The mythical Japadhola gods at Nyakiriga Shrine

Jan 18, 2002

Frightening, amazing and mysterious tales about the Nyakiriga shrine abound among the Japadhola. Many who have visited it have gone away with incredible testimonies. Their lives never remain the same again.

By Raphael OkelloFrightening, amazing and mysterious tales about the Nyakiriga shrine abound among the Japadhola. Many who have visited it have gone away with incredible testimonies. Their lives never remain the same again. So one evening I picked up with Owere, a teacher at Nagongera seminary and we journeyed to the land where dreams are made to come alive and life’s burdens are uplifted. A sparsely settled, rocky agricultural village seats on a rugged platform in Sere (Maundo), Tororo district. Down through the village path, we traversed isolated homes, bushes, rocks, and farm fields. Suddenly, a jutting forest rose above the agricultural plain. Under the mild evening sun, the atmosphere was still and solid. But the plants swung, as if in telepathic conversation beholding the divine presence of the four gods; Bura, Majanga, Othim and Nyakiriga. I felt a wave of mystical powers sweep across the plains. A man working in the nearby field noticed our baffled pause, as we gazed in awe. We greeted him and paid him a compliment upon his devotion to the field. “Is Odora in the shrine?” Owere asked politely. “Yes, he must be,” he said as he whiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “I saw him heading that way a little while ago,” he went on, then continued to pick up a weed.We walked towards the forest and meandered through its dense vegetation. “Odora is priest of the people and servant of the gods,” Owere told me. He takes care of the shrine and performs rituals,” Owere said as we went along. Entrance to the shrine without Odora’s permission brings dire consequences to the intruder and, it is said, a sudden gloom of darkness. The entrance to this place by women is a sacrilege. A customary rule that reflects a prejudiced society.What we walked into at the end of the path captured my imagination. Transfixed, I was convinced that I was indeed standing before an illusion. The interior panoply and sublime silence dissolved all sense of time. A rich display of rock outcrop rose into the trees, a small pot buried in the ground under a tree and tiny shrines aligned either flanks of the aisle. The evening sun accomplished a prism of light and shade, tinting the leaves and littering the floor with an abundant aura of continuity. Odora had quickly sensed our presence. By the time we got to the entrance, his body frame, carrying a face wisened by age was before us like a frozen picture. His tawny eyes where something to behold. They burnt with a gradual fire whose cast radiance explores the coward in every soul.“You are most welcome,” he hastily affirmed, exposing his toothless gums, whistling more than he actually spoke. He asked us to present our sacrifice and remove the shoes before going in.“We don’t have any sacrifice but money,” I anxiously broke in, studying his reaction. It is customary for any pilgrim to take either a cow, goat, chicken (red or next to white) and local beer brewed without cassava flour. “Alright,” he said after a moment’s meditation.“You can come in. The gods will decide how much you will offer. I will buy the sacrifice later and perform the rituals,” he said. As we stepped into the shrine with our bare feet, everything felt strange and different. There was a dramatic interior display that contrasted the world outside and yet reflected it. The interplay of light and shade imitated the co-existence of good and evil. A monkey rustled the leaves and a cacophony of crickets chirped in the trees, breaking the still atmosphere as if to say we were intruding upon this rustic peace. Were the gods in fact speaking through the monkey and crickets? But we had come in good faith.Towards the altar, Odora’s memory staggered back through the years as he tried to recall when he became priest. For all he recalled, it must have been during the 1940s after the tragic death of his elder brother, the priest then. The spiritual birth and divinity of Nyakiriga shrine is as old as the Japadhola migration to this land in the 16th century. “A young boy, Majanga, disappeared from home into the forest. His father and family mounted a village search but in vain. When he mysteriously returned after several days, he told his father that he had wandered off into the forest. His father, who was much bewildered, inquired how a child like him had ventured all by himself into the forest infested with wild animals. He told his father that the power of the god, Nyakiriga, had guided him through. He brought his father into the forest and showed him this hole. And when he died, his spirit came to live in this forest,” says Odora.Today, the place where Majanga sought refuge is the altar. A rock and deep hole painted with patches of sacrificial blood and beer beneath the rock. Like Christians who appease their God with praise and worship, the Japadhola appease their gods with local brew and blood. Cows and goats are speared to death while chicken heads are buttered on the altar. The Japadhola sacrifice to the gods inorder to live in harmony with the spirits of their ancestors.“People come here to seek blessings, wealth, jobs and to invoke or remove curses,” Odora said. After the detailed tale, Odora approached the altar in the silence that ensued – humbled. He engaged in a telepathic conversation with the gods, dramatically rumbling away in tongues. It is amazing, but instantly, there was a creaking vast distance between us. The spelt difference between human and spiritual roles. We stood back and watched in silence. In that ‘transfiguration’, the fate of our offertory was decided. The gods had spoken. They thirsted for chicken blood. With my right hand, I perfected the ritual. I stepped forward and placed sh5000 on the altar – humbled, stunned and afraid. I was supposed to request for anything: blessings, healing or wealth. But I stood numbed. “We have to leave at once before darkness,” Owere’s husky voice shook me out of my daze. Strangely, I desired to stay in this traditional bliss and spiritual enclave. But there was an engulfing call to return my soul to the beckoning of the Christian God. Hastily, we scampered back, away from Nyakiriga.

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