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As a Nigerian in the 21st century, our parents never exposed us to an extensive spectrum of religion and beliefs. Anyone who wasn’t Christian was Muslim, and that was it. In school, teachers glossed over traditional and cultural aspects of our history that promoted the relevance of African mythology. So you could say, until my visit to Osun-Oshogbo sacred grove, I saw African gods and goddesses as mere characters in fictional stories. The roadway to the grove was straightforward. We had heard it hosted the Osun River Festival. My Yoruba teacher in secondary school portrayed the river goddess Osun as the resentful wife of Sango, the god of thunder. Since the town had no cabs, my travel companions and I chartered a blue minibus called a “korope,” and we paid the driver five hundred naira for the trip, this is about a dollar and five cents. As the bus speed down the slightly hilly road that led to the grove, our driver a middle-aged man named Seun answered a few of our questions about the festival and what happens during the rituals. “The goddess is caring and gives children,” he had said while telling us why he never missed a festival. The beginning of the grove was impossible to miss, thanks to clay walls with sculptures that stretched all the through the cultural home. A troop of monkeys greeted us by swinging across trees and occasionally settling on the top of our bus. When we got out, a few of them followed us until we opened our purses to show the monkeys inside as instructed by a guide. As Nigerians, we each paid two hundred naira to enter the main parts of the grove, while foreigners paid five hundred naira. We handed an extra thousand naira to our tour guide so we could take pictures with our camera phones. It cost an extra four thousand naira to use a professional camera. Our guide, Mr Tolu, before the tour began offered us herbs that, according to him, would allow us to see the spirits that occupied the grove. Despite our spiritual awakening, none of us was fearless enough to see actual spirits like the ancestral masquerade Gogoru whose image was a hulking figure of a man with a face shrouded in cowries, his belt strapped with charms and his arm holding out a locally made rattle otherwise known as a shekere. Walking through the forest paths that led to figurines and shrines of Yoruba gods, I felt the air in the environment was different. Among the vast vegetation in the grove, Mr Tolu showed us some special trees that members of the community used to cure illnesses like malaria and typhoid. As we went on our way, we were told the story of Susanne Wenger, the Austrian artist who in the 90s became the Adunni Olorisha, making her the guardian of the grove. We found out that before her death, the Adunni along with other local sculptors recreated several figurines of the gods and goddess. Some statues such as Obatala, the head of Orishas, stood over ten feet tall, while some like that of Esu the god of justice was so small it was easy to miss within tall grasses. Finally, we arrived at the bank of the Osun River. It took a while for the currents to subside, revealing the statue of the goddess in the river. She was carved like the typical curvy African woman, with her arms held out at both ends. From the riverbank, we fed the fish visible from the shallow end. Our experience ended on the suspended bridge overlooking the river. ‘Don’t look down for too long’ Mr Tolu said, According to him, the water seduced people in the past to jump in. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not but I looked away. There was still a bit of grove left to explore but we had to leave because it still serves as a place of worship for several traditional groups, like the Ogboni cult and Osun worshippers who by the time we were leaving, a gathering had begun.