to my dad? Could be. The thing about being rich is that you never ever have to move an object from one place on the earth’s surface to another, unless you are playing a game. My father thought this corrupting, and so he, and later I, spent many hours doing sweaty, abrasive, back-straining work on old cars and on boats. I built my first boat, an eight-foot lapstrake tender, when I was eleven. My mother and sister in contrast never, as the phrase has it, lifted a finger. Nor did my husband, another interesting contrast. This is truly odd because sorcery is a physical thing, and clearly he learned to do that very well, the collecting, the mixing, the stirring, the boiling. The cutting.
While I am eating, Jasper comes by and asks if he can help. He is a strong, stocky kid with a big mass of dark curls and a bright and humorous eye, and I am glad to have him, because I need someone to hold the other end of the drywall panels as I tack them up to the rafters with the nail gun. By the time the sun goes down, I have the ceiling and the walls done, and the exhaust fan fitted into place. Polly Ribera comes by and takes a look and praises clever Dolores, who feels pretty good herself, having let old Jane out of the cage for a little stretch.
I take a cool shower, put on fresh clothes, eat some mangos with cottage cheese and feed Luz’s chicken some bran flakes. I knock together a little box for it out of scrap wood and hardware cloth. Then I sleep, dreamlessly as usual. The Olo regard dreamlessness as a very serious malady, on the same order as aphasia or paralysis. You really still dream, Ulune explained to me, but some curse or malign entity is blocking the vital messages from coming through. I dreamed vividly all the time I was in Africa, and at breakfast each morning, I would share these with Ulune and he would share his with me. Some were not so pleasant, as I am starting to recall. Did you ever have a nightmare in which you “awakened” into yet another nightmare? And couldn’t move? And thought it would never stop? The witch dreams of the Olo are to that sort of thing as the aircraft carrier Chester A. Nimitz is to Ulune’s twelve-foot log pirogue.
The next morning, I awake early, with unfamiliar hunger pangs. Jane is getting rambunctious, obviously. I make myself a batch of French toast and eat it with maple syrup and jam, a pot of coffee, a whole Hayden mango at the picnic table in the backyard, serenaded by the birds. I used to like honey on French toast, back before Africa, but now the idea of honey makes me a little faint. I examine the birds and listen to them carefully. There don’t seem to be any honeyguides among them. Then I go out and pick up Polly’s Herald from the front yard where the paper boy has dropped it. I glance at the headline. I rip it out of its plastic wrapper and read the story. Then I drop it on the ground, stagger into the bushes, and throw up my breakfast.
SEVENTEEN
10/2 Lagos
Dave Berne is here. Originally a Brit, famous womanizer, not with me, tho, been at Stanford for ages. He said M. had told him all about me, and sent his love, and said we would get along. Been here many times, speaks all the languages, is completely at ease. As we drove from the airport, he regaled us with a story (in mixed English and Yoruba) about a grad student of his who couldn’t get the Yoruba language tonalities right. No one would talk to him after he asked, very politely, when the next circumcision ceremony was to take place. Berne asked him exactly what he had said and the kid repeated it amp; what he’d actually said was, ‘Please, I require to have intercourse with three billy goats.’ Tunji laughing so hard he could hardly steer.
Back at the Palm Court, Berne insisted on running off to Yaba Market for a big street lunch and so we all did, plus W. Berne found a horrible-looking little stand that he said sold the best akara in Lagos amp; we all sat around on rickety stools and ate the fried pastry, dipping it in blazing chili sauce, and washing it down with beer amp; it was very good, too. Someone tried to sell him an old Gelede mask, D.B. instantly identified it as fake, explained why, brilliant rap on aesthetics and symbology of the western Yoruba, grad students in awe. I thought it was pretty good myself, but my awe is all dried up, now, M. used to do shit like that all the time. Greer slipped into the background, grinning tho, I think he finds it a relief not always to have to be the big kahuna. W. not in awe at all, shooting D.B. daggerlike looks.
Good discussion at dinner, talked about origins?where do religious ideas arise, can you trace a myth back to some primal source and say, oh, here marks the spot where that particular belief entered the consciousness of a people? Greer talked about Mami Wata, a Ewe cult he’s been studying for years, where we know the origins with some precision, since it dates from the coming of Europeans to the West African coast. From POV of Africans, these people appeared in floating islands that arose out of the sea. Their skins were the color of drowned corpses. They possessed tools and weapons of a kind and power never before seen on earth, clearly of magical origin. They worshiped carved figures, like real people do, amp; placed them in front of their floating islands. The Ewe adapted existing water spirits into a new cult, giving it a name in pidgin?Mother Water, or Mami Wata? amp; began to worship the figureheads of trading vessels. Mami Wata wants you to be rich like the white man, is the message. Her devotees dress in white and smear their faces with chalk or flour, and dance around figures painted bright pink, which still bear the expression of benign stupidity found on the original carved figureheads.
W. is eating this up, asking questions, and scratching away on a pad?his area of expertise, the weird way in which the races ape one another. Knew he was getting it all wrong?nothing to do with race, everything to do with money?but was so happy to see him animated again that I didn’t butt in.
Greer talked about Yoruba origins, said the old bards of the kings of Oyo claimed the Yoruba came from Mecca, but that’s obvious fabrication based on prestige of Islam. That Y. not entirely autochthonous seems beyond doubt, most probably they came from the east, in waves during the early first millennium a.d. His best guess is that they came from Meroe, a kingdom in upper Egypt that flourished between the second and fourth centuries.
A little discussion of Afrocentrism here, the name of Meroe always sparks that, Meroe having conquered Egypt proper at one point, a rare example of black folks getting over on the other kind and thus to be cherished. Then a giant leap to: Egypt equals black, Egypt founded Western civ. thus white civilization another rip-off from the good guys. Demolished (I thought a bit unkindly) by Berne; he’s got a quick fuse in the presence of nonsense. He said this obsession with Egypt and Nilotic ethnic types has been a disaster in West Africa, and was invented by white colonialists in the first place, so that they could rule by favoring people who looked like them?light skins, thin lips and noses. The Tutsi in Rwanda, the Hausa in Nigeria, and it was disgusting to see Africans falling for it. You got a world-class culture right here in Yoruba and you despise it because it doesn’t have MTV and chrome trim. W. did a long angry rant about how the white man would never respect the black man until the black man had real power, power to hurt the white man. What Africa needed was a black Hitler!
Stunned silence. Greer stepped in, asked Berne to talk about the Olo.
Odd tale. A crazy Frenchman back in the 19th C. found a small group in isolated district in Fr. Equatorial who claimed to be from Ife, but Ife before the Yoruba got there. The Yoruba pantheon, they claimed, were them. They had godlike powers back then, in the golden age, now they’ve fallen on hard times. Tour de Montaille, his name was. Don’t recall hearing it before, said so?Berne explained he had discovered the original journals, but was unable to verify the existence of Olo, so assumed either the Frenchie made it all up, or they were extinguished or dispersed in the past century. Wrote a brief piece in J. African Hist., probably in library here. I said I would check it out. He said read the Fr. journals, too, they’re here also, if the termites haven’t got them.
Actually, a jolly evening, the best in a while. W. did not go out carousing with Ola and his pals as usual. Instead, later, a polite knock on my door. I succumbed. After, I wanted to talk, about us, about the craziness, about how he was feeling, for God’s sake, but he fell asleep, is sleeping now as I write this. I can’t sleep. It will have to be Xanax again. Still, maybe the worst is over.
10/4 Ado-Joga
Here in this little village west of Lagos, Berne setting me up w/ Adedayo, Gelede mask carver, most gorgeous wood-carving tradition in Yoruba art. Interesting: Gelede artists are men, but tradition pays homage to the spiritual power of elderly women, called awon iya wa, “our mothers.” Not common in Africa, needless to say. Or anywhere else. Feminist in me finds it terribly exciting. These women have such power that they have to be entertained, cosseted, praised, and placated, lest they turn into witches, and bring destruction down on communities. Result = Gelede masked dance ritual. Unlike other Yoruba dance rituals, which address the forces of the spirit world, Gelede concerned mainly with this world, as personified in the terrible old women. The dances speak to social and spiritual issues affecting daily life, like art in Europe in Greece, in Middle Ages.
Mr. Adedayo very old, dignified, aristocratic, works in a tiny yard in front of his atelier, sitting on the ground
