Nigeria – Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove

The ritual drummers preceded her as she strode down the broad steps toward the Osun shrine, carefully balancing on her head a calabash filled with kola nuts, palm oil and other offerings to the Yoruba gods. She was not used to walking barefoot, so the sticks and stones on the forest floor sometimes hurt her feet, yet she continued on her course with a trancelike resolve. It was all part of an initiation ceremony of the traditional Ifa religion of the Yoruba, the largest ethnic group in southwest Nigeria, and the main reason she had traveled to the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Nigeria. At home in Brooklyn people know her as AnnMarie Sealey. Here in Osogbo they call her Ifaseye Orisabunmi Adeegbe.

Read more