Affecting the Future: On Civil Servants, Spiritual Work, and Money at the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove

Against the focus on pastness in discussions of and about heritage sites, I argue, in this dissertation project, that such sites ask us to not only consider the past but to think about, plan for, and even make the future. To make this point, I consider the case of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, one of only two United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites in Nigeria. My work builds on preceding literatures about the Grove and takes their arguments, which have mainly emphasized the ways in which “…the past and the present are folded together…” in this landscape, further: I ask readers to consider not only how the past and present are folded together in this landscape but also the future, an assertion made possible through the observation of the various people that interact with the site every day. Of these various people, I ask readers to encounter the Grove primarily through the experience of the civil servant staff members of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments Osogbo, or NCMM Osogbo, who themselves are often ignored in narratives about the Grove although they are responsible for its maintenance and upkeep.
To shift focus away from the pastness this landscape calls to mind and to instead emphasize how my interlocutors’ experiences are anticipatory of the future, I examine the parallels between the tipping practices of the civil servant staff members and the spiritual work (known as the Egbe ritual) facilitated by Osun Devotees for particular kinds of visitors. Although different, both practices necessitate social relationships and, especially, money for the purposes of guaranteeing oneself a better future. If the spiritual work done at the Grove is a way for particular visitors to “manipulate” their destinies, or fates—as I will demonstrate in later chapters--I want to argue that my civil servant interlocutors also “manipulate” their lot in life through the less ritualistic form of tipping as both forms of manipulations and relationship management speak to and are meant to help improve one’s material condition in the future.