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...)
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
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!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
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!
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!
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