said, “You know Edun? Tell him to give me another contract.”
I said I would do what I could for him.
He was a portly but muscular man of fifty, quite tall. When he was asked to describe himself and his community, he said, “I am a Christian contractor who is a Yoruba.”
So he knew a lot about Yoruba culture?
He said, in a series of apparent non-sequiturs, which yet had meaning, “I am well read. I come from a staunch Catholic background. My mother was a papal medallist in the days when you really had to work for it. I was with the Celestial Church of Christ. And then I attended the White Garment Church—an orthodox form of Christian Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement.”
Why did he call it orthodox?
“In the books I have read it is more African than Western. There is more uniformity in it. They use the Bible. The service usually lasts for four hours. It starts at 10 a.m. world-wide.”
There was a lot of singing and dancing during the service. It excited him. He liked the burning of incense. The order of the service was also more interesting.
Did it change him spiritually?
“I shouldn’t say that it opened another vista in my life.” But then he said something different. “One day I saw a little girl who was possessed by the Holy Spirit, and she was being cleansed. I was taken aback by the things she was confessing to—the things she had done in the spirit realm of darkness. The experience made me more spiritual. I now believe there is an Alpha and Omega who watches over you. One hundred and twenty million Nigerians or average Nigerians can contend with the vicissitudes of life only by turning to the Alpha and Omega. Other people call it something else. I guess I am an optimist. I have lived here and I have also seen other African countries, and I thank God for Nigeria. I have seen Liberia after the war, and Sierra Leone, and I have seen Angola before and after the war. Your average Nigerian is more educated than the other African. By the time a man is really educated he can rationalise better. In Nigeria you have educational processes where you can carry on improving yourself.”
I asked what he knew about traditional African belief.
“We have traditional deities that are well known internationally. Then there are sacred sites or shines and festivals. There is a grove here. It is a recognised UNESCO site and here they have the festival of Osun Osogbo. Followers of the goddess gather here in hordes and they pray for what they want with the priests and priestesses. The sheer scale of human traffic at this festival is awesome. People come from Brazil, Cuba, the USA and Haiti, and it goes on for a week. On the final day a virgin with a big calabash on her head walks to the river followed by legions of people, and she pours the contents of the calabash into the river, giving it a libation. I was crushed by the people. I could not see the virgin.”
The Yoruba gods and goddesses are many, their stories involved. Did the contractor learn about them when he was a child? He said no. His knowledge came from talking to other Nigerians when he was grown up, and it opened his eyes. He didn’t think of it as juju. He didn’t like the word. It had a negative connotation.
He said, “The priests and priestesses hate that word. They call it tradi-religion or tradi-medicine. ‘Juju’ is debasing. There is magic. Look at that girl. The girl I told you about. Look at the things she said—how they went under trees to create havoc and accidents, and how they afflicted people with misery and poverty. She was in a trance, and she was open about it during her cleansing. I believe in this dark side. I am very careful. I don’t upset people who threaten me. I don’t know what dark abyss they are coming from, and what powers they will use to hurt me.”
I had a romantic idea of the earth religions. I felt they took us back to the beginning, a philosophical big bang, and I cherished them for that reason. I thought they had a kind of beauty. But the past here still lived. People like the contractor were closer to it, and his words (with their Shakespearean echo) gave a new idea: the dark abyss of paganism. Others spoke of that