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!
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