Obara Trupon

A divination was made for the soldier ant (Ijalo), the worm (Ekolo) and the fly (Eshinshin), and they were warned that war was about to arrive. Ijalo had to give Eshu a goat with a knife. Ekolo and Eshinshin each had to give a goat. Ijalo complied. Ekolo refused. Eshinshin, as soon as the divination ended, went into the wild and built there, hidden, a house without doors or windows.

By then the war had already broken out. Eshu led the invading troops straight toward the soldier ants, but beforehand he had armed their mouths with the knife from that sacrifice. The ants sought refuge by slipping among the enemy ranks, and with that weapon they bit everyone who tried to stop them. The worm also ran to hide, but it passed through the middle of the lines of ants and their knives left it in pieces.

When the fighting began to calm down, some men emptied the king's palace and stored what they had stolen in the fly's house. So they accused her of having taken the king's goods. At the trial she had nothing to defend herself with, she was declared guilty and sentenced to death.

Then Eshu took the form of a girl and asked her whether anyone had performed a divination for her. The fly admitted that she had consulted Orunmila and had not sacrificed, and she asked that the offering be made in her name. It was completed at once.

When the day of the execution came, Eshu moved the king's trusted man and the head of the court to ask for mercy: the fly's fault did not deserve taking her life. The judge proposed another way out: to warn her not to live in the wild again and to stay from then on near where two or more people were settled. This is why flies live in towns to this day.

When this odu appears in the Igbodu, a problem is announced. The person must give Eshu a goat with a knife and will come out alive from any dispute.

An elephant's head and the tusks it carries were consulted with the odu Obara Trupon. Both parts got the same warning: either they made an ebbó, or they would end up abandoned in the forest when the remaining body was moved home. The tusks were the only ones to obey.

For that reason, when an elephant dies in the forest, only the tusks are taken from the head and everything else is left behind.

When the spirit child (imere), the child who only passes through the world, was coming toward the earth, Obara Turukpon performed divination for him. He had to offer a goat and a broom. The man who would be his father, however, did not make ebbó to prevent the death of a small child.

The boy was born and, because of what he had offered in heaven, he survived childhood. As an adult, however, he died suddenly. In his last years he supported his parents financially, and for that reason the son's death left them in poverty. The father worked the land. Seeing his parents' grief from heaven, the young man turned to his friends so that they would support him in the work of his father's farm.

When the time came to clear the weeds, the father worked a short strip and went back home. During the night the son appeared with a crew of spirit children and left the field clean. The same happened with cutting the trees, pulling out the stumps and plowing: the son came down from heaven and helped in the same way. The father wanted to find out who that invisible help was and went for a divination consultation. He was told to hide in the bush near midnight, and there he stayed, carrying in his hand a plate made of calabash.

Shortly before twelve he saw his dead son leading the others toward the field; each one rode a broom. Together they opened the furrows needed to plant yams. During the work, the father took his son's broom. Near dawn, when they finished, everyone picked up their brooms except the son, who could not find his own and searched for it without success. When day came, his companions abandoned him and went up to heaven. He was left alone, and then he began to sing this song.

Since he did not have his broom, he could not return to heaven. In the light of the morning the father came out and embraced him. The son reproached him for how he was treating him, and the father reproached him for having left in that way. The father wanted to know whether he had not noticed how much he had suffered since his departure. The son answered that this was exactly why he was going to help him. The father insisted that it was not worth the same as living together. The father's passionate words convinced him, and he had no choice but to go back home with him, even though this meant losing the ability to return to heaven.

Even so, the son kept looking for his broom in silence. The father kept it in his room, out of everyone's reach, and always carried the key that locked it. As time passed he grew confident, believing that his son had already accepted staying on the earth. One day he drank too much and got drunk. For the first time since his son's return, he hung in the living room the trousers where he kept the key, and fell into a deep sleep. The son, seeing him like that, checked the pockets and found the key. He entered the room, searched until he found the broom and almost at once set out for heaven, where he rejoined his companions.

When the father woke up, he no longer found his son. From then on, those who live in heaven have not been able to help anyone on the earth with their own hands.