The addition of the Osun Shrine to the WHS list in 2005 brought back memories of my visit to it during travels around Nigeria in 1975. Nigeria wasn’t and, from what I read, still isn’t really a country to travel around “looking” at places. One could hardly recommend anyone to take a “holiday” there! Dealings with individuals can range from the rapacious, through hostile and unhelpful to extremely kind and friendly. The mere logistics of travel can be very wearing.

To get the most out of Nigeria you need to have or to engineer an entrée to its society. By lucky happenstance through a chance travelling companion (I hope the last 30 years have treated you well Judith Barrett of Vancouver!) I had somehow got involved with the artistic and music scene around Oshogbo (a centre for such activities). This included meeting and staying with Twins Seven Seven – now apparently a grand old man of the African artistic scene, highly feted in USA and “owner” of some 6000 Web entries (I note that he has even recently been designated himself by UNESCO - as an “Artist for Peace”! How many “lists” does UNESCO have?). Also with another, albeit less renowned, artist Sam Babarinsa (though I note he still has some Web entries!).

It was Sam who took me the short journey from his house in Oshogbo down to a forest grove by a river. This was the Osun Shrine – a place I noted as being “full of mystery”. We walked through a series of clearings with structures, sometimes thatched and sometimes with corrugated iron roofs. There are many statues and the largest are enormous creations of shaped mud cement often in the form of “gates” through which one enters a shrine. These were created by Susanne Wenger, an Austrian woman who had arrived in the 1950s and set about reconstructing and refurbishing the shrine collaboratively with locals. In an effort to preserve the shrine she re-erected the wall which marked the sacred precinct. So complete was her commitment that she married a local, became a priestess (or “Olorisha”) and a senior member of the “Ogboni” society. The photo is of a shrine which is one of her works and represents the meeting of Obatala and Shango, 2 Yoruba deities (Oshun herself is the river goddess of fertility). One of the shrines is designated to the Ogboni secret society, an “eminance grise” in modern Nigerian politics with a reputation whose nearest Western equivalent might be the Masons but whose political and judicial writ may well go rather further!

Looking back, despite Sam’s efforts to introduce and explain, I see the visit as a wasted opportunity – there is so much now I would like to know whereas in those days I didn’t even know I didn’t know! It is still something of a surprise to me that this shrine “rescued” by a European and decorated in a style which is only partially “African” has become such an important place in Nigeria’s contemporary culture – such that Nigeria has chosen to have it inscribed as a WHS! In fact, after even a little study about this place (there is quite a lot on the Web) one begins to realise how much it can tell one about Africa past, present and possibly future and also how much of Africa is unknown and possibly even unknowable to a European (Though Ms Wenger seems to have made a good try! Coincidentally she celebrated her 90th birthday on Jul 4 2005 just 11 days before the Osun Shrine was inscribed. ).

So, if you do “brave” Nigeria, by all means visit the Osun Shrine – but do some prior study and try to get involved with the locals.