Getting around is easy and the people are friendly. Tiny, bright blue minibuses make their way up and down the main roads (of which there aren’t many). There are so many of them, and they are so small, that they don’t try to cram too many people in, and the fare is rarely more than N20 to go anywhere in this little town. On two occasions, I’m pretty sure they altered their route, just so we could go to the exact place we were trying to get to! And not only the buses – there are also bright blue drops (= taxis)! These are exclusively very battered, scrapyard-defying old cars with drivers who speak very limited English, but a real luxury to those of us who live in places where there are no taxis.
Away from the handful of main roads, the town is mainly sleepy, potholed streets lined with small shops, two story homes, and people just sitting, hanging out and saying hi to you as you pass. Osogbo felt different from the West we had experienced in Lagos and Benin City – we never felt threatened, no-one tried to steal from us, and the people were without exception friendly and helpful. The children of the shopkeepers who lined the street leading up to our hotel, would smile and wave and chant ‘oyibo peppe’ at us whenever we walked by, and their parents would smile and wave too. (Apparently, ‘oyibo peppe’ – which means ‘white man chilli’ – comes from a common rhyme which Yoruba children like to sing, and the full thing goes “Oyibo peppe, American shine shine, blacky shadow”!!) There are a surprising number of mosques here, as well as the expected churches and the evidence of a thriving traditional religion in the occasional shrine and the slightly scary juju section in the market. Someone told us that Osogbo is an incredibly liberal and tolerant place and, while I know everyone here likes to brag about their home town being better than other places, I can believe that’s true just from the happy co-existence of these three religions and the fact that we felt so welcomed.
Osogbo is the centre of Nigerian art. It is still home to Chief Jimoh Buraimoh – a significant artist whose works are mainly brightly coloured, beaded paintings, and after whom a street has been named (the street on which he has his home and gallery). We stayed in a hotel owned by him (Hotel Heritage), and, after a visit to his gallery, were privileged to meet him and share a beer in the hotel bar. A very interesting, generous man, who arranged for someone to come and pick us up the next day and take us around the Sacred Forest.
The forest is one of only two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Nigeria. It contains a shrine to Osun, the river goddess, who is central to the Yoruba traditional religion, and whom a group of young men were worshipping when we arrived on a mid-week morning. It’s a beautiful and very peaceful place: seemingly endless trees, the river flowing through it and full of sculptures and small structures which were created by Susanne Wenger. Wenger was an Austrian artist who came to Osogbo in the 1960’s (and was part of kickstarting the movement which Buraimoh was a part of), converted to the Yoruba religion, and spent the rest of her life living there and creating stunning sculptures around the Sacred Forest. Her “workshop” – also within the forest – is an enchanting building, which really belongs in a myth or fairytale: sloping, curved walls; tiny passageways; low roofs; enclosed spaces; chairs carved from the same stone as the walls; and a generally very surrealist feel. It’s incredible; and also incredibly difficult to imagine how it could have served as her “workshop” – you can barely walk through it, let alone sculpt in it. Apparently, she is buried there.
After the visit to the forest, we were taken to see her home: a beautifully decaying four storey house, with carved pillars, a wooden staircase, a winding, twisting, ancient vine climbing up the front wall, sculpted doors, mosaiced floors – everything about it is stunning in its artistic detail. Being in Osogbo, where there is such a thriving art scene, I realised that I was relieved and overjoyed to find that there were things that had been built/planned/created with aesthetics in mind. So much of life, architecture, invention in Nigeria is functional (understandably so) – I’d forgotten just how much I missed things being intentionally beautiful, how wonderful it is when you come across something that is there just to be nice to look at. That’s one of the things that I loved about this town – there are sculptures and pictures around every corner, the buildings are interesting and sometimes beautiful, and there are numerous galleries and artists’ workshops (and Buraimoh is currently building an ‘Artists’ Village’ on the outskirts of the forest to foster young talent in the area). The place just has an artistic buzz.
While we were there, we visited another gallery owned by Nike Davies-Okundaye (whom we had met in Lagos) and finally found a piece of hers we could afford: a small batik, dyed with the indigo which is common in Nigeria and also her trademark. We also bought a very large piece of batik by one of her students, but using Nike’s style and geographical designs. We actually came away from Osogbo with considerably lighter wallets and considerably more luggage, ending up with those two batiks, a wooden sculpture of the goddess Osun, carved by one of Susanne Wenger’s students in her style, and a simply gorgeous indigo quilt, by one of Buraimoh’s protégés, who had batiked, dyed and stitched the whole thing by hand. It was a relief to find some mementoes of our time here which are actually, in and of themselves, really beautiful objects.
The only downside to our stay in Osogbo was trying to get out of the place. Knowing we had to travel by road to Ilorin, then from Ilorin to Ilorin airport before 11.30am (our flight was at 12.30pm and there wasn’t another until 2 days later!), we were a bit nervous about things going wrong and so started out early. As we were walking out of the hotel at 7am, one of the staff mentioned to us that it was a sanitation day. No, no, we said, that was last week. Oh no – apparently in Osun state, they do it EVERY SATURDAY. So no-one can travel anywhere between 7 and 10am EVERY WEEK! We bolted out of the hotel and managed to flag one of the few remaining buses down and persuade him to take us quickly to the motor park. We leapt out of the bus, grabbed the first driver we found and agreed a price to take us directly to the airport, if we could leave immediately. Ok ok – all good. We threw our stuff into the car, got in and – of course – the driver was nowhere to be seen. Much shouting and screaming later (much to the amusement of the gathered crowd of men), he finally came over to the car and we left. On our way out of Osun state we met no fewer than 7 roadblocks by sanitation enforcers, and 3 normal security roadblocks. At each one, the driver had to get out of the car and go and plead with the officials to let us through, while we smiled and saluted and rubbed our hands together in a begging action – anything to try to make it smoother. Of course, several of them wanted bribes but, surprisingly, even though I think we were at the stage of considering it just so we wouldn’t miss our plane, our driver categorically refused to bribe anyone (very unlike all other drivers we’ve come across, and very impressive). Of course, we got through each block eventually: there were never more than one or two other cars stopped there, so clearly earlier cars had been let through. And of course, we were at the airport far too early and our plane was delayed by over an hour. This sanitation thing is just so infuriating – what’s it even for? If it’s that important, why did they let us through? Why don’t they have a couple of signs up telling people when sanitation is?! And why does one state decide to do it EVERY WEEK?!!
However, our troubled exit aside, Osogbo’s just a lovely, friendly, fairly sleepy place with a buzzing art scene and attention to beauty, and, if it weren’t for my apparent and incapacitating allergy to Nigeria, I would seriously be considering living there.
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