Exploring the Connection Between Yoruba's "Adahunse" and Christian Spirituality

Introduction:

In the rich tapestry of Nigerian cultural and religious traditions, the Yoruba people have long held a significant place. Their religious practices and beliefs, steeped in mythology and spiritualism, have been passed down through generations. One intriguing aspect of Yoruba spirituality is the figure known as "Adahunse." This article aims to explore the fascinating connection between Adahunse and the Christian concept of spirituality, shedding light on their similarities and offering insight into the interplay between these two traditions.

Adahunse: A Yoruba Spiritual Figure:

Adahunse is a prominent figure in Yoruba religious beliefs, often associated with the ancestral realm and regarded as an intermediary between the living and the deceased. In Yoruba cosmology, it is believed that the spirit of the departed can be invoked and consulted for guidance, blessings, and protection. Adahunse acts as a conduit, facilitating communication between the physical and spiritual realms.

Christian Spirituality: A Brief Overview:

Christian spirituality encompasses a range of beliefs and practices, emphasizing a personal relationship with God and the pursuit of holiness. It encompasses various traditions and expressions within Christianity, reflecting diverse cultural contexts and interpretations of scripture. Central themes in Christian spirituality include prayer, worship, moral living, and seeking spiritual growth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Intersection of Adahunse and Christian Spirituality:

Intermediary Role: Adahunse, as an intermediary figure in Yoruba spirituality, bears some resemblance to the role of saints and angels in Christian belief. Both serve as channels for communication between the human and divine realms. Just as Adahunse assists in connecting with the ancestors, saints are often invoked by Christians as intercessors, seeking their aid in supplication to God.

Communion with the Divine: Yoruba tradition places great importance on maintaining a connection with the spiritual world. Similarly, Christian spirituality emphasizes the importance of communion with God through prayer, worship, and sacraments. Both Adahunse and Christian spirituality emphasize the need for believers to cultivate a deep and meaningful relationship with the divine.

Ancestral veneration and Commemoration: Yoruba religious practices, including the veneration of ancestors, align with the Christian emphasis on remembering and honoring the departed. Christians commemorate their loved ones through various means, such as All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, or by visiting graves and holding memorial services. This shared focus on ancestral remembrance highlights a common thread between Yoruba and Christian traditions.

Moral and Ethical Living: Christian spirituality places great emphasis on moral living and adherence to ethical principles derived from biblical teachings. Similarly, Yoruba spirituality, with its emphasis on ancestral reverence, also encourages adherents to live virtuously and to uphold the values passed down through their lineage. Both traditions seek to foster personal growth and integrity in their followers.

Symbolism and Rituals: Symbolism and rituals hold significant importance in both Yoruba and Christian spirituality. Adahunse is often invoked through specific rituals, symbols, and offerings, mirroring the use of sacraments, liturgy, and sacred symbols in Christian worship. These rituals and symbols serve to deepen the spiritual experience and create a sense of connection to the divine.

Conclusion:

The connection between Adahunse, a figure deeply rooted in Yoruba spirituality, and Christian spirituality is a fascinating exploration of the parallels between these traditions. While they may differ in specific beliefs and practices, both Yoruba and Christian spirituality share common threads of ancestral reverence, the pursuit of communion with the divine, moral living, and the use of symbolism and rituals. By understanding these connections, we can foster a greater appreciation for the similarities among our cultures.

References 

Johnson K. (2021) African Indigenous Healers and Counseling: A Case study of Babalawo. OSP Journal of Health Care and Medicine 2. HCM-2-129

Oyebola, D.D.O. (1980) Traditional medicine and its practitioners among the yoruba of Nigeria: A classification. Social Science & Medicine. Part A: Medical Psychology & Medical Sociology. 14(1) Pp 23-29

https://ooduarere.com/naija-gist/religion/different-babalawo-onisegun-adahuse/

Breeding ‘God’ for Meat: Dissecting a Lexico-Semantic Slant into Yoruba Monotheism

Growing up as a Yoruba boy, it has always fascinated me how the same expression is deployed to label the art of worship of God and the art of breeding animals. Theism’s and animal husbandry’s equal claim to the term however leaves a little allowance for categorisation which can be located in polysemy. But this polysemy is only afforded by the latter field – animal husbandry. In Yoruba, the lexico-semantic equivalent of “breed” is “sin”. To say “I breed dogs” either as a pet, for meat or even for sale (which in turn metaphorically returns one to the idea of money or food as meat) is to say “mo n sin aja”. It therefore becomes obvious that the word “sin”, like its English counterpart is a lumped expression which, often in certain contexts or after a little more interrogation, can be unpacked to reveal different dimensions which all stem from the idea of ‘ownership’. In short, the breeder (olusin) owns the animal.

Yet, while theism seems to be free of such demarcation of either breeding for meat or as pet, at least denotatively, it does not take too much struggle to access it connotatively when one takes some time to examine the practices of theistic worshippers in any of the world religions. Besides, if anything, theism retains the idea of ownership and it grudgingly accepts that fact, even though it is designed to present God as the supreme owner of the universe. The way religion proselytising is carried on reveals something akin to an attempt to sell what you own or have bred meticulously. Likewise, the fact of different forms of ‘God’ as presented by Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and some modern forms of Pantheism and others points at a semblance of different breeds of what is sold.

A deeper interrogation of the Yoruba’s choice of the word “sin” (worship) in connection to God often leads one to the advent of monotheism in Yorubaland. Yoruba historians have always referred to the early Yoruba as polytheistic or pantheistic (taking all the gods as necessarily working together and venerating all, albeit while devoted to one or a few). And the choice word for veneration or worship was “bo (Orisha)” which more faithfully reflects the processes involved in worship – pouring of libations, offering of sacrifices, total subjection even in the face of being ignored or unrecognised for such devotion. At this stage, “sin” was more aptly deployed for a relationship of indebtedness. For instance, to “sin’gba” (sin ogba) meant to serve term as a bond servant usually as a means of repaying some loan or debt; the full payment of which leads to the total freedom of the servant and cessation of the devotion. A slight semantic shift applies for the use of the word in animal husbandry where the human owner is said to own/breed “sin” the animal due to the fact that s/he performs the devotion. After all, the animal mostly only enjoys the services of the human until it is time for it to also serve some purpose – as meat, carrier of burden, a means of exchange and so on. In these two senses interrogated, one thing is clear: to “sin” is to serve with an expectation of some end (both temporally and economically).

Fast forward some decades to the age of hybrid Christianity/Islam among the Yorubas. The worship of God seems to be attached to the provision of the daily bread. In fact, the Yorubas have since found out that embracing the religion was a way of getting access to the world of the European coloniser whose intension in the first lace was to use the religion to gai access into the world and wealth of the African. While many devotees of the monotheistic God worship him for love and in simple wonder about His awesomeness and ethereal mystery, many simply, either covertly or overtly hang on to Him because of the promise of meat. Meat, again in its metaphorical sense, include food, wealth, health, safety, good life and other needs as suggested by the scholar Abraham Marslow. For them, it is more sincere to say they serve God in the sense of “sin Olorun” than worship God in the sense of “bo Olorun”. And being in the majority, their use of language has seeped into the popular consciousness where everyone now ‘serve’ rather than ‘worship’ God. 

*This essay relies heavily on the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis (linguistic determinism/relativism) which argues for the fact that the peculiarities of our languages have the ability to determine or largely influence the way we see the world and interact with it.

Covid-19 and the Racism Nexus

I had an experience today that widened my perspective on racism and the role of education in correcting the ugly thinking pattern underlying racism.

Some of my high school students started a bedlam while teachers were in a seminar. Shiuts of “Corona Virus” took over the whole place. We rushed out to see what was wrong only to find that a certain Asian salesman (probably Lebanese or Iranian) had come to sell his wares as usual. Unfortunately, the students were almost surrounding him, screaming at him and I suspected that any remonstration from the man would have set off real chaos (God forbid). We immediately reprimanded the kids and promptly apologised to the man and his Nigerian partner.

The crux of this gist is how it made me feel about the few experiences of racism during my brief visits to foreign countries. More so, when we read reports of racial abuse all around. Don’t the abusers feel justified because of the education they have received and the different narratives which consolidates their false sense of superiority, innocence and purity vis-a-vis the victim’s inferiority, sinfulness and guilt?

It struck me really hard that we Africans have concentrated too much on the evils of racism based on a narrative that presents the white as the offenders and the black as victim. We seem to have neglected to teach them that racism can go either way and it’s wrong in either circumstance.

Now that Covid-19 is aboard and some super powers are already selling the narrative that it is the fault of the Chinese – an unfortunate idea, shouldn’t we seize this opportunity to re-evaluate our philosophy about the other and their problems which often become the bases of discrimination and racism?

Plagues can start anywhere and THIS is not the fault of the Chinese.

Olushola OYADIJI

“OBINRIN BII OKUNRIN”: DISECTING A COVERT YORUBA PHILOSOPHY OF FEMININE INFERIORITY

The present century, especially the turn of the millennium, has brought with it the feminist ideology simply labelled in many fields as feminism. And feminism has raged on like wildfire. The wildfire metaphor is deliberately and aptly deployed here to capture not only the sense of how ravaging an ideology feminism has been, how much it has dazzled the onlookers and fire fighters alike or how seemingly unstoppable it has been. More interestingly, this metaphor is deployed to paint a picture also of the difficulty of pinning down its source to a certain force of ignition or a location – although the latter subjects itself to easier explanation than the former which keeps an elusive façade. But also, the wildfire metaphor captures a sense of what is burnt as well as what may yet get burnt as wildfires always carry an undesirable prospect of burning more than the human societies would have projected or imagined.  

This essay is however not a pedagogical piece on metaphors. Rather, it is a concentrated peep into the inconvenient fact that the Yoruba society, which prides itself on wisdom and the veneration of women as harbingers of life who are celestially imbued with almost god(dess)-like qualities, somehow secretly (and maybe inadvertently too) deploys language to disallow the woman from being a woman if she must aspire to the highest ideals of the Yoruba culture.

A quick comparison of the various women ‘emancipation’ movements like the Women’s Lib of late 18^th century America, Canada and Europe, the more recent Pussy Riot of 2011AD Russia and even the ancient and agelong Aje sorority of Yorubaland which roughly compares with witchcraft reveals a common goal – to advance the cause of women (universally) and assert the right of the woman to live in freedom and pursue happiness as well as realise her full potential as a female human being. However, there are deeply entrenched biases in Yoruba language that clearly reveal that women are expected, against the spirit of Simone De Beauvior’s (1949) The Second Sex, to either forgo these desires or mutate (maybe metamorphose) into a different kind of specie to attain the recognition which the society bestows on its full-fledged members.

As Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf put it in their classic and widely criticised ‘hypothesis’ which has come to be known in the Linguistic parlance by names like Linguistic Relativism, Linguistic Determinism or the Deficit Hypothesis, people are (forever) at the mercy of the language which has become the vehicle of expression of their culture as they cannot but think, speak and otherwise experience the world outside the boundaries of that code system. Indubitably, long-held and deeply-entrenched expectations and codes of behaviour are stacked for ‘safekeeping’ as well as reference purposes in Yoruba proverbs and axioms. While sets of sayings are reserved for different situations and purposes, there is a level of fascination in this essay with sayings that pretend to praise women but which actually end up reminding them of their inability to reach the level of full personhood that everyone desires and which most – if not all – of their male counterparts achieve by default.

Prominent among such denigrating accolades is the expression “obinrin bii okunrin” which roughly translates as a woman who is just like a man. On the surface, this praise term evokes a sense of pride for a woman who feels respected for being better than just a (an atehinto) woman. A Yoruba woman invariably had to be manlike to be great sine being womanly is tantamount to subjugation and relegation. Being referred to as atehinto is a reminder of the culturally loaded reference to the structure and location of the female genitalia which compels her to pass her urine ‘backwards’ rather than forward like her male counterpart. Another such saying that comes to mind immediately as it is often used to complement the foregoing is “to act like a man”. In other words, women from whom bravery is expected are enjoined to se bii okunrin or se okan akin. Akin is a Yoruba expression for the brave at heart, a warrior or ‘he’ who stands out for some adventurous deed. The use of the “he” preform in the antecedent sentence lays claim to freedom from any gender bias or chauvinism on the author’s part. Rather, a cursory anthropological journey into the Yoruba naming system would reveal that Akin may only be a “he”.

Akin can be semiotically linked to “Kumolu” – another Yoruba name which evokes another saying that a woman would not be named Kumolu except on the ground of some exceptional situation. The reader need not look too far for the exceptional situation as it is simply the lack of or the death of a ‘male’ heir in a family of some nobility. Olu being the heir, the real successor, the real child that bestows pride on the family, every home prays for an Oluomo. The Olu twist brings in another interesting angle to the narrative when one considers the morphological make-up of words like “Oluwa” (God/Lord), “Oluse” (doer) et cetera. In short, a woman is not linguistically catered for in the world of the active and great. No woman is addressed as “my Lord” in the Yoruba culture except she has stripped herself of or been forcefully stripped of the ‘limiting’ female garb in order to effectively become relevant in positions of Lordship like a regent (interim king) or an acting General of an army.

This essay should not conclude without once again establishing the fact that the woman in Yoruba culture has her place. However, her place is to be located in softness, beauty and grace – concepts and virtues which are not essentially the loftiest in the order of greatness among which bravery, royalty, sacrifice, wisdom and heroism rank the highest. A woman who aspires to such virtues as these must become (like) a man, sometimes literally having to dress up, talk and act (like) a man in order to be a true obinrin bii okunrin, a heroic, liberated woman – probably a mutated specie of woman.

For Further Reading, see:

De Beauvior, Simone. 1971. The Second Sex. Alfred Knopf

Mead, Margaret. 1949. Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. Harpercollings

www.yorupedia.com (for Yoruba words)

Figures:

 

Pussy Riot (credit: www.wikipedia.com)                    A Yoruba Witch (Credit pinterest.com)

Women’s Lib demonstration, Washington DC, 1970. (www.wikipedia.com)

Female Yoruba Regents (www.nairaland.com)

My US Fulbright Experience,  My Eye-opener to my World

When I first  heard of the Fulbright FLTA program halfway into my Masters of Arts degree in English at theUniversity of Ibadan in 2009, I knew at once that I had to apply and take advantage of the opportunity for a myriad of reasons. I’d get an opportunity to contribute to mutual understanding among countries of the world and enhance in my own little way the ongoing trend of globalization and world peace. I’d be an ambassador of my beloved Yoruba language and my Country Nigeria, I’d come in contact with the English Language in a Mothertongue (L1) speech community. I’d improve my professional skills in the language teaching field and so on. All this time, a very important advantage which would rank among my top life changing experiences never really occurred to me. This experience which I call an eye-opener to my fatherland, I must say informed  the need to write this article. Nevertheless, I shall dwell also upon how my other desires have been met almost in the order in which I listed them in the opening sentence.

For me, this journey of discovery which helped to fulfill my dream of seeing the world beyond my country and joining with hundreds of others in bringing diverse cultures and languages of the world to a common platform started right from the articles which the Institute for International Education (IIE) sent from time to time coupled with the pre-departure orientation organized by the US embassy in Nigeria. I began to see the cultures of the US in a new light. It now became clearer as a country with a plethora of cultures and not a 'cultureless' society as most erroneously believe. It would be better described as “a canvass with several shades of paints and styles” as I recall a writer saying in one of IIE’s articles. This point would be further reinforced by my day to day experience in New York City about which I wrote a poem titled “Races and Faces”.

However, the real life experience of the friendliness and rapture which cultural exchange and transnational friendship could bring started for me at the Orientation at Phoenix. I also began to have a feel of Americans’ friendliness and sense of curiosity which has ever been my experience since I got to New York University. I go to the class everyday looking forward to my students’ smiles and intense questions about and admiration for my Yoruba culture. But unexpectedly too, living in New York, and more so, taking graduate courses in Diaspora Studies and Africana Studies has brought me into a new consciousness about Nigeria and Africa. More precisely put, the Fulbright experience afforded me the opportunity of finding a distance, a different and panoramic locus standi from which I can take a distant look at my world, a view which though not disinterested, yet was free from the bias and limitations of an insider. I now feel a new sense of citizenship  - not only of Nigeria but of the world, a call to action, a better perspective of what our national problems are and the solutions to them, a new disposition to academics and politics and a raised sense of self-esteem.

Like John Donne who said in one of his poems, “I wonder what you and I did till we loved”, I also say I wonder what knowledge I had till I got involved in this project. After I wrote the first paragraph and the idea of the eye-opening experience however, it occurred to me that I could have jumped to a hasty conclusion. After all, we are just barely half-way into the program, and a lot of other –probably more “wall-shattering” – experiences are on the way. Yet, I say, if this program should come to an end at this very moment, I shall not have wasted the US department of State’s, IIE’s and my resources in embarking on this journey of discovery. I could almost say at this point Veni,  Vindi, Vinci. Mo wa, mo ri, mo segun.

It Used to Be…

…That men were boys

Women were virgins

And the youth were toddlers

It used to be

That teachers were students

Leaders were led

And founders were searchers

But was it ever so

That these moneybags were poor?

These directors were jobseekers?

These proprietors were staffers?

Was it ever so

That paradise was here on earth?

Are Sexual Harassment Laws Being Taken Too Far???

First-Grader Suspended for Singing 'I'm Sexy and I Know It'

By Ashley Jennings | ABC News

• First-Grader Suspended for Singing …

A Colorado elementary school student was suspended from school this week for singing a lyric from a popular LMFAO song, "I'm sexy and I know it."

Those six little words from the Los Angeles rap-influenced duo earned first-grader D'Avonte Meadows a three day dismissal from Sable Elementary in Aurora, Colo.

"I only just said the song," Meadows told Denver's ABC7 News. "I'm sexy and I know it."

School officials said D'Avonte was suspended for sexual harassment after he sang and the line  to a female classmate who was standing in a lunch line. Unfortunately,  it wasn't the first time he'd serenaded this girl with this particular lyric.

Aurora School District's Media Relations Specialist  Paula Hans, said in a statement:

"Aurora Public Schools is committed to providing equitable learning for all students. We have policies and protocol in place to prevent any disruption to the learning environment. Due to privacy laws, we are unable to discuss appropriate disciplinary consequences about a specific student."

District policy, as outlined in the student handbook, states that sexual harassment "must have negative effects on the learning or work of others."

D'Avonte's mother, Stephanie Meadows, told ABC7  News that her son had had disciplinary problems before this week's infraction.  Last month, she said, he was sent to the principal's office for singing  the same song  to the same girl.

This time, however, he was "shaking his booty" near the girl's face, Meadows told ABC7 News.

"I'm going to definitely have to sit with him and see if he understands exactly what the song means," Meadows told ABC7 News.

But Meadows still doesn't believe her son's recent actions justify  suspension for sexual harassment.

"I could understand if he was fondling her, looking up her skirt, trying to look in her shirt. That, to me, is sexual harassment," Meadows told ABC7 News. "I'm just, I'm floored. They're going to look at him like he's a pervert. And it's like, that's not fair to him."