RSS Mischief V - The gods with no balls

Mayflower, our nemesis

Traditional school rivalries are inbred, there is rarely an alternative frame of reference that the negative ones so easily begin to define you. Up the road from our Methodist roots Remo Secondary School (RSS) was the humanist strong Mayflower School, Ikenne.

The competition for entry into Mayflower School was stiff that some who attended primary boarding school there did not make the cut and defaulted to RSS.

We seemed to always play the second fiddle to them, in academics and quite evidently in football games. I never knew of a time that we ever beat them, no matter how we tried and that called for extraordinary measures not predicated on our Methodist provenance or the motto of our school, For God and Fatherland.

Pleading to clueless gods

Apparently, the gods, animist, fetish and dreadful had the answer to the nagging big question: How do we defeat Mayflower School at football?

We were woken up by seniors who had consulted oracles and shamans at 1:00 AM and coerced at the threat of violence and severe punishment to contribute funds to procure kurubé (fetish) services of a medicine man to gain advantage of Mayflower School at our next scheduled match.

Why this urgent need could not wait until during the day escaped me, nor did I believe there was any way we could beat Mayflower School without both the luck and the skill, and I was just annoyed that someone was ready to take money from gullible and impressionable students promising something to us that was too farfetched and unreal. Besides, what is to say Mayflower School had not procured similar services and so cancelling the presumed advantage we had purchased?

Snitching for justice

All that together in my mind fired the sense of injustice that led to my writing an anonymous letter about this nonsense and dropping it in the front car seat of the vice principal’s car. They no doubt took it seriously because the principal talked about it the next morning at the school assembly and put out a notice for whoever wrote the letter to come forward without fear of exposure.

Thinking long about it, I visited the principal the next afternoon about the matter, he assured me nothing like this would happen again and the seniors involved will be told off. Then he gave me 5 Naira and send me on my way. For the rest of my time at school, we were no more harassed for fetish seeking contributions and we still lost to Mayflower School anytime we met at the game of football.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Blog - RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

Blog - RSS Mischief IV - Post the pots

Old Gods Have Retired

Care for the words ye speak

We can be rather emotional beings and so prone to outbursts and communication that in the spur of the moment can damage relationships.

Nowhere is such able to affect you as much as to hear that some rather unpalatable, reprehensible or downright atrocious thing has been said about you and your person in a fit of uncontrolled and animated displeasure.

Gratifyingly, these things are rarely said where one witnesses the vituperation, they are relayed conversations that come to light sometimes long after the event. Amid idle banter, effusive gossip, or the need to convey a veneer of candour, the perpetrator encapsulates quite reductively the character, status or person of someone else into a pithy phrase or word, the hearer unable to escape the impact of what was said.

Absence is not presence

The party to whom opprobrium was intended whilst in their absence then gains knowledge either by a whispering campaign or in unrelated conversation that wends its way to the unintended revelation of a major slight.

You cannot ever mistake the import, it has consequences and it will hurt quite deeply. However, you have to begin to rationalise and hope you misheard. Maybe the issue cannot be corroborated and before one settles into pitiful paranoia, as long as the matter is not addressed directly to one, it might well be best to ignore it altogether, but that takes time.

A bastard of the gods

At least, that is the frame of mind I have, for if one were to act one side of the story regardless of the trust that one has in the source, the old gods of allegiance, filiality, relationship, respect, consideration, honour and duty will be retired never to hear supplications or receive sacrifices of adherents who have justly gone apostate.

Even for a bastard, we are made of sterner stuff than to be rash in judgment and intemperate when provoked. The fight is unnecessary for the conscience to heal from the unkindest deployment of verbiage. We live for a higher cause.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

When the cult of mother becomes a curse

Speaking of the oracles

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. This is a saying in Yoruba that is not that easy to translate without losing the fundamentals of meaning and context.

Òrìṣà in Yoruba is the core of the indigenous animist culture representing the supernatural, elemental spirits that are varied depictions of polytheistic deities, powerful, revered, worshipped and honoured. In the main, they traverse the early plane in legend as human and the heavenly plane as spirits, they are the mainstay of the deepest cultural identity of the Yoruba.

Only, a decade ago, I had to reflect on who the Yoruba were when I met two Cuban professors whilst on holiday who appeared to have more insight and knowledge of Yoruba myths, mythologies and legend than I ever knew. Steeped in superstition in what Lord Lugard dismissed as a ‘vague dread of the supernatural’, you probably would never understand the Yoruba without being Yoruba.

Blog - Who are the Yoruba?

The enduring hold of our oracles

I might extend that to suggest the Yoruba influence that remains strong in the practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, and Oyotunji suggests some fundamental underpinning of the mother culture has been lost to the influx of new religions that have in most cases branded these traditions as savage, uncivilised and inherently evil.

Yet, these beliefs have sustained people for centuries and endure in the spirituality of the peoples and their descendants of the new world who were trafficked in the malevolence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. Indicates that the mother or motherhood usually as seen from the perspective of the child is the genre of elemental spirits worthy and possibly demanding of worship, adoration and adulation.

In the cult of mother

Recently, in watching a film and a television dramatization, I was exposed to an interesting dynamic between mother and child, the blood relationship persisted to serve the purposeful hold of the Òrìṣà mother on the worshipper child, but it was progressively damaged through abuse brought on by drug addiction.

A child desires of a mother love, attention, care, protection, maybe encouragement and even guidance, but some children get little of that because the mother’s capacity to mother in a somewhat ideal mothering situation is impaired by personal struggles that distract the mother from that objective.

In the one case, as in the film, Moonlight, the mother only seemed to come to, late in life whilst in rehabilitation and she profusely apologised for being less of a mother than she could have been. It was a time of tears, of hugs and of healing.

Blog - My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Breaking the cult of mother

In the television drama, it was the 6^th episode of the 5^th Series of Law and Order: UK, called Deal where a drug-addict mother could care less about her son, first blaming her 13-year old son who for years had been told he was responsible for her problems and then when she was owing money to her drug dealer, she sold her son to the drug dealer to abuse as he saw fit.

The Òrìṣà mother bond was kept strong with threats to kill the boy’s mother if he stepped out of line. It is not until he saw that his mother had indeed sold him that the wicked Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child hold and bond was broken.

The travails of mother and child

The Yoruba culture places great burdens of responsibility and duty on the worshipper child to serve and sacrifice to the Òrìṣà mother, which in many cases is a willing and honourable function in the life of a child who has had positive influences of the mother, mothering and motherhood.

We as child strive to do as much as we can to uphold that Òrìṣà – worshipper bond, yet, that bond can be broken, broken beyond repair by agency or acts of either or both mother and child. The addiction that belies incapacity does not have to be drugs, it could be any other activity that brings on the infirmity breaks that maternal bond.

At peace, away from mother

As I wrote in my blog on Moonlight, the case of my mother is an addiction to a syncretism that combines elements of Judaism and Christianity with African-initiated interpretations of scripture along with strange animist traditions enlivened by incantations of the Psalms, rituals and holy waters, the result of which has broken the Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child bond.

Whilst it pains me that there is no relationship of any note between us, I cannot help but see my mother through the prism of those other mother addicts with no prospect of a Moonlight ending, because somewhere down the line she sold that motherhood to her devotion, hoping my fear of it would bring me into line, like the drug dealer’s threat to the boy.

Coming to terms with this has meant that I have decided not to waste precious time trying to make peace, but as I learnt in a conversation with a dear friend, I must find ways to be at peace with myself. I write about these things because I believe I am not alone in this kind of experience, it is also my own personal therapy in resolving the deep conflicts of the heart.

Nigeria: Another rotten church exploitation - brides without grooms

These foolish things

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” I Corinthians 1:27 (New International Version) Parallel Verses.

I have chosen this Bible verse to illustrate what passes for religious abuse in Nigeria, where pastors get their flock to indulge in farcical gimmickry, and the flock like sheep follow the shepherd down the precipice of ignominy.

A pastor in the Winners Chapel franchise and I have written about them many times, I dare say, it was a church I did attend in the late 1980s in Nigeria, had asked all the single ladies who want to get married this year to attend church in wedding dresses.

Gowns on clowns

Pictures which I saw on Facebook were really from Linda Ikeji’s Blog, the popular Nigerian gossip rag that one must admit has one of the biggest followings in Nigeria. We are people like that.

Linda Ikeji’s Blog - Pics: Women looking for husbands storm Winners Chapel Enugu in wedding dresses

The ladies were bedecked in bridal dresses, all without grooms just as bridal houses saw the opportunity for brisk trade, renting out dresses as zippers and corsets might have caused a fitting frenzy in the ladies rooms just before the prayers of supplication and blessing.

Between God’s tactics and man’s stupidity

This is where I have issue, in fact, I have many issues with these corruptions of the Christian message and the drama that ridicules the whole purpose of religion and much else.

The verse above clearly states, “God chose the foolish things …”, it is God doing the choosing; how that comes about is open to interpretation, but I cannot find ways to suggest that verse instructs that we should act foolishly so as to shame the wise, nor does it suggest we should celebrate weakness to shame the strong.

This reads as a tactical ploy of God that is not in the gift of man to deploy, where men attempt to do this, everyone appears foolish, and there is no redeeming factor towards wisdom apart from compounded derision.

For those brides who went to church in their bridal dresses, nothing is said of bridegrooms ready to sweep them off their feet, rather, they were wishing and hoping and ultimately being presumptuous.

Shamanist grottos in church buildings

Herein is the problem, we go to our churches broken, needing, sick and desperate, a hungry crowd open to atrocious exploitation and manipulation by people standing at the pulpit as men of God.

However, the reality is we have the mind-set of ritualism, the church building has become the forest grotto where the Shamanist priest invokes the gods with incantations and the worshippers have arrived seeking instant solutions convinced of the fame and the powers of the priests. Anointing, we call it.

Obviously, we must leave a gift for the deities, something must be given in exchange for what we desire. That gift is now passed off as a seed offering. Though never under duress, very few in need ever think they would get anything if the tray is not filled with a generous gift. Where we have little, we are overcome with a guilt complex, the widow’s mite is now too little for the church.

Sadly, this is what things have become, it is like the temptations of Jesus Christ with the Devil’s chorus, “All this I would give you, if …” Yeah, if you can prove who you are; if you jump and show off; if you bow down and worship or in churches today, if you sow a seed. It is all full of conditions when the gospel stresses the things of God are free, free, free, and free.

The Bible Gateway – The Temptation of Christ [Wikipedia]

The women suffer, always

Then again, it is the women that take the brunt of the abuse, they are the ones exploited for their singlehood as if it takes only one to get married or women should be more desperate especially as the biological clock ticks away, and society disrespects or dishonours extended spinsterhood.

Once they get married, they are on another conveyor belt of possible exploitation if they cannot bear “the fruit of the womb” in Church-speak. The man is never once medically assessed for fertility or the motility of his sperm to clinch the deal. The onus is always on the woman.

Yet, these women who came forward were expecting to get married within the year, the possibility looms of meeting, courtship, engagement and marriage all happening in less than 12 months.

Unworkable marriages

God have mercy as the thrill and euphoria of getting hitched wears off and the man begins to wander because neither party to this travesty was compatible, but hapless and foolish victims of manipulation, exploitation and circumstance, orchestrated in church by the chief priest who proclaims – “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Friends, no match is made in heaven, the match is made on earth between imperfect people and they have to work hard at it, daily tending the love and easing the hurt, it is not a fait accompli of life. Sometimes, it does not work and when it doesn’t be ready to get on with your life.

The miserable lives we live

The woman again, desperate is back in church trying to save her man from the other desires that provide him expression and satisfaction he cannot get at home. It becomes a vicious cycle where the unworkable marriage instigated by the spectacle of risibility and the hare-brained scheme of the pastor, who laughs all the way to the bank on the pains of his flock. It is unconscionable and manifestly evil, it sickens to the high heavens.

What then gives rise to wife-battering and much else? Frustrations, many frustrations. A lifelong relationship that should be given time to mature with interaction and engagement is turned into a magical trick of dead seed to tree in an instant – without roots, deep roots at that, it would die.

I think, I have written enough already. Marriage is not happiness, if you are not happy as you are, the risk of marriage bringing happiness is temporal and it would fade.

Our little gods with diplomatic immunity

Home and away

Times I have wondered about the richness of Yoruba culture thriving in lands far away from West Africa in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in Cuba and in Haiti.

Extricated by the atrocity of slavery, men carted as beasts of labour and burden to enrich imperialist regimes and kingdoms of the last three centuries, the stories are gruesome.

However, what intrigues me more is the little gods that went in the hearts and the minds of our people to these places, the Orishas – spirits and deities that never died, but thrived, Yoruba religion lives.

Our common humanity

This is however, a subset of humanity’s spirituality, all people from all the ends of the world carry their little gods and idols around with them such that no matter how far they are from their original lands nor how long they have been away for generations, these idols and charms remain significant with at least a remnant.

Somehow, the somewhat fashionable trends towards humanism, atheism or New Age religions appear to be people uprooted from the core of their ancestral existence, finding new commonality with a different kind of diversity.

This is not just evident in animist and ancient non-establishment spirituality and religion but we find this in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other broader based religions.

Stranger still

I step out of my residence in London into a major street with six different mushroom churches of Nigerian origin, the crowds creating the familiarity of ceremony, culture, ritual, liturgy and community far away from home.

Two years ago, a Zambian pastor wrote of what he uncharitably termed Nigerian Religious Junk exported to other countries, I could see what he meant.

A big hold

However, I suddenly realised that my appreciation of the reach of little gods was stunted when a British man of Nigerian origin showed off his amulets tucked under his clothes; in the process the lie about lost cultures was debunked.

The charms, the concoctions, the incantations or even the syncretism manifest in what we believe are the established belief systems find firm believers where we rarely expect to see them.

The little gods of spirituality and beliefs, known and strange, still hold sway and never die through the generations. No effect of civilisation damaging as it might seem today at the original homes and grottos of these little gods can destroy their potency as exiled or immigrant little gods who need no papers to live and multiply in foreign lands, they have diplomatic immunity.