No Ifa Censor

I’m trying to upload the song I recorded last week about the salve Eji Obara bought, so I hope it works, but we’ll have to see...

Today I recorded another not-so-funny Ese (verse) that used equally clever wordplay in Odu (Chapter) Ogunda-Di. In this Ese, Ogun knows a woman named Adi in the biblical sense. In Yoruba the most important part of the verse is the sentence, Ogun do Adi (Ogun slept with Adi), which is pronounced Ogun d’Adi, which is practically the same as Ogunda-Di. These guys are really clever, and the Araba gets a kick out of it when I put the pieces together for myself and start laughing.

I have noticed that for a lot of Ese the Araba has to go into his room and pull out a huge stack of mis-matched papers he has to check the names of some Odu and some details of the verses. I’ve read in a lot of books that the Babalawo now don’t know as many verses as they used to, and don’t know them as well, most likely because of technology like radio and TV. It reminds me of this quote from Black Elk that goes something like, “One day people’s minds will be so weak they won’t be able to remember anything without writing them down. Since the Araba can lean back and spit out 15+ minutes of literature at the drop of the hat, I don’t think his mental faculties are weak, definitely much stronger than mine, but it did make me feel a bit sad that it has become more difficult to keep these Ese in modern times. Then I thought that maybe technology could help to, since that is exactly what I am trying to do; preserve verses like that one in Ogunda-Di or 9.4 as I call it.

I recently devised my own method for archiving Ifa verses since I’ve never seen one. Since there are two figures in each Odu and there are 16 total signs that can take each of those two places, with the first being the most important and the second acting almost like an adjective and modifying it. So for Ogunda-Di I have been using the number 9.4 because Ogunda is the 9^th sign and Odi is the 4^th. The only tricky part about my archiving system is that the chief Odu are the one’s that are repeated, like Ogunda-Ogunda or Odi-Odi which would be called Ogunda Meji and Odi Meji respectively. Since they are more important, I just call them 9.0 and 4.0 and leave the positions they would otherwise take (9.9 and 4.4) empty. It makes finding the verses on my hard drive infinitely easier.

I have also noticed that after collecting quite a few myths, there is a large number that I will definitely not want to put into a children's book because many of them are really graphic. I think at least half of them involve sex in some way shape or form, and while I could write a way around it in some of them, there are some that are just a bi too explicit. Then there are some like another one I collected today that involve cutting off heads and other kinds of violence, which makes sense within the context, both of the verses and the use of Ifa in general, but renders a fair number of these verses a little bit out of the Walt Disney age-grade, so I'm going to have to be a bit discerning in choosing myths and even more careful about the way I write them up...

I went to the market today and bought another soccer jersey from a guy on the street. After we agreed on the price, he asked me if I was Nigerian, I think because I bargained with him almost exclusively in Yoruba and made him give me half of his original price and told him I knew it was still 100 Naira too much. Usually people just ask me where I’m from assuming I’m not from around here. He flipped out when I told him I was studying Ifa, and he wants me to come back sometime soon so I can cast Ifa for him even if I can’t tell him what his future holds! I’m going to study up some more and see what I can do.

Even though my market skills have gotten better, I haven’t been completely happy with how fast I’m learning Yoruba, so I think I’m going to go a bit extreme and just stop speaking English unless it is absolutely necessary because I know the key to proficiency is learning to think in the language. So if I stop using English, soon I’ll stop thinking in it, I hope at least...

Tomorrow I am going to try to visit my friend Dr. Saah, a really nice professor from Cameroon who teaches French here. He just stopped me one day and was really surprised when I could speak French to him. I usually see him at least a few times every week to try to keep my French up, and he said he might bring me to a few of his classes. He also told me that I should try to make some time in the spring to visit his village in Cameroon, which just so happens to be the village of my new favorite soccer player, Alexandre Song! If we actually make it, that would be awesome!