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."

5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor | LiveScience.com – Sat, Apr 28, 2012

• 

When your head hits the pillow, for many it's lights out for the conscious part of you. But the cells firing in your brain are very much awake, sparking enough energy to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the rapid-eye-movement stage of your sleep.

Why do some people have nightmares while others really spend their nights in bliss? Like sleep, dreams are mysterious phenomena. But as scientists are able to probe deeper into our minds, they are finding some of those answers.

Here's some of what we know about what goes on in dreamland.
1. Violent dreams can be a warning sign

As if nightmares weren't bad enough, a rare sleep disorder — called REM sleep behavior disorder — causes people to act out their dreams, sometimes with violent thrashes, kicks and screams. Such violent dreams may be an early sign of brain disorders down the line, including Parkinson's disease and dementia, according to research published online July 28, 2010, in the journal Neurology. The results suggest the incipient stages of these neurodegenerative disorders might begin decades before a person, or doctor, knows it.

2. Night owls have more nightmares
Staying up late has its perks, but whimsical dreaming is not one of them. Research published in 2011 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms, revealed that night owls are more likely than their early-bird counterparts to experience nightmares.
In the study 264 university students rated how often they experienced nightmares on a scale from 0 to 4, never to always, respectively. The stay-up-late types scored, on average, a 2.10, compared with the morning types who averaged a 1.23. The researchers said the difference was a significant one, however, they aren’t sure what's causing a link between sleep habits and nightmares. Among their ideas is the stress hormone cortisol, which peaks in the morning right before we wake up, a time when people are more prone to be in REM, or dream, sleep. If you’re still sleeping at that time, the cortisol rise could trigger vivid dreams or nightmares, the researchers speculate. [Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]

3. Men dream about sex
As in their wake hours, men also dream about sex more than women do. And comparing notes in the morning may not be a turn-on for either guys or gals, as women are more likely to have experienced nightmares, suggests doctoral research reported in 2009 by psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England.
She found women's dreams/nightmares could be grouped into three categories: fearful dreams (being chased or having their life threatened); dreams involving the loss of a loved one; or confused dreams.

4. You can control your dreams
If you're interested in lucid dreaming, you may want to take up video gaming. The link? Both represent alternate realities, said Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.
"If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice," Gackenbach told LiveScience in 2010. "Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Her past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they were also better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character.
That level of control may also help gamers turn a bloodcurdling nightmare into a carefree dream, she found in a 2008 study. This ability could help war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Gackenbach reasoned.

5. Why we dream

Scientists have long wondered why we dream, with answers ranging from Sigmund Freud's idea that dreams fulfill our wishes to the speculation that these wistful journeys are just a side effect of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Turns out, at least part of the reason may be critical thinking, suggests Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett who presented her theory in 2010 at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in Boston.

Her research revealed that our slumbering hours may help us solve puzzles that have plagued us during daylight hours. The visual and often illogical aspects of dreams make them perfect for the out-of-the-box thinking that is necessary to solve some problems, she speculates.

So while dreams may have originally evolved for another purpose, they have likely been refined over time for multiple tasks, including helping the brain reboot and helping us solve problems, she said.