Ogbe Trupon

Before leaving for the world, Ogbe Tumako was advised in Heaven to make a sacrifice in order to survive the problems awaiting him. He would have to face a brother who would be born before him. The priests of Ifá who divined for him recited a verse: whoever lifts water in a flat basin invites it to spill over his head, and the adult who sows hatred will make his children harvest its fruits.

They told him to serve Eshu with a male goat and a fish, to cultivate a kind and calm character and to abstain from all wickedness. They warned him that one of his brothers would create many problems for him, but that if he resisted the urge to return evil for evil, that is, an eye for an eye, he would have more prosperity than that brother.

He made the sacrifice. The awó gathered the appropriate leaves, added heads of a tortoise, a rat and a fish, and threw them together. With this they prepared a medicine, tied it to the handle of a very small axe and hid it in Ogbe Tumako's head, with an incantation saying that with a single body the axe fells 201 trees in the forest.

On arriving in the world he became a famous priest of Ifá and also a fortunate farmer. He prospered very soon, and his wealth and fame earned him the enmity of his older brother, who began to plot against him. After some time he ran into great difficulties and his luck began to decline.

Ogbe Tumako divined, and his Ifá reminded him of the command of Heaven: not to avenge any wrong done to him and not to act in anger or fury. So he held firm in not returning the blow to his brother. He decided to soften and went about his affairs calmly. His brother did everything possible to ruin him and, although Ogbe Tumako went staggering from place to place, he stayed on his feet.

When all the brother's plans failed, he stirred up the whole town against him, and some people began to turn hostile. Then Ogbe Tumako invited other awós to divine. They recited another verse: today one cannot be like tomorrow, and no one knows what he will do the next day. They told him to persevere, because the child who goes out to play never forgets to come back home, and they advised him to make a sacrifice so that no one could kill him.

He offered a black goat to his Ifá and held a feast with it. He appeased his head with a rooster in order to call upon the wand of virtues that had been hidden in it before he left Heaven. He also served Ogún with a dog, a tortoise and a rooster.

Not long after, the brother who had been seeking to kill him died. People began to return to Ogbe Tumako, with the excuse that it was that brother who had stirred them up against him. Others gave him wives with a promise of marriage, and he came to have several children.

Sixteen years later he had a very large family, with several wives and children. At the height of his prosperity he held a feast of thanksgiving to his Ifá, to which he invited the awós who had divined and sacrificed for him. Then he sang praises to the awós of Heaven and of Earth who helped him survive the trials. Thus the weight of death that his brother had prepared for him was carried by the brother himself.

Before the tortoise began to farm her land in heaven, an awo called Ogbe Onle Ahun Maja did a divination for her. In that time, those who lived in heaven went to God at the start of planting to collect the seeds they would plant on their farms.

The tortoise spent a long time clearing hers and then went to God to ask for seeds. He answered that she was late: the others had already taken all of that year's seeds. But God never refuses a request, and he told her that only the seed of the calabash or melon was left (ugba for the Yoruba and okpan for the Beni).

With these seeds the tortoise had one single obligation: not to converse with the calabash. God warned her that she would have difficulties if she did not control her tendency to talk too much.

Earlier, the awo had warned her that, if she did not make a sacrifice, she would harvest something that would weigh on her neck like a burden. The tortoise paid no attention and went without sacrificing. Even so, God gave her the seeds and she promised to keep quiet.

She went to her farm and planted them. The next day she found that they had already sprouted, and she exclaimed, full of excitement: “My calabash has sprouted!” She was stunned when the calabash answered: “My tortoise has sprouted.” That was enough to announce where her chatter would lead her, but the tortoise did not catch the warning.

Three days later she returned and saw the plant with fruits. Happy, she said: “My calabash has fruits!” and the calabash answered her: “My tortoise is pregnant.” The tortoise touched the fruits and the calabash hit her. Even then she did not understand; she went back home calm, believing she would soon harvest.

Two days later, she found the fruits dry enough to gather. She took out her machete and cut the first one. At once the calabash snatched the machete from her and tried to cut her throat. The tortoise took off running and the calabash went after her.

While she fled, the tortoise sang a song that was a cry for help: she asked the people to come and free her from that torn up calabash, without hands or feet. But everyone who came near to help was frightened on seeing the mysterious calabash and drew back.

Worn out with exhaustion, the tortoise ran into the father ram. He told her to hide in the corner of his house while he took position to attack. When the calabash appeared, he stopped it short and charged it with his horns. In the next charge, the calabash broke into pieces and the tortoise was safe from its fury.

Iginua, although he belonged to the royal family of the Edo, lived in poverty. He left home when he lost his father's protection, King Olua, and because the Edo had warned the king that they would not have his eldest son as their sovereign. Discouragement drove him into exile, and there he scraped by in great misery.

He wanted to cut every tie with Benin, and he gave up the name Iginua to be called Ogbomodu. He ended up settling in Akoko, where he met a priest of Ifá. The priest consulted the oracle for him and told him to direct his plea to his head with a banana, to dress as a chief before the sacrifice, and to serve Eshu with a goat. Ogbomodu complied, but his poverty continued.

Later Akoko went to war with its neighbor Ekiti and lost. Among the captives the winners took to Ekiti was Ogbomodu, and there they sold him as a slave. The Ewi of Ado was looking for a slave for the annual festival of the head, and they bought him for his palace. But the Obá saw that this man seemed worth too much for the festival's sacrifice, so he ordered his chains removed and put him to work as a servant. His loyalty, his intelligence, and his good speech pleased the Obá so much that he appointed him to attend the king's head at the festivals every year.

At the festival, Ogbomodu put on a chief's clothes and attended the Obá's head with care. When the plea for the king was finished, they told him to sit down and plead for his own. He asked his head to guide him to the goal of his life. On hearing him, the Obá was left wondering what more a man could want who already held such a good place in his court. At dawn he ordered him tied up and sold again. Custom forbade the Obá to kill someone who had served his head, and so he punished him with slavery.

They took him to the market of Ekue, which is now called Akure, and there he was bought to serve the head of the Deji of Ekue, also called Odezu. Again he performed so well in the palace that they set him free and he went back to looking after the Obá's head. When the service was over, they told him once more to plead for his own head, and although he had already suffered for it, he repeated his request to be taken to his destiny. The Obá, unable to hide his anger, asked him what other destiny he expected, when he already enjoyed a privileged place. He was chained again and sold by order of the Obá.

The same story was repeated in the palaces of thirteen other Obás, among them those of Ijero, Ilara, Orogun, Ife, Abeokuta, Owu, Owo, Ijebu, Ijesha, and Ondo. In the end he was sold in the palace of the Obá Ado Ajuwaleke. Thus he closed the circle: he returned in chains to the place he had sworn never to go back to.

He entered Benin shortly before the Igue festival. Nobody saw in him the heir who had left under the name of Iginua. As his destiny commanded, they appointed him again to attend the head of the Obá, and custom required that afterward he plead for his own. He asked that his head take him to his final destiny, and that request irritated the Obá of Benin.

The next day, the Obá summoned the blacksmiths to take Ogbomodu's height and cast a bronze coffin of his size. He also summoned the Owina, who worked iron, to make sharp bolts, pointed and shaped like a U, which would be driven into the coffin. When everything was ready and decorated, they lined the inside with white cloth and ordered him to lie down inside. They covered him with another cloth and put on the lid. They drove one bolt at the height of the head and others at the chest, the belly, and the feet. His fate was to be offered to the divinity of the sea, who was believed to be dead.

But the moment had come for Eshu to act, because of the goat that Ogbomodu had given him. While they hammered, Eshu placed a layer as hard as stone between the man's skin and the cloth, and that layer bent the points before they could wound him. Thanks to Eshu, no bolt reached him. Then the Obá ordered the coffin thrown into the sea of Olokun.

In those days the Iwere, who are also called the Ighan (today the Itsekiri), were eagerly asking for a king of their own. A divination had announced to them that their king would come by the water, since they could not choose any son of Ighan as king. They had offered their great river fourteen different animals and 201 lifeless objects, so that the divinity of the water would send them that king.

Four days after the offering, the elders were holding a special ceremony by the river when they spotted a large bundle floating. They pulled it out and began to open it with an axe. A voice came from inside asking them to break it open gently. When they lifted the lid they discovered a handsome young man, blinking. Since he was already a grown man, they thanked the sea for answering their wishes and offerings. They lifted him onto their shoulders and paraded him dancing through the town, proclaiming the arrival of a water king, an Ogiamen. At the coronation he himself asked that his title be water king, and he wanted to recover his first name, Iginua or Iginuwa, which his father chose when he was born, before his voluntary exile.

Three years after his coronation he wanted to honor his father, Olua, king of Benin, with a visit. Before going he sent word along with the gift: two roosters, two hens, and six bags of bugle beads. In Benin the birds refused the corn that was offered to them, and the messengers explained that these birds ate bugle beads, and that was why they had brought the six bags. They also announced to the Obá of Benin that the Iwere had a new Ogiamen. The Obá blessed him, returned the birds, and kept the beads.

Then the king of the Iwere put on a robe with beads and a crown in the same style, to visit the Obá of Benin. The people of Benin watched him without knowing which king this was, so splendid as they had never seen. He said he was the Ogiamen of Ighan and asked the Obá whether he recognized him. The Obá answered that he did not. Then he took off the crown and revealed that he was Ogbomodu, a name that means “the head that has not reached its destiny does not rest.” The Obá remembered the man they had nailed in a coffin and thrown into the great river. He joined his head to the other man's and said that truly “against destiny there is no armor, and no cloud wipes out its footprint.”

The greatest surprise was still to come for the Obá: the Ogiamen was his eldest son, the one who had exiled himself years before. He told him of his deeds, which had taken him through the palaces of fifteen kings of the known world until he reached his father's, where his destiny was fulfilled in a new land, beyond the waters. While he listened, the Obá wept and embraced him, thanking God and the ancestors for living to see that day. Then they went into the palace and he gave him the staff of royal authority, the isemwen righo, the same one that all the kings of Warri use today.

With the chiefs gathered, the father asked him to stand and officially conferred on him the title of Olua Namen, Olua King of the Water. With it he received authority over the region of the riverbanks, called Iwere. Thus Iginua was recognized as Olua of Iwere and his destiny was fulfilled. With the passing of time Olua was shortened to Olu, and the explorers changed Iwere to Warri.

The drum that announced his arrival at the palace sounded so good that King Olua of Benin asked to exchange drums. Those two drums are the ones the people of Benin call emedo and Emighan neguegbero, and they still sound at ceremonies in Benin.