Faith­ful devo­tees turned out de­spite the in­clement weath­er on June 18 to par­tic­i­pate in the in­au­gur­al tree-plant­i­ng cer­e­mo­ny to mark the of­fi­cial open­ing of the Orisa Vil­lage Site at Mal­oney.Af­ter 15 years, the ten acres of land that was do­nat­ed to the Orisa com­mu­ni­ty by the UNC Gov­ern­ment, led by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, were for­mal­ly con­se­crat­ed.An in­ter­est­ing fea­ture of the day's pro­gramme was the joint in­vo­ca­tion by var­i­ous mem­bers of the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties that share the an­ces­tral space in T&T. The cer­e­mo­ny com­menced with Ori­ki Olo­du­mare, led by chief Ifa­sounu Ogun­ri­no­la Ogun­bowale of Ile Isokan, Febeau Vil­lage, San Juan.Piyai Ata Kosa of the Ka­ri­na com­mu­ni­ty per­formed the open­ing rites to bring the an­ces­tral bless­ings of the first peo­ples who oc­cu­pied the land space in T&T.Pun­dit Har­ry Per­sad Ma­haraj of Clax­ton Bay, and mem­ber of the In­ter Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO), brought the an­ces­tral bless­ings of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty on this spe­cial oc­ca­sion.

The site was ded­i­cat­ed in ho­n­our of the late Olori Awo T&T Ba­ba Clarence Forde and the late Iyalor­isha Ijoye Melv­ina Rod­ney, for­mer spir­i­tu­al heads of the Orisa com­mu­ni­ty of T&T. The tree-plant­i­ng cer­e­mo­ny was the joint ini­tia­tive of the Chil­dren of the African An­ces­tors In­her­i­tance or­gan­i­sa­tion and the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Or­isha El­ders of T&T, and was the brain child of project man­ag­er El­der Ja­jah Oga Onilu, mas­ter drum­mer and African mu­si­cian of San­ta Cruz.Ac­cord­ing to Otun Iyalode Awo Ag­baye, spir­i­tu­al head of the Ifa/Orisa com­mu­ni­ty, this project marks the com­mence­ment of a se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties to fos­ter clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion among the many devo­tees of the tra­di­tion who need com­mon space in which they can unite.Plans for the site in­clude the de­vel­op­ment of an Or­isha mul­ti­pur­pose com­plex, which will com­prise a cul­tur­al cen­tre, a mu­se­um, li­brary, the­o­log­i­cal cen­tre, an au­di­to­ri­um and a holis­tic heal­ing cen­tre.The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Or­isha El­ders of T&T is an um­brel­la body that is con­sti­tut­ed to rep­re­sent var­i­ous Orisa or­gan­i­sa­tions na­tion­wide.Present mem­ber­ship stands at around 33 shrines reg­is­tered.