The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,49
men among the officials stood up, made the royal obeisance, doing their half crouch, touching the floor with the tips of their fingers, so that (like the courtiers before the Oba of Lagos, but those courtiers were wearing gowns, and these officials were wearing suits) they looked like sprinters waiting for the starter’s pistol. Then they stood up and correctly, holding one hand over the other, they told the Oba that many things had been done and, in fact, they were hoping that one day when he had the time he would come and have a look. He said he would, one of these days.
Then the officials, speaking on our behalf, asked for permission to visit the sacred grove. The Oba gave it graciously, making an encouraging gesture with his white horse-hair whisk. We were dismissed. He went out by the door through which he had entered, and the policemen and the rest of his suite followed. We had a few words then with the Oba’s wife. She was as friendly and interested as she appeared.
We left the durbar hall, with the officials from the tourist office. As soon as we went out of the main gate the ragged court musicians started up: drums, metal on metal, and pebbles shaken in calabashes. The man who was our sponsor—he was from the publishing house—made as if to give money to the musicians. But another man rounded on him, saying, “I’ve already given them money. Don’t give any more to the scoundrels.”
THE SACRED grove took my breath away. After the Oni’s palace, the garden of the Source of Life, the Yoruba heroine of long ago, the petrified staff of the Yoruba giant, I had expected only more myth-making, something calling once more for a suspension of disbelief.
But the grove was real and it was beautiful: a piece of tropical woodland which had been left untouched for some time, and where no animal or creature was to be killed. That was what we had been told; and that was what we found. At the limit of the grove families of monkeys took their time to cross the public road. Smaller, sad-faced monkeys, tormented elsewhere, looked without fear at our party and the cars that had brought us.
The grove was walled off or fenced with a fascinating wall of masonry or terra-cotta, the work of an artist whose melting forms recalled the playful designs of the Barcelona architect Gaudí. The textured wall was touched with moss; it was in keeping with the design. Through the wilderness of tree-trunks and hanging lianas inside we had glimpses of the river that ran through the sanctuary. It was a muddy tropical river, and no attempt had been made to beautify or soften the turbid water; the scalloped melting forms on the wall were intended to match the bounce of the fast-moving river, narrow at this point. As in the design of the Kabakas’ tombs in Uganda, where the design had been religiously laid down, everything had to be local, had to be of the place as it was.
It was all very moving to me, especially the idea of the grove as an animal sanctuary. It was said to be a hundred and sixty acres in all, a quarter of a square mile. I wished it was ten times the size.
A big gate opened into a short lane—this was for the procession at the time of the river festival. The lane led down, past a number of small home-made shrines at the foot of trees, to what was said to be a pavilion, just where the yellow river curved. It was an open pavilion, thatched, with timber uprights. To one side of the pavilion was the big shrine. The shrine was also thatched, and had mud walls decorated with figures in white, chocolate, rust and black. The priests and the soothsayers lived within those walls. The legend was that the pavilion stood on the site of the palace of the first Oba of Osun. At the time of the river festival, as people said, thousands of people of the black diaspora came here. There were morality plays in every corner of the wood.
Perhaps it was artificial, as some people said; perhaps it was all made up. The site was too beautiful, the symbolism of the ritual too easy; perhaps it had been all put together by someone whose business it was to stage events. But it was also possible that all rituals began like this, in artifice.