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...
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