At the beginning of the religion all roads were closed. No one knew the cause behind it and no one could move forward on the roads. The few that dared to travel never returned. Communication among the people of the country was impossible as everyone was a captive in his home. To travel was to die. Impossible as it was to go from one place to another, life simply stagnated. Nevertheless, there were a few men who preferred misfortune to life and happiness made monotony, so they left their towns only to succumb along the unknown and closed byways.
In one of those towns lived two Africans who during the many years had produced numerous children. As soon as the boys grew up they said to their fathers,
Babá ni lo ladé.
And they set out on the road and never came back. Their mothers cried and said,
Omó, omó umbo son son.
And in this way one-by-one they were lost. Already very old and without realizing it the Africans produced a number of twins and when they were born the happiness was limitless. Everyone admired them. They slept on beds of dried yagua and on mats of palm boughs. They wore necklaces of pearls and jet and with cruz de asta that shone a divine light like that of Obatalá.
The “elder” twin was named Tabo [Taiwo] and the “younger” twin Caín [Kaindé, Kehinde]. Their mother raised them with reverent passion, because they were the sons of Elube—Shangó, the orisha who was the Strong among the Strong, the universal inheritor of Olofin, the creator of life. Those children were the only ones that Iyansá cherished—the divine woman of the marketplace and the cemetery. She fed them abundantly with epó.
Great ceremonies were made in order to honor them, and to put them content, songs and dances were made to the Ibeyi, who were happy and naughty, but always united.
They went to the top of the caimito tree; here the twins cried for their fathers (Taita) and repeated the same words as their brothers before them (Babá ni lo ladé), such that the women began to cry and lament the luck that was going to be lost. But there was an ancient woman of more than a hundred years old, crippled by time, and who in her younger days was the best horse of Siete Rayos in the land, who now began to loosen up miraculously and the spark of life for an instant impelled her heart to fill with vitality, urging her voice proudly to dominate the chorus of the other women; and those cries turned into songs of joy, and upon two wooden plates exactly the same the woman excitedly hit their palms and danced rounds to the Ibeyi.
One fine day, Chichicate, Mamelita, and Guao, three evil sticks of the forest appeared before them and made the Ibeyis go off to those forbidden woods. Secret of Ogundá Bedé.
Note: In this Ifá, in osobo, you have to make three paraldos.
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(C) Copyright David Brown 2013.
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