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Some people might think that animism is an outdated and archaic belief system, not even a religion.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it is not clear whether it can be considered one single religion, our guide explained various aspects which are not outdated or incoherent at all.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...

Going cashew nuts

Our next activity in Cassamance, was exploring a bit of the Ousouye region during a bike ride, by VTT Casamance.

Accompanied by local guide Bonfils, our first stop was Joseph, a guy who, now that he's retired, started up a small, traditional cashew processing plant. So get ready to learn some new things about cashew nuts!

It's quite labor intensive, involving different steps, done by around 15 employees. A nice touch, in accordance to their social policy, one third of these employees have disabilities, one third are single (young) mothers and other staff:

The steps explained:
1. Steaming: 60 kg is put above water heated by a fire, using the shells of previous nuts.

The cooking arrangement, 60 minutes for 60kg

2. Breaking the nut away from its shell, which is still coated with a (toxic) oil. After the drying in the sun, this is done by an Indian mechanical machine.
3. Roasting, which removes the toxic and renders the cashew edible

Local oven, which heats at 70° during 6h for 40kg  cashew nuts

4. Cleaning and peeling the cashew nuts
5. Frying: in sunflower oil, since the local peanut oil isn't deemed appropriate.
6. Adding a flavor: spicy, salty, banana, honey or other

Locally harvested honey

7. Packaging: done in plastic bags, initially with an industrial sealer downtown, but since they had so many difficulties with power outages, now done with the help a simple candle and lots of practice.

Packages, in 7 flavors, almost exclusively sold to tourists at 1000CFA (1,55€)

 And then our bike ride continued through the fields, to more fetish aspects of the local animist culture (seen another blog post).

Pirogue excursion from Ziguinchor, Casamance, south of Sénégal

Gambia: lazy couchsurfing, yeah man!

So, our shortest stop on this trip (2 nights), and probably the country where we spend the least money ever (86€): Gambia. Very small in itself, curled around the river Gambia, with 1,5 million inhabitants. English speaking and quite touristy.
We decided to try our luck with Couchsurfing and winded up in Sukuta, in the outskirts of Banjul, the capital, with not one guy, but a whole crew, the Kingdom crew as they call themselves. Lots of reggae, some smoke blowing in our direction, clubbing, a day at the beach and an improvised birthday party, yeah man, it's all good!
Our time together brought back memories of our Zim crew, and inadvertently, some of our Zim expressions kept coming out, though we can also feel we've evolved since then. But it was very nice to be so involved with local people, 24/24, sharing their daily lives, sleeping at their house, hanging out, playing games, chatting. Even doing some of the more touristy stuff like visiting a monkey park and going to the beach was a lot easier and had a very different vibe because we were hanging out with locals. Thanks Ous, Dave and Daddy!

Why I like Africa: places like Toubacouta...

After an hour by boat, here we were, visiting Misira and Sippo, tiny fishing villages in the south of Senegal. Beautiful Saloum delta, with baobabs and mangroves. But more importantly, in barely an hour, I witnessed several customs and habits that reminded me what I enjoy and even admire in Africa.

Here’s a couple:

1. We happened to be there during the monthly clean-up of the village. Already a very commendable practice, but, to get everybody to help out, first, drums beat to call all the young people to help. Next, for the more reluctant ones, they have a couple of guys, dressed in red costumes waving around two big machetes, who run around scaring kids, but more importantly, remind everyone to lend a hand. These guys are called kankourang, and are also used during  initiation ceremonies, a practice that in 2005 was recognized as a UNESCO immaterial cultural heritage (see link in FR).

Sun dried fish.

2. The local fishermen have started up a co-op, initially supported by the Japanese (hence all the Yamaha engines on the pirogues), which does all kind of things. Smoke the fish, salt the fish, make oil from the fish. Women bring oysters which are cleaned and processed, and the shells are grinded and charred to make building blocks for the houses.

3. In case of a conflict, instead of calling the police, the concerned parties meet around the sacred tree of the village, a fromagier (cause the fruit are supposed to smell like cheese). I can imagine being dwarfed by such a plant can help bring things into perspective…

4. We met the local queen! 86 years old, inherited the kingdom cause there was no male descendant thirty years ago. No protocol, a knock on the door, she gets out of bed, a quick flash of her boobs before she pulled on a shirt, chatting while she’s munching away on peanuts and occasionally spitting those on us, but very pleasant and down to earth.

Now, in how many places around the world can these sort of things happen?

Mangrooves

The fishing village Misira

A nesting spot for... well, a whole lot of birds!