Voices of Osun Osogbo

The effort to help conserve the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove and the Busanyin Shrine is a community effort that involves not only local people, religious figures, and artists, but researchers, and cultural heritage conservators as well.

“This environment is like this because you know, they say the forest is full of spirits. Osanyin forest, all the spirits were here from the onset, so these trees you see here are all deities, there are several spirits in them also. Therefore no one must cut any of the trees in this forest. This place is a forest of spirits. That is why you see all these trees still here. And you know, the spirits reside in cool and quiet places all these trees have their unique spirit.” - Priestess Osunyemi Efunsola

"Flood started becoming a thing of concern about fifteen years ago. Ever since, the event has considerably fluctuated; nonetheless, there has been more significant downpour year on year the worst being in 2019 when it rose to about six feet high on the reference." - Rabiu Ajao Abesu

“… Restoring something that has been damaged becomes a bit of a challenge, so this week has been another extension in that process, a condition of that process where we've begun, of course, going back to 2019, when CyArk came with AOT (Adunni Olorisa Trust) for the first meeting, the first documentation. This week we've carried that on, actively documenting the Busanyin shrine particularly to see how it has been affected by flooding to see how parts of the building have collapsed … It becomes easier to do a restoration of the sculptures, the artworks, the building ensemble altogether.”