Ifá Ẹsẹ and other Wisdom Literature

Osa Meji
The Cotton Plant
Olosee, awo oko
A dia fowuu
Eyi ti o maa fi gbogbo omo sowo abigbin.
Owu ni bawo ni oun o se maa bi abiye bayi,
Ti aye ko si fi nii riran ri oun? (5)
Won ni ki o rubo.
Igba ti o rubo tan,
ni won ba ran Eji werewere
Pe ki o lo pa owu
Ati awon omoo re (10)
Nigba naa ni owu waa bere sii ru,
Won waa ran Iri wowo
Pe ki o loo pa owu
Nigba naa ni owu waa bere sii bimo
Leyin naa ni won waa ran oorun (15)
Pe ki o loo powu
Igba ti oorun npowu
Ni owu waa bere sii la.
O ni bee gege ni awon awo oun wi
Olosee, awo ako; (20)
A dia fowuu
Ti nfi gbogbo omo sowo abigbin
Won reji werewere
Pe o loo powu o,
Owu nru (25)
won ranri wowo
Pe o loo powu o,
Owu npalaba
Won roorun
Pe o loo powu o
Owu nla
Owu nru o,
Owu nla
Ni soju eleye lowu see la.

Olosee(1), Ifa priest of farmland
Performed Ifa divination for the Cotton Plant
Who was losing all her children y premature death.
The Cotton Plant inquired from her Ifa priests what she must do in order that her children might survive.
And so that the inhabitants of the earth would not give her any trouble. (5)
She was told to perform sacrifice.
After the Cotton Plant performed sacrifice,
Her enemies sent small particles of rain
To go and destroy her,
As well as her children. (10)
But it as at that particular time that the Cotton Plant started to produce new leaves.
Her enemies then sent severe dew-drops
To go and destroy her.
But that was exactly when she started to produce new flowers and seeds.
At last, they sent the sun (15)
To go and destroy the Cotton Plant.
But as the sun was shinging on the Cotton Plant,
She started to open up her buds.
She said that was exactly what her Ifa priests predicted.
“Olosee, Ifa priest of farmland, (20)
Performed Ifa divination for the Cotton Plant
Who was losing all her children by premature death.
They sent small particles of rain
To go and destroy the Cotton Plant.
But she was growing new leeavs. (25)
They sent severe dew-drops
To go and destroy the Cotton Plant.
But she started to produce new buds and leaves.
They sent the sun
To go and destroy the Cotton Plant. (30)
But she opened up her wool.
The Cotton Plant is producing new leaves. She is producing more wool.
It is in the preseence of birds that the Cotton Plant opens up her wool” 2

1. Olosee. A personal name.
2. Birds cannot eat cotton wool although its white colour may attract them.

As we stated in the newsletter the Cotton Plant ese has many meanings that are apparent to us. It is also quite poignant given the way that us Afrikans were brought to this country throughout the enslavement era. We think that there is a larger aspect of resilience here that we should pay attention to. To keep this in line with the goal of È̩NÌ, we will keep this scientific:

• Heat Exhaustion
  • Too much of a good thing can be quite detrimental. We all know that. For example, in some plants, fertilizing with too much nitrogen will turn the leaves a dark green color, well beyond the healthy green that we are used to. The same is the case here with the Sun. Especially on hot days, when the plants are focused on trying to keep themselves cool to be able to conduct normal functions, transpiration is a way they keep themselves cool, much in the same way in how we sweat. Some plants will wilt to decrease the amount of exposure they have to the sun (reducing their surface area) so that they can retain as much water as possible. We experienced this last summer with our sweet potato plants. We thought that they had been just so so so thirsty, but once the plants were shaded by the house, the leaves on the sweet potato perked up again!
• Sunburn
  • As we start our plants indoors, or under cover, we must take great care to ‘harden’ them off to the suns rays. This means that we must gradually expose our plants to the Sunlight, because it is quite harsh. In 2015 I had transplanted about 50 pepper plants into my grandmothers backyard. They were taken directly from my bedroom window, which received light from about 12:30-6pm, to her backyard that received a lot more light. When I checked in on them a couple days later, they had turned into paper. Many leaves were the color of manila folders and so thin you could almost see through them. Then, those that hadnt been affected had been eaten up my alleycats, one just waved its tail at me, basking in the Sun of late May.
• Rain Compaction
  • I didn’t believe it at first, but apparently, in larger farm plots, the rain itself can be quite detrimental to soils. Although rain falls from about 6,500ft (2000km), the distance that it is from the soil doesn’t have muchc of an impact because each raindrop accelerates to terminal velocity pretty quickly. This means that the raindrop stops gathering speed and insteads hit a freefall where it cannot go any faster. The real issue of rain compaction comes when the rain all hits the ground and isn’t able to absorb into the soil. When it hits, and then sits, and settles in that first half-inch or so of soil, and then i tdries and pulls all that soil together, very quickly we can get hard-pan soils that prevent the absorption of water into the soils. This is why no-till and cover crops is a necessary practice. By leaving adequate cover on the soil, we prevent compaction especially from the repeated rain-evaporation cycles that are present throughout the growing season.
• Dew Drops and Pathogens
  • In the last couple of years researchers have been understanding the role water droplets play in how exactly pathogens are spread in agricultural fields. A small consensus has grown around the idea that if there are pathogenic particles on the surface of a plant, when dew or any other moisture comes, can absob those particles into the droplet. When these surface water drops are then hit by a larger raindrop, they can disperse in all directions, potentially spreading the pathogen throughout the entire crop.
    • In this article the authors state their objective was to understand how far pathogenic particles could travel based on their liberation patterns, “This research provides insights into possible agricultural solutions for this issue. “We are trying to characterize how far these pathogens are flying from one plant to the others, then we can suggest what is the optimal distance or array of the crops in the field,” Jung said.” There is a very nice video illustrating more of what was being said.
    • In this article the researchers were understanding the immune system of the plant, in response to rain. Just as your grandmother told you to make sure you wore a coat out if it were raining, the plants do the same, stepping up their immune defenses in the case they receive some particle from a freshly created liberation pattern, “Plants are continuously exposed to mechanical manipulation by wind, rain, neighboring plants, animals, and human activities. These mechanical stimuli cause short-term molecular changes and long-term developmental effects, affecting flowering time, pathogen defence, and plant architecture. Using water spray to simulate rain, we show that jasmonic acid-signaling factors mediate rapid gene-expression changes.”
    • The last article is an update of the first. The researchers were able to publish their results and included the role that wind may play in the dispersal of the viral particles when they are released into their liberation pattern. “At the very beginning of the rainfall, millions of dry spores are liberated from the plant,” Jung said. “By having the wind around it, these dry spores can easily disperse to another plant. Pathogens spread in this way can ruin an entire crop.” A good video is there also
  • One other pathogen that is used by the dew are other molds and fungi, like Powdery Mildew.