Bent double by age, the high-priestess of Nigeria’s Yoruba spirit-world shuffles forward from under the trees, reaching out a white, blotchy hand in welcome. Mrs Wenger resurrected the traditions of the river-god Osun.

Half a lifetime ago, Susanne Wenger dedicated herself to reviving the traditions of the pre-Christian Yoruba gods, “the orishas”, and left Austria to make Nigeria her home. The frail 94-year-old artist, with one seeing eye, has been a driving force in Osogbo town, where she is in charge of the sacred grove, a place where spirits of the river and trees are said to live.

In an upstairs room of her house, surrounded by carved wooden figures of the gods, she receives well-wishers and devotees, who she blesses in fluent Yoruba.

When she arrived here, she found traditional culture in abeyance, all but destroyed by missionaries who branded it “black magic” or “juju”, a word Mrs Wenger reviles. Friends paint a picture of a dedicated, tough and far-sighted leader who has helped revive a culture thought destroyed by Christian and Muslim evangelists, and secured protection for one of the Yoruba tradition’s most sacred sites.

But she is very humble about her achievements.

“Osogbo is a creative place, it is that by itself, it didn’t need me,” she says. Followers say she has learned about and accepted pre-Christian deities like no other European has ever done. Orisha worship is a controversial belief. In the past it involved human sacrifice and there are rumours that still happens at secret shrines elsewhere in the country. Devotees of the orishas can worship either good or evil gods in order to get what they want. But thanks to Mrs Wenger, the town’s annual festival of Osun has grown in size and popularity and thousands of Yorubas come every August to renew their dedication to the river-god.

Susanne Wenger was born during the First World War in 1915 in the town of Graz, Austria. She studied art in Graz and Vienna where she was part of the famous Vienna “Art-Club”. After the Second World War she travelled to Italy and then spent some time in Switzerland where she had exhibitions together with the most famous artists at the time in the gallery “Des Eaux Vives” in Zurich.

In 1949 Susanne Wenger went to Paris, where she met Ulli Beier, a German linguist who accepted a posting in West Africa. They got married and in 1950 arrived in Nigeria. From Ibadan they moved to Ede where she “very quickly became part of their culture.” 

In 1957, she fell ill with tuberculosis in an epidemic in which many thousands died. Friend Ajani Adigun Davies says Mrs Wenger believes the illness was a kind of sacrifice, in return for the knowledge she was receiving about the gods.

“The Yoruba beliefs all depend on sacrifice, that you must give something of value to get something of value, you must suffer pain to gain knowledge,” he says. In her early years in Nigeria she met Adjagemo, a high-priest of creator-god Obatala, who would become her mentor.

“He took me by the hand and led me into the spirit world,” Mrs Wenger told a French documentary maker in 2005.”I did not speak Yoruba, and he did not speak English, our only intercourse was the language of the trees.”  She divorced her husband and resolved to stay in Osogbo for the rest of her life.

From a very early age, Susanne Wenger has been strongly attracted by nature and specifically by trees – in which she recognised “the images of sacredness”. And it is in the Sacred Groves of Oshogbo where she has integrated her art into nature and where her art is now protecting nature.

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7595841.stm

http://www.geocities.com/adunni1/sw.html