Some Lessons from Orita

By

Obododimma Oha

Orita is a meeting of roads in Yoruba, which is equivalent to aba in Igbo. Two or more roads could meet and each number of meeting roads is given a name derived from orita, just as the number conveys the level of spiritual power the local people, mainly those in African Traditional Religions, assign to it. That directs us right away to what orita does in the culture or folklore. Is orita just one evidence of indigenous numerology, in which numbers are assigned some significance? Is orita an input into uncommon thinking in any way?

But as we think about these, it is good to point out right away that we cannot discuss anything about orita without talking about the road. Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate from Nigeria, has beautifully drawn our attention to the importance of the semiotics of the road in African cultures, even in modern postcolonial thinking, with his play, The Road. Soyinka is telling us clearly that our human destinies are tied to the road, just as life itself is a journey involving “roads.” There are roads for individuals. There are roads for societies. Sometimes, individual roads have repercussions for societal roads, and vice versa. But the road is a site for contesting choices. We are all people of the road; we are all travelers.

The decision somebody makes in acting that role of roadmaster means a lot for other people who may be just road touts. So, we are right in watching out for the decision made by the roadmaster (who may not have mastered the road at all!). In fact, the road is “unmasterable.” It could be slippery. The point one passed freely yesterday may today be points of skirmishes! The road today may not be the road tomorrow. And so, Soyinka has a mine we can inexhaustibly explore, for the road has trajectories.

Orita is always about roads meeting. In Yoruba, no one talks about two roads meeting (orita meji), for that is a given. Every road is always two roads meeting, a coming and a going, back and front. So, every road is orita meji and the sacrifice is not placed there. It is no-place. But orita meta (meeting of three roads) is an important intersection. It is a spike in the order of things and meeting of seen and unseen roads, of worlds, of entities, where the meeting is a corollary for the meeting of our lives. Your life is a road, just as mine. It meets mine, but will branch off. God forbid that when it meets mine and branches off, none of us would regret it. None of us would later have to carry excess luggage and continue tripping.

Yes; at orita (orita meta, orita merin, orita marun, etc), our roads meet and converse. Since we have become roads (or roads, though lifeless) have become us, the meeting of these roads is a meeting of the important narratives that are us. So, every orita is a very important point of meeting. You can go there (and if there is a newsstand, Free Readers’ Association”) and gossip and waste your time, your life. And later you continue traveling on your road. Or you may choose to hide in your office and meet other gossips online where you curse the crossing of roads. You can even go to a club with your mental luggage, and in-between mouthfuls of pepper-soup and beer sing us a song about the miserable journey of the meeting of roads. The important thing is that your clubbing and newsstand gossiping are also the meeting of roads and the transformation of luggage on the journey.

In thinking about the meeting of roads and its diverse uses, two narratives come to my mind: one is fictional but related to folklore, the other is real life experience in which the semiotics of orita as a spiritual spatiality is recognized. In the first case, Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard is a candidate. An early part of the novel tells of the efforts made by the palmwine drinkard to get to the city inhabited by Death (Deadstown) to be able to obtain a clue about the whereabouts of his tapper. Since nobody is willing to tell him where Death lives (maybe out of fear of Death itself), he decides to force their mouths open by lying down at an orita, with his legs spread out carelessly. Surely, people would comment on this “strange” behaviour. Doesn’t that remind you about a modern corollary in social media: a post luring you to make a comment, and once you make it, you have swallowed the pill of come-back-and-check-for-a-response! You have an albatross on your neck! Anyway, the palmwine drinkard is targeting the open mouth: a helpful comment from passersby. And soon it came: it said: “Who is the mother of this alakori, this good-for-nothing fellow who wants to die and has placed his right leg in the direction to the city inhabited by Death? Does he want to go there?” The clue now seen, he begins his terrible journey to Deadstown. In that case, orita which seems to de-complicate issues of whereabouts through a meeting of roads; helps in de-complicating the search for Death! A problem presents a solution.

Another encounter with orita is this particular sacrifice at an orita meta (a meeting of three roads) right after the Catholic Church in University of Ibadan. Incidentally, the church is for a celebration of sacrifice. Yes; the Catholic mass is a regular celebration of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. Now, the sacrifice with apples and other delicacies is based on the assumption that:

(1)        the meeting of the roads is a visual manifestation of a meeting in the spirit, with threeness at the centre of it. In that case, the meeting might just be a spiritual clash at another realm, the sacrifice being a bribe or at least an enticement.

(2)        the spirits or their agents have mouths and can eat apples like humans; in fact, they are postcolonials and bad ones at that, having appetite for apples which they cannot grow in Ibadan!

Beyond this, this placing of a sacrifice at the oritameta might even be seen as spiritual terrorism. It is designed to frighten us as we behold it, and give the impression that the people who put it are about to unleash maximum spiritual horror on somebody.  My worry: can’t the sacrifice be a drone monitoring the weather or deviant behaviours in the community? The last is particularly appealing, for it could make the work of the university security simpler. But it is now about the resuscitation and use of a diabolical spiritual weapon few meters from the foot of the cross!

Anyway, as members of the book community, we might be right in being worried when we see the sacrifice for apple-eating spirits in our backyard. The meeting of the community of book people with that of non-book folks is already an orita, and an important spike. Same for the sacrifice of Christ (celebrated in  Catholic mass and symbolized in the cross) and the sacrifice with apples. If I were a dare-devil school child or a hungry beggar in a depressed economy, why won’t I eat the apples on behalf of the spirits?