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.

Juju and elections

As we walked up to the Inec office in Okene, I saw a small pile of gari in the middle of the road. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe someone spilled it by accident.
But driving around town, I noticed more little piles of bright white flour at intersections. At one place the flour was poured around the little traffic director’s hut in the middle. It looked like a necklace.
It wasn’t until the second time we passed the junction by Inec that I noticed corn and other seeds had been spread on the floor too. Next to them were leaves folded into packets and tied up with string.
The juju was obviously down.
I have no idea who set the spell, or what the spell was. I wasn’t about to ask anyone either. I’ve tried to unpick what was happening before my eyes that afternoon.
We trekked all around the water tank at the heart of town looking for a polling station that had any ballot papers, ballot boxes, voting booths, a queue of voters, anything that might indicate voting may happen. There was nothing, and this was only yards away from the main Inec office in town.
An hour earlier a crowd of men surrounded the office, and had to be pushed back by soldiers so staff could bring boxes of ballots out to waiting busses. But as we walked around there was a complete silence, and an almost complete absence of men. Women and children sat on the porches of their homes, resting their chins on hands, regarding us as we passed. The people we stopped to talk to all said the same thing. They weren’t worried about the delay in distributing the ballots, and they were confident that in this area, the Action Congress would win.
When we came back to the main road we saw where all the guys in town were. A crowd had formed around a primary school next to the Okene police station. We began walking down to them but had second thoughts when we saw the crowd swathe and bulge in that dangerous way. It was probably best to come back later, someone suggested.
An hour or so went by. We came back to the spot and found to our surprise “everyone” had voted and people were streaming away from the polling stations, happy, laughing, cheering victory.
“See? Na peaceful-o, tell your people naija dey vote peaceful!” someone shouted at me, giggling.
I walked up to the wooden table of a polling unit. An AC party agent had a book of ballots in his hand. Every one had a thumb-print for the Action Congress. He was stamping the backs of the ballots, tearing them off the book and passing them to an Inec official to sign and place in the ballot box.
At another polling unit where voting had all but finished, the Inec presiding officer told us she had abandoned the lawful procedure because she feared the crowd would get violent. She said they had checked everyone off against the register before allowing them to vote. They only tore off the ballots from the book as they stamped them later, after the voters had left, she said.
We asked what time she’s received the ballots, and what time voting had finished. As she told us, her eyes dipped down away from mine and a little secret smile inched across her face. 312 voters had come, done their duty and left within an hour and a quarter.
Later, I asked my friend who was observing the election in another state how long it was taking for people to vote there. He told me that because the register wasn’t listed sequentially, it was taking between five to six minutes to find people in the register, give them the ballot, put their thumb print on it, mark their finger, stamp the ballot, sign it an drop it in the box. A voter’s register of 312 people would take 26 hours for everyone to vote.
I thought that somehow the vote had been hijacked. I asked the Chairman of the Action Congress in the state about what we’d seen. He said: “I don’t believe it, because the police stationed at the polling unit, or the Inec officials, wouldn’t allow it to happen that way.”
The police DPO just shrugged his shoulders when we asked him about what we’d seen.
Money and the threat of violence will persuade people with positions of responsibility to abandon the principles they were employed to uphold, but the officials we spoke to did not seem scared, or ashamed of what was happening.
Could it be that their choice to disregard the rules was made easier because they knew they were participating in a communal effort? Communal efforts need signs and signals, what better than a bright white pile of gari?