African fetish: animism

After our first cashew nut stop, we went to the dark side of the force: animism and African fetish. Our guide, Bonfils practices animism himself, and he showed us around various villages with varying degrees of animism. "People might say they are catholic or Muslims, but once they go back to the village, they're expected to partake in the ceremonies, that is just the way it is. If you don't want to be considered an outsider, you leave your religion for 15 minutes and pick it back up afterwards."

Some people might think that animism is an outdated and archaic belief system, not even a religion. I tend to disagree. While it is not clear whether it can be considered one single religion, our guide explained various aspects which are not outdated or incoherent at all.
According to Tylor, animism consisted of two unformulated propositions; all parts of nature had a soul, and these souls are capable of moving without requiring a physical form. This gives rise to fetishism, the worship of visible objects as powerful, spiritual beings. The second proposition was that souls are independent of their physical forms. It gives rise to 'spiritism', the worship of the souls of the dead and the unseen spirits of the heavens (Wikipedia).

This picture was taken on an invisible border separating a village between the animist side and the catholic half.  Though there is no or very little friction or tension between the two sides, the division was made for practical reasons. Some animist ceremonies only allow men to be present and so  women and uninitiated children are requested to stay home, often on Sundays. This clashes with the Catholics, who, of course, have women attending church on Sunday.Hence, the church is build in one part, and Catholics tend to live that side of the village.

                  
Can you see the little altar, discrete but still quite visible? It is a family fetish, where the family living in that house hold ceremonies and give thanks for both births and deaths. A death is celebrated with some palm wine (the older the person, the more wine is required), a newborn with flower and eggs.

This is the tamtam, or bush telephone. It is used for two occasions: announcing a death in the village, or a call for a war with another village.

The call for war has become very rare, as interaction and thus links and co-dependencies have increased greatly, but deaths are still announced. using a specific rhythm repeated during 30 minutes, which calls for everybody to "guard" themselves through their grigri or by tying specific leaves around their arms, it also calls them to come and pay their respects before the funeral, usually held the next day.

This is the public gathering space. Here, people attend ceremonies, some of which also include offerings. If a person has had a good year, he can offer rice, which is also a statement to offer help to the needy. Of someone is in need of assistance, he can either ask for help in person or leave an empty basket in front of their house, and collect it full at night.

This is the central fetish, where one person, elected by the village council of elders, receives the people with requests and prayers. Unlike the other officials, he is designated for life, so the choice is important and pondered for significant period of time. Once chosen, the person remains in solitary for six days (the local week), and then is reintroduced with a different name to the village, which holds a big celebration.

Many of these aspects can be found in an excellent cartoon, called Kirikou, featuring a baby of that name who usually deconstructs some stereotype.

We happened to drop by a campement, where the kids were watching an episode, where Sunjata and the creation of Mali are explained, a favorite story of my nephew, Loïc.

And this marks the end of our bike ride on the dark side of the force...