In the sacred grove

I clambered through the roots down to the water. The soupy brown river moved swiftly around the bend that hugs the shrine of Osun in the sacred grove of Osogbo. Caught in an eddy and desperately flapping trying to get out of the stream was a white dove.

How did that get there? I wondered, oh -poor bird.
Right then a man in white next to me wound his hand back and lobbed another bird out into the middle of the river.
Oh… right, now I see.
The grove was already busy. Light filtered down through the thick green leaves, it was cool under the branches, but it was humid. Soon my hair was drenched with sweat. Every wall in the grove is moulded to look like it rises naturally out of the ground, as if a tree root has broken the surface of the earth. In the walls the faces of spirits peep out with wild eyes. I walked backwards through the main gate, barefoot, with the others. The cool wet ground was strewn with little pebbles, but I didn’t know if I was allowed to put my shoes back on. The sounds of rattles and bells filled the cleft in the earth, the smell of Indian hemp mixed with the odour of river mud.
Everyone seemed to be asking for money. Women sat on roots with outstretched calabashes. They were the kind of women you’d see at market, tough, strong, no-nonsense. Other women moved down to the statue of Osun dressed in white with cowrie shells woven into their hair. They greeted each other smiling and then turning away from the other in a kind of reverse bow. They made their way down to the waterside and sat down. From time to time they called out with a kind of ululating cry, I suppose to the spirits. They sat by the waterside and anointed worshippers heads with water. They flicked a spray onto the head and the water beaded up in their hair like glass jewels. When the woman in front of me stood up again she bellowed her thanks into the air, as if what she asked for had already been granted. The belly of Osun, swelled with pregnancy had a handprint on it in the colour of yam cooked in palm oil. I saw many women being consoled by the priestesses, who held their hands and blessed them. I saw so many satisfied people that day. Most people I spoke to had asked for cash. “Instant cash!” said one “and I’ll get it, in Jesus’ name”, which was a bit confusing.
Others were collecting water in any container they could, I even saw one guy with an old bleach bottle down by the water. I made a silent prayer he wouldn’t drink from it. There were more people with doves. They whispered into the doves ears, and rubbed the birds over their heads. Then they’d throw them in.
At the shrine itself people clamoured to get in to the small hole under the grass covered roof. I walked around the building, by the sides people sat and talked, a group of women in coloured wraps sang, and a priestess was admonishing two young boys, I couldn’t tell exactly what it was about but they’d transgressed some law of the shrine. I went up to one of the priests and asked if I could take pictures of people being blessed inside the alcove, he refused.
But what about him? I said pointing to a man filming with a TV camera.
“That is different. He is Osun people”, he replied. Oh well. He invited me to step into line and be blessed. At that moment drums struck up from outside and everyone started hollering for people to make way. In to the courtyard burst two young women in white followed by drummers. One of the women held a bowl on her head, the other shook white powder in her path. They danced up to the mouth of the shrine and the woman flicking the powder placed something down in front of the priests inside, and with a yelp, they were gone again.
I moved back into line and waited my turn to be blessed. I was pushed forward and stepped over a wooden bowl filled with mashed yam and bruised banana and crouched down inside the small hollow. One of the priests handed me a plastic lid with water in it. “Drink a bit, the rest goes on your head” someone said. I took a gulp, the water tasted sweet somehow. A woman thrust a chunk of kola nut in my mouth.
“For long life,” she said.

On the road again
The embers of a few fires leaked smoke into the hazy skein that already hung over the morning. I haven't seen Abuja at dawn for a while -much better than in the flinching sunlight, but there's no time to stay and look across Garki Market to the rock. I'm on the road again.I joined a bus at the old federal secretariat. The Nigerian Tourist Development Corporation representatives are shipping out en masse to the Osogbo festival and I'm along for the ride.
"We will be departing shortly" says the director of admin, acting up his role of pater familias. "We will be cruising at a speed of between 10 and 20 km through town, rising to to between 70 and 80 on the highway... Will someone please pray for us?" And we're off.
Every time I drive down airport road I've been concentrating on driving or in a rush so its nice to be in the back of a bus with time to look around.
I see the machines in a phalanx waiting at the city limits, more pouring out of the Lugbe slip road. We speed through Gagwalada, past the beggars on the bridge. A woman in a wheel chair and a man with no legs -hands covered by flip flops- peer over the edge at the weight of water flowing under. Past the shops with their Nanfang tyres wrapped up in shimmering silvered foil like sweets. Two children wrestle with a tyre iron, trying to prise apart a truck wheel, pop out the rusted rim to clatter on the oil-stained ground. A husk of a VW beetle looks on.
Past metal workers, sparks flying off an angle grinder in the hands of a teenager. The shards of steel cascade through his legs. I can see the strobe flash of an arc welder touching white hot liquid drops of metal to a joint. Iron Must Obey.
As the bus flies over the Murtala Mohammed Bridge -where I once saw information minister Frank Nweke Jr. direct traffic around an accident- some of the chatter has died away, the early morning catching up on the ticket-to-riders, their heads nodding sleep.
I open my eyes and Obajana is looming up ahead, the two columns of the cement works kiln look like a space city in the jungle. Last time I was down this way we played Johnny Cash's I Been Everywhere on the stereo. On the other side of the road the workers shacks have slumped further into each other, rotted a bit more.
I doze through Kabba, the furthest western point I know on this road. From here on in its all new. Last time I was here it was deserted; Thugs chased the voters away. They trashed the market and tipped ink on a school room floor. We saw where they'd squatted around stabbing their fingers in the pool like hyenas on a corpse.
The road seems a bit worse and the bush a bit thicker. By the road dense thickets of palm and banana trees in dark ravines cut out by filthy streams. Broad waxy-leafed mango trees shelter benches where people lie amongst their wizened roots.
The concrete houses with their poured and moulded stairs and balconies look like they've been delicately tipped out of a jelly mould. Some bits topple forward, some wobble back. Their ochre roofs of rusting tin make the town look like a heap of cardboard boxes, scattered n the floor. Here and there an old church, its mouldy plaster flaking off and turning green, stands out.
Osogbo is alive with bend down boutiques. A pyramid of shoes stands on a traffic island, next to little mounds of fabric puffed up like iced confections. Bags of eggs and bowls of ground nuts come through the window. The radio flickers into life and Yoruba music comes through. The riders on the bus start to nod their heads and point their fingers at the ceiling. We are here.