Introduction

As the terrifying experience of Professor Adelola Adeloye in Ikole-Ekiti in 1945 indicates, Sopona or Baba – as the deity associated with the disease, smallpox, was known – was lethal for some of its victims while others survived. Yet, Adeloye had been vaccinated in school. The unpredictable consequences of contracting smallpox reinforced local beliefs about the deity, Sopona, whose arbitrary power was often immune to the blandishments of Western medicine. Not surprisingly, Sopona was widely feared throughout Ekiti, which affected people's actions when it appeared. People were forbidden to ‘cry and mourn over a victim of smallpox’ for fear of provoking the deity's anger over the possibility that humans might question its actions in the selection of those whom it had affected. It was believed that if Sopona were to see someone crying for a family member, that the remaining members of the household would be stricken as well. This conceptualization of Sopona – as a dangerous orisa (deity) that possessed a person but which could be placated and treated by devotee priests and priestesses (awuro Sopona), contrasted with British colonial officials’ conceptualization of smallpox – as a virus with particular symptoms and aetiology that could be prevented through inoculation.