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.
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