About

I am Aníbal Daniel Mejía and I was born in Flint Michigan, USA on November 18, 1964. At present I live in San Francisco California. According to the National Geographic Genome Project a sample of my DNA reveals that while my father’s Y chromosome hails from West Africa and my mother’s mother’s mother’s X comes from Northern Europe, the bulk of my genetic material boasts bits and pieces from the Mediterranean, Native America, Southwest and Northeast Asia, and even some Neanderthal. My mom is from Michigan, my dad from Honduras, Central America. I was raised primarily in the town of Patagonia Arizona, speaking pretty much “English only” mere miles from the U.S./Mexico border. I’ve travelled some, mostly in Latin America, and have lived a good while in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a child I was obsessed with religion and would beg my parents to get up early on Sunday mornings to get me to Sunday school. I loved reading about Maya hieroglyphs; Egyptian temples, cat goddesses and mummies; the Man, Myth and Magic encyclopedia, and almost anything that “smacked of the occult,” as the town librarian once said of my reading choices.  As a teen I became obsessed with witchcraft, Neo-Pagan Goddess worship, Wicca and then, in college, African religion in the Americas, such as Haitian Vodun, Southern Hoodoo and “Conjurin’,” Cuban Santeria, and the “Macumba” of Brazil. In school I studied Art History, Anthropology, Portuguese language and Brazilian literature and spent most of my time there pondering the immensity of the African diaspora into the Americas. Simultaneous to my arising intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual interests was my coming up as a gay man of color in the United States and in my travels abroad. All I can say is that there was a moment, very special, utterly unique, sometime in my early 20’s when during a drumming ceremony on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro I realized that a whole community of people, mostly Black, but including people of all shades and tones, young and old, mostly poor but some wealthier, both straight appearing and many who were very out, very “gay,” all kinds of men, women, trans and intransient, children and elders were all centered, in that moment, dancing around the predominantly Black, female and queer leadership of a force, an “axé” or spiritual authority, which declared itself from “Africa,” the “house of life.” It was a community I had felt hidden somewhere in myself the whole of my childhood and young adulthood, a mystery that made itself obvious in everything these people did, inside and out, hidden in their shrines or out in the street, in the market, everywhere and anywhere. Not quite Utopian, as that while I still couldn’t understand what anyone was saying or even what they were really doing, I could easily see that these people’s lives were far from idyllic, and also still, myself feeling incompetent and ill-at-ease in both my own skin and socially in this brave, old, ancient world I was discovering like a modern-day, parochial Christopher Columbus livid and boisterous  all around me. I felt some part of me arrive in perfection, something from beyond coming from within. It wasn’t a ‘coming home,’ because I knew I was still in another country, yet I felt the possibility of myself as author, integral in my components, my self, whole, holy, a part of these people’s dancing even as I stood apart adding my own funky moves into the party. Somehow I felt like I was ‘in the house,’ that I belonged. Through this culture of “another” I could feel and find my own; I could perceive both the United States and Brazil’s common histories and differences, our commonalities and present disparities, and joining in as a junior member of the “house,” I came to co-create a continuance of this Africa, come “under the water” from across the sea. Learning so much more than I gave as I followed my adoptive mothers Iyá Marinete and Iyá Niluaiyê with their tutoring in the making of black beans, acassá, moqueca and acarajé, how to throw cowrie shells to see things hidden, to blend perfect black coffee sweetened with way too much sugar, I came to understand and know a bit more of myself. From Vinicius I first learned to dance Ijexá, Jeje, Cabula, Kongo and Ketu. From strangers in Rio’s nightlife I first learned how to cruise and then to flirt. My debts cannot be paid. Que Deus lhe pague.

While living in Rio I was initiated in the Candomblé de Ketu tradition. Candomblé de Ketu is a tradition whose origins are from the town of Ketu in Benin, West Africa as well as from other Yoruba areas, mostly in Nigeria, which has survived and, in many ways, reinvented itself in Brazil. I was initiated by Iyá Nitinha of Casa Branca in Salvador Bahia as an olorixá in the house of Iyá Marinete Martins de Souza in Rio de Janeiro. I have also studied and practice Umbanda, another spiritual/medicinal tradition from Rio having predominantly Kongo/Angola roots. I also love Jesus. And Buddha. I put up with Christianity and take communion. I sit on my Zen pillow and try to do nothing. I also, just as when I was a child, study all kinds of different religious and spiritual stuff from around the world. Now, an adult, I work as a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’m employed as a social worker and psychotherapist primarily with homeless folks in San Francisco’s Mission district, LGBTQ Latino immigrants to the United States seeking asylum or surviving human trafficking, and I also help people with substance use and trauma related issues. It is also my pride to provide spiritual consultation, guidance and training, and teach Candomblé and Umbanda traditions.

Currently, my mind has been trying to look more deeply at the unique contribution of West African culture, specifically of the Yoruba, Beninois, and Kongo peoples to global philosophy, medicine and spiritual practice, especially as it has manifested in what is called by many “syncretism” or “mixing” with other cultural traditions in the Americas. I am finding that this “syncretism” is more like a chameleon than a capitulation or cop-out; whatever color you try to hit it with, it comes back to you with the same even as its eyes look in two directions at once and its little legs wobble steadily forward. Epa! A magical beast, native to the tropics and unknown in the North. Watch its tongue! Its teeth! Personally, as a spiritual practitioner and in intellectual and aesthetic pursuits I’m less concerned with dogma, tradition and orthodoxies than I am with effects, actions and consequences. I write here as a means to explore and share, to create and conjure, not so much to assert a final, official position, answer or creed. Yet I love to study history, love classical and folk forms, abhor innovation at the price of good taste, detest overproduced sounding music, “spiritual materialism,” spiritual “lifestyles,”etc. etc. A Romantic at heart most probably, yet I find the best escape from the banal is into the actual, where beauty is most bizarre, most promising. I seek salvation in “things as they is,” I find “Just this” is usually more than fabulous enough beyond words, simply redemptive. Adding words, it’s a gilded lily that somehow grew up golden in a slime mold world, the jewel lotus above the muck and murk, blossoming into limitless blue babble.

I live with my lover and partner Eric with our pet royal python and this host of spirits which gather round in an apartment which is way too small for all of us, yet is nonetheless cosy, homey, blessed. All I can say is “Gratidude!” that it’s rent controlled and has a wonderful back porch upon which Eric has created a miraculous jungle sprouting all the ewé (herbs) I need for my work.

A Yoruba proverb says, the world is a market place, while heaven is our home. So I timidly set up my little stand here to try peddling my goods. Out here in the market, keeping an eye out at what folks are buying, the deals, steals, the promos and rip-offs, I twice double check the cash handed me. Loudly I shout for buyers, while quietly I count. What is counterfeit and what is gold?