I am seeking a fluent speaker of the Urhobo language who is also a fluent reader of English to translate into spoken Urhobo my book on devotion to Ekene, the water spirit who is the central deity of the Agbarha community in the Niger Delta.
Having been privileged to encounter and interact with Ekene devotees in 2024, my online writings on Ekene became the first accounts of this secluded spirituality, believed by one faction of Ekene devotees as being for Agbarha people alone while it is generally held by Ekene believers that it is taboo for anything connected with Ekene to be photographed.
My meeting with Ekene devotees, however, was largely fraternal, deeply welcoming, powerfully integrative and permanently memorable, as I was inducted into their worship, ritualistically drank alcohol from the same cup as other devotees at the shrines, participated in prayers to the deity, made my own offerings and pledge to the deity and immersed myself in the glorious language of drums and sonorous Urhobo chanting and magnificent dancing, indelibly glorious experiences.
Having been so blessed by the community I want to give back to them what I have gained from them.
Realising that assimilating information in spoken Urhobo would be more realistic for many of them than through reading English, I would like to have the book translated into fluent spoken Urhobo, hence I am making this call.
I need someone who is either sympathetic to traditional African spiritualities, such as Urhobo water spirit devotion or has no bias against them.
This is in order to avoid such tragedies of translation as that of rendering the Yoruba origin Orisa spirituality deity Esu as Satan in a translation of the Bible into Yoruba.
Please get in touch if you are interested.
Here is a link to the book which can be accessed for free at
academia.edu
Ekene Philosophy and Mysticism: Developing the Universal Significance of the Theology and Shrine Culture of Devotion to the Ekene Water Spirit of Agbarha in the Niger Delta
Great thanks
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
08051439554( WhatsApp)