American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (32 page)

Read American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World Online

Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

 

Page 208
ing, she said. Maybe I could go with her, I said. "Good," she said. "We can also use your car."
The plan was for me to carry Chief Alagba and two of the drummer boys. That would give Ghandi room for herself and two girls in Iya Shango's little sedan, plus room in the trunk to store the most important of all the passengers, the pots consecrated to Yemonja. Each was filled with sea water from the previous year's festival and had to be replenished. It was very important not to spill anything. Having an extra car freed up enough space to secure the four tureens so they wouldn't shift around.
The weather was fine and clear as we drove Highway 21 through Beaufort's usual congestion and across the flat marshes leading to the coast. Chief Alagba, head of the Egungun Society, told me his ideas for promoting Oyotunji. Villagers had been in a number of movies, for example Alex Haley's
Roots
, and he said the Ogboni Society, the Council of Landowners which ran village affairs, wanted to create and market a videothus the
Yemonja pot, center, on beach at Hunting Island, South Carolina.

 

Page 209
chief's extensive taping of the Yemonja festival and the camera case riding on his lap.
He mentioned something I'd heard, that Iya Ghandi wanted to leave, but it seemed a painful subject. He loved her, and she him, but she wanted to go to Miami, or some other larger city, and there wasn't much he could do to stop her. It made me sad. No matter what your religion, losing your woman is hard.
When we arrived at the beach the sun was blazing. I regretted at once not having brought a hat, of a bathing suit, though at least I was in shorts. We parked alongside the cars of ordinary fun-seekers. Iya Ghandi began to carry the pots, one by one, down to the water's edgebalanced on her head. Each pot was covered by a "veil" of blue or white cotton clothwhat was inside was supposed to be secret. But on one trip, the wind blew the veil away. The pot, a crystal tureen the size of a punch bowl, was filled with milky-looking sea water, shells and parts of crab and fish.
I reached down to pick up the veil.
Chief Alagba refills sacred pot for Yemonja with sea water at conclusion of
week-long ceremonies.

 

Page 210
"No," she said quickly. "Don't touch that."
I drew back and apologized.
"It's okay," she said. "But you aren't initiated." She looked around for Alagba, and scolded him for not acting as quickly as had "a stranger.'' I exchanged a glance of sympathy with him, but there wasn't much I could do on his behalf.
We walked the boardwalk to the sandy white beach beyond the fringe of trees, some torn down by a recent hurricane. The tide was coming in and the area was filled with sunbathers. We didn't look like them. Iya Ghandi, clad in white blouse, loose white pantaloons and head scarfas were Chief Alagba and Iya Shangoarranged the pots on the sand and waded into the sea, shaking a castanet and singing a Yoruba praise hymn.
Chief Alagba began taping. The children sat near the pots, watching. Iya Ghandi came back from the sea, barefoot and wet from the knees down. She knelt, took her obi from a bag and cast them on the sand. She said it was a good reading and smiled. At that moment, a pair of Marine jets boomed in from over the horizon and headed out over the Atlantic.
Ghandi and Alagba then carried each of the tureens into the waves, where they emptied the old water and replaced it with new. When they'd finished, they covered each of the pots again, said a prayer, and the ceremony was concluded.
The kids were in the water in a flash. Lacking a change of clothes, I hung back on the beach, but it was so hot I at least peeled off my shirt, the better to blister.
Alagba waved, and I turned to see Chief Elesin trooping down the boardwalk in black mesh tank top and shorts like a San Diego surfer, ice chest under arm and radio tuned to a funk station. As soon as he reached the sand he peeled off his clothes down to a leopard-pattern bikini brief. On his lean, muscled body, it looked good. He sprinted toward the water, then stopped abruptly, as if he'd forgotten something. He ran back toward the pots and fell forward on his hands, in what resembled a modi-

 

Page 211
fied push-up, the position of respect to royalty or the orisha. He had forgotten to pay his respects to Yemonja. When he had done that, he sprang to his feet and cart-wheeled into the surf with one of the drummer boys.
"Elegba," Iya Ghandi sighed, as though at an irrepresible teenager.
I walked up the beach alone, watching all the sunbathers watching they knew not what.
The tide was coming in fast. I got back to the group just as Iya Ghandi had begun to move the pots to the edge of the dune line. "That's what they're after," she said of the incoming waves. I said maybe we should goI had an appointment with the king and didn't want to be late. She said it was time to leave anyway.
Then she spotted something down the beach, walked off, and came back with a dead gafftop catfish. I'd noticed it earlier in a pile of seaweed. To me it was just decaying refuse. Not to her. "This means big money," she beamed, and plopped it into Yemonja's pot. It would be food for the orisha for the coming year, and would bring good luck.
We carried everything back to the cars and the kids showered off the sand and salt. On the way home the two boys and Chief Alagba fell asleep. I wished I could have, too, and I was on fire with sunburn, but I drove fast and made it back before three, just in time for my appointment.
But the Oba wasn't there. Instead, burly Chief Akin Tobi, who had played the egungun figure, came up to me, shyly, and asked if I would mind driving the twenty or so miles back into Beaufort. The royal station wagon had broken down and the Oba, Iya Orite, Miwa and her six-month-old baby were all waiting at Bradford Tire. Could I bring them home?
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The Oba and Iya Shanla went away for the weekend, in part to patch up some of the strains of husband and wives, and I

 

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went away, too. It was good to return, though, and I settled back into my hut and routine with perhaps undue ease. Something was seductive here; I could understand why people stayed, and why each time someone left, a piece of the community fabric was torn away. Maybe the Oba knew I knew that. I don't know why else he invited me to that week's meeting of the Ogboni Society. The council sessions weren't secret, but it was unusual for an outsider to be admitted. It was, of course, a good way for me to observe the nuts and bolts of village decision-making. But I knew there was something else the Oba really wanted me to see.
At twilight, a shirtless teenage boy escorted me to the meeting chamber inside the Afin. The fading light and the still, thick air gave the long hut at the far corner of the walled compound the aura of the timeless court of a fairy tale prince. As soon as I walked in I saw the Oba seated on a small, elevated dais along one wall. Despite the humidity and temperature well into the nineties, he was smoking his intricately carved bone pipe.
I took a seat in a folding chair at the far end of the room and watched as six members of the council finished their invocation dance before a shrine to the ancestors. It seemed to go on a long time, but when they had finished, and returned to their seats, the Oba put down his pipe, and, without speaking, began to throw his opele. He smiled. The reading was good; nonetheless, he called for precautionary ebo. Three roosters for Ogun and three hens for Oshun.
Iya Shanla, sitting near the king, excused herself momentarily to retrieve an electric fan from the royal quarters, which helped move the dense air around, but not a lot. None of the circulation reached me, anyway. Even sitting quietly, I was bathed in sweat and covered in mosquitoes from the unscreened windows and door.
As recording secretary, Shanla reviewed the previous week's minutes. They had discussed dedication of the new shower and

 

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bath house and the pros and cons of tourism. Then came administrative discussions. Despite the exotic ambiance, I began to wonder if my intuition about the invitation had been wrongmaybe this council meeting would be as routine as ones I'd covered as a reporter.
"New business" shifted the tone immediately. First was the matter of Iya Orite's land. The Oba wanted to give her title to a small plot for a house and small garden. As the king's wife, property was her due by tradition. She knew it and they knew it. On the other hand, the rivalry with Shanla made any gift to Orite appear as favoritism. Some of the other villagers may have been troubled by it, too, if the comments at yesterday's sharp-tongued gelede, an annual burlesque-style convening of the village "witches" to publicly air gossip and grievances, were an indication.
By protocol, Orite was required to petition the Ogboni council for approval of the grantit was a limited monarchy; the king couldn't just do as he pleased. Orite had done her lobbying, though, and got a unanimous vote. The six council membersnow seven with the late arrival of Chief Elesin, who had been giving a reading to a client from Hilton Headsealed the pact with a capful each of Seagram's gin and bits of coconut from a small pass-around plate. Last to partake was Orite, who knelt before the Oba and pressed her head to the floor in obeisance.
Next the Oba asked the council to consider the request of a mother of a troubled thirty-two-year-old man, diagnosed schizophrenic. She wanted the village to take her son for the summer. Some of the members were against it, thinking the man's problem too much trouble. The Oba had a different view. "We know a lot of times people are dismissed as having behaviorial problems simply because they can't relate. Maybe this would be what he needs to snap him back together. We are all schizophrenic to the extent we are living in two opposing cultures. All Afro-Americans are."

 

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To find the correct path, the Oba cast the opele, both for the village and for the man. Explicating the throw, he told the council, "Ifa has sent this man and we should not try to avoid it. Obatala and Esu (Elegba) say there will be a creative solution. Ideally, he should be initiated." Both wives were against the plan, for although the king would collect most of the fees for the man's initiation, it would surely be the wives who, in return for their shares, would have to deal with the daily caretaking. But eventually Orite sided with the king and the majority. Shanla didn't. And neither did Iya Ghandi.
In the moments after that, the room gradually fell silent. A few priests whispered to each other, or exchanged knowing looks. The king re-lit his pipe. From the quiet came a rustle of cotton. Ghandi stood up to speak, her right before the council. Everyone already knew what she wanted to say.
The Oba listened quietly, though he looked as sad as she did defensive. He didn't want to lose her, but it wasn't up to him. Nor any mortal. Ultimately, Ifa would reveal what Ghandi should do. That didn't make the possible departure of the village's only Yemonja priestess any less burdensome, or his heart any less sick about it. No wonder festival week had seemed to carry such odd vibesit was the goddess's own curtain call.
Ghandi sat down, and the Oba leaned back in his chair, pipe in hand. He seemed to study every face. I knew this was why I was there. I wiped sweat from my eyes and dabbed drops of it off the pages of my notebook.
"We are living in a chaotic period," he began. "It is important to always keep in mind that in a period of creativity there are always chaotic situations that don't follow an idea or a plan, but are happening. We thought the arrival of Yoruba culture would eliminate all problems. We have learned that this is not necessarily the case." He paused to let the point sink in.
"We are like people in a lifeboat in a storm. We cannot control events. But we have to keep doing what we have to do....

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