Defying the odds

Surrounded by Nigeria's urban chaos, Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove is a rare survivor where pilgrims can still pray to the old gods of Yorubaland, writes Sean Connolly

- Sean Connolly

Once upon a time in Yorubaland – the Yoruba peoples’ ancestral territory in south-west Nigeria, Togo and Benin – every city had a sacred grove. That is, a patch of forest in which it was forbidden to hunt, build or cut trees, and where prayers and sacrifices to the orisa were made. The orisa are the gods and spirits of the Yoruba cosmology, a pantheon numbering in the hundreds, with all the depth, intrigue, and complexity of Greek myth. They have also spread around the globe, living on across the Atlantic in the syncretic religions of the Afro-Atlantic world: Brazilian Candomblé, Cuban Santería, Haitian Vodou – all have their roots in these forests.

But in recent decades these sacred groves began to disappear. A stigma developed around orisa worship, as Christianity and Islam became increasingly dominant. The rampant, unplanned urbanisation common to Nigeria also took its toll, bringing down trees and taboos together, salami-slicing these oases of the spirits into extinction.

Except one. The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove is a 75-hectare refuge set in the heart of Osogbo city (population: circa 820,000). This leafy grove sits astride a lazy bend in the Osun River, which acts as Nigeria’s own Ganges and is named after the orisa Osun, patron of love, beauty, and fresh water. Pilgrims come here to drink and bathe in the healing river, though much like the murky Ganges itself, this takes some amount of faith indeed.