CHAPTER FOUR
The Griot’s Hole
The Griot’s hole is a traditional marvel of the most updated technology. And that’s just true. I’ve never seen any space and environment like it all over the world and I’ve been to a lot of marvellous places in my thirteen years due to Daddy’s insistence that his children have the best of everything from education to holidays. I was in Disneyland Paris, when I was five, Disneyland California at eight, American Museum of Natural History at twelve. I think the griot’s hole looks quite like the Hall of African Peoples and The Hall of Biodiversity at AMNH but definitely better depicted, though smaller. It also looked like a traditional Igbo village square like I read of in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. While I watched in awe, Uncle Jimi simply stepped aside and said this is my office. I looked at him and asked the first of my many questions in this room.
Uncle Jimi, what is a griot, is it an animal? He simply pointed at a small corner that I quickly recognized from TV as the place from where Uncle Jimi told his stories to me and several other children who listened. Written on the roughly carved bark of a tree were the words:
A griot is an oral historian that is born and endowed with Eleduwa’s special powers to know and remember our people’s history and directly share it with our generations through song and tales. It is not a profession; it is a calling that originated here and widely used all over West Africa.
I bent down and read the words aloud, stopped and thought for a few minutes and said my thoughts aloud;
A griot is a person that tells stories and sings about history and tradition.
Uncle Jimi nodded. Then I asked quite rhetorically,
Are you the griot?
He nodded again and said there are many other griots all over the world. There’s Dan Maraya in Jos, Salifu Keita. I nodded and simply told him I never heard of any of them before. Then he said, ‘Have you heard of Sanmi Onigangan of Ibadan. I almost swished my head to say No when I remembered the newspaper clipping I found in the room I stayed in papa’s house when I first came in to Ibadan a week ago. I remembered clearly the paper had proclaimed the shocking announcement of the possible resignation of Sanmi Onigangan of Ibadan from the services of the royal palace of Ibadan and the great people of Ibadan. The problem with the news item was the fact that a griot of the status of Sanmi was never expected to resign till he died and his resignation was directly linked to the possibility of a great political crisis in yorubaland that may threaten the entire existence of the Ibadan royalty. Sanmi did not want to be caught in the expected crisis. The story was written by a columnist named Prof. Sanmi Aluko of the department of African History, University of Ibadan. That’s Papa and his picture was on the newspaper clipping. Now Uncle Jimi is telling me that Papa is the popular Sanmi Onigangan of Ibadan and Sanmi Aluko who wrote the piece on Sanmi Onigangan of Ibadan. And he’s a griot and a Professor of African History. I thought about it for a minute’s fraction and asked, but the writing in the newspaper said Sanmi Onigangan is a skilled drummer and papa doesn’t have a drum. Uncle Jimi looked at me the way I’ve often seen him do on TV and said in almost a whisper “yes, he does have a drum and he is very skilled in drumming”. I stood listening to every word he said. The gangan and bata drum used to be in this room until he moved it a couple of weeks ago, two days before he wrote the piece you read. He obviously moved it in anticipation of the questions his resignation would raise. I nodded.
You know the gangan drum is a traditional item in our land and you can see that depicted on our currency. It’s famous for its unique sound and people call it a talking drum.
That’s an exaggeration, right? I asked.
Well, it does talk in some ways. For instance, it’s a popular drum for masquerade dances and it is said to speak directly to your physical and inner ears. Most elders pick its hidden meanings while you can also pick its tone in the English language. It speaks all languages. There is the popular story of a masquerade dance that happened in Ibadan and while the huge colourful spirits came out dancing, a mischievous young man came out with them in a hand-sewn colourful costume. He danced so much the costume got torn at the brockus joint. The gangan drummers caught sight of the eegun’s dancing brockus and the only way to alert the eegun before other onlookers could see it’s dancing brockus was through the gangan drum but immediately the tune and rhythm of the drum changed, it ended up publicizing the eegun’s dancing brockus because everybody could hear the words of the gangan drum in the language of their hearts and ears. We both laughed so much. It was a funny one and it was typical Uncle Jimi style.
Did the young man also hear the language of the drum?
He was so engrossed in the dance but later heard the gangan drum speaking. It was late though because everyone had seen what was between his legs.
I looked up at the vast room called the griot’s hole. It was about 55meters tall, 80meters long and 35meters across and virtually every space of it was filled with some form of life, tall trees, artificial and natural ones scattered to form a thick and dense canopy under which every other thing grew. It was a museum intended to model the village and forest activities of the myth and legends of pre-colonial Yorubaland. There were statues that guarded a narrow winding footpath crossing this jungle of a room. The more popular and prominent of these statues were a life-size figure of Sango, the legendary Yoruba god of thunder, his eyes sparkling red and looming in the darkness while sparks flew off his raised axe at regular intervals, the sculpture was coloured in the dark African skin, toned softly and looked real. At his side was Oya, his wife, looking most beautiful and kneeling in a longing gesture and I didn’t notice the softly flowing water from her wrapper until I stepped into the stream it formed. Another figure was pointed out to me as a character from D. O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare. He had a long flowing white beard that glittered slightly in the dark forest and was in contrast to his dark brown skin and reeled out proverb after proverb, most ending with the words iba olodumare. Uncle Jimi also described him as a figure that Fagunwa probably constructed as Olodumare (God Almighty) from the biblical depiction of Jesus Christ as a dark-brown skinned man with flowing white hair like wool. Are you saying Jesus Christ was a Yoruba man? I asked.
Maybe he was, the bible says he has our kind of skin but remember Fagunwa wrote fiction.
Where in the bible is that found?
You should ask a preacher, I’m not one, he said smiling. Then he added, the twelfth to fifteenth verse of the first chapter of the book of revelation.
There was also an unmistakable statue of the mythological giant yoruba god-king Oranmiyan. Though at the far end of the footpath, it was still clearly visible from where we were because of its size.
I also looked at a small clearing at the end of the winding footpath which was bordered by massive trees and a couple of stuffed masquerades glided back and forth much like a scene from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Uncle Jimi smiled and saluted a particular one which stopped and responded in a dramatic frenzy kneeling down on his left knee, a slight bow of his head, hands crossed over each other and voice booming in esoteric greeting.
There’s no sculpture of Oduduwa here, Uncle Jimi said.
Why? I asked.
Oduduwa founded the earth from Ile-Ife but rather we decided the statue of Oduduwa will be at Ife. However, the akuko iseda aye is modelled and kept here. There were also birds flying around the thick jungle and small stuffed animals, apes, leopards, a few species of non-venomous live snakes were allowed to roam about freely, butterflies and fireflies were grown and introduced artificially. Uncle Jimi further explained that just a small percentage of the trees were not real but the artificial ones are randomly spaced across the room. There was a little village at the eastern end of the room deep behind the trees and you’d have to walk off the footpath to see it. Uncle Jimi said it was modelled after a drawing of the old Ife when Moremi was its princess. You could see the lights from burning firewood and smoke and singing through the dense jungle. Soldier
s escorted you once you step within its boundaries after emerging from the jungle. There were no foot paths to the village as a defence strategy. Uncle Jimi also said you could see occupants of this village cross periodically to another village on the western end of the room. This western village was built more like a garrison, with fenced walls and weapons, fire arrows, swords and a small foundry and iron smith workshop that forged the weapons. The entire system was life-like and didn’t run in contrast to each other. Uncle Jimi explained. It’s all powered by electricity from a solar power station above the faculty roof. At 7 o’clock every morning, all electrical systems shutdown for about an hour while a watering system sprinkles water at several places all over the room for about forty five minutes to keep the foliage healthy and also create a mist which makes it eerie and natural to first time visitors that come in early in the morning. We could create thunder sounds at this time of the day and you’d think it’s really raining. Uncle Jimi quite explained a lot of other figures and statues that littered several other places across the room. As we walked back to the entrance through which we came in, I noticed that the back of the door through which we came in was an artificial tree trunk that had no branches yet a chameleon gently rested on it with eyes swivelling and shutting in slow motion. The ground was soft earth in some places and soft brown earth-like rug in some places but there was obviously no cement and tiles, not even on the walls. The foot path branched off to the left towards where I had seen the meaning of the word griot on the tree bark and where Uncle Jimi usually sat and tells his stories on TV and we turned towards this area where he called his office. We passed the small open space called Uncle Jimi’s village square and then at the end of it was a small glass enclosure about 3.66metres by 3.66metres by 4.88metres. Through the glass one could see a completely modern office with a mahogany table, a leather chair, a flat screen desktop computer and a large bookshelf. The modern convenience was a sharp contrast to the space we were in right now, the village square. This place was donated to UI by a group of Yoruba historians and funded by African Griot Arts Consortium after years of pressuring the authorities by your grandfather and me about the importance of passing down the legacies, history, tradition and customs of our people to our children. UI is indeed fortunate to be a beneficiary. It’s the first of its kind in Africa and we rarely publicize its existence due to campus politics and mainstream politics. In the cool darkness of the forest one could notice the bright colours of several insects and animals but I was quite shocked when I heard the sudden shrill cry of a large bird that swooped down close to a branch near the village square. It was the biggest bird I’d ever seen. What’s that?
It’s the bird I told you of earlier which we know in our stories as akuko iseda aye, we constructed the frame. That’s it he said pointing. Yoruba legends have it that olodumare owned the earth and created it but it was full of water and the seas covered the surface of the earth until he sent Oduduwa down to Ile-Ife by means of a chain that stretched from the heavens called Ibugbe Olodumare to the earth. Oduduwa was however sent down with only a seashell full of sand and a bird which is usually identified to be a cock.
That bird is way bigger than any cock I’ve seen and I told Uncle Jimi.
Well, we have good cause to believe Olodumare will not found the earth with an ordinary cock so we named this extraordinary cock, akuko iseda aye which literally means the creator’s cock but more accurately called a Phoenix in english and other foreign literature.
What will Oduduwa do with a shell full of sand and a bird, though?
Legend has it that he got to the earth and poured out the shell of sand over the water and dropped the bird on it. The bird scattered the little sand in different directions and as it expanded, it formed solid ground in everywhere it got to.
By now I had enough surprises to last me an entire holiday. Many of these stuffed animals operate on voice recognition and voice control and respond to the sound of human voices imitating what most living animals do. The reason for this is to give the real experience to visitors when they come in here. This bird must have heard our voices and traced it to this place. Uncle Jimi said.
At this point we decided to get into the office and get some food. Uncle Jimi had a slice of bread and mug of milked tea ready for me. I ate quickly not wanting to miss anything. The time was exactly 2pm now and I looked at Uncle Jimi, he must be really privileged to be in charge of this place. More so, I never expected to see something like this in Yorubaland or Arewa or Biafra or Benin Republic. These were all nations around me and were all struggling for development. It made me think that if we had this in a faculty in UI, then why go to California or Paris or Washington to experience it. We sat down under the cool shade of the tree in Uncle Jimi’s village square while he told me a story. The story was titled, once upon a Giant Country.