This week I’ve been focusing on trying to memorize the messages I have learned from each divinatory sign, which I found was surprisingly easy. It’s still amazing how some of these Babalawo can start spitting them out, but after getting very familiar with them, I have learned some of the parts that are the same in many of them, and I am able to recite them with the Araba as he’s telling me for the first time. Most of the Odu (chapters) have second names like Odu Ogbe-Osa is also called Ogbe Ri Ku Sa, or Ogbe-See Death Run, and these names are often tied to the verses or stories. So in Ogbe Ri Ku Sa there is a story about how Ram was pretending to be Rabbit’s friend until he put him in a box and ran with the box on his head to a place where he planned to kill Rabbit. It’s pretty tough to forget the meanings in that way. There’s also another one called Ogbe-Tomopon, and anyone who speaks Yoruba won’t be surprised to know that the verses in this Odu largely deal with having children, so there’s two down already!
What I’ve been doing, is casting the Opele for myself and trying to see what Ifa says about whichever sign comes up. Since I’ve really only done the twins, and all of the verses in Ogbe, I know about 1 eight of them so I have to cheat a bit and change some of the signs, but it makes it a lot easier to remember them that way. Maybe just because I’m more of an hands-on learner, but I started learning them more quickly that way than I ever did when I was just reading them on a piece of paper. The Babalawo who developed the Ifa Corpus were really smart in how they set it up, because the more I learn the easier it seems to be to keep it all straight, relatively speaking. I’m starting to see how it’s possible for one person to have memorized literally a quantity of information that would literally take months to recite.
Since so many of the stories are about animals, I am also reminded practically every day of some of them. For example, every time I see a rooster or chicken they are often kicking their feet around in the dirt and it reminds me of the story of Oduduwa coming down from heaven and spreading the earth with such a rooster. I also noticed a specific kind of weed called Odogbo, and how it used to have trouble growing until it made a sacrifice to its destiny on a river. From that day its future became brighter and even the river lets it grow in the water because it liked the sacrifice. I’ve come to realize how some Babalawo (especially the really knowledgeable ones generations ago) really did see the world differently. They knew stories about the nature of everything in the world, and supposedly they knew/know secret names for all of these plants, animals, etc. that give them power to control them to a certain extent. I am going to ask the Araba about that this week to see if he can explain how that works and/or if he knows some of them.
I have also noticed that even though the Ifa corpus is completely oral in nature and the Babalawo memorize the words exactly to preserve it, it is still remarkably malleable so it can stay relevant. First, since the advice Ifa gives is somewhat vague in nature like, you will succeed in your business if you do this, it is easily transferable to more modern settings. What is really interesting though is that some of the interpretations have now changed to include issues like politics, international travel, and using more modern items in sacrifices based on the prescriptions in the verses. I think the idea here is that even though Ifa says some very specific things like, “You have a hunch-backed friend who is plotting to destroy you behind your back,” the Babalawo view these messages as having their own meaning within a certain context, and when the context changes the message must also be adapted to fit it.
You might remember that when I came the Araba told me Ifa said to watch out for people related to Ifa who want to take my money, well he was right again! The Araba’s son pulled me aside one day and gave me a story about how a flashdrive he was using for school had broken (he just got it a few weeks earlier), and he needed a lot of money to buy a new one. I honestly didn’t remember the advice of Ifa at first, I was just used to people trying to take money from me, so I told him I’d get him a bit of money later, but not much. So I gave it to the Araba and waited for him to bring it up again. Sure enough a few days later he came asking for the money, and I asked the Araba to give it to him. In the end he got 200 Naira, but I don’t think he’ll be asking me for any more money when he doesn’t need it.
I also met with Dele, the guy I worked with the last time, and of course he was asking for more money, and I gave him some even though he never gave out the money I sent for lots of different people. When I asked him about it, he said he didn’t give it out because he thought they would suspect him of stealing it. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think his story is unlikely because he never told me there was any problem, and I could have straightened it out pretty easily if that were the case. At any rate, Dele like several other people I have met, seems to think he is Charlie and I am a golden ticket to get to the US. We had a 90 minute conversation yesterday about how the best thing for him to do to come to the US was to enter the visa lottery and there is literally nothing else I can do to help him. Just this week I have had about 3 or 4 people I don’t know, but who just see me somewhere ask me in all seriousness to take them to the US, and while I thought I was used to it, I’m starting to get sick of dealing with it every day. Maybe I should just tell people that my number is the number for the US embassy...
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