7.9 Obara-Egun Tan

Sorry I didn’t post an update last week, but after I explain the Odu Ifa for the past two weeks (and also the last one!) it will all make sense. I chose Obara-Egun Tan because in this Odu, Orunmila leaves Ile-Ife and goes to take a bath in a river, and enjoys himself so much he looses track of time and actually almost drowns! Fortunately I haven’t drowned (although to this day Babalawos aren’t allowed to enter that river for that reason), but since I have been at my grandparents’ house on Agbeja street in Ibadan with very little to do everyday, I have lost track of time just like Orunmila.

Last week I picked Kyle up from UI, but Aunty Bimbo still had some things to do in Ibadan, so we’ve just been here whiling away the time. I’ve been using this time to finish transcribing all of the Odu Ifa that I hadn’t gotten around to yet, and also compile and edit all of the stories I have learned. I have finished a draft of the first book, about all of the major gods, goddesses, and important Yoruba stories, and even though I’m a bit sick of reading it right now, I think it’s pretty good! The other book, which contains practically all of the stories I have learned from Ifa chapter-by-chapter, is much, much longer, and since electricity is scarce, I haven’t been able to finish that one yet, but hopefully soon.

I also thought about choosing one of my favorite Odu, Owonrin Dagbun for this week because it contains a story about Orunmila and the Yoruba game of Ayo (very similar to Mancala, just with different rules). I bought my Ayo board in Ibadan a long time ago, and since there isn’t light most of the time, I have played a lot of Ayo with Mama Ibeji’s kids, especially Bidemi, the youngest. Since I still have some Naira left, I decided to go out and buy another Ayo board for her so she could keep playing after I left. The interesting part of this story is the man in the neighborhood who sold me the Ayo board is also named Ogunnaike and went to the same school that my grandfather attended! He couldn’t believe that I bore the same surname, but since he is also Ijebu, I couldn’t get him to give me a discount on the Ayo board... Like they say, it’s easier to get blood from a stone than money from an Ijebu.

Since the tailors in Lagos are more expensive and all seem to take forever to finish sewing clothes, Aunty Bimbo put me in touch with Uncle Seun’s tailor here in Ibadan. I went with Kyle to buy a ton of fabric for myself, Damini, and some friends, and the tailor came by to collect it all. Since a full outfit for a man here takes 4 yards of fabric, and they only sell this type in 5 or 10 yards, I had an extra 2 years of several different colors left over. So I asked the tailor to make some dress shirts for me out of the remaining 2 yards and I also asked him to put some of the Odu Ifa that govern my life on the sleeves. He’s bringing the clothes back today, so we’ll see how well they turn out, but if all works well, they could be really nice. Since the divining chain or Opele has two “arms” each with one sign for each Odu, I put the sign for the right “arm” of the Opele on the right sleeve, and the sign for the left “arm” on the left sleeve or arm of the shirt. I think I may have frightened the tailor a bit when I started drawing the Ifa figures and reciting their names, but I think I paid well enough that he didn’t mind. The colors also have something to do with each sign, and weren’t chosen randomly, but you’ll have to ask me about those if/when you see me wearing one.

To come full circle, in Obara Egun Tan, Orunmila gets out of the river, but he decides to go back once more and meets his wife Olokun there. She loves him so much that she begs him not to leave here again, so he says farewell to everyone in Ife and leaves to be with her since he can’t stand to see her so sad. I hope I’ll come back to Ife at some point in the future (and some people say Orunmila did come back as well), I’ll be crossing bodies of water not swimming in them, but I will be meeting my own Olokun in Israel this coming Thursday.

This is the last post, at least for this adventure, so I want to say thank-you to everyone who has been following what I’ve been up to here. While I’ve been looking back through all of the stories I’ve learned (and everything else as well), it’s difficult for me to believe that I knew none of it just 9-10 months ago. It has certainly been a great, fascinating, and of course legendary experience for me from treating crazy people, to witnessing traditional euthanasia, to being paid to tell someone’s future, to hearing the voice of a god, and much much more, and I hope I was able to convey at least a little bit of that to you. Also don’t forget to get a copy of the book when it comes out hopefully in the next year or so! You’ll have the inside scoop on the origins of all of the stories and how they came to be there!

3.0 Iwori Meji

The Odu Ifa for this week is Iwori Meji because in that Odu there’s a story about how Orunmila left Ile-Ife for heaven because of something one of his sons did, and since I’m leaving Ife, I thought it was appropriate (although I’m in Ibadan and not heaven, and I don’t have any sons who can upset me...) Kyle came to visit me for about two days from Ibadan and we just went around campus, and on either Teusday or Monday we helped the Araba get the wheels rolling for some work he wants to do in Brazil.

A few years ago, a man in Brazil who runs a temple for the worship of various Yoruba deities brought the Araba to Sao Paulo to do some work with them, casting Ifa, initiating people into Ifa, making sacrifices, and they really loved him. The Araba made over $5,000 or about 8 million Naira while there, but the Yoruba guy who took him everywhere and did all of the translation for him stole the money and disappeared! So since then the Araba has wanted to go back to Brazil, but he doesn’t speak Protuguese so it was impossible to communicate with the people in Sao Paulo. So last week my friend Wale said he knew someone on campus who had lived in Brazil and spoke portuguese fluently, so I arranged for us to meet and call the Araba’s friend in Sao Paulo to see what could be done. The first time we tried on Monday, we couldn’t get a hold of the guy in charge, so I set up another day (this past Thursday) to try again. That morning the Araba cast some kola nuts after feeding Ifa and asked what was going to happen, and Ifa said that that day we would get to talk to Leo (the man in Sao Paulo) and that we would start the whole process of going to Brazil. Fortunately Ifa was right!

I was worried we might not get him because when I bought some credit for the Araba to use his phone to call, the network was terrible and we couldn’t call an number at all, but right before we tried to call Leo, it opened up, and no more than 5 minutes after we were done talking, the network went bad again. It was really wild. So now Leo is trying to get a group of people together who will pay for a ticket to bring the Araba to Brazil to do some more work for them, and apparently Ifa said that the Araba will also do some work with some other groups in Brazil because they will like what happened with Leo so much. The Araba was very very happy about all of this because it’s been bugging him for a long time that he lost so much money, and that it would be so easy for him to make some more, especially now that he needs it to finish building his house.

On Thursday I believe, I witnessed a traditional version of a pregnancy test! Someone I know had been having trouble with his girlfriend and went to talk to the Araba about it. Apparently it had happened a few times before, and the Araba told him that there was no need to go to the hospital to get a paternity test done because Ifa said that he was the father of his girlfriend’s baby. The poor guy just wanted to be sure, so he kept asking Ifa, and Ifa kept saying the same thing( by “saying” I mean the Araba would cast Ifa and the message on the opele was always the same). I found it to be very fascinating, and certainly cheaper and more private than a paternity test would be. At any rate, Ifa told my friend that everything would be ok, and that his girlfriend would come back, and she called him about a few minutes after we left baba’s house. I hope everything works out for them, but it sounds like that’s what Ifa said would happen.

A few weeks ago when I was with the Araba one of his “aburos/junior brothers” who I think is actually his nephew, or maybe just a friend in Abuja called to let him know that his refrigerator had been stolen when he took it to be repaired at a shop. The Araba consulted Ifa while they were on the phone and told him that the fridge was still on the premises, and that the people who said it was stolen were not exactly lying because they were the ones who stole it. He then told the guy that Ifa said he would get it back, but he might have to make a sacrifice to do it. Unfortunately the guy was dragging his feet about paying the Araba to make the sacrifice for him, and since the Araba really wanted to do it, I gave him some money to get it started. Just this past week, the man called back to say that someone had told him that he saw the fridge in the security office of the shop, and he got mad and barged in. Sure enough, his fridge had been there all along. The guy was so happy and promised to send the Araba more money.

On Thursday I went back to Osogbo to do my last round of interviews, this time on the god my great-great-grandfather used to worship, Ogun. Wale, of course, knew the head Ogun priest, so I met up with him and we went to the Ogun shrine there so I could ask some questions. While there are still a few gods/goddesses that have proved more elusive than I had hoped, I think I have a very good grip on the major myths about them now, because for the past few interviews, whenever I was told various myths, for many or even most of them, I already knew it, if only in a different form. The differences are often as interesting as the stories themselves, so I’m always happy to hear different versions, but it was reaffirming to know that all of the information I was receiving wasn’t terribly foreign. After it was all over I bought him some beer and gave him some money, and he was so thrilled, he kept thanking Wale for bringing me to him.

After it was all over, since I don’t know when the next time I will be in Osogbo will be, I asked Wale if we could go to Osun’s grove since it was only a few minutes away. The grove is wonderful, and I wish I had made some more time before to go all around it, but I’m glad I made it there all the same. Since everything inside the grove is believed to embody the goddess herself, people aren’t allowed to cut the trees or kill the animals, so there were monkeys running all over the place and eating the food people had used for sacrifices. It was really interesting for me to see some of the places explained or described in myths and Ifa narratives there, and while we were walking around I was telling Wale how certain statues came to be in certain places, in whose image they were made, and in which Odu it came be found.

As yesterday was my last full day in Ife, and was conveniently also Ose Ifa (the sacred day of Ifa in the traditional Yoruba week), I went to the Araba’s house for the last time to give him some schnapps and akara to give to Ifa and he said a bunch of prayers for me and my whole family. Then I just hung out with him for a few hours, and took him out to a bar to buy him a bottle of Heineken (his favorite beer) one last time. Maybe it’s because I have gotten so used to coming and going to his house, but it didn’t really feel real when I got up to go finally and rode off. Somehow I think I still expect to go back there after spending the better part of each day with him since September 2010! Who knows, maybe I’ll see him again sometime soon! Well, actually, Ifa probably knows, but I know I don’t.

I had to pack up all of my things this morning because yesterday everybody and his brother wanted me to come see them to say goodbye, and by the time night fell I was really beat. Shortly after noon today, Mr. Toyin came to pick me up at Dr. Saah’s house, I said my final goodbyes to his family and we left for Ibadan. Before we left, I stopped by the store of my Igbo friend Stem because he was really sad to see me go, and he kept telling me that I had to come back. Now I’m with Aunty Bimbo and Gbebemi in my grandparents house on Agbeja street, and I’m not sure exactly when we’re going to return to Lagos, but my guess is Monday or Wednesday since the last round of elections is on Teusday.

Right now my plan is to keep transcribing some more Ifa verses and also start piecing together some of the stories I want to put in the book. I’ve been looking forward to this part because I think I must have learned well over 200 stories about 20 gods/goddesses and more about different people, towns and animals and seeing them all (or most of them) together in the same will be very interesting. I still have about another two and a half weeks to do so, so I’m sure it shouldn’t be much of a problem. That’s all for now, I hope everyone has a happy Easter!

4.14 Irosun-Rete

I just got accredited for voting! I went to my polling place to get accredited to vote at noon here, so in just about an hour I’ll leave to do just that! I’m really looking forward to seeing how the whole process works and who gets the most votes (although I don’t think I’ll need to ask Ifa to know who will win). I chose Irosun Agbe for this post because there is one former senator here in Osun state who really did nothing but steal and has been paying people to vote for him, paying other people to intimidate other people into voting for him, and a bunch of other things too, but he was beaten very soundly last week by the opposition candidate. This is more or less what Ifa says will happen in that figure if you are greedy and have loose morals, a lesser known or smaller person will take your place even though you hold a higher position.

On a more personal note, I am very close to having everything I need for my book! This week I went to Osogbo a few times with Wale and also did some interviews here in Ife. I had a lot of fun with the Babalawo in Osogbo because whenever he would start telling stories from Ifa, he would ask me if I knew the Odu from which they came and almost every time I could tell him the answer. I found that even when I knew the Odu and the story as well, when he told it to me, it was always different from the one that I knew. This kind of confusion happened a lot in Ife, and one day in particular one woman told me that a woman named Moremi was married to another Yoruba mythic/historical figure named Oranmiyan and that she never had to sacrifice a child, and later on another priest told me that she didn’t marry Oranmiyan and that she did sacrifice her child. Both swore vehemently that if anyone says otherwise, (s)he is lying.

That has made figuring out which versions of stories to include a bit difficult, but it has made me pay more attention to the stories to try to understand them and their messages better since I believe these stories were mostly modeled on real events but created to convey a message or teach a more universal lesson or truth. I think next week if I have time I am going to try to sit down and try to piece together all of the stories and sort through all of the various versions I have heard, because honestly many of them are a bit of a jumble in my head! I also don’t want to just mix stories together because I think most of them are told in a certain (or divergent) ways because of the meanings that they carry, so I wouldn’t want to dilute, mix, or confuse any of the symbolism in them.

I have also come to realize that even if I stay here for another year, I will never be able to be able to write a completely comprehensive book on all of the Yoruba deities because the more I learn about these gods, the more gods I learn about! Also, even though many people may know about a certain deity, sometimes I have quite a bit of trouble finding anyone who can speak with a good level of certainty about him/her, how (s)he came to earth, how (s)he left, what (s)he did, etc.

The guy who has been taking me around to see all of these people, Wale, is a real character. Everywhere we go, there seems to be a woman who is upset with him, and his phone is always ringing because he has always promised someone that he would be somewhere an hour ago even though he might never actually get there. The other day we left the shrine of Oluorogbo in Ife (I never knew this, but apparently this deity created an indigenous form a writing a long time ago!) and right after the priest was trying to convince me to make a sacrifice and take a title from him, this woman ran up to the car and started yelling about how Wale hasn’t been calling her. Then the next day we drove past another one, and he kept getting calls from yet another one who was begging him to come to her house. He says women are going to kill him, and I think he could have a full-time job just trying to manage that aspect of his life. It all made me very glad that I haven’t let any of the women who have asked me to marry them get too close. Speaking of which, I had another record broken yesterday. I had a marriage proposal from a 50 or 60 something year old woman propose to me, which is definitely the oldest yet. Most of them usually aren’t much older than 35. At any rate, thanks to Wale, I know I am going to keep that part of my life under control!

Eji Ogbe (Part Two)

It’s tough for me to imagine that everything that happened this week actually happened in just one week! I guess the biggest news here is that the elections got pushed back again, so the senatorial elections happened yesterday and not a week ago as planned. At first when the elections got moved back to Monday, I thought it was because the INEC (Independent National Election Committee) knew about some plans certain politicians had for disrupting the voting in certain areas (I know one candidate in Osun state who has been paying people 50,000 Naira each to intimidate voters, snatch ballot boxes and that kind of thing), but when it got pushed back again to this Saturday, I’m beginning to wonder if there really were just some logistical issues. At any rate, the elections happened yesterday with only a few reports of violence in some states, and at least here on campus the guy everyone knows to be a rogue got less than a tenth as many votes as his ACN opponent, which gives me some hope. We’ll see what happens next week with the presidential elections!

So this week instead of working with the Araba, I have been going to Osogbo with a guy I know here to collect more stories from some priests there. The first place we went was to a priest of Osanyin (the god of herbs and medicine) because Osanyin is popular enough that I’ll want him in the book, but not so common that you can find his priests everywhere like you could a babalawo. Anyway that interview was one of the most wild things that has ever happened to me. Since he is a priest of Osanyin he “has Osanyin” in a corner in his room (there are two myths about why that is the case, but you’ll have to read the book when it comes out to find out why), which means the objects that embody and represent Osanyin are put there. The amazing part about it was that the priest put on a special necklace and was asking Osanyin some questions, and when he shook a rattle, everyone in the room could hear Osanyin answer him! It wasn’t a regular human voice, but a kind of high-pitched squeaky kind of voice, and I could almost pick out the words it was saying in Yoruba. Apparently Osanyin said it was my destiny to do this project and that the priest should help me with it. I can’t really give any explanation for how we heard the voice because there was nothing “alive” in the corner, and the priest couldn’t have been making the noise because sometimes they were both talking at the same time. It was a bit freaky I have to admit, but definitely fascinating.

I also went to interview a priestess of Osun at the palace in Osogbo, but she and her brother got really greedy when they saw me and wanted me to give them a really exorbitant amount of money, so we left them alone and went to see another babalawo that my friend Wale knows really well. It made me think of a time way back in September when the Araba told me that I should stay close to Ifa because Ifa was going to look out for me and make sure I got what I needed because this guy is amazing. I of course give him something for his time, but unlike the other guys he never asked for a cent and knows infinitely more than the priestess did. He helped me out so much that the plan now is just to go back to him and see how far I can get with him, because he might be able to tell me everything I need to know.

It has been very interesting hearing more stories and Ifa verses from Olaifa (the babalawo in Osogbo) because many are similar but slightly different from the ones I have learned from the Araba and elsewhere. He said something really insightful that I think will probably put in the introduction to the book. Roughly translated he said, “If you were to ask about me from 4 people in the neighborhood, none of them would lie, but they would all tell you something at least slightly different about me. If you took what just one person said, you wouldn’t have a great idea of who I am, but if you took what all of them said together then you’d have a much more complete picture.” I’ve always been very interested in this kind of contradictory but conciliatory aspect of Yoruba culture and it was really neat to hear him say that.

I went back to visit the Araba on Friday and he showed me the developed pictures of him and me on my “graduation” along with one of all of the babalawos who were there too. He is really proud of them and hung them up on his wall already. Maybe it was just me being self-centered, but I hadn’t completely realized how much having me around had affected the Araba. I think I was so focused on how much he had taught me that I didn’t know that I had helped him out a lot as well. When I visited him, he told me that nothing was really going on anymore and he hadn’t really had any big customers so money was really tight. He of course was still giving money out so other people wouldn’t go hungry, but I found out that he was having some trouble finding enough food for his whole family too. I think I didn’t realize it before because while I was working with him I would pay him regularly and if I was around I always tried to pay for whatever little things I could. I gave him some extra money to help see him through elections, and in a strange way even though I was really sad that things are so tough for him, I was happy that I was at least able to give him something in return. I still think I may have gotten the better end of the bargain, since knowledge and wisdom are certainly worth more than money, but at least the money counted for something!

I’m going to go back to Osogbo on Monday to interview the babalawo there again, but I’m getting very close to having everything I need to the book and I’m hoping that by week’s end I’ll be able to just start editing and compiling!

15.2 Ose-Yeku

Sorry I haven't posted in a few weeks, things got fairly busy and interesting, which i guess makes it more of a shame that I didn't write it all up! The Odu-Ifa I chose for this post is Ose-Yeku, the Odu for taking a title or chieftaincy. If you're familiar with what's going on in Nigeria right now, you'll know that elections start today, so I thought it might be appropriate, but more importantly, I had my graduation of sorts with the Araba this past week. I'm trying to upload the official picture we took of me receiving my certification as a Babalawo from him, so I hope it works. Whenever a Babalawo finishes learning all of the Odu-Ifa, a special sacrifice is made to Ifa, and of course some money is paid to the Babalawo who did the teaching for each of the Odu. Since I'm not technically a practicing Babalawo, I just gave the Araba money to make the sacrifice on his own, but I did buy a lot of beer and schnapps for the Araba and some of his Babalawo-friends who all came on Wednesday to celebrate with me.

So now I still try to go to the Araba's house everyday to ask him a few more questions about Yoruba religion and Ifa, but mostly we have just been hanging around his house and helping people who come to him with problems. Starting this coming Tuesday I am going to go to Osogbo with a man named Wale I met here on campus who said he knows priests and priestesses there who can give me all of the information and stories that I need, so it looks like for the two weeks or so that are left for me I'll be interviewing priests and priestesses of several deities instead. I'm really looking forward to learning all of these things from them!

Dr. Ajibade had to leave for Germany on a fellowship this past friday, so I moved into the boy's quarters of another professor I know, Dr. Saah from Cameroon. The room is really interesting because he uses it as his recording studio and music practice room, so I'm surrounded by guitars, basses, and a keyboard! It's also been very good for my French because I've noticed that I have slowly been forgetting things like when to use the subjunctif, but since he only speaks French to me, it's all starting to come back.

Even with all of this the most exciting thing that happened was Ellie coming to visit! She was only here for about 4 days but we got to do a whole lot. Unfortunately the father of one of Uncle Seun's friends died, and in Yorubaland you have to return to the person's hometown to bury him/her, so we went out to Ekitiland (the far east of Yorubaland for the party!) We got to drive through lots of different parts of Yorubaland including Ife! All of the people at the party loved Ellie, and she got "sprayed" (given a lot of money for dancing) a lot by the people there. There were several older ladies there who really liked us, partly because Ellie gave them traditional greetings and partially I think because I could speak Yoruba to them. At any rate, they kept telling us that we had to get married and that they would come to the wedding to celebrate with us again! Uncle Seun also took us on a driving tour of Lagos, but I think one of Ellie's favorite things was the Akara that we bought on the side of the road. I think I'm going to have to make it for her once I leave.

Well those are the highlights from the past few weeks, but I'm sure I'll have plenty more to write after this coming week is over!

16.15 Ofun-Se

Sorry this post is coming a day late... My friends at NEPA decided to take light early on Saturday morning and didn’t bring it back until even later on Sunday night, so my battery was about dead and I spent all of Sunday night trying to catch up work. They took light again now, but I have some battery left so hopefully it will last until they bring power back!

Today I have officially studied every Odu in the Ifa corpus from Eji Ogbe to Ofun-Se (the last one). To be honest, it was pretty unceremonious. I finished recording the last Odu with the Araba and then he said, “Ki lo to ku?” Which means, what’s left to do, and for the first time I told him that there wasn’t really anything! The only thing left now is the little celebration he wants to have possibly on March 25^th, but after that it’s all done!

After we finished recording the last Odu, the Araba and I went to make some medicine for an Al-Haja in the neighborhood who said business wasn’t going well enough for her. There is a specific medicine in Eji Ogbe that is supposed to attract customers to a business, so the Araba and I went to go prepare it. It required 201 pieces of several things (corn, beans, pepper seeds, and a few others I think), and I learned how hard it can be to do something as simple as counting seeds! I kept starting over every time something would distract me to be sure that I had the numbers just right, but the best part happened at the end. I had counted and recounted everything ot make sure that exactly 201 were in the pot, and when I gave it to the Araba, he took a handful of extra pieces of corn, beans, and seeds and just dumped them in and laughed as he explained to me that there have to be at least 201, but you can have more...

Once everything needed for this medicine was in the pot, the Araba said some prayers over iyerosun (divination powder) printed the symbol for Eji Ogbe on it, put it in the pot, sealed the pot with some special “soap” (or a kind of goo really) and sealed it up. Then he and I dug up the concrete right in front of her front door and pulled out a pot that contained another medicine that she had made for her before by someone else that apparently wasn’t working. Then the Araba put the new one in the hole, sacrificed a rooster over it and covered it up again so nobody would know that it was there. I’m really glad I got to see this one because I had noticed in many houses that there were circular patches on the concrete just inside the doors of many houses here and I had never given it much thought, but now I know that they are medicines, like one the Araba has to prevent people from stealing anything from his house.

I mentioned before that the Araba had done some work for a politician here, but I forgot to mention that the sign that he cast for this guy was Irosun Opinmi. There’s a really interesting story in that odu about how a bunch of people wanted to kill a certain man named Elewi who was destined to become a king and Elewi is the name given to the king of a certain town to this day as a result of it. So just like the story said, this politician became a ruler of sorts, but until last week I didn’t know about any plans to take his life. Apparently there was a lady who also wanted this position (I met her a few days ago!) and she hired the Alfa who always bugs me about giving him money to make medicine that would kill the Araba’s client. This Alfa came to the Araba thinking that the two of them could work together to get rid of this politician and help the woman win the position. Unfortunately for the Alfa, the Araba’s morals are a bit less flexible than his are, and they got into a huge fight. I asked the Araba what was going to happen then, and he asked me what happened in the story. I told him that nobody was able to kill Elewi, and he answered that since they had made the sacrifice and made some other medicine that the Alfa could try as much as he wanted, but he would never be able to kill this client because it was his destiny to occupy the position. That was a pretty crazy soap-opera/nollywood movie type of day. Maybe I should have recorded it, given it a title like “Death and Destiny/Iku ati Ori,” and sold it on the street for 200 Naira!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories in Ifa and how they were created and how they are used, especially how time is supposed to be interpreted in them. In general, Ifa is considered the collective wisdom of the Yoruba people, and all wisdom is gained through some sort of experience. So the idea behind every Ifa verse is that with the Babalawo’s help a client can take the important lessons from a vast collective experience of centuries of our ancestors. But recently I have been thinking about how the two arms of each figure act kind of like the double helix on a strand of DNA in that they combine in a way that in theory gives rise to all possibilities of events here on earth. That paired with the fact that time in these myths operates like Divine time, or a time outside of time that has happened, is happening now, and will continue happen in the future, lead me to think that each time a figure (like Irosun Opinmi in this example) is cast, this part of the clients life is actually part of that sign as the archetypes in the myths are supposed to be playing out at the moment Ifa is cast.

To me that made the whole idea of Ifa as a cultural repository make much more sense because each successive time a figure is cast, we’re able to see its nature and its meaning. So for example in one of my favorite stories in Ogbe Yonu, a little girl gives Orunmila lots and lots of trouble, but in the end, because he was patient and kind to her, he finds out that she’s a princess, they get married, and they lived happily ever after. My guess now is that in the past when Babalawos cast this figure for clients they may have watched the events that followed and saw that the person was put through unnecessary trouble with the opposite sex, but when they were patient, blessings followed, and when they weren’t patient, they just got abused and had nothing to show for it. So all of that information and the forces that would help this person to succeed (like a sacrifice to Ifa) were recorded by creating a story that contains all of the important details and supernatural archetypes. That’s pure speculation on my part, but I’m sure Babalawos (at least in the past if not now) came up with these verses and stories because many of them contain issues that have come to Yorubaland well after the legendary Orunmila would have gone back to heaven. The whole creation of this vast corpus seems like a really interesting and fascinating mystery to me, and I wish I could know for certain exactly how they were created.

Who You Gonna Call?

Hey everyone, sorry I didn’t post anything last week... NEPA (Nigerian Electrical Power Agency or No Electricty Practically Always depending on who you ask) too power away for pretty much all day Sunday and didn’t bring it back until sometime on Tuesday. Even then it has been really unstable at best. I think part of the problem is that the rainy season is coming back, and whenever it rains, the power seems to go. I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed that it will get better!

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.