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!