Festivals & Flaming Arrows

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

See Me See Trouble!

Sorry it has been so long since I updated this page… Things have been busy on many different fronts, and as the title suggests, I’ve seen lots of trouble, but fortunately very little that has affected me directly. I talk to my friend that Araba pretty regularly, and about 2 weeks ago or so he had his annual Ifa festival, which he has always wanted me to be able to see, but I’m always at school and unable to attend. This time around, I wasn’t too far away, and I’m very glad I got to go. He, too, was so happy that I was there, even though this year’s was very low-key. He didn’t want to celebrate too much because his younger brother had just died recently. He introduced me to a lot of younger babalawos (Ifa priests) that he has trained at one point or another, and I managed to make all of them laugh by reciting an Ifa verse with a slight modification to tease one of them who apparently pays more attention to women than he does his work.

Part of the trouble the Araba has been having is that the king in Modakeke (his town) has been picking fights with him about all kinds of things over the past few years and hasn’t been giving him the salary he is meant to collect for serving as the town’s chief Ifa priest. The Araba hasn’t retaliated, but most recently the king sent a bunch of police officers to tear down a sign on his property and mess with some of the construction he has been doing by his house. The Egungun people (Yoruba ancestral masquerades) in Modakeke gave him some trouble too, as has another family that – out of nowhere – started claiming that they did not sell a plot of land to him about 20 years ago. It got pretty bad at a certain point, but within the past few weeks, one of the chief Egungun guys got so sick he almost died, and one of the people from the family that wanted to take the Araba to court had a dream in which some spirits gave him poison to drink and he woke up deathly ill! Both of them came running to the Araba for forgiveness, which he said he was happy to give, but when I called him after this had all happened, he told me he was as shocked as they were because he hadn’t done anything. According to him, God didn’t like what they were doing, and the sickness was a warning to get them to behave appropriately. He might well be right, because the first thing they did was to right their wrongs!

Another set of issues arose with the Akoda, the main person I had been working with, and this made me decide to keep a more respectful distance (especially since I don’t need to work with him as much anymore). Although life is tough for everyone here, almost everyone I have worked with has been very happy with the money I have given them, and some have even offered to give some back. The Akoda however, always seems to want more, and more, which put me on my guard. I went with him and a large group of the traditionalists to what is called Isese Day, or the annual festival in Osun State for people who practice traditional religion. I had previously promised the Osun priestess that I would talk to her son about applying to schools outside of Nigeria, but she took me to the side to talk to him about it, the Akoda got really, really angry. She apologized to him and explained what we we talked about, but he refused to calm down. Since I am fairly familiar with Ifa by this point, there were a few things he has done that made me unsure about how truthful he is about everything, and the fact that he became so possessive of me made me uncomfortable. I haven’t been back to see him too much as a result, and I only plan on stopping by to say hello in the future. There are so many other people who have been very open and kind to me, and there always seems to be one kind of trouble or the other with him, and I’d rather avoid that.

I’ve spent much more time with the Sango devotees recently, in part because the person who takes care of the royal Sango (the deity of thunder and lightning) has amazing stories to tell (which I’ll save for the end because they are so good!), and also because they are gearing up for their massive 10-day festival next month. On the 7^th, they had a special meeting in the palace in which they performed Sango dances for the king and major chiefs, and went around to tell everyone that they would begin the festival in a month’s time. What I found most interesting is that they did this more than a month in advance! When I asked why, the Sango priest said it was because it happened to fall on the day of Ileya (‘eid al-Kabir) for Muslims, so the King and chiefs wouldn’t be able to take part in it. He and the king had worked together to find another time, and they both settled on that particular one. This is something I am going to ask the king about because I have noticed that this is a pattern of his. For at least two other festivals in recent times he has adjusted when they occurred to make sure that those who are Muslim can attend, and also that the traditionalists who are putting it on will have the benefit of a larger audience and people who will give them money for performing these services for the town. The king seems to be really good at this balancing act, because all parties involved seem to be happy with the way it has been working out.

Still, there has been a little bit of trouble… I learned about a particular Egungun masquerade that almost got into a bit of a fight with some kids from a Muslim school here, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time going to both sides and asking people what happened. Interestingly enough, both sides seem to think that they were the victims, but what everyone can agree on is that the masquerade was going down Islamic Street, where the school is located, and some of the young kids didn’t want to let it go by. Depending on who you ask it was either because the kids don’t approve of traditional masquerades, the masquerade people wanted to fight the Muslims to reclaim lost territory, or because the masquerade drummers mocked the head of the school with their song! Whatever the cause was, it took one of the senior teachers at the school to calm everyone down, as some people started throwing rocks, and he smoothed things over with the head Egungun chief afterward. What I found most interesting about this is that the people playing the drums, singing, inside the masquerade, and inside the school were all Muslim!

I met another very interesting guy here who in essence practices every religion he can get his hands on. When I went to go interview him, I had to wait at his house for a while because he was at the mosque praying, but when he showed us into his house, I saw quite literally every orisa that exists in Ede there! In fact, at the end of the interview, he put down is tasbih (Muslim prayer beads) and asked me to record him talking to his Osanyin (the deity of plants and medicine who actually speaks to his devotees in a high-pitched squeaky voice). If you ask me when I get back, I can play it for you so you can hear it. However, I have met other Osanyin people before, and I am pretty sure that very powerful ones cannot be recorded (I tried once and the audio file was completely useless!), so it made me think that this guy may have spread himself a little thinly between all of his different religious activities, but God only knows.

I have done several interviews with alfa (Muslim clerics) here over the past 2 weeks, and it has been very interesting hearing from them after hearing from so many traditionalists. Although none of them has fully approved of traditional religion, they have very sophisticated arguments for why religious tolerance is a necessity for Muslims, and every one of them has quoted the Qur’an or Hadith for me to those ends. It has also been funny hearing some of them code switch between Yoruba and Arabic at times, and one of them in particular loved to say “fahimtum?” after every sentence, which means “do you plural understand?” Yoruba people will recognize this as a literal translation of “so ti ye yin?” which is just a kind of filler phrase even if you are addressing one person. It caught me completely off-guard the first time he said it, and gave me a bit of a laugh once I realized what was going on. The alfa also thought the Ifa story about Ileya being a Sango festival was really funny and clearly taken from the Qur’an (and not the other way around), but strangely enough, the night after Ileya there was a massive thunderstorm. I couldn’t have made this up, and I need to ask the Sango people how they interpret it.

Ileya was a huge deal here with people coming back to Ede from as far away as Benin Republic, and there were rams tied up literally everywhere. On ‘Eid al-Kabir, Muslims usually sacrifice a ram to commemorate the time when Ibrahim/Abraham almost sacrificed his son (usually believed to be Ismail/Ishmael, but possibly Ishaq/Isaac) but was given a ram instead by God. Consequently, the price of rams and other animals jumped significantly, and every day there seemed to be more people riding okada/motorbikes with rams tied on the back. On the day itself I followed the king to the main prayer ground, and it was fun watching everyone come out to catch a glimpse of him as he passed by on his way to pray. It was even more crowded this time than it was for ‘Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan, and we actually had to fight our way through just to let the king through to his spot right behind the Chief Imam. After the prayers, the town was pretty quiet as everyone went home, and people took a holiday for at least 2-3 days to be with their families. The market woman who sells me fabric even gave me a few pieces of ram’s meat as a gift, which I gladly accepted even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat it.

I know I said I would save the best for last, and here it is. Everybody commonly calls this Sango priest, Sango, but he told me that at a certain point, he stopped worshipping Sango, had gone to Qur’anic school and was a practicing Muslim. That all changed when one day he got possessed by Sango while praying in the mosque and fire started coming out of his mouth and burned the clothes of some of the people praying next to him (fire came out of his mouth because that is one of the things Sango is said to have done when he was alive)! There is a something very interesting going on between Sango and Islam that merits a closer examination, and I might look into that with him further down the line. Keeping with the theme of this post, although an incredibly friendly and simple man, Sango seems to have found himself in the middle of lots of trouble over the years, starting from the time when he decided to marry the daughter of the assistant chief imam of the town! That didn’t sit well with her family, and it took the intervention of the king along with the birth of a child to sort everything out, and somehow (I’m not entirely sure how) he managed to win them over. Now his wife worships Sango with him, and he is on very friendly terms with his in-laws despite the fact that they swore he could never marry their daughter!

Another time he got written up in a local newspaper because of a conflict with an alfa (the headline read “Alfa Fights Sango”), and after he showed me the cloth he used to worship Sango with a different alfa just the day before, he told me a wild story about the big Sango statue that is inside the palace. It is a massive statue (if I can upload it, one of Baba Sango’s kids is standing next to it in the picture), and apparently it used to be out in front of the central mosque. There is a light bulb inside Sango’s mouth to represent the fire he used to spit, and the electricity used to power it came from inside the mosque. Just to stir things up a bit, a local musician wrote a song in which he said “Bi mosalaasi Ẹdẹ ga to, Baba Olukoso lẹmọmu wọn/As grand as the central mosque of Ede is, Sango is their chief imam!” This of course didn’t go over well with the Muslims, and it caused a huge row in town. For a while certain areas were off-limits because it was so dangerous, and one of the leading Muslims begged the traditionalists to let him pay to have the statue moved into the palace. I had always thought that it seemed a bit strange to run a power line all the way out to where the statute currently is in the palace, and now every time I look at it, or the very beautiful central mosque, that song comes to mind, and I keep thinking “see me see trouble” or “there is so much trouble” in non-Nigerian/Yoruba English.

See Me See Trouble!

Monday, August 15, 2016

Nigeria ti baje... But Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World!

I’m usually not a very pessimistic person, but something I kept hearing over the past two weeks (and which I completely understand) is “Nigeria ti ba je” or “O ti da ru,” which roughly translated means, Nigeria has become rotten or is ruined. One day I went to Ife and Wale and I were getting ready to jump-start his car the way we usually have to do when he noticed that the lock on his door was broken. After taking a quick look we realized that someone had broken into his car, stolen the battery from under the hood, taken his speaker out of the trunk, and tried to take his sound system too. The Araba got sick a little over a week ago because he had been working too hard getting ready for his annual Ifa festival and couldn’t find enough money (I found out that he was trying to grow his own food to feed his family), the car I took yesterday from Ibadan to Ẹdẹ died after a few minutes, and we had to push it to a gas station because the driver didn’t have enough money to buy gas before we paid for the trip, and just about everyone I know has asked me for money (just today a woman in one of the markets in Ẹdẹ called me over out of the blue to buy something/anything from her).

Prof. Olupona, my advisor at Harvard and a sort of second father to me, was gave a lecture on religion, citizenship, and ethnicity in Nigeria at this years meeting of the Nigerian Academy of Letters at the University of Lagos, and we were all (even the Nigerian-based professors) a bit shocked and disappointed by how degraded the facilities at the UniLag were and how poor the service at its guesthouse was. My father studied and then taught Chemical Engineering there a long time ago, and I remember growing up with stories about how great the place used to be. Despite all of that, the past few weeks have been very interesting for me, and I’m very grateful that I am here to research a topic that still makes this part of the world fairly unique and is encouraging even when so many other aspects of life here are pretty dire.

One such encouraging event happened when I was conducting an interview with the high priestess of Osun (the Yoruba deity of fertility and wealth whose festival is coming up very soon!). She had made some kind of medicine for a young woman who came in partway through our discussion, and although she only produced a fraction of the money she was supposed to pay the priestess, she let the young girl take it anyway and just said to bring the rest of the money whenever she could. Shortly after that happened, the Osun priestess told me that she used to be a Muslim for quite a while, and then she completely blew me away by quoting the Bible in Yoruba as a response to one of my questions! She even tried to refuse the money I offered her after the interview, but especially since I just saw that she hadn’t been paid for some fairly extensive work, I insisted that she take it. This priestess is a really wonderful woman, and I think I may write about her and her family as a prime example of the traditional Yoruba approach to religion. My dissertation will have a more complete account of her, but her father was a babalawo, her mother an Osun priestess, she married a Muslim and tried practicing Islam for quite some time, eventually became and Osun priestess herself, and has children who are Muslim, Christian, and devotees of various orisa. Beyond just being a lovely person, she’s really sharp and incredibly well-versed in religion – and not just her own!

I haven’t observed any new festivals (although Osun’s is coming up very soon), but I managed to conduct several follow-up interviews here in Ẹdẹ. One of my most significant findings was that in my interviews with the chief priest of Ogun and Egungun, both of them told me that they were also Muslim, and while the Egungun chief said all of the members of the Egungun cult here are Muslim, the Ogun cult contains both Musims and Christians in its membership. I had already suspected this might be the case, but what was most interesting is actually the way for which it was mentioned as an afterthought by both men, especially in light of the fact that some Muslim clerics had assured me that orisa devotees would not be at the ‘Eid celebration (although they apparently were quite numerous…)

I also spent more time with the Akoda and learned some really fascinating information from him. He recounted an indigenized version of how the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite daughter Fatimah was born and how she came to get her name - Ifa tu imọ (ọta) – for those who understand Yoruba, and he gave me some more deep insight on some of the rituals performed during the Ifa festival. For example, I noticed that nobody got up to dance around the lamp after a certain part of the Ifa corpus had been recited, and I asked him why. He smiled and said it was good that I had noticed that because that part of Ifa deals with death and was ceded tothe deceased kings of Ede so they could come up out of the ground and dance around the flames just like the living had been doing. When taken with all of my other notes on the rituals and significance of this festival, this had an incredible amount of meaning, and it made me think that a whole book could be written on just this one night. I’m glad there is a sizable (if still relatively small) number of young people very actively involved in Ifa here because it would be such a shame for any of this to disappear.

I also accompanied the Akoda to the babalawo’s Ile Ijọsin (or church/house of worship), and I found that to be very fascinating. This is because it was a sort of service for Ifa devotees, but in form it had a liturgy almost identical to that of some of what we call the “mainline” or “orthodox” churches in Nigeria (namely the Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist churches). Having spent so much time in Anglican services, I felt strangely at home standing up, sitting down, and listening to announcements and scriptural readings at certain times. I’ve gone twice now, and this is another fascinating phenomenon I’m going to pay close attention to in my section on Ifa!

While I spent some time in Ifa’s church on Saturdays, I’ve been spending my Sunday mornings in Christian churches (although I don’t think I’ve ever had to specify a church as Christian before…). I’ve been going to a very early morning service at First Baptist Church which was the first church created in Ẹdẹ (in 1900), and I’ve met two of the pastors who are both very nice people. The first one is a fascinating guy who actually wrote a fiction book about Harvard, which I will have to read, and the senior pastor just got appointed two weeks ago. I’m looking forward to learning more about this history of the church and what they think its place is in such a heavily Muslim town. I also visited the main Christ Apostolic Church here (CAC is what academics call an African Indigenous/Independent/Initiated Church and what we commonly call an “Aladura” or prayer church). It is of a distinctly different flavor to that of the Baptist church, but attracts a lot of members as well. I got to meet the pastor briefly, but he had to run off somewhere after service so I will have to come back another time to talk with him some more.

This past week was mostly spent on non-research activities. Prof Olupona told me about a conference on Global African Indigenous Religions being held at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife (where I have done research in the past and lived when I was studying with the Araba), and since the conference was being convened by our good friend and former student of Prof. Olupona, Prof. Ogungbile, I quickly put together a presentation and went! It was a lot of fun being back in Ife, seeing most of the professors I knew from before, and meeting several new ones. One professor, Ivor Miller, wrote a well-known book on Ifa with former OAU Vice-Chancellor and incredibly famous babalawo ‘Wande Abimbola, and it was great getting to meet him, talk about Ifa, Afro-Caribbean religion, and I even got to give him an iroke or Ifa divination tapper.

For my presentation on the deep importance and function of the palm tree in Ifa divination and traditional Yoruba life (tip of the hat to Prof. Kimberley Patton and her great course on trees in comparative religion), I used a beautiful new Ifa divining board (ọpọn Ifa) that a carver Damini and I know very well just made for me. The carver is in Ife, and he finished carving our name on the board just before I had to give my presentation. He did such a good job on it that Prof. Miller and a really nice senior chief from a Yoruba town in the Republic of Benin both asked if they could get one. I called the carver, had him bring several over, and bought a board for the chief from Benin since he loved them so much. He was so happy that I was Yoruba, knew about Ifa, and could speak Yoruba and French to him that he insisted we take a picture with his new divining board. He was a very impressive man who delivered an opening speech at the conference on the history and importance of indigenous religion. Apart from having a great grasp of the topic as well as a keen perspective on its trajectory and current state, he also delivered his remarks first in Yoruba and then in French, which elicited applause from everyone there (I clapped for Prof. Mugane who surely would have approved as well).

After the first few days of the conference, Prof. Afe Adogame (another one of Prof. Olupona’s former students and graduate of OAU) was kind enough to give me a ride to the university of Ibadan and then to the university of Lagos for Prof. Olupona’s lecture. When we got to the University of Ibadan, I spent the night with the Adewales, the family that hosted both me and Makinde when we were there (although at different times), and it was great to see them. The most exciting part was seeing their new baby daughter, whom they named Ayomide, and whom I had wanted to see for a long time. We had a great time catching up, and they really want to take me to the festival of the Ogiyan (king of Ejigbo) because Mr. Adewale’s father (whom I met in 2013) is now one of the most senior and well-respected chiefs in the town and they get royal treatment there. As long as I don’t have to be in Ẹdẹ for anything else, it sounds like it would be a lot of fun, especially since Ejigbo is so close to Ẹdẹ.

Despite all of the issues I’ve witnessed over the past few weeks (like my bus to Ife breaking down the morning when I was scheduled to give my presentation or not having runningwater for so long I almost ran out of clean clothes!), it was great to see Profs. Olupona, Adogame, Ogungbile, and Adesina (from the University of Ibadan who has also spent some time at Harvard) again, and meeting some of the Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters like the famous Prof. Emeritus Ayo Bamgbose was a real honor and a great reminder that somehow despite all of the wahala (Nigerian word for trouble/nonsense) that exists in Nigeria, it has produced and still is producing some really wonderful people and academics. I’m looking forward to working with some more of them here in Ẹdẹ in the coming weeks and maybe meeting some as the students are going to start their semester here at Redeemer’s University this coming week!

Friday, July 29, 2016

Ipedi Festivals

It’s hard to believe how much has happened in the past 2 weeks or so as I’ve been really busy, but I think I’ve managed to learn a lot and develop my plans for my time here. Most of my time was taken up by what’s called the Ipedi group of festivals, which is a period of just under a week that marks the beginning of the traditional year and contains festivals and/or rituals for Ogun (the deity of iron, war, and farming), Ifa (wisdom and divination), Egungun (ancestoral masquerades), Oranmiyan (an ancestral deity of war), the Timi (Sacred king), and also some rituals for the deceased Timi. During that time period, I’ve mostly been running around taking some pictures and videos of these festivals, and doing some interviews with the important specialists who are involved in them. I did one set before the festivals so I’d know what to look for an expect, and I’m just now getting started on another set to try to make sense out of what I saw, understand their significance, function, and role in Ede’s religious life.

It was surprisingly hard trying to pin down exactly when and where I should be for each of these festivals. Before coming to Nigeria, I went to a fair amount of trouble to get a book written in the late 50s about Ede’s festivals, so I had a very good idea of what festivals were supposed to be held, approximately when, and what was supposed to happen, but I have since learned that a decent amount has changed since the 50s, and when I would ask people about certain details, I would often get completely conflicting answers. The best example is the Egungun festival (which is a smaller, less significant one than the main one that usually happens in June). I asked some well-connected people in the palace when the Egungun ceremonies would take place, and while they told me that it would be sometime the following week, a young babalawo (Ifa priest) told me a few days later that it was actually going to start that day! He gave me a location and time, and I managed to get there without missing anything, but I’m glad somebody (maybe Ifa?) had my back on that one! Funnily enough, the Araba told me a few days ago on ose Ifa (the sacred day of Ifa in the traditional Yoruba week when Ifa priests consult the deity) that it predicted success for my research in Ede, so I guess I just need to hold up my end of the bargain.

My dissertation will have a more full account of the different festivals, but I can give a short description of them here too. The first one is Ogun’s festival, also called the new yam (harvest) festival because Ogun is the deity of farming and agriculture, and the yam is one of his sacred foods as the strong primary staple crop in Yorubaland. It’s not uncommon for Ogun’s festival to also be the new yam festival for that reason, but I think it is particularly important in Ede because the town was originally founded as a base for warriors protecting the border and trade routes of the Oyo Empire and Ogun was the patron deity of the first Timi and many more after him. The main part of this festival (which is quite popular and attended by much more than just the hunters and Ogun worshippers) is the sacrifice of a dog at the Ogun shrine in the market right by the palace. The actual sacrifice is can be a bit harrowing if you love dogs and aren’t used to animal sacrifice, just to give you a heads up. After giving Ogun the required sacrificial materials, two Ogun devotees stretch the dog and suspend it in the air by pulling on ropes attached to its neck and hind legs. While it is suspended above the shrine, another hunter takes out a cutlass and has to cut through the neck of the dog with a single stroke. If not, it is a bad sign that Ogun is not pleased and has not accepted the sacrifice, although nobody remembers this ever happening because they take great precautions to ensure that it is performed successfully. I find it interesting that since it is, at least in theory, completely possible and fairly easy, to use just one stroke, any failure there would indicate some lack of maintenance for the cutlass, lack of care or attention in performing the ritual, or something else like that, which I could imagine would definitely not please Ogun (who has a notoriously short temper).

The following day has festivals for Oranmiyan, the past Timi or kings of Ede, and Ifa at night. I was not allowed to see the Oranmiyan festival because it is only the senior chiefs who can witness it, and they only bring out the Opa Oranmiyan (Oranmiyan’s staff/the Ede war standard) once a year to offer sacrifices to it. The most interesting part of this particular ritual to me is that the Balogun (senior war chief) is a Muslim, and he is the one charged with performing these rituals. Later that afternoon they began sacrifices to deceased Timi, but I had bad information about this one, and the king actually called me and Wale to let us know that they were going to start it! We rushed over there, and it was pretty fascinating to see it. In essence there were three sets of rituals that were largely the same. They would go to a group of graves and leave various offerings there, say several prayers asking for blessing and protection for the town, and then they would do a form of divination much like the kind commonly done with kola nuts to determine if the ancestors were happy, accept the offerings, and give their blessing. Fortunately (although from what I gather this happens practically every year), the configuration of the yams and kola nuts used in divination was always the same at each one of the dozen or so graves and indicated a success.

The Ifa festival was unsurprisingly my favorite and the most fascinating as the rituals are a bit deeper and more complex. All of the Ifa devotees come to the palace that night at about 11pm and they recite Ifa verses from the major parts of the Ifa oral corpus (these are a bit like poems and myths used in the practice of divination) until about 5am! After they finish reciting one of the Odu (chapters from the Ifa corpus), the senior Ifa priets, the Timi, and the senior chiefs all get up, dance out to an ancient iron lamp with 16 flames on it, dance around it counterclockwise 3 times, and then come back to their seats for the recitation of verses from the next odu. The following morning (most people don’t even sleep in between) the Ifa priests move in a procession around town to greet the most important chiefs and get some gifts, food, and schnapps from them.

The next day after that was possibly the biggest celebration in town (maybe excepting what’s called Ileya here or ‘Eid al-Adha/Kabir, but more on that later), and it is the one called Ipedi, or the king’s festival. Dancers and drummers come to the palace early in the morning and start singing praise songs for the Timi until he and his chiefs come out to walk in procession around town. Previously, Ede had big city walls like most Yoruba cities, but as the town grew bigger and there was no need for them anymore, they have long since disappeared. However, the Timi still goes to the four gates that used to be the entrances to the town, sits on his throne and receives well-wishers. Along the way on the road, the major religious figures come and pray for him and the town, and the Timi gives them some money. Everyone else comes out to greet the Timi, and heads of major lineages or organizations come and give him gifts and/or money. It was complete mayhem, and everyone was in the street. It must have taken 5+ hours to complete everything because the Timi would stop every time a group of people wanted to greet him. There were lots of drummers, dancers, religious groups, and even one guy dressed up like Timi Agbale Olofa Ina (the Oyo general who became the first king of Ede) with a flaming arrow set in his bow and everything!

Two days later, the ancestral masquerades known as Egungun start to come out. There are three that appear at this time, but they don’t all come out at once. The masquerades are quite large, and have a person inside them who dances around, and the outside is usually decorated in lots of different colorful fabric with some kind of wood carving for the head, often times with some kinds of symbols that represent death. It is a taboo to touch the Egungun, so although there is always a big crowd around them (I noticed it was mostly small children), only a few designated people are ever very close to them. They are always surrounded by drummers, and while they are dancing, every once in a while they whirl around and run in a certain direction, scattering all of the people in front of them. Each Egungun would come out of the house that owns it, dance around, collect money and offer prayers for people, go to bars and get free booze, and go to the palace to dance around. They would come out at about 4pm, and wouldn’t go back in until pretty late at night. One group of people who seem to really love this tradition now is young guys about my age. I noticed a lot of them smoking, and taking advantage of the free alcohol that the masquerades get. Apart from the smell of pot and several drunk people wandering the streets, the masquerades themselves are really fascinating to watch, and I think an in-depth study of their paraphernalia and its symbolism would be very interesting, but that’s not why I’m here…

Apart from the festivals, one of the most interesting things that has happened, happened almost by accident. While conducting an interview the Akoda, he told me several stories from Ifa that are clear adaptations from the Bible and the Qur’an. One was about Ibrahim and ‘Eid al-Kabir, or Ileya in Yoruba, another was about the Prophet Muhammed, and then there was another about Jesus! I had heard a few stories about Ileya from Ifa, and a few others referencing the Prophet Muhammad before, but Ifa has traditionally not interacted too much with Christianity, and this was the first time I had ever heard of something like this. The Jesus story, of course, had a distinctly Yoruba flavor, and in the end Jesus was betrayed and killed because his parents failed to make a sacrifice for him when Orunmila saved his life and predicted what a great man he would become. Since I love Ifa stories so much, and this type in particular, when I have some time, I will have to ask the Akoda if he knows more that address Islam and Christianity. I’m also interested to hear what some of the pastors and imams have to say about Ifa’s take on their traditions.

In other news, I’m getting my life set up here on campus. The university is quite large even by Nigerian standards (where universities can be almost small mini-states in their own right). It’s pretty amazing that the whole place was built by a church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, and they make their own water, bread, have a waste management service, security force, etc. There’s also a really nice Ijebu lady (the same sub-ethnic group that our family comes from) who has a general store on campus. She’s been teaching me a little bit of Ijebu when I stop by to buy credit for my phone and give the kids she watches some fruit or candy. It took a while to set up a bank account because security has become even more of an issue with all of the fraud going on, and I learned that the exchange rate has now gone up to 370 Naira to 1 Dollar. It makes me wonder how much longer this can continue… The Araba told me that it’s bad in Modakeke too, and that people don’t have money to pay him even when he’s done work for them, and he might even not hold his Ifa festival in September because money is so tight everywhere. Since the festivals are done for several weeks now, I should have a chance to go see him relatively soon, and I’m going to get started with more interviews, so I will keep you updated on hot that goes!

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

First Few Weeks

Hi everyone, it’s been about two weeks since I arrived in Nigeria, but it feels like a lot longer because so much has happened already. I’m not sure how much I would have said about what exactly I’m doing in Nigeria, but I’m here doing research for my dissertation in a relatively small town called Ede in Osun State, which is right in the middle of Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria. I picked Ede in part because not too much has been written about it yet, but despite being a predominantly Muslim town, it has a fairly long history of Christianity, and a very vibrant traditional religion and culture. Perhaps the biggest reason is because all of the different religious groups tend to get along remarkably well (which is no longer the case everywhere in Yorubaland and/or Nigeria), and the traditional king in Ede (called the Timi) plays a huge role in ensuring that this was the case in the past, and the current Timi by all accounts is doing a great job of ensuring that it stays that way now and in the future. I’ll mostly be attending and observing the major festivals in Ede to see how these rituals and the Timi’s role in them demonstrate and reinforce this culture of religious pluralism and maybe suggest an indigenous perspective on what the nature of religion is that is slightly different from what most people would have in mind.

I landed in Lagos two Sundays ago, and our good friend Nneka from Harvard picked me up from the airport. I was surprised when she told me beforehand that we should just take an Uber from the airport, because Uber wasn’t around last time I came, and I never would have thought to check! Nneka was nice enough to let me stay with her for 2 nights before I left for Ede, and it was pretty wild staying with her on Lagos Island because it is far less crowded and easier to get around than Ikeja where I’ve spent most of my time in the past. The other thing that surprised me was that the exchange rate on the parallel market has gone through the roof lately. I had followed the official rate online (which was up to about 250 Naira to 1 Dollar from what had traditionally been about 150 for the longest time), but the rate you get from one of these money-traders from the North is now just under 350, which means my dollars get converted to more than twice as much as I’m used to… While this will make my life a bit easier, the sad part is it means everything is getting more expensive for Nigerians, and I’ve already noticed that people (especially in places like Ede and Modakeke, where I was the last time I came to Nigeria for a year) are struggling even more than before. I really hope things will change soon because I’m sure it can’t continue in this direction for too long.

Before going to Ede I met up with someone who happened to see the blog I made last time when I was studying Ifa with the Araba (if you’d like to see some of the wild things that happened during that time and learn about what Ifa and the Araba are you see all of that on my previous blog here) and the Ifa library we made on Prof. Mugane’s ASK-DL website at Harvard, and even went to meet him in Modakeke afterward! It was really great to meet someone else who recognizes how great the Araba is, appreciates all of the work he does, and even helps him out from time to time. While I was on the road to Ede, I stopped by Ode-Omu (the Araba’s hometown) to give him some stuff I had brought him from the US, Senegal, and Brazil. He wanted to meet me there partially because it was on the road, but mostly because he didn’t want everyone to know I am around, or that I had given him things because then they would go asking him for some of it, and try to track me down too!

I visited Ede in 2014 to see if it would be a good site for research, and I was lucky enough to meet the Timi (his name is Munirudeen Adesola Lawal, the first king from the Laminisa royal family), and he was incredibly gracious and said he’d love for me to come do my research here. He asked me to stop by the palace again when I came back, so that was one of the first things I did. Unfortunately he was on his way back from a trip to the US then, so I was told to come back later. The other person I had met in 2014 was the Akoda (the 2^nd most senior Ifa priest or diviner/priest of the deity of wisdom and divination), and I still remembered the way to his house, so I bought him a big bottle of schnapps (the use it to pray to Ifa) and went to let him know that I’m back. The Akoda was very happy to see me and promised to take me to see some of the most important orisa priests and priestesses (orisa is the Yoruba word for traditional divinities).

Since I arrived in Ede right at the very end of June, my next order of business was to try to meet some of the senior Muslim clerics since I wouldn’t be able to do that through the Timi, and the end of Ramadan was in just a few days. I visited the central mosque twice to introduce myself to the Chief Imam and the chairman of the Ede Muslim Council, a really nice man affectionately called Baba Elesin. They were both surprised that I was a Christian but spoke some Arabic, have read the Qur’an, and what really made them laugh was that I had been to Kaolack in Senegal where the Tijaniyyah tariqah, the most popular branch of Sufism (the esoteric branch of Islam) in Ede, is centered. They kindly invited me to come observe their programs for Laylat ul-Qadr (a night towards the end of Ramadan when the Prophet Muhammad first began to receive the revelation of the Qur’an) and ‘Eid al-Fitr (the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan.

For a full description of both of them, you’ll have to read my dissertation or the book that will come out of it (inshAllah/God willing), but what really struck me was first and foremost how orderly ‘Eid al-Fitr was. Ede is probably about 80-85% Muslim, and the main ‘Eid celebration was in the field of a grammar school that must hold up to 10,000 people. The place was about as packed as it could be, and when the Chief Imam began the prayers, I couldn’t help but think that the only thing that could get 10,000 Nigerians to fall silent and form neat, orderly rows and move in unison of their own free will must be God. If you’ve spent any time in Nigeria, you know how rowdy and noisy it is, and this struck me as a bit of a miracle (Even if it only lasted a few minutes).

A few days ago I finally got to see the Timi (it was tough because he was busy with all of the Ramadan festivities himself, and I couldn’t see him while that was going on), and he was incredibly gracious this time as well. He asked me about my long-terms plans in Ede, and introduced me to his younger brother who he said could be my link to everyone and anything I might need to see in Ede. Fortunately the Akoda had already introduced me to some of the other important people, but I will be getting back in touch with the Baba Kekere (little father or the Timi’s brother) in the next few days to learn more about the dynamics of the royal lineages, praise names of past kings and the town of Ede itself and royal history.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet with the Chief priests of Ogun (the deity of iron and war), Obatala (the ancient and wise deity of creation), a very knowledgeable priest of Sango (the royal deity of thunder and lightning), and the chief priestess of Osun (the deity of love and fertility) who is a really lovely woman. I’ll try to conduct a more formal interview with the chief priest of Ogun again in the next few days because his festival is coming up on Sunday the 17^th which is also the new yam/harvest festival that marks the beginning of the new year.

On a more personal note, I’ve been staying on the campus of the newly-built (and partially still under construction) Redeemer’s University, and I was put in touch with Dr. Fyanka, a lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies who has been kind enough to help me get an affiliation with his department and accommodations on campus. Last week I helped them with the Toyin Falola conference since it was being held on campus, and the highlight of that for me was running into our uncle (and famous Nigerian author if I can brag about him) Femi Osofisan! I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years, and since this is the first time I’ve ever used a smartphone in Nigeria (those of you who know me know how much I resist technology), even I have to admit that it was nice to be able to take a picture with him and send it back to my family right away.

Also, our good friend Wale has been helping me move around Ede and conduct some interviews because he actually spent the first part of his life here, he has a car, and Obafemi Awolowo University (where he teaches in dramatic arts) is not in session, and they don’t know when they’ll be starting up again. It’s been great hanging out with him again, and he was even able to show me where the First Baptist Church is located, and I’m going to go there week after next because it was the first church built in Ede and that Baptist mission played a huge part in the history of Christianity in the town.

I had a rare day when I didn’t have much to do, so I went back to Modakeke to see the Araba, and it was really strange to see how some things have changed (he’s getting a bit older, his house is almost fully completed, some parts of the town are more run-down than before), but also a lot of them are exactly the same (I took the same little bus that I used to ride everyday to go to his old house, passed by the same buildings, and saw some of the same people I knew from before). One good change is that my friend Oloye (which is just a nickname that means “chief”) has gotten more serious about working with the Araba and is done riding his okada around and chasing women!

I really enjoyed seeing them again, going over some of the Ifa verses the Araba had taught me, and I even learned some new things about the Araba in the process. The most interesting fact came out when I reminded him about the medicine he made for a guy once that is supposed to make a person impervious to bullets (I think it’s someone in the other blog). The Araba didn’t remember us doing that, but he did say that it works really well, and told me that was how he escaped from the Ife-Modakeke war in about 1997 with only the welt in the middle of his forehead. I had always wondered how he got that, and he said it was because somebody had shot him right there with a gun, but because bullets can’t break through his skin, it just knocked him out and left a huge mark/amount of scar tissue! To give you an idea of how serious this war was (and the Araba’s part in it in particular) he also took on a whole tank and survived! He’s a really incredible man, and I think before I have to leave again, I’ll ask him if he’d mind me writing a book mostly about him but also our strange and unlikely friendship. The most recent chapter of that saga may just have been opened by somebody else seeing the Araba in one of our videos online and asking him to do some work to solve a problem, but that one may have to wait for another time…