Ifa also explains the consequences of taking without reciprocity, of failing to make sacrifices. Ofun Oturupon teaches, “Incidentally, once the farmers refuse to offer sacrifices to Sango, there would be the onset of drought. The sun would be very intense … As soon as they offer sacrifice to Sango, rain must fall … Their farm products would be very fine. They would sell and buy.” Further, Ika Irosun warns, “He was going to choose a virgin land to plow … he was asked to perform a sacrifice … yet did not perform it. Something suddenly occurred and it took [him] away. They said the snake uses its mouth as a vise. The scorpion uses its tail as a ring. The farmer … would not witness its harvest … He died and used his hoe as a pillow on the farm.” It is scientifically justified to see rampant wildfires in California and devastating hurricanes of the South as consequences of human disregard for the laws of nature, specifically the balance of the carbon cycle. This may also be true in the spiritual realm. As humans increasingly worship ourselves and the material products of our own making, raping the Earth in the process, and taking without giving back, metaphorically (and perhaps literally) we invite a kind of death. Of course, consequences for failing to make ebo certainly exist, but are not always death. By violating the natural laws of reciprocity, we may invite spiritual poverty, impairments to our physical and emotional well-being, or a sense of disconnection from our purpose.
Ifa further describes the characteristics of a successful farmer: efficiency, punctuality, and honoring of agricultural tradition. Odi Ogunda relates, “Cast divination for the man who used to leave early from the farm. The one that would not subscribe to time wasting. He would not use his seasons to loaf around. The Punctual Farmer is a zealous worker. We are grateful to God for the Punctual Farmer. We rejoice with him. Fortune and wealth overwhelm us.” Ofun Irete warns us not to be greedy in the harvest, disregarding the requirements of the plants upon which we depend. In this ese the only surviving farmer is the one who does not climb and overharvest the fruits of the Jua tree. “The Jua tree, however, is a cash crop. No one climbs it … I have only picked the dropped ones. I did not climb the Jua tree on my own. I picked the ones that dropped.” On sharing our harvest with the community, Ogbe Iwori teaches, “Let us combine hunting with farming for our world to be better. The farmer was returning from the farm. He gave a small piece of yam to the hunter. The Hunter was coming back from the deep forest. He brought a small piece of meat and gave it to the farmer. Let us combine hunting with farming for life to be better for us.” These teachings are particularly poignant to me, as they dispel the myth that efficiency in work and specificity in technique are Western notions. In fact, our farming traditions gift us with strategies for working hard, fast, and with high attention to detail. This ensures an abundant harvest that we can share and exchange in community.
Ose Otura affirms the importance of prayer: “The perennial farmer is the one that prays fervently to God. A torrential rainfall would clear and soften up the soil.” While there are traditional prayers for each Force of Nature, those simply spoken from the heart can be just as powerful. My son recently affirmed, “Mom, I like how you go outside in the storm and say, ‘Thank you for watering our crops, and please be gentle on our house!’” The essence of prayer and sacrifice is the acknowledgment of the being-ness of the nonhuman energies in our world.
According to Ifa, the farm is also a place of refuge from violence. Owonrin Obara teaches, “The warfare in the city does not get to the farm. When everyone heard about Cricket’s house in the farm, they paid him homage. He shrieked, ‘The warfare in the city did not get to the farm.’” I believe that in our exile from the red clays of the South, to the paved streets of the West and North, we left behind a little piece of our souls. Forced by structural racism into overcrowded and under-resourced urban neighborhoods, many of us have grown up with profoundly traumatizing exposure to violence. Ifa invites us to reclaim rural land as a haven of peace, even as we do the essential work of uprooting violence from our urban communities.4
Farming While Black contains exactly 16 chapters to honor the 16 major books in Odu Ifa literary corpus. From just a few verses of the sacred literature of Odu Ifa we receive essential lessons for approaching our work as farmers.
Offer prayers and sacrifices to the Land, honoring the laws of reciprocity.
Rise early and work hard.
Cultivate and harvest crops according to their prescribed needs; never overharvest.
Share the bounty of the land with others in the community.
Use the farm as a refuge from violence and strife.
Participants in Black Latinx Youth Immersion rites of passage program offer rum and songs to the forest. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.
UPLIFT
Bwa Kayiman, Haitian Revolution
Haiti was once the wealthiest colony in the Western Hemisphere and also the most brutal. The average life expectancy for an enslaved African in Haiti was 21 years. Abuse was dreadful, and routine: “Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars?” wrote one former slave some time later. “Have they not forced them to eat excrement? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss?”5
On August 14, 1791, the Haitian Revolution began with a secret Vodou ceremony held in the forest near Le Cap. Dutty Boukman, a Vodou houngan (priest) and a respected community leader, convened the gathering as a planning meeting for revolt as well as a religious ceremony. Boukman prayed, “God who has made the sun that shines upon us, that rises from the sea, that makes the storm to roar, and governs the thunders … you have seen what the whites have done … give strength to our arms and courage to our hearts. Sustain us … Harken until Liberty!” During the ceremony, the priest (Mambo) Cecile Fatiman sacrificed a Creole black pig to Ezili Danto, the spiritual mother of Haiti. It is of note that Ezili Danto was a spirit born in Haiti from the marriage of the traditional lineages of the indigenous Taino and the African Dahomey. Those present at the ceremony swore to take up arms against their enslavers unto death.
They went on to lead a successful insurrection from French colonial rule that resulted in independence in 1804. It was the only uprising of enslaved Africans to date that led to the founding of a state. The self-liberated Haitians outlawed slavery and inspired a cascade of subsequent revolts throughout colonized lands across the globe.
Offerings to Azaka and Orisa Oko
We ask a lot of this land. Each year we coax around 80,000 pounds (36,500 kg) of mineral-laden vegetables from the hard clay soils to nourish our community, plus several cords of wood to keep our spaces comfortable and showers hot. We also make steep spiritual requests of the land, welcoming thousands of strangers each year, along with their traumas and burdens, to come and heal on this ground. The Land generously and relentlessly composts their pain into hope. While most of our programs center Black, Latinx, and Indigenous learners, we recently held an Uprooting Racism Immersion for people with white privilege who were interested in dismantling oppression in the food system. It was perhaps the first time in decades that so many European-heritage people had slept, worked, and taken meals on the Land. Partway into the program, I had a dream that the Land was restless and so took my divination bones to the forest to inquire about the trouble. The divination revealed that Azaka, Haitian Spirit of Agriculture, Guardian of Farmland, Friend to Peasants, was confused and upset that there were so many “police” on his farm. Further, Azaka expressed discontent about the arrogance of the visitors, as evidenced by their use of forks during meals. With some hesitancy, I shared the revelations of the divination with participants, explaining that even if they were not literally officers of the law and did not intend to come with arrogance, that energy was being perceived by the Land. I let people know that we would need to make a cornmeal offering to Azaka with humility and gratitude i
n our hearts. We would also need to begin eating with our hands. To my relief, the community understood, complied, and all was well with the Land again.
In Haitian Vodou we believe in a supreme, unknowable, and singular God, Bondye. Aspects of this Divinity are called lwa (parallel to Yoruba orisa) and manifest as forces of nature and spirits. Azaka, affectionately called Kouzen (m.) or Kouzin (f.) (cousin) by Haitians, is the multiple-gendered lwa of agriculture and the head of the family of earth spirits. Azaka came into existence after the Haitian Revolution when enslaved Africans were finally allowed to own land. Azaka is personified as a hardworking farmer who wears blue pants and shirt, a red neckerchief, and a woven sack, and carries a machete or sickle. Azaka walks with a limp due to their heavy workload, and has an insatiable appetite for food. Supplications to Azaka fortify the land for a bountiful harvest.6
To connect with Azaka, you need only to come to the farmland with humility and make offerings from your heart. Because the reality of working hard to earn a fruitful harvest is so onerous, Azaka requires abundant offerings to believe in the sincerity of the supplicant. Offerings to Azaka include corn in various forms: cassava bread, sugarcane, rice and beans, tobacco, herbs, cereal, and rum. You can place these offerings directly on the ground or dig a hole and bury them. For those initiated to Vodou, there are more elaborate communal rituals that can result in the union of the supplicant with the lwa, a process called mounting or possession. The act of mounting underscores the ultimate unity and nonduality of the universe, and the democracy of the Vodou faith; any person can unite with the Divine and receive revelation directly and personally.7
Azaka’s counterpart in Yoruba Ifa is Orisa Oko. Orisa Oko is the orisa of agriculture, prosperity, and rural land. Orisa Oko started life in mortal form in the city of Ife-Ooye, where he was a hunter and a fisher. He rescued Yemaya Agana, the drowning daughter of Obatala and Yemoja, and subsequently married her and moved into the home of his in-laws. The people of Ife began to ridicule him for living off the fortunes of his parents-in-law, saying:
Orisa-Oko plants no melon; yet he eats its egusi [seeds].
He lives on the fortunes of his parents-in-law.
He gulps down the delectable egusi soup with no thought of family obligation.
—OGBE-ODI
To regain his good reputation, Orisa Oko consulted Ifa through divination, who told him to leave town and settle on a farm in present-day Irawo, Nigeria. Orisa Oko did as advised and became wealthy and well regarded in his new home. Then he “entered into the ground” (an expression for the attainment of immortality) and became the orisa of farming and prosperity. His shrines are often depicted with a phallic sculpture representing fertility, and his ritual objects are painted red and white, representing the fecund liquids of blood and semen, respectively. In devotees’ shrines a 5- to 6-foot-tall (1.5 to 1.75 m) iron or metal staff may also be leaning against the wall.8 Orisa Oko is one of the orisa Funfun (orisa of the white cloth), whose devotees wear white garments.
As one might imagine, Orisa Oko takes egusi soup as an offering. In the Diaspora, Orisa Oko also favors sweet potatoes, nyame, taro roots, corn, and dishes seasoned with palm oil and smoked fish. Orisa Oko, however, should only be given new yams at the annual yam festival, discussed below. You can leave offerings for Orisa Oko in a fertile field or a hole dug in the earth.
Due to the association of agriculture with forced labor, the veneration of Orisa Oko has dwindled in the New World. There is a danger in confusing the oppression that our people experienced on land with the Spirit of the Land itself. The truth is that we require a spiritual union with the living earth to maintain our well-being. As Baba Malik Yakini explains, “The Earth is not just the third rock from the sun. The Earth is alive. To be whole, we need to be connected with that spiritual energy.”
Prayer for Azaka
Azaka Mede! Kouzin Zaka! We come to you.
You support all the believers. We call on you.
We need your help.
The doors to success are closing on us.
Azaka Mede! Hear our prayer.
Show us the path to peace and comfort.
Show us the path to success,
The path to truth, the path to dignity
The path to prosperity.
Azaka Mede! Kouzin Zaka!
Show us the means to earn a decent living.
Make us strong and disciplined.
Lead our way to what we need.
Help us become prosperous.
Azaka Mede! Kouzin Zaka!
Help us so we can help others.
Whatever we possess, may it also be of service
To those in need and the deserving.
Azaka Mede! Kouzin Zaka!
Free us from our fears.
Bring order in our lives. Give us faith.
Make us better servants of the lwa now and forever.
Ayibobo! Ayibobo! Ayibobo!9
Prayer for Orisa Oko
Orisa Oko you are the one who cultivates the land so it yields hearty harvests. Cultivate within us a desire to live our purpose and achieve our destinies.
Orisa Oko you are the one that brings fertility to the Earth so that it may give sustenance to all the living. Allow our spirits, minds, and bodies to become fertile with the creativity needed to manifest our hearts’ desires.
Orisa Oko you are the one that heals aulments that plague so many with misery and dis-ease. Allow us to become healers of our families, our communities, and ourselves and help spread light and love throughout the world.
—from Orisha Oko—Orisha of Fertility, Progress and Evolution10
Soul Fire Farmers prepare an offering for Azaka each spring in supplication for a bountiful growing season.
Planting and Harvest Rituals
A pile of newly harvested sweet potatoes, the yams of the Diaspora, rested on a white sheet to the east of our gathering space. We had harvested these yams from the cool soil to the rhythm of a drum, as is the custom at the start of Manje Yam, the Haitian festival for the eating of new yam. Now it was time to offer praise songs and adorn the yams with offerings of oil, rum, and candlelight. Offerings and prayers complete, we then covered the floor completely with banana leaves, representing the surface of the water that the magic boat of the lwas crosses to reach the holy city of Ife. Banana leaves are selected because they perpetually self-renew from the roots, representing the eternal nature of the Divine.11
Most of our friends were new to the ritual of Manje Yam, so they giggled a bit before taking the mystic journey across the sea to visit the land of their ancestors. One at a time we saluted the four directions and kissed the ground to the west. Then we lay down on the banana leaves and rolled ourselves toward the yams in the east, the land of Ginen, our ancestral home where the lwa would fortify us spiritually for the year ahead. After the ritual return back across the Middle Passage to receive the blessings of our ancestors, we could prepare and eat the new yam. We cooked the yam with salted fish and passed the pots of cooked kwi (yam) over the heads of those present.12 The fish represented the bounty of the sea, and the yam represented the bounty of the land. Conveniently, Manje Yam takes places on or near November 25, so family members who had release time from work due to Thanksgiving were able to gather.
UPLIFT
Ngmayem Festival for the Millet Harvest, Ghana
Each October, the people of Manya Krobo, Eastern Region, Ghana, hold a weeklong festival to celebrate the abundant harvest of ngma (millet) and other crops. They offer gratitude and thanksgiving to Mau (the Creator) and supplicate for continuous bounty and protection in the coming years. The festival marks the beginning of a period of rest from the intense agricultural season and the resuming of cultural and social activities that have been on hold during the arduous months of rain, such as marriages, funerals, and reunions. During Ngmayem, the Krobo people journey to their ancestral home on Krobo Mountain (Klo yo) for spiritual renewal and then share in a community-wide harvest feast. The Koda fe
stival, a time of planting and focus on spiritual development, precedes Ngmayem by 20 weeks.13
The millet harvest festival is also celebrated in the Diaspora, namely on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. The seu is a communal labor society built around the harvesting of the millet. The seu workers harvest the millet to the rhythm of the drum, cow horns, and agan (a piece of a plow fashioned into a musical instrument). They then process to the manganzina where the millet is stored, while singing songs. Once the work is finished, the people gather at the home of the farmer to sing and dance to the rhythm of the drum, a celebration called seu sera. Their dance called wapa mimics the movements used in planting and harvesting. Today seu is also celebrated with a national Harvest Parade, a colorful event with music and folkloric groups.14
The Haitian harvest festival of Manje Yam is rooted in Igbo tradition. The Igbo believe that the yam is the sovereign of all crops and has a spirit called njoku. The veneration of the new yam marks the beginning of the harvest season. It is a time to give thanks to the Spirit of the Land for a good yield and successful harvest. During the festival, people who share the same ancestors travel to their homeland to eat the new yam together. Elders teach the children about family history. Relatives take time to settle quarrels and make peace, as the new yam cannot be consumed with bitterness. The Igbo believe that quarreling on a yam farm, throwing a yam in anger, eating yams with others whom you despise, or defecating near the yam desecrates the yam spirit.15
We have yet to find an exception to the harvest festival tradition among our African ancestors. To give thanks for the harvest in community with family and friends is an integral part of farming while Black. Some of the common elements that you can draw upon in convening your own harvest festival include: gathering extended family, waging peace, making prayers and offerings to the Land, renewing yourself spiritually, and enjoying the fruits of your labor with joy.
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