Water had collected in sloshy pools where the floor slanted down, but the second-hand sofa and coffee table were dry. Glancing around what reminded me, oddly, of a graduate student's living room, I noticed a statue of the Ibeji on a metal bookshelf. Also several earthen and wooden pots, and a sign that said, "Prosperity." A shakeree lay on a chair. A discount stereo unit was tuned to a classical station. Among the wall posters was a Senegalese print celebrating the Marcus Garvey Centennial (18871987).
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Baba Tunde explained that he had to go back upstairs because he and Baba Kunle were seeing a client, a mortician from Alabama, who had been there all morning. Besides that, he said, tomorrow they were traveling to Jamaica and had to pack. He asked if I could wait, apologized again about the flooding, and excused himself. An hour later, when he returned, apologizing for the delay, he told me that he and his cousin had decided the best way to start our visit was for me to have a reading. It would cost $35. This was slightly unexpected, but I agreed. Later I would learn that an up-front reading with a stranger was virtually de rigeur among priests. It was, if nothing else, a way to screen unwelcome or untruthful visitorscops, for example.
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Baba Tunde led me down a white hallway to a maze of other rooms in the lower level. We passed several orisha altars before ducking under a white hanging drape into an all-white ceremonial chamber the size of a small bedroom. A white sheet had been stretched across one corner behind a slim white statue, stylized as an old man, representing Obatala, to whom the room was consecrated. Because the deity is revered for wisdom and intellect, his priests often become arrogant. But there is no justification for it in the religion itself. All the orisha have different qualities, and none is considered "superior" to the othersexcept Olorun, the supreme being.
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There wasn't much in the room other than the motif of purity. A low wooden table toward one side held a clear bowl,
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