voodoo;wildoo;science

My husband is ever so inquisitive abt nigeria n our culture. Sometimes it gets extremely annoying trying to put a line btw myths and reality. He always comes up wiv these off the wall questions like the other day he was asking me abt all these god n goddesses like shango, obatala n stuff. I remember being in elementary school in soemthing being mentioned abt them in my yoruba class. but honestly do u think i cared at the time. i think not. he just simply shakes his head n says i am a fake nigerian cos i never have answers to his questions.

i grew up in the shelters of the city surrounded by high walls n fences n the closest i got to things like that was our dreaded ile ya trips to the village. please even the village i mean was like living in the city. shoo same ole high fences and walls. the most we got of the locals was whatever we saw looking out of the windows or balcony. i don't think i have ever seen a mud house u know like the ones in those real old movies of iyalode n stuff or those hausa movies in my entire life.

anyways, we always end up in these conversations arguing whether it was voodoo or science.

uptil now as we all know people still vermentally believe in all this voodoo stuff. my husbands argues that there is white voodoo but that will probably be part 2. i don't know if its that i am too westernized n i simply choose to try not to believe in all that stuff but yet, i am scared as hell whenevr i am travelling to nigeria. u know all those family memebers u don't know coming to visit from the vilaleg once they get whiff that someone is in town. i don't even go visit my grandmother in the village when i go home. we always have someone go bring her over to lagos. the lady is like in her 90's n refuses to come live with any of her kids in lagos. she'ld rather stay by herself in ijebu. of course she has a little house girl that stays wiv her. even though she is always sending them away cos she claims they r stealing somethign from her it could be meat from the pot or something crazy like that.

but there r somethings that r just harboring on the borderline like

my grandfather went home for ileya one yearn he killed a ram, shared it amongst his family members n forgot to give some old lady that he ahs usually given every year. well he never makes it back home from the trip. he died on his way home
their explanation: the lady was a witch, did something to him cos she was mad. apparently, she confessed rigth b4 she died.
mines: he died from dehydration cos he had diarrhea on the way home.


another:

my dads friend died a couple of years ago,
their explanation: he worked in the tax office, he used to get big cutbacks from the companies he was auditing so they wouldn't have to pay their fines. anyways, he ususally gives the boys in his offcie a cut form the pie as they do all the leg work anyways. there was this particular firm that was audited that payed up but the guy told his boys that the firm never payed so hw wouldn't have to share the bucks. the gys got to know he had collected n where mad, they swore to him he would notlive to spend a dime of the money. well he atually never did. he died a couple of months later n the oney was found right where he had kept it, in his closet.
their explanation: the guys did voodoo n had his secretary put it in his tea. he was in the hospital 4 a couple of mths n had the doctor stumped. a freind had tried taking him holy water that had been prayed on by some woli but the freind had an accident on the way n the bottle broke.
mines: the vodoo was poison. the liver clears the body of toxins. so naturally the poison did havoc to his liver n his liver failed n d fact that he had been an alcholoic did not help his liver at all. tot he woli incident, co-incident?


another one:
my dads brother had come to visit from the united states. a couple of days b4 he was suppposed to leave, hispasssport got missing, n we search high n low n couldn't find it.
a friend of the family took us to some babalawo. myself, her 2 daughters and my dad.
d old guy told us only those that where pure of heart n not afraid could help.
he filled a calabash with water n asked us kids to look into it. n the face we see in it was the person who took it. i looked real hard n saw nothing. one of the other girls said she saw nothing 2. but the third girl said she saw the face of our house girl. i guess either i was not pure of heart or too scared cos i sure as hell did not see anything.
anyways he told us to go home, we would find it. we question d girl but she still claimed till tomorrow that she didn't take it. she got fired n a couple of days later we find it.

so was she d culprit? i don't know. did she leave it b4 she left. who knows or was it there all along n we just hadn't seen it.


anyways there is a reason 4 this voodoo question. i'll let u'all decide in the part 2 to this