focused on how much he had taught me that I didn’t know that I had helped him out a lot as well. When I visited him, he told me that nothing was really going on anymore and he hadn’t really had any big customers so money was really tight. He of course was still giving money out so other people wouldn’t go hungry, but I found out that he was having some trouble finding enough food for his whole family too. I think I didn’t realize it before because while I was working with him I would pay him regularly and if I was around I always tried to pay for whatever little things I could. I gave him some extra money to help see him through elections, and in a strange way even though I was really sad that things are so tough for him, I was happy that I was at least able to give him something in return. I still think I may have gotten the better end of the bargain, since knowledge and wisdom are certainly worth more than money, but at least the money counted for something!

I’m going to go back to Osogbo on Monday to interview the babalawo there again, but I’m getting very close to having everything I need to the book and I’m hoping that by week’s end I’ll be able to just start editing and compiling!

15.2 Ose-Yeku

Sorry I haven't posted in a few weeks, things got fairly busy and interesting, which i guess makes it more of a shame that I didn't write it all up! The Odu-Ifa I chose for this post is Ose-Yeku, the Odu for taking a title or chieftaincy. If you're familiar with what's going on in Nigeria right now, you'll know that elections start today, so I thought it might be appropriate, but more importantly, I had my graduation of sorts with the Araba this past week. I'm trying to upload the official picture we took of me receiving my certification as a Babalawo from him, so I hope it works. Whenever a Babalawo finishes learning all of the Odu-Ifa, a special sacrifice is made to Ifa, and of course some money is paid to the Babalawo who did the teaching for each of the Odu. Since I'm not technically a practicing Babalawo, I just gave the Araba money to make the sacrifice on his own, but I did buy a lot of beer and schnapps for the Araba and some of his Babalawo-friends who all came on Wednesday to celebrate with me.

So now I still try to go to the Araba's house everyday to ask him a few more questions about Yoruba religion and Ifa, but mostly we have just been hanging around his house and helping people who come to him with problems. Starting this coming Tuesday I am going to go to Osogbo with a man named Wale I met here on campus who said he knows priests and priestesses there who can give me all of the information and stories that I need, so it looks like for the two weeks or so that are left for me I'll be interviewing priests and priestesses of several deities instead. I'm really looking forward to learning all of these things from them!

Dr. Ajibade had to leave for Germany on a fellowship this past friday, so I moved into the boy's quarters of another professor I know, Dr. Saah from Cameroon. The room is really interesting because he uses it as his recording studio and music practice room, so I'm surrounded by guitars, basses, and a keyboard! It's also been very good for my French because I've noticed that I have slowly been forgetting things like when to use the subjunctif, but since he only speaks French to me, it's all starting to come back.

Even with all of this the most exciting thing that happened was Ellie coming to visit! She was only here for about 4 days but we got to do a whole lot. Unfortunately the father of one of Uncle Seun's friends died, and in Yorubaland you have to return to the person's hometown to bury him/her, so we went out to Ekitiland (the far east of Yorubaland for the party!) We got to drive through lots of different parts of Yorubaland including Ife! All of the people at the party loved Ellie, and she got "sprayed" (given a lot of money for dancing) a lot by the people there. There were several older ladies there who really liked us, partly because Ellie gave them traditional greetings and partially I think because I could speak Yoruba to them. At any rate, they kept telling us that we had to get married and that they would come to the wedding to celebrate with us again! Uncle Seun also took us on a driving tour of Lagos, but I think one of Ellie's favorite things was the Akara that we bought on the side of the road. I think I'm going to have to make it for her once I leave.

Well those are the highlights from the past few weeks, but I'm sure I'll have plenty more to write after this coming week is over!

16.15 Ofun-Se

Sorry this post is coming a day late... My friends at NEPA decided to take light early on Saturday morning and didn’t bring it back until even later on Sunday night, so my battery was about dead and I spent all of Sunday night trying to catch up work. They took light again now, but I have some battery left so hopefully it will last until they bring power back!

Today I have officially studied every Odu in the Ifa corpus from Eji Ogbe to Ofun-Se (the last one). To be honest, it was pretty unceremonious. I finished recording the last Odu with the Araba and then he said, “Ki lo to ku?” Which means, what’s left to do, and for the first time I told him that there wasn’t really anything! The only thing left now is the little celebration he wants to have possibly on March 25^th, but after that it’s all done!

After we finished recording the last Odu, the Araba and I went to make some medicine for an Al-Haja in the neighborhood who said business wasn’t going well enough for her. There is a specific medicine in Eji Ogbe that is supposed to attract customers to a business, so the Araba and I went to go prepare it. It required 201 pieces of several things (corn, beans, pepper seeds, and a few others I think), and I learned how hard it can be to do something as simple as counting seeds! I kept starting over every time something would distract me to be sure that I had the numbers just right, but the best part happened at the end. I had counted and recounted everything ot make sure that exactly 201 were in the pot, and when I gave it to the Araba, he took a handful of extra pieces of corn, beans, and seeds and just dumped them in and laughed as he explained to me that there have to be at least 201, but you can have more...

Once everything needed for this medicine was in the pot, the Araba said some prayers over iyerosun (divination powder) printed the symbol for Eji Ogbe on it, put it in the pot, sealed the pot with some special “soap” (or a kind of goo really) and sealed it up. Then he and I dug up the concrete right in front of her front door and pulled out a pot that contained another medicine that she had made for her before by someone else that apparently wasn’t working. Then the Araba put the new one in the hole, sacrificed a rooster over it and covered it up again so nobody would know that it was there. I’m really glad I got to see this one because I had noticed in many houses that there were circular patches on the concrete just inside the doors of many houses here and I had never given it much thought, but now I know that they are medicines, like one the Araba has to prevent people from stealing anything from his house.

I mentioned before that the Araba had done some work for a politician here, but I forgot to mention that the sign that he cast for this guy was Irosun Opinmi. There’s a really interesting story in that odu about how a bunch of people wanted to kill a certain man named Elewi who was destined to become a king and Elewi is the name given to the king of a certain town to this day as a result of it. So just like the story said, this politician became a ruler of sorts, but until last week I didn’t know about any plans to take his life. Apparently there was a lady who also wanted this position (I met her a few days ago!) and she hired the Alfa who always bugs me about giving him money to make medicine that would kill the Araba’s client. This Alfa came to the Araba thinking that the two of them could work together to get rid of this politician and help the woman win the position. Unfortunately for the Alfa, the Araba’s morals are a bit less flexible than his are, and they got into a huge fight. I asked the Araba what was going to happen then, and he asked me what happened in the story. I told him that nobody was able to kill Elewi, and he answered that since they had made the sacrifice and made some other medicine that the Alfa could try as much as he wanted, but he would never be able to kill this client because it was his destiny to occupy the position. That was a pretty crazy soap-opera/nollywood movie type of day. Maybe I should have recorded it, given it a title like “Death and Destiny/Iku ati Ori,” and sold it on the street for 200 Naira!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories in Ifa and how they were created and how they are used, especially how time is supposed to be interpreted in them. In general, Ifa is considered the collective wisdom of the Yoruba people, and all wisdom is gained through some sort of experience. So the idea behind every Ifa verse is that with the Babalawo’s help a client can take the important lessons from a vast collective experience of centuries of our ancestors. But recently I have been thinking about how the two arms of each figure act kind of like the double helix on a strand of DNA in that they combine in a way that in theory gives rise to all possibilities of events here on earth. That paired with the fact that time in these myths operates like Divine time, or a time outside of time that has happened, is happening now, and will continue happen in the future, lead me to think that each time a figure (like Irosun Opinmi in this example) is cast, this part of the clients life is actually part of that sign as the archetypes in the myths are supposed to be playing out at the moment Ifa is cast.

To me that made the whole idea of Ifa as a cultural repository make much more sense because each successive time a figure is cast, we’re able to see its nature and its meaning. So for example in one of my favorite stories in Ogbe Yonu, a little girl gives Orunmila lots and lots of trouble, but in the end, because he was patient and kind to her, he finds out that she’s a princess, they get married, and they lived happily ever after. My guess now is that in the past when Babalawos cast this figure for clients they may have watched the events that followed and saw that the person was put through unnecessary trouble with the opposite sex, but when they were patient, blessings followed, and when they weren’t patient, they just got abused and had nothing to show for it. So all of that information and the forces that would help this person to succeed (like a sacrifice to Ifa) were recorded by creating a story that contains all of the important details and supernatural archetypes. That’s pure speculation on my part, but I’m sure Babalawos (at least in the past if not now) came up with these verses and stories because many of them contain issues that have come to Yorubaland well after the legendary Orunmila would have gone back to heaven. The whole creation of this vast corpus seems like a really interesting and fascinating mystery to me, and I wish I could know for certain exactly how they were created.

Who You Gonna Call?

Hey everyone, sorry I didn’t post anything last week... NEPA (Nigerian Electrical Power Agency or No Electricty Practically Always depending on who you ask) too power away for pretty much all day Sunday and didn’t bring it back until sometime on Tuesday. Even then it has been really unstable at best. I think part of the problem is that the rainy season is coming back, and whenever it rains, the power seems to go. I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed that it will get better!

Last week was one of the most interesting weeks as well. I watched the Araba worship Ifa (Bo Ifa) which means make a sacrifice for someone using all of Ifa’s favorite foods, which includes a she-goat! It was quite messy, but it certainly brought the book of Leviticus to life for me! The reason the Araba needed to do it was because a certain Al-Haji in the town who has diabetes had a stroke and was in really serious condition. Fortunately he’s better now, and the Araba said the problem was that one of his four wives used some medicine (oogun or magic charm) in her house so that when he crossed a line she made on her door he wouldn’t be able to cross it to go out again. So the sacrifice for Ifa was used to break the spell and then the Araba made some medicine to cure his blood so he wouldn’t have another stroke and it would help him with his diabetes. I think it would be tough to know if this wife actually made bad medicine for Al-Haji, but after the Araba said that he and one of his other wives said that she really didn’t like sharing him with the other wives and got jealous whenever he left. Also the sacrifice seems to have worked because his wife came back later and said he was doing much better and could get out of bed.

I think I mentioned a politician who had enlisted the Araba’s help a few weeks ago, and the Araba told me he cast Ifa for him and said that he would definitely take the office he was trying to get. Sure enough, last week he won, and since he was going to move into his new physical office, he was worried about bad medicine that the last guy (who really didn’t like him) might have left. So I went with the Araba into his office, we cleared everyone else out, and the Araba took out some things that I hadn’t seen before and rubbed some things all over the place where the wall meets the floor, and then I squeezed some lemon juice that he poured into a horn he has that houses Ifa, and he sprinkled it all over the office. He had someone climb up into the ceiling tiles and sprinkle some other liquid there. Then we all looked everywhere we could think of in the office for anything hidden, but when we didn’t see anything we just let an Alfa pray over the room and then left. It was a lot like Ghostbusters to be honest (Nowak, 2011). When we left and I asked the Araba about all of the various medicines he was using, he just told me that with everything that he put in there, if there was any bad magic there before it won’t be able to work anymore, so ghost busted!

One of the other crazy things that has happened recently is that a man I know fairly well has been thinking about marrying a girl he knows, and the Araba cast Ifa for him and Ifa said that she had just gotten pregnant but he needs to not get angry about it. Then he said it was true! I have no idea who the father is (it could very well just be him, but Ifa didn’t say and I didn’t want to ask), but I could tell he was pretty upset by the news, mostly I think because he will have trouble paying for a baby.

Just yesterday I had my most interesting marriage proposal. This one was interesting not because the woman had a beard or anything like that, but because her husband was there! They had come because she had been having trouble having kids (The Araba had cast Ifa for her by proxy of her older brother and said that she couldn’t have kids), so they decided to come themselves and negotiate a price for making some sacrifices. I felt pretty bad for her, because the husband has another wife who apparently has had several children already and she feels a lot of pressure not from her husband in particular, but just in general. They said they will come back this week, so hopefully the Araba will be able to help them.

Also, I had completely forgotten about the man who was suffering from some kind of sickness but couldn't die, so I asked the Araba what happened to him and he told me that just about a week after we went there he died in his sleep. I thought this was a very interesting case because at first I thought it gave Ifa's stance on Euthenasia, but when I thought about it some more, I realized that the concept of Euthenasia doesn't quite apply. For a traditionalist every person has a time to die chosen by him or her in heaven/dictated by God, although life can get messy and things can happen to disrupt this. Since the appointed time is the time that one should die, in this man's case, there was something separating him from his destiny or appointed time, and the Araba was just helping him to set it right again. I suppose it's still Euthanasia in a sense, but from the traditional perspective, the ethical problem lies in prolonging life after it should end and not the other way around.

I’m getting close to the end of the Odu Ifa now, I think I have just 34 or so left. The Araba told me that whenever someone finishes studying all of the Odu Ifa there has to be a kind of celebration/sacrifice to Ifa and it’s quite a big deal. He said once I’m done he’ll call all the babalawos in town, print up a certificate for me and the whole nine yards. Fortunately I can just give him the money for everything and if there are sacrifices to be made he can do it since that’s not really my cup of tea. At the rate we’re going that might happen closer to the end of the month.

I’m hoping I’ll have a bit more time once I’m completely finished with all of the Odu Ifa to go around and interview either priests and priestesses of a few other deities to get stories about their respective Orisas, or maybe just a few people who know a lot of myths about them. Right now I have learned lots and lots of different stories but I’d like some more about some less prominent gods and goddesses. Well that’s all for now, I’m going to try to sleep a bit more and catch up on transcribing some of the verses the Araba taught me.

6.3 Owonrin-Were

The biggest news I have this week is that the lady the Araba and I have been treating for mental illness is essentially back to normal. It was really amazing, one day when we came she started speaking like a normal person and was asking questions about what she had been doing and started to cry because she realized what had been happening to her from the past almost 10 years I think. She started taking the medicine voluntarily because she knew it was helping her get better, and the Araba said that soon we will have to make another one for her to cure her completely. It has been really fascinating to me that all of this came about because when the Araba threw his opele for her family this sign came up. I find it equally amazing that somehow, somewhere along the line a babalawo must have figured out how that if you mix the ashes of a specific set of 3 kinds of leaves, the heads of a rooster and a hen, and some other ingredients I have written down, that after a few weeks it will clear some form of dementia from a person’s head. I’m curious to see what the next medicine will be.

Something funny happened yesterday as we were finishing up with this lady. A pastor from Lagos called the Araba and said he needed help with a woman in his church. I think it was because she was sick, but it could have been another problem. At any rate, I have always thought it was pretty funny that so many of these pastors usually come from far away towns to see Babalawos because they don’t want anyone to know that they are doing it. The politicians at least are fairly honest about their patronage of babalawos. There’s one in particular who is trying to get a post that the new governor has opened up by kicking out one of the PDP cronies who was stealing money. He saw us on the street one day, pulled his car over, gave the Araba some money, and then set up a meeting with him and a bunch of other people. The guy actually seems like a decent person, most people seem to like him, and he does have a pretty powerful babalawo working for him, so his odds are looking good.

I’m now almost three-quarters of the way through all of the Odu Ifa, which is a bit scary to me because there aren’t a lot left to study and it doesn’t seem like it has been that long. I think part of it might be that I have started learning them a bit more quickly since I am now able to understand all of the Yoruba in some of the verses and most of it in the others. I have also started to notice that each one of the signs has its own general meaning and when two are paired together the meaning is pretty clear. I can’t usually predict what the meaning will be given the two signs, but when I see the meanings, they usually tend to make sense. I realized that this is why they often describe them as children, just like how kids will get one set of genes from each parent and there are dominant and recessive genes which correspond to the right and left hand signs respectively. It’s really interesting to think that since these signs are supposed to contain all of life and that everything in life (especially it’s problems) are understood to be governed by some combination of the forces (I guess that’s the best word to use) represented in each one of the signs.

I also learned this week that the Araba was right about Oloye. He hadn’t really turned a corner and started getting serious about Ifa. He hasn’t come back to study since then, but only comes back on the days when the Araba worships his Ifa because he knows that I usually buy schapps and akara for him to give to Ifa then, and he wants to eat and drink some. On Friday the Araba purposefully left the house early to through Oloye for a loop because he knew he was going to try to mooch off of Ifa.

I had noticed before that the actual words that I wrote down for each Ifa verse would sometimes differ slightly from those that he would recite when I was recording him. I finally remembered to ask the Araba if I had been writing them down incorrectly or if that was just the way that it was, and he had a very interesting answer. He told me that there are some words of course that can never change, but most times when you recite a verse it will change slightly. He said the meaning will always be exactly the same, it will just have a slightly different appearance. Anyone who knows the verse will be able to recognize it even if a few words are changed here or there. I thought it was interesting because the way the Araba described it, it was very clear that the Ifa verse was not the words itself, but the meaning/story/ or account of a previous Ifa consultation that happened before. As such the way it is told may change slightly and I found it very interesting that it was supposed to change slightly as well. I’m not sure if all Babalawos treat Ifa this way as I was always under the impression that the verses were fixed and memorized word by word. I do like the idea, however, that words and imperfect human symbols, can never completely contain or express a more divine reality or message so by expressing it in various ways you get closer to the real meaning, like looking at an object from many different angles since just one vantage point is insufficient.

On the woman front, I had decided to tell them that I have a wife in the US to see if that would get them to leave me alone, but unfortunately for me, that doesn’t seem to be enough. One woman yesterday said that she was fine with being the second wife and that i should bring her and her kids back with me. I think now I might have to invoke another Odu Ifa (4.3 Idin-Wiri I think) that says the person for whom it is cast must never have more than one wife. It’s actually one of my favorites because it uses a very clever example to prove it’s point. It says whether you try to or don’t, you can never have more than one wife in your house because when light enters a room, darkness flees. I hope Idin Wiri can be my light to make these other women flee...

7.4 Obara-Bodi

My biggest piece of news this week was the fastest and most interesting marriage proposal yet. Lots of women have told me that they want to marry me, but there was one proposal this week that I don't think I will ever be able to forget. I never even got the girl's name, but she set a record by asking if I would marry her within 30 seconds of meeting me! What was memorable about this proposal however was not her speed and directness, it was the fact that she had some interesting facial hair. I don't know if even Ifa could have seen this one coming! To her credit, she was much nicer than the other women when I explained to her that I couldn't take her to the US and that I was not looking for a wife. I think the next time I come back to Nigeria I am just going to pretend to be married. It's usually the girls who have to do that, but I guess this is the 21st century... Interestingly enough there is an Odu Obara-Bodi that reminds me of love potions from Harry Potter. It is for people who have their sights set on a certain someone but are having no success (IE these women/me). I just hope they don't come to the Araba and have him make the prescribed sacrifice that is supposed to open the road to the relationship!

The other big piece of news for me was that I finally worked myself into the ground. I figured it was just a matter of time, but it caught up with me. This Monday I didn't feel too well, but being myself i decided to man up and work through it. By Monday night I was worried that I might have contracted malaria, so I took my first day off on Tuesday. Sure enough that did the trick and I'm all better now, but I'm going to watch myself a bit more carefully and try not to work quite so hard. I've told myself that before though, so we'll see if it actually happens.

I'm not sure if it was this week or last week, but there was a person who came to have Ifa cast for her while the Araba's other student was with us. This guy, we call him Oloye which means title-holder or chief, hasn't been a really serious student and has only recently finished the first 16 major Odu (I think I'm somewhere around 170 now). So the Araba likes to mess with him and the people who come for divination by asking Oloye if he can interpret the Opele. The answer is invariably no, and then the Araba asks me. I can't always get it, but this particular time was Ogbe-Alaara. I told the Araba that it meant she is either living outside of her father's town and struggling to get by, or she's having trouble with enemies or both and then explained what she would have to do. Then everyone laughed. At any rate, I'm not sure if the Araba's teasing light a fire under Oloye or if he got tired of riding his Okada around, or chasing women, but he has recently decided to start getting more serious. The Araba is skeptical that it will last more than a few days, but I try to encourage him.

Finally, as some of you may know, there is an big presidential election coming up here in Nigeria. As I am a Nigerian citizen, and of age for the first time, I have decided to do my civic duty and vote! There has been this big push by the INEC to register as many people as possible for these elections, so I went (partially out of patriotism and partly out of curiosity) to one of the stations to get signed up. It was really neat to see how simply they were able to do it. All it took was a printer, a laptop with a webcam, and a fingerprint scanner, and in about 15 minutes you could be registered to vote! The less neat part was also how easy it was. I brought my passport because I figured they would need some kind of documentation, but all I had to do was give them a name and an address! I now understand all of the protest from the opposition parties like ANC and ANPP about how while admirable, this registration push could possibly be doing more harm than good. I can easily see how an organization could register people without them knowing and cast votes for them or possibly even make people up. We'll have to see how it turns out. As for me, I haven't made up my mind about for whom I will vote, so if any of you have your own opinions (mainly pointed at the other Nigerians, but anyone really) I'm all ears!

Wahala Ti Po Ju

The funniest thing happened yesterday, apart from ManU losing to Wolves... I came to Ibadan to visit Kyle and we went to the zoo on campus. The zoo was ok, but at one point we went into the primate house and were staring at a chimpanzee, and it really didn’t like Kyle at all. After making noises at him, the chimp grabbed something off of the floor and flung it at Kyle! Fortunately, Kyle ducked, and I almost couldn’t believe that the chimp had actually flung his dung! I had always heard stories about monkeys throwing poo at people, but it was very different seeing it in person. It’s highly entertaining, as long as it is not getting thrown at you...

Everything else that has happened this week pales a bit in comparison, but it was still pretty interesting. The mad lady has been getting better everyday. Now to make her take her medicine, we have to go to the places where she buys food and ask the people who make it to put it inside, because she is too together for us to try to sneak it in ourselves. Just recently she started going out of the house to go buy things that she wants, which never used to happen before. The Araba told me that it may take some months for the illness to completely clear from her head. We’ll see how long it takes.

There was another family who came to Baba’s house because their father had been almost dead for months now, but was not able to die. They said he had taken some kind of traditional medicine to stop others from being able to kill him, but now it is stopping him from dying when it was his time. So the Araba cast Ifa for his children and they made a sacrifice. The Araba collected some leaves and made a kind of paste with them and we went to their house. When we got there, the Araba told them to leave a snail in the corner of a room, and then we went in to see the man. It was honestly the most miserable I have ever seen anyone in my life. The man already looked like a corpse. The people in his family told us that we had to leave quickly because a pastor was coming and they said the pastor would want to kill us, but it was pretty clear that they just didn’t want him to know that they had called a Babalawo in for help. Apparently they had been working with the pastor for a long time, but since neither he nor the hospital had been able to do anything, they decided to try the Araba. So the Araba told them what to do with the paste (they had to make nine small little cuts on the top of his head and rub the paste into them), then we left so they wouldn’t be in an awkward situation. They called the next day and said that the medicine was working because their father’s face had changed completely. They didn’t say anymore than that, and we haven’t heard from them since, but I really do hope it worked. I felt so bad for the poor man...

At home, Samuel has discovered that I know the answers to most of his homework questions so pretty much everyday without fail, he comes into my room and tries to get me to give them to him. Since I worked in a classroom of kids of the same age in Cambridge, the kind of work they are doing really worries me. He’s supposed to be going to one of the best schools around, but that’s a bit worrisome. At first I thought he wasn’t trying too hard to figure things out for himself, but then I realized that usually he either hadn’t been taught what he needed to know, or even worse, sometimes he has been taught incorrectly. I’ve looked at a lot of his homework, and sometimes the teachers will have marked correct answers as incorrect, and left incorrect ones as is. Just this past week I had to teach him French pronouns, how to do long division, find LCMs, and everything in between, mostly I think because it wasn’t really taught to him the first time. I can’t really blame him for just wanting to have the answers to things when the explanations either aren’t there or don’t make any sense (especially if they’re wrong). Sometimes I feel bad that I can’t spend more time with him working on his homework, but I know I don’t have enough time for both of our work! It does really get me worried about the Nigerian educational system though...

Another problem here, for which there are several Ifa verses, usually comes with painted eyebrows and fake nails. Since we’ve been spending a bit more time outside the past few weeks, the Araba and I have been running into more and more ladies who are in or around their houses. The Araba has told me several times that nobody will ever see him with a lady-friend because there’s too much trouble there, and also because his Odu Ifa says he cannot have any more than 3 wives. That confused me at first because my wife-count for him was up to 5, but I must have made a mistake somewhere because he assured me it is only 3. At any rate, we run into a lot of these ladies, and like most other people, they all beg me to take them to the US, but some of them get really angry when I tell them that it’s simply not possible for me to do that. Most of them also either ask the Araba if they can marry me (to which I always say no), or sometimes they ask me. I usually try to laugh it off, but they are really persistent so I have to be frank sometimes and say I’m not interested. They also are pretty shameless in asking me to buy things for them, and often because it’s the only way I can get away from them, sometimes I give in and just give them some money to leave me alone.

The Araba usually thinks it’s kind of funny, but recently I think he has even realized that it’s a bit too much. Also, for all his caution with women, there is one who got him into a lot of trouble. One lady who used to be his friend in Ode-Omu, his hometown, needed to have a funeral in November, but didn’t have the money. Because the Araba is a nice guy, he just gave her all the money I paid him one week, and then called one of his friends who is a bank manager to see if he could give her a loan. Since the lady owns a beer parlor, the manager and she agreed that she could take a loan of 40,000 Naira after she made lots of money over Christmas and New Year’s, she would return 50,000 Naira (a little over $300). The Araba signed on as a guarantor for her, and everything seemed to be ok, until January ended and she hadn’t come back with the money. The Araba called her several times, but she refused to come. She didn’t say that she didn’t have the money, she just didn’t want to give it up. So the police came to the Araba’s house and said they would come back and arrest him if he didn’t get the money to the bank somehow. To make a long story short, the Araba paid the 50,000 himself and has been trying to get her to pay him back ever since, but she hasn’t showed up yet... I always knew that people struggled in Nigeria and that some people would always try to cheat others, but this one really surprised me. It has definitely taught me to be very careful with letting my money out to people here. Thank God I am J+

7.12 Obara-Oturupon

This past week the whole issue with the lie someone told about the Araba finally got settled. The King called everyone back to the palace to finish it, but the guy who accused the Araba of making charms against the person who owned the property never showed up because I think he realized that everyone already knew the truth. So we waited around for about an hour at the palace, but when he never showed up, we just left. It was incredibly anti-climactic...

I learned about one Odu Ifa that made me laugh a little bit on Monday because I think the Araba has assumed that it is mine. This one is Obara Oturupon, and if it is cast for someone, it means that (s)he should keep to certain very strict taboos, two of which are abstaining from eating dog meat, and the other is from drinking palm wine. I think the Araba associates it with me because I never drink alcohol and I don’t eat meat. Apparently, if this were my figure, and I broke one of these taboos my body would turn against me and possibly swell up. The funniest part about that was that I think I may have accidentally eaten some meat in something the day before I learned that figure and my body definitely turned against me...

We also went back to see the lady who has some kind of mental illness. The medicine seems to have been working well because every time she has taken it, she has passed out, and now she looks a lot better. Before she looked pretty scary, I can’t lie, but now she looks almost normal. Something in her face has definitely changed since she started taking the medicine. She also has become more together, as she realized that we were probably sneaking the medicine into her food, a fact that had completely gone over her head before. I’m not sure how we’ll convince her to take the medicine now that she’s more lucid, but hopefully she’ll be lucid enough to know that it’s good for her!

There is also this lady who lives right across from the Araba who is deathly thin and never has any food. I usually give her money every week or so just to make sure she can eat something healthy, but the terrible part is that she lives in a house with relatives who are fairly well-to-do. I never understood why they would let this woman starve while they were all fine, but the Araba finally explained it to me. Apparently this woman’s father owned a large plot of land, and since she his closest living relative she is the legal owner. Her relatives are letting her starve because they want to inherit the land once she dies! I didn’t want to believe it when he told me, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense, and the Araba has dealt with them before and says they are bad news (even though he’s always really polite to them).

On a much happier note, I got to see my Dad this week. He finished his course in Abuja last week and came back to Lagos to see a few people before leaving for the US. On Thursday, he and my uncles Segun and Seun came to Ibadan to see my grandparents’ graves and I came from Ife to see them at my grandparents house. I didn’t get to see them for too long, but it is really nice to see all of them together again. It doesn’t happen too often anymore.

Finally, there is this Al-Haja who has a store on one of the roads I take to get to the Araba’s house who is one of his good friends. Sometimes I stop by there to buy Akara (I guess the best way to describe it is beans that have been smashed and then deep fried in oil). I don’t always like Akara because it can taste very different depending on who it is that fries it, but I think I am hooked on hers. I think it also helps that she always gives me the biggest ones and slips a few extra in when I buy them. I am going to have to learn how she makes hers so I can copy it after I have left because it’s really just that good. If I perfect it, feel free to ask me to make some for you when I go back to the US because I’d love to have an excuse to eat it again (provided it tastes like hers...)

3.8 Owonrin-Okanran

3.8 Iwori-Okanran

So I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I got to meet the Ogunsua (King) of Modakeke, but the bad news was the way that I met him. I sent the Araba some money for a new year’s Ifa festival that he had to put on as the highest ranking Babalawo in the town and he told me he used it to buy several crates of drinks for all of the other Babalawo. The problem was that another person in the neighborhood who also sells drinks got angry that he didn’t spend all the money at his shop. As a result he told this one guy is the landlord of some property where the Araba and his friend had a shop that he had made some magic charms to stop the landlord from building anything there. So after a whole lot of trouble, it became clear that the Araba had done no such thing, so we all had to go to the palace of the Ogunsua and tell him what had happened. The whole thing got resolved pretty easily, but the Araba’s friend, a tailor and a really nice guy, had to find a new place to set up shop.

When I heard all about the trouble I told the Araba that Iwori-Okanran was the most appropriate Odu for the situation, and he laughed pretty hard and said, “Very good!” Iwori Okanran warns that the person will be involved in some kind of trial and should beware of people (especially people (s)he thinks are friends) because they will come into some sort of conflict. The Araba handled it pretty well though, he said it made no sense to have done something like that, and insisted that his good name could get him through the lie, and he was right! At any rate, we’ll probably go back so I can introduce myself to the king under better circumstances.

In other news, I’m about halfway through all of the 256 Odu Ifa. I think I’m somewhere around 125, but I forget the exact number. It’s gone by really quickly, and I think I’ve really started to get the hang of what a Babalawo does. I always know exactly when to get the Araba’s divining chain before he asks me, I’ve gotten used to all the different tools he uses in making medicines, where to get them in town, and I even recognize the Odu when he cast his chain about as fast as he does. A few days ago was the first time I think I completely understood everything that happened when a client came and it was pretty cool.

This guy came from another town, and was talking about how his sister was having trouble having children. Apparently she had tried making some sacrifices to her ori (best translated as destiny or personal god), but she still had not had any success. The Araba cast Ifa for him, and I recognized the Odu that came up. It was Idin-Osa which I like to call the Odu for the conundrum of the modern woman. It says that there is a woman who cannot have children and is doing very well in business. It also says that God will not give her children until she takes it easy with her workload. She works too late, and is possibly a bit too concerned with business, all of which will have to change for her to have a successful family. To make a long story short, the guy started telling us all about how his sister was pretty rich, but was stingy, I think because she wanted to use every last cent to make more money. We’ll have to see if she comes to make a sacrifice or not.

Another interesting thing that happened was that last Sunday I think, the Araba cast the figure Owonrin-Iwori also called Owonrin-Were (were means crazy person). This was really cool because I got to learn all about it this past week, or the week before, I forget. At any rate, I helped the Araba make the medicine for the person who indeed had a mental illness of some kind, and we took it over to her. I have to admit that she was a bit scary looking, and she wouldn’t take the medicine the first day, so we came back on another day and snuck it into some food that we had bought for her. The Araba told me that the way it worked was that the medicine would make her fall into a deep sleep, and while she was sleeping it would clear the illness out of her head. She didn’t want us to stick around long enough to see her pass out, but after she had taken a bit of the food, she started nodding her head. I’m going to ask if we can go back on Monday and see how she’s doing.

I’ve been trying pretty hard to catch up in memorizing the meanings of all of the different Odu, and I’m almost a quarter of the way there now, and whenever I get bored here (especially when the power goes out) it’s kind of fun to cast my Opele and think about the different stories associated with each Odu. I hope I’ll be able to fit all of them in my head, because sometimes after I finish studying them, it literally does feel like it’s full and nothing else will go in. One last interesting thing that has happened to me is that the second person in a few months has literally chased me down assuming that I am a pastor and harassed me about doing something for him. The most recent guy said he didn’t know what he wanted me to do for him, but there was something that I had to do. I think I’ll pray for him, but maybe next time that happens I’ll just tell the guy I’m a Babalawo and see if that solves the problem!

Who's Your Daddy?

Happy New Year everyone! For starters, let me say that yes, I know who my father is, and this time around he came with me to Nigeria. We only spent a few days together because he had to head off to Abuja to teach for three weeks, so after he left I came back to Ife. Once I got here, I put all of my things away, and went back to the Araba the very next day. He was really happy to see me, especially since I brought a brand new blackberry for him (Nigerians all seem to have an obsession with hi-tech phones). We’ve been making a lot of medicines for people recently and it’s really funny to me to watch him grinding up leaf ashes and bird feathers with two rocks right after playing around with the features on his blackberry. I guess it’s a good example of leapfrogging (thanks Ellie!).

The day before I came, some people came to see the Araba and he cast the figure Owonrin-Were (Were means crazy person in Yoruba) for them, which in this case meant that they had someone who had some kind of mental illness in the family, and not only did I get to learn about that figure this week, but I got to help him make the medicine. It was pretty wild to be honest, and very tiring. I get why the medicines are usually so expensive. I mostly just pounded the ingredients together, which was a bit awkward for me at first since the two most important ingredients were chicken and rooster heads! At any rate, I got a good workout in, and Baba Araba said that I could go with him to give it to the person. This should be really fascinating because the medicine is supposed to knock the person out within 10 minutes and then when the patient comes to, whatever the illness is should start to leave the brain. We should do it this coming week.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but the Araba has one son who is a lot of trouble. The Araba tells me about how despite his best efforts the kid just seems to be no good. Well sometime in November or early December, we found out that he got a girl pregnant, and since he is still (supposed to be) in high school he doesn’t have a job or any way to earn money, so the Araba reluctantly gave him his Okada to try to earn some kind of a living. That means that whenever we need to collect leaves, roots, or anything else for medicine, we almost always have to walk everywhere, which gets really tiring now that the sun is so intense.

I have also been playing a lot of Ayo (A Yoruba board game like Mancala) recently. When I came back to Ife, Dr. Ajibade’s son Samuel was getting pretty restless because there aren’t a lot of people his age around, he’s the only boy, and when there’s no electricity there isn’t a whole lot to do in the house. So I taught him to play Ayo, and ever since he wants to play Ayo 24/7 (except when he’s watching some DVDs I bought for him since he did well on his end of term exams). I’ve really enjoyed teaching him to play, the only problem is he wants to play literally all the time, including when I’m sleeping or working! We’ll find some kind of balance though I’m sure. Interestingly enough I learned a story

So something very funny happened this week. I had noticed a long time ago that when casting Ifa or making medicine or prayers for a person, the Araba always calls the person by his or her first name and then the son or daughter of his/her mother. So I would be Ayodeji omo (child of) Anna. I had meant to ask him why it was always the mother’s name and not the father’s name but had just forgotten. In my mind I was trying to come up with some deep theological or cosmological reason for this, and I had some far-fetched theories, but the Araba’s answer was much simpler, logical, and hilarious in my opinion. He said that in theory you could use either name, but quite often if you use the name of the father, the prayers or power of the medicine doesn’t reach the intended person. Not picking up on what he meant, I asked him why, and he spelled it out very plainly for me. He said, because there’s never any doubt who is the mother of the child she carried it, but far too often the person you think is the father actually isn’t! After he said that, all of us started laughing, both at the idea and the fact that I didn’t get it right away!