ZO KWE ZO, a man is a man

Today, December 13th 2015, the new Constitution of the Central African Republic is put to vote.

Gunshot has been heard in Batangafo, though much less than in Bangui, where, in the Muslim PK5 neighbourhood, ballot boxes have disappeared and grenades have been fired. Two people have died so far, and over twenty are injured.

ZO KWE ZO. A man is a man, said Boganda, the country’s founding father. He who for the first time sang the national anthem, with a vigorous voice. ZO KWE ZO, each human life is precious, one feels compelled to whisper to the human being who is about to throw a grenade at other human beings, in his dusty ear.

However, when, in that context, someone tells you that he will go to vote so that he can start cultivating his field once again after two years, you understand that each man is precious. That there is always hope.

But what does the new Constitution say?

According to Sandra Martin-White, “one would need to be crazy to vote for it”. Why? According to her, because, in addition to giving the parliament enough power to cause institutional paralysis, it creates, in a country with the scarcest resources, an apparently pointless Senate and unnecessary councils. One such example would be the Economic and Social Council proposed in article 112. Or the High Council for Communication (art. 115) and the National Council for Mediation (art. 116). A more welcome addition, in principle, is the Special Court of Justice. But let’s dwell on some peculiarities.

Article 18, for instance, states that the Republic is a secular state; the President, however, must swear by God when taking up the post. A minor detail. Among the most anticipated articles is probably number 24, where a limit of two 5-year terms is imposed for a President’s tenure in office. However, one need not look further than Rwanda to see how this can always be changed in the last moment.

As you can imagine, some articles are heavily political and influenced by the current situation, such as number 107, which states that the President will only be responsible for acts committed during his tenure in the case of high treason. Other than that, seemingly full immunity.

But I believe the most controversial article is number 24, which excludes as candidates all persons who have not resided in the Republic over the previous year, or who do not own a residence in the country. And it is precisely because of the exclusion of candidates that the drums of war are being heard again in Bangui and even here, in Batangafo.

Leaving paper for reality, today the Christian-majority Antibalaka groups have been firing in Bangui, and the Muslim-majority Séléka have been firing here, and in Ndele, Birao and Kaga Bandoro (for instance, the FPRC faction of Nourredine Adam). Some quarry because their candidate has not been accepted, the others because they say the necessary conditions are not met to hold elections, such as the return of all the exiled.

I have just seen again the person who told me he was going to vote in order to be able to cultivate his field again. I asked him once more and he said that, after today’s gunshot, voting for a constitution whose contents he does not know is not worth the risk. He will vote, but in the elections. As the Brassens song went, “dying for your ideals is ok, but let it be a slow death”.

Others say they will vote both yes and no, so as to make their votes void and thus voice their complaint that here, in Batangafo, where there has been no TV or radio for months, no one has explained what exactly they are voting. Not to mention the fear that there will be no elections – and no peace – if they vote no, when in principle nothing would prevent the elected president from writing a new draft.

There are others who do not even intend to vote in the elections. According to them, whatever the people vote, it will be transformed into a yes in the capital; and, in the elections, the international community will do whatever it takes so that their candidate, Martin Ziguelé, will win. Ziguelé, who is thrown stones even in his own village since, after stating that he would strike a deal with the devil to bring down the former president, he is associated with the majority-Muslim Séléka armed group.

ZO KWE ZO, no one is more than anyone else. Thus began the former constitution and thus begins the likely new one.

Let’s hope the Founding Father turns up today in Bangui and pulls the ears of a few and people can soon cultivate their beloved fields again and send their children to school.

Bon courage Centrafrique.

Picking up the pieces of the central african puzzle

Since Saturday there are 40,000 new Internally Displaced People in Bangui, 800 prisioners escaped from the only full functioninig prision in the capital, thousands are wounded  and more than
thirty have died. The brother of one of the victims goes on working with me in the hospital. When I find out, I tell him he can go home. He thanks me with a regard full of acceptance, dignity and sadness. But he stays.

Today, the amount of tweets with #CARcrisis has gone down a little and most of them describe the situation as calm but tense. In the TV room a giant puzzle is being done thanks to Angela´s never-ending patience. I have just finished the book "Making sense of the Central African Republic". Let´s see if I´ve got it.

A bit of history

First thing I have learnt is that CAR has been very influenced by Chad since the nineteen century. With a slaver sultanate steping freely on here. It is not surprising then that Chad had considered that he could put presidents in and out at will. Ask Bozizé. Hoisted up to power by Déby, the eternal chadian president, was pulled down by Seleka militias partialy composed by chadian mercenaries and replaced by Michel Djotodia.

Déby, chadian president since 1990

Bozizé, RCA president since 2003 to 2013

Djotodia, RCA president since mars 2013 to january 2014

Secondly, for the french, what they called Oubangui-Chiari was born as an accident of colonial history. Let´s explain it.  The french wanted to control Africa from Senegal to Djibouti, from West to East stopping that way the paralel british ambition of controlling Africa "from Cape to Cairo".

To make the story short: the french, after having arrived to Fashoda as adventurous expedition of thousands porters but just 150 soldiers, they had to step back when they faced the british. The latter didn´t need to spend a single bullet (Britisfh navy was superior, Dreyfuss affaire in France...). At least the british were kind enough to change the name of the city to aleviate the pain of the french wound. Now Fashoda is Kodok and is in today´s South Sudan.

Let´s go back to CAR. The end of the story is that French withdrew here and CAR turned out to be ´le cul de sac´, the dead-end street of his West-East dreamt axe. And it is what still seems to be:-(

With such an origin and his neighbour´s example (the belgian Congo) it is less astonishing the french government act  of immorality by giving the region to a group of reckless companys in exchange of 15% of the benefits they could get. And there is no amazement of the wild explotation each group made in the absence of a strong central authority. Like they did with timber, natural reserves with his poachers and antipoachers armed groups (where some of the country rebels as Seleka chief Joseph Zindeko have been trained) or the so called blood diamonds.

It looks easy. A classic. Nevertheless, in order to go on with other pieces of the centralafrican puzzle we have to know very well where to put the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before all atention went north, to Chad in the other side of the Chiari river, the South was the natural CAR´s neighbour in the close sore of the Oubangui river that baths the capital city. Mobutu didn´t leave space for doubts when he said that Bokassa (who proclaimed himself "Emperor" of CAR) was his brother but Kolingba (also from Yakoma tribe) was his son.

Mobutu, Zaire (RDC) president since 1965 to 1997

"Emperor" Bokassa, RCA president since 1966 to 1976

Kolingba, RCA president since 1981 to 2003
(it is said that Mantion, the french "proconsul" was the real boss)

The congolese family falls apart when Patassé, the only democraticaly elected president of RCA, associates with Bemba, leader of the MLC and president Kabila´s enemy. Patassé, the most carismatic party lover of the lasts presidents, risked a lot with his friends choices, like Gadaffi to stop the heavy influence of the chadian president, Déby. As we saide before he didn´t win the game and Déby helped Bozizé to get the presidency.

Patassé, only democratically elected president of RCA. He rulled since 1993 to 2003

From french looting, to first Congo and afterwords Chadian preassures, to the spill over of neighbouring conflicts like Darfur and to the presence of armed groups like the ugandan Joseph Kony´s Lord Resistance Army, to the conflicts between peul pastoralists and local farmers, etc we have to add a piece that doesn´t seem to match into the puzzle: almost a dozen of "peace keeping" international missions that have wandered around here since the nineties to the actual MINUSCA (and the french Sangaris force that are never too far).

How is it possible that so many institutions, during so much time, had achieved so little?

In Tatiana Carayannis and Louisa Lombard´s book they talk about the "accordion of help" that arrives in big quantities when the situation is dissastrous but vanishes even before starting to face the structural problems: security, economic development that gets to the population in need, stable and accountable institutions... The 400 million dolars spent in  humaintarian aid in 2014 are 3 or 4 times bigger than development aid. Instead of that we have the vicious circle of international actors willing to leave as soon as possible and local elites that want to keep their privileges in a country bigger than France but with a population of less than 4 million people living in extreme poverty with just 47 years of life expectancy.

Maybe the most striking example is the 27 million dollars of the Disarmement Desmobilisation and Reintegration programme that -as it is sadly obvious these days- has not reached his goal of dissarming the groups but apparently exactly the opposite. The slowing-down of the process by the elites willing to keep on receving money added to the resignation of the donors has allowed lots of people to enlist in the armed groups with the promise of the money they would recieve in the future from the DDR programme founds.

With all these pieces of the puzzle we start understanding better the uncontrolled violence of end 2012 and 2013 by Seleka ´aliance´groups from the forgotten north of muslim majority (some ex antipoacher policemen, some chadian mercenaries) that overthrew the corrupted president Bozizé and his family that was settled down in power. Or the Anti-Balaka reaction from christian majority that answered even more brutally and that made president Djotodia fall down in less than a year.

We are missing though, always the same pieces. The ones that will prevent the central african puzzle from blowing away everytime that someone bangs their fists on the regional table. Will MINUSCA and the international community learn from their past mistakes? How will the end of the embargo on blood diamonds affect the peace process? Will the transition president Catherine Samba-Panza be able to find the pieces of stability, acountability and security that her country will need before holding elections that we can call democratic?

It doesn´t look probable when she was herself involved in the corruption case related with the concession for diamond explotation to the daughter of  Dos Santos, when Angola donated 10 million dollars for developmental aid plus 5 more that disapeared on the way. Also it doesn`t look likely when the Congo Brazza´s president Sassou Nguesso is more interested in french support for his third term mandate than to support the CAR population in need.

Catherine Samba-Panza, RCA transition president since 2014

But when I walk day after day on the same road that turns into a river after every storm but nevertheless every morning turns back to be a path where kids and adults, with tireless smiles and hopes, greet you by your name; I understand that there are pieces that are not in the book I have just finished. I think I am starting to get a glimpse of this wonderfull puzzle. 

And everytime I see my colleage that goes on healing patients despite the fact that his brother has just been murdered, I don´t have the slightest doubt that when we all do our part to put all the pieces together, the central african people will finally be able to enjoy their small paradise between the Oubangui and the Chiari rivers

Good bye letter to the great MSF team in Malakal

Juba 06/7/2015

Dear friends from South Soudan:

I have not left Juba yet and I already miss you all.

I want to thank you first for all the things I have learnt with you and for all the wonderful stories that you have told me. I have seen the temple of Nyikang, the Shilluk king that never dies, close to the tree where people go to proof their innocence because if they lie they die.

I have heard that Dinka and Nuer ancestors come from the first humans on earth and that they quarrelled because one took the young calf meant to be for the other. But you have taught me how all the tribes, kawayas included, can work together as a big family.

I want to thank the most smiling cleaners in MSF records for the miracle of having an impeccable hospital in the middle of the mud. And for sharing their morning tea with me ;-) To the log team for big things as building and keeping the hospital in perfect conditions but also for small things like postponing their duties to look for a piece of soap for a mother who need it. To the cookers that bring happiness to the stomach but also to the ears when they are singing or to the eyes when we see their children playing around. Also to the drivers that offer to go to anyplace even if it can be dangerous for them.

And what to say about the amazing medical team we have. The imagination and patience of the nutritional assistants to find new ways to make our little babies accept the food and grow healthier. Or the divination power of our nurses and nurse supervisors to decipher my handwriting to know what is the treatment I want for the patients ;-) Thank you for the tender care you give them and also to keep them alive. You are the ones keeping permanently your eyes on them so we all can run to help when something goes wrong. If you didn´t pay attention to them, we always would arrive too late.

Special thanks to the unquenchable enthusiasm and energy of our CHWs that are our feet, eyes, ears and mouths outside the hospital. They can go tent by tent saving lives by explaining people how to prevent diseases or looking for a sick kid or an abducted woman or a man that didn´t come for the treatment. Without you we just treat the people that come to us, with you our hands can reach the farthest tent of this POC. You know how proud I am of all of you.

Forgive me because I cannot name you one by one but I will make a few exceptions:

Thank you Daniel for being the first one suffering me, for making a perfect follow up of the TB patients and for improving so much. If the new clinical officers and we all make the same effort you do, we will become an even better hospital and project.

Gentle, a soldier that becomes a clinical officer is a metaphor of the future I wish for this country even if you had a different name ;-) Thank you and all the rest for assuming the responsibility when we needed you even with the music of war being played so close to us.

Simon Dau, I know people in the new extension are happy having you there, but we need your big heart back in the hospital as soon as possible. Patients need your perfectionist notes in the ward, your patience in the ER and your stiches are definitely nicer than mines ;-)

To compensate we have Simon Angelo, the angel of Wau Shilluk that blessed us with his presence also in the hospital. We have been very lucky to share your experience in Kala Azar and your medical knowledge but apart from that you have been a good friend in both sides of the Nile River. I hope that this friendship with all of you will remain in both shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

And thank you Obaj for carrying the Mental Health of the team and the POC over your shoulders. Better thanks than mines are the ones you receive in the waterponts, or the ones you listen from women that were not speaking to anybody before or the colourful drawings of the children that you keep playing and happy. Without you, their reality wouldn´t be so full of colour. Keep on doing your magic, we all need it more than ever.

We could also call ourselves Translators Without Borders ;-) You know that when Wau Shilluk was attacked and everybody logically run away, Samuel, one of our translators stayed there alone and gave the treatment to the TB patients. And also in the hospital Kawayas we cannot work without you and if we understand South Soudan people a little bit better, it is obviously because of you. Thank you for that and pass my admiration to all the Wau Shilluk team for rebuilding the tent and the project and going on helping people there even when we couldn’t go for such a long time.

You see, as I have told you so many times, you are a great team. We all need the support of the donnors, and the lead from capital but you can work with or without kawayas. May be even better without us changing things all the time! ;-) Anyway, please treat Eliezer and the others with the same love you treated me.

And last but not least thanks to the patients, the reason for all of us to be there and the more resilient people one could imagine. Thanks to our children for playing with me and for explaining me how is the house of hippos under the water. And to the adults for the bracelet you gave me. It will remind me all of you.

Someone told me that when God (Kwoth, Juok or Nhialac) got angry with humans and broke the scale to heaven, at least he left the blue bird Otok to stay with them. I hope that sooner than later we will all see the blue bird of peace flying freely above the wonderful green lands of South Sudan. You are the best proof that it is possible and the best team to take care of the people of this country in the meanwhile.

Sucran kathir. Thank you all and see you soon. Insha Ala!

César

Money and then, beautiful things :-)

[Translated from the original spanish version by Natalia Molina. Thank you and congratulations to the new mummy ;-)]

- "In Mozambique you can not make friends"

This statement, coming from a beautiful woman from Granada, burnished by the waving flames of New Year's Eve bonfires on the beach of Mozambique Island, came as a shock. We are waiting for the dawn of New Year with some Japanese women on this island joined to the mainland by a narrow bridge that reminds me of Cádiz, the Silver Teacup, but with old colonial houses and an Arab center of winding houses (vertically and horizontally) lit only by the embers of coal stoves and the stars...

- "They always expect you to pay everything, and they themselves do not feel able to be friends of yours. So they may be more or less nice, but I’ve been working here for three months and there is no one I consider my friend, as an equal."

The conversation is interrupted because she goes for a walk with her group of Spanish friends and her Mozambican date (that, you can find in Mozambique ;-). The thing is the money issue also causes me a headache: not knowing if the people are friendly because they think you're going to pay for everything or because they like you. And I have a good solution. Lately I have been bringing out the topic with everyone I meet, boring them. And I let my right-wing side of brain talk, but the left-wing side steer, so in the end I still give people the vote of confidence and invite then from time to time.

Because if they are not friends, how can I call Luis, when we arrive home and tell his lover stories of the day in two languages, Portuñol and Portuguese, his face changing its orography to the rhythm of dancing candlelight? He tosses in seismic guffaw remembering the drunk man who slept from bump to bump. And joyful rivers of tears flow through the previously dry valleys of his cheeks cleaning the dust on the road when we reached the part where I throw up because of the clattering (and some beers) and people say I do it so they leave me a seat. And then comes a calm.

Or what about the Masai "adopting" me, in one of the 150 means of transport I take on my way to the Tanzanian border with the impressive dignity of his red cloak covering his shoulders: he moves out of the front seat to let me sit, while he gets wet upstairs without losing elegance, taking a fold in his cloak out of nowhere to cover his head.

(not his best photo but I wanted you to see Tanzanian version of the omelette ;-)

And he shares his room with me in Dar es Salaam and loses some of his composure from laughing when I call him Baltasar on The Kings day or when I say that I'm already a White Masai, when he hides my belly in the legendary (and now magic ) red cloak. And not only his composure but also the voice between baritone cocks to see the rush that hits me when I get to find .. coffee ! Or now that he’s gone and I'm still at his house and he doesn’t stop calling me...

If those are not friends... just for the girl from Granada, for her info ;-)

A really warm hug from Dar es Salaam !

Magic for beginners: The Griot (or The Magic of Words)

[Translated from the original spanish entry by Nuria. Thank you Nuria!!]

We got to the end of our adventure.

(Aaaaaaawww, I can hear you shouting out of disappointment. But I just meant our adventure… in the traditional villages of Senegal ;-))

After spending the night at the police station…!

(Guys, if you don’t keep it down I can’t move on! Goodness me, you are really pushing it today! It is true, though, that I went a bit too far ahead of the story… Let’s go back then!)

When we said goodbye to the villagers who had treated us so well, we left without The Fighter. Already purified over ritual baths, protected by his gri-gri and honouring his hot-headed character (“all of you fighters are crazy”, he greeted the wizard!), he headed back to Dakar in the hope that he would get his wife back and he wouldn’t be caught again dressed up as a woman and saying weird things in the river…

Problem is that I had run out of water the night before, so I’d been drinking from the well whose water had been boiled in the all-sorts-of-old-flavours-tasting pot and just kindly “filtered” for me with the first t-shirt they grabbed. Add that to the smoked taste of firewood, and that water was… it was… the opposite of an add by Coca-Cola, to put it mildly. So when we arrived in Fatick and I spotted an ATM (we also had run out of money, hehe), I leaped on it and, as soon as I left, I started dropping that delicious liquid to the four winds while shouting “we are rich” and “no more misery” while Pape was roaring with laughter!

Good stories of my journey. But we were not caught by the police because of that! Basically Pape bumped into a friend who was on his night shift that night at the police station, and since he was on his own, we made him company over tea and slept “locked up” in the police mosquito net. 

(Sorry, back to the point… Let’s talk about African minstrels, the great storytellers, and about dynasties… the griots!)

We need to wake up early today as we’ll finally arrive in Diakhaw, the historical capital of the Kingdom of Sine (from the ethnic group of Serer), whose royal family are the ancestors of… my friend Pape! And because we belong to the family, we gain access to the grounds of the old Palaces, surrounding the Baobab and the tombs of the legendary kings who had ruled over this region since the 14th century. But we didn’t come here to see some tombs. We came to see this lovable woman.

It’s my great honour to introduce you to Princess Coumbody, daughter of Mahecor, the last King of Sine. And as you can see from the picture… she actually looks like him!

It is touching to hear this woman saying that for his whole childhood she couldn’t cry. Although it was not due to obligations of the post, but because “my dad was so good, he loved us so much, that commanded for us to have everything we wanted: clothes, sweets, toys… And I remember how the griot would take me over his lap and tell me the most amazing stories until I would fall asleep. It’s only now, when I see that my sons and grandsons won’t be able to enjoy the same life of absolute happiness I had, when I really feel like crying…”

And just to avoid the ocean coming through the beautiful blue eyes of this last Princess of legend, I take out my phone to show her the picture of her cousin, Pape’s grandma (to whom we went to ask for permission in Dakar to attend the rituals, and who suggested us to do the “sweet” sacrifice of inviting children in the neighbourhood for lunch). What is my reaction when I see her taking my phone over and kissing the screen, a great expression of happiness on her face. (My grandma, la Elvi, could have done exactly the same thing ;-) )

We leave her memories behind and the Palace too, looking for N’ deye Faye, a griot we heard about because of her great musical talent. However, we could have never imagined she was actually going to sing for us the history of Coumbody, the last Princess of Sine!!!

Pape is genuinely touched. He couldn’t believe he would be able to gather the best griot women in the historical capital to sing about the feats of his family. The magic in those words and music are touching a secret fibre inside him, a fibre that connects him to his ancestors, his land and, if may say, to the millenary oral tradition of the African continent (and Mankind!).

N’ deye Faye’s powerful voice revives in front of us not only the wise King Mahecor, but also Coumbody’s mother, and the father of her mother who fought for his ancestors’ beliefs and for freedom in the bloody battle against the Muslims who wanted to impose their religion. Her voice, supported by her partner sitting next to her and repeated in a surrounding eco by the other two, is as if Ceddo was being projected in front of us, a movie by the great Senegalese film-maker Ousmane Sembène (you have to watch Xala, by the way).

And after she finishes, she also begins to recall her childhood and tells us about how her father (last official griot of one King of Sine) used to leave the house early to gather the rest of the royalty griots over the rhythm of his drums to sing at the gates of the Palace, which however they wouldn’t be allowed to enter. Or how her grandfather used to wake her up some times in the middle of the night to test her on the genealogies they’d been studying during the day. “But what I liked the most was to help the griot women in the family so that I could learn their songs and have fun singing with them”.

“I got married and went to live with my husband, an amazing griot too, but I didn’t work as a griot. It was only after the death of my husband, because I needed to feed my children, that I started to go back to the old words and rhythms, and started to sing at weddings or baptisms from families that were linked to my family as griots. And every time I sing and bring the old stories back, I feel the same joy I had as a child. I think I’ve always wanted to be a griot…”

We say goodbye in fascination. As we are leaving, Pape, who is still impressed, tells me that he cannot believe how I dared to ask them about the “burials” inside the Baobab! This is one of the most enigmatic facts about the “caste” of griots. So close to royalty, but at the same time with so many rules to remind them about their inferiority. In the royal family’s environment we had been told that if a griot was buried like the others, the land would turn infertile. Something they could not confirm is if that was meant to be derogatory, but N’ deye’s version is quite different:

“Only the greatest griots were granted the post-mortem right to have their bodies sheltered inside the trunk of the Holy Baobab.” And it seems that his grandparents’ generation was the last one to be granted that honour.

So I grin at Pape and leave thinking that only big poets, those who have the power to revive the great feats of their ancestors, deserve to be close to their God, embraced by the Holy Baobab…

Magic for beginners: The Mask’s Dance (in the amazing Dogon Country)

[Translated by Bisila Noha from the original entry in spanish. Thank you Biso!!!]

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well you do not stand in one place.”

Arrow of God, Achebe 1964

Through the writing of Chinua Achebe, the recently deceased writer considered the “father of African Literature”, we are going to discover one of the most fascinating aspects of African culture: the power hidden behind its masks. This discovery will take place in one of the most amazing sceneries, the Dogon Country, which may represent the very best of the continent: Serengeti – the savanna and its “Land of Endless Space”, its massive fault with the small “Victoria falls”, the villages and their architecture, and the traditions of its kind people. Wanna find out more? ;-)

After leaving you breathless with the picture of the Bandiagara fault, I think you should wander around one of the villages that are embedded in the cliffs. To do that, though, you will first have to hop onto a truck’s roof, walk through several villages, and then do some climbing.

Once we get to the villages “at ground level”, we learn many things about their culture, the supremacy of the sacred snake Lébé, how spiritual leaders or hogons are chosen in accordance with the cycles of the star Sirius, and that assemblies take place in the toguna. A toguna is a building whose roof is so low that no one can stand up when discussions get heated. In fact, Dogon people only consider valid words those said quietly when sitting. Fair enough!

Most of their windows and doors are masterpieces: sculptures on wood depicting Dogon cosmology or the history of a given tribe. I cannot help but share the picture below with you, as it is a toilet door. Imagine what a palace door might look like!

But let’s get down to business. The word mask comes from the Latin word Masca, witch, and according to Roger Caillois (preface of Masques de O. Perrin’s book), the basic functions of a mask, like those of mimicry with insects, are:

- To disguise, hide or protect rather than portray.

- Metamorphosis. To turn into something else, to be possessed by a superior spirit whose energy or advice is needed. At the Mask Museum in Lomé, we were told that masks were originally used to ask the Spirit who was responsible of someone’s death, but also to hide the person accusing in the name of the Spirit or god, so that the culprit’s family could not take revenge. The masks are therefore linked to the death of both men and the fields, as they also are used to pray for rain.

- To drive others away. “To wear the mask, to be entitled to do so either via an induction, tests or a purchase, means to no longer belong to the frightened group but to join the FRIGHTENING ones.” This strengthens hierarchy and social cohesion.

As we have already been “inducted”, we now can wear the Kanaga Mask, the sacred crocodile. Let’s get possessed by its Spirit… Are you ready? 

Now that we are the “Mask” and that we have spent a couple of days in the forest preparing and speaking only mask language, we can follow the Chief of the masks to a terrace where we will perform the Dance which is used to pray for rain. Women and children have already left, afraid of being punished by the “police masks”. Only real men can see us and present us with offerings. We start to feel the “burden”, the presence of something superior to us and with the music and screams of our Chief we dance faster and faster and our body keeps spinning incredibly, covering the four cardinal points, as if the mask was no longer heavy and we had turned into the sacred crocodile, the world and the rain that is to fall…

Back to Achebe’s novel, in which the Mask, Agaba in this case, appears for the first time. There is a “massive stampede”, as it “was not a Mask of song and dance. It stood for the power and aggressiveness of youth”. When it gets closer to the main character the following ritualistic conversation takes place:

“-Ezeulu, do you know me?

- How can a man know you who are beyond human knowledge?”

Achebe, in order to show us that post-independence societies are dominated by consumerism and that in those social circles where people ask about the “health” of their Mercedes Benz when they greet each other, people cannot reply that they have sold it as they could not afford the insurance, gives us the following example: it would be as if a Mask were asked a ritual question and replied “I do not understand what you are saying, I am nothing but a man with a mask”. Both things are unthinkable in their respective worlds.

This is why we understand why Achebe, in order to explain different things at once, as only he can do, says:

“White man is the masked spirit of today” 

What a different view from the unconditional love expressed towards France following its military intervention.

Oddly enough, this man is an initiate in the mask’s dance…

In case Achebe is right, I will close this post with this pic ;-)

Magic for Beginners: The sacred Baobab

[Translated by Aixa de la Cruz from the original blog entry and published in her magazine Indias/Indies. Thank you Aixa!!]

The adventure began one morning when I woke up and saw that the family was in the living room in a quieter mood than usual. One of the cousins, whom I had already met, was completely off on the sofa, expressionless, and he mechanically gave me his hand without saying a word. It’s because of Ramadan – I thought – and went to the shower. But when I came back, I found that there were more and more neighbors on the living room and my enquiries about their presence only met evasive answers, so I went out to look  for my friend in the hope that he would solve the mystery. 

It seemed that the cousin - a tough wrestler of Senegalese wrestling, jobless at the time, hardly supported by his fan club while his wife, together with his daughters, lived with her parents while filing the papers for divorce- had been found that morning, without warning, looking carefully for something on the banks of the river and dressed in drag.

While I was sleeping, they had burned some branches in the house to shoo the devil and by the time I woke up, I could see neither the devil nor the cousin dressed in drag; he was just catatonic. Little by little, after being locked down in his room, he recovered. And though he didn’t remember what happened that morning, he laughed when he was told about it and said something like:

- It must have been that bastard of my mother-in-law. She must have asked a marabou to put a spell to get my wife to divorce me.

Leaving aside whether it was really necessary to hire a wizard for his wife to divorce him, the question was: what now?

- We need to go to the village of our ancestors to ask for the protection of its god – fetish, they call it-.​- Can I go too? – I couldn’t help but ask.

And although they said I could right away, being white, the situation was more complicated than it seemed and we first had to speak with the oldest person in the village, who was in Dakar. Luckily, it was Djike, the admirable maternal grandmother of my friend Pape.

In the lively conversation that followed the initial greetings, after we told her about our intentions, I kept on hearing, after the name of the fetish, the sentence “bugul toubabs” whose meaning I happened to know: our ancestor’s god does not like whites. (I don’t blame him). Pape, without setting deference aside, explained to her that I was practically a member of the family so there surely was a way to make an exception. Djike didn’t seem too convinced and kept on giving him examples of another village where a nun had been spooked by the sight of the god who, in its animal form, came running to her because she had approached the sacred baobab.

To help defuse the conversation, we told her anecdotes of the family and showed her pictures, which she loved. Thus, when I told her everything I know in wolof, she eventually softened her position and told me that before I left Dakar I had to make a sacrifice to the fetish for him to expect my arrival.

A sacrifice!

I was already picturing myself in the middle of the city wielding a knife to cut a rooster’s throat at the location indicated… but not. It was much simpler than that. As the god happens to be fond of children, the sacrifice consisted of cooking a kind of rice pudding, though without the rice, and inviting the kids in the neighborhood to eat it. On the day of our journey, we just had to step out the door and invite them, for the bowl to be clean and shiny.

Thus, with the hope that this precaution would be enough and fighting the torrential rain as we could, we set off. Everything was slightly weirder than usual, like when we met a man who had a huge finger.

Once in the bus, while my two fellow travelers were sleeping and I looked at the landscape that became greener and wilder as we moved inland…

Boooooom!

We had got a flat tire just beneath our seats. We were all safe and sound but… was it a bad omen?

To answer the question, we moved a bit away and the wrestler took some shells out his backpack, tossed them three times on the sand and after signaling two that were parallel but in opposite directions he told us it symbolized the departure and the return and that the disposition of the shells in-between augured the success of our purpose.

So we continued on our journey, now all of us awake. And after reaching the bus stop of the region of Fatick we had to ride some motorbikes to - through footpaths surrounded by baobabs and fields of a fresh and exuberant green color – get to the lovely village of the ancestors.

Without either electricity or tap water but with impressive kindness and the welcoming beauty of the mud walls and the thatched roofs that surrounded us in the middle courtyard of the family concession, night fell while we chained the suspension of our fasting with the greetings, and the dinner and the stories of kings and the starry night and the grandmother telling us about that one time in which the fetish, in its serpent form, appeared to her in the barn… And little by little we fell peacefully asleep with our dreams only upset by maybe the encounter that would take place in the morning under the sacred baobab.

At dawn, with the rooster crowing and the movement that began to be felt in the family concession, the three of us woke up and got out of the bed with mosquito net we had shared.

During breakfast, we were informed that they had already spoken to the guardian of the sacred serpent, the old man in charge of the rituals beneath the Sacred Baobab.

- He’s so old that when he talks to you, you are going to be under the impression that he’s about to die at the end of each sentence.

It perhaps is necessary to clarify that in the Senegalese tradition, some trees are the official residence of many supernatural beings such as the djines, but above all, the baobab is the link with the ancestors: it is the place to which they came to make their sacrifices to the protectors. Thus, unlike Eastern and Southern Africa where the ancestors are directly invoked – they sometimes even speak through the shaman, in a trance -, here the god or the protector is invoked and he becomes the mediator between them and their ancestors.

But the question was still in the air: was a white going to be allowed to the rituals to which – as I was told – no other toubab had ever been allowed to? We didn’t have much time to wonder because they soon came and told us that the old man was waiting for us at the Sacred Baobab.

Once again Pape had to make use of his good manners and diplomacy to convince the old man, who only gave in when Pape accepted – not without fear - to take the consequences that might derive from the transgression.

So I followed them to the Baobab where, first for Pape and later for the wrestler, the guardian would open the little thatched hut where the pumpkins that contain the water mixed with the sacrifices offered to fetish were kept. He would directly address the god pronouncing the name and family of the person that was about to perform the ritual bath, asking him first permission and then his protection and blessing.

The solemnity of the situation was perceived in the delicate sound of the leafs beneath the baobab, in the silence as Pape retreated behind the screen to perform the sacred bath in which he couldn’t get either his hair or his face wet, as the tradition commands. Then it was the turn of the wrestler, the true reason of this journey to the heart of Senegal, who repeated the ritual to cure himself of the outbreak of insanity that had supposedly been caused by a marabout at the request of his mother in law to prompt a divorce.

Everything seemed to have successfully concluded but the old man stayed seated beneath the baobab and surprised us all with the question:

- Does the toubab want the blessing of Loungoulgne too?

They all remained speechless and turned to me. This wasn’t planned. We were hoping he would let me see the ritual, but it didn’t cross our minds that he would let me perform it. I gladly accepted although – I was told – first they would have to ask for the permission of the fetish that, if denied, would manifest somehow, for example by tainting blood red the water of the sacrifices in the pumpkin.

I nodded again, left Pape with my camera and approached the sacred Baobab, still bathed in light, as a requestor.

Everything went smoothly. The water didn’t turn red, so the god had accepted that I performed the ritual. After listening to the words of the old man, I went to the wooden screen on which I left my clothes and took a bath as indicated. Although a bit  nervous, I felt as if I was bathing at the same time with the water and with the rays of light that seemed to fall warm and generous on us, blessing us too.

The ceremony was over and, when I tried to thank the old man with my just learned words in Serer – here they didn’t speak wolof any more – he burst into laughter and told us again, apparently touched, that it was the first time in his life that he or his ancestors had allowed a white to perform the ritual. He seemed really content and relieved that everything had been OK.

Once purified by the ritual, we went out to walk through the fields that seem to share the magic of the sacred baobab. The limpid, somehow primordial green seems to surround the men that work the soil in the company of their children in a magnificent vignette amidst the infinite plains.

Little by little the night fell and with it came the stories, but this time we were at the neighbor’s house because she was famous for her skills as a narrator. The surprise – in addition to the woman’s proposition that I married one of her youngest daughters – came when it was the children who - one after another, occupying the center of the group and following their mother’s indications – told the stories. About the clever hare who fooled the rabbit by pleading his hair with the branches; or about the father who tried to impose the rule that nobody who was late for lunch would eat and eventually he was the one who got punished…  All of them were told in a mixture of serer translated to zolof and then to French, striving to preserve the songs and gestures and the magic.

With these stories night fell and dreams came. And I remembered the sacrifice I had had to make before starting the journey, inviting the children in the neighborhood.

And just before I fell asleep, I wondered whether these children would be the true god of the sacred baobab. 

Interview with Mia Couto

[Translated from the original spanish version by Sara Estima. Thank you Sara!!]

- What can I do for you? 

The question comes as the sound of waves of a calm sea. This man of serene blue eyes and bright smile asks me this question. But it turns out that this simple man in jeans and short-sleeved shirt is one of the best living Portuguese language writers. So this straightforward question and equal treatment put a smile in my face that will not leave me during our entire conversation.

We start talking about magical realism, although “those who invented that word were not writers”, and he tells me that the major difference between African and Latin American writers is due to the greater influence of the Catholic Church in Latin America, because “here the deceased never leave”. Although people go to different churches, the vast majority still believes in their ancestors and keeps some of the traditional culture.

The problem lies in the rigid European rationalist system (I don't recall his exact words), although “back there people also believe in horoscopes, even over the internet”. I soon kind of forget that this was supposed to be an interview and we keep going back and forward on our theme, as if we were in the sand paths of Maputo’s surroundings.

I tell him next that I was impressed to know that a book so mature, so full of subtle, relaxing, deep images, so full of Mozambique, of all its stories was written before the end of the terrible civil war that devastated his country. Ignoring the compliments as if they hadn’t been told, he acknowledges that “I was also surprised. I did not want to write a book about the war and, if ever so, only much later. But it happened like that. I suffered a lot writing this book, because at night stories came to my mind, I was visited by friends who had been killed in the war. And I had to find a PLACE OF PEACE inside me. That is why I had to write this book.”

I'm so delighted with his reflections that it is almost too hard to go on, but the characters slowly come to help me, like Virginia, the woman of Portuguese origin who reinvented her unknown Portuguese family “as my parents did; they used to tell stories of a Portugal to which they could not return to during the dictatorship. Their stories gave me an imaginary family and that seemed very important to me.” He will not give me any clue about which, amongst the stories, correspond to traditional beliefs and which ones are invented, though he maliciously smiles avoiding my question, telling me that “in the town where I lived the colonization was very difficult and the town was not easily controlled; so if I crossed the street I could play with black and Indian children. I learned their language and they told me their stories. Upon returning home I translated those stories to my family. That is when I began to realize that something was lost in translation.”

And that is when you started twisting the language, I tell him, trying to pull some information. Again, he smiles maliciously. He is famous for not giving much information in interviews, although he admits that he loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, “it is a fabulous book”, he says. And he accepts the influence of Luandinho Vieira, “but only in the way of treating language”, he explains. And I don't get any more influences from him.

But we go back to our matter of interest, the poetry that is everywhere in his book. I tell him that I do not agree with Francisco Noa (with whom I spoke and who is a lovely person) in that “the water has, in his work, an anthropophagic dimension”; on the contrary it seems to be an optimistic, fertile element, the symbol of the power of imagination or of the unconscious mind... His smile indicates that he will give it little importance, but he acknowledges that “water and more exactly rain is an element of change and also regeneration in traditional cultures”. I do not quite recall the words that followed, because he seems to talk more with his sea coloured smiling eyes. But, when his smile spreads to his lips I understand that I must say something.

I ask him the first question that comes to my mind. “You are a biologist, aren’t you? Because I am a doctor.” I am instantly ashamed of the familiarity and of the plainness of my question, but since my face is already red from the Sun, he does not notice it and answers “I see no contradiction; biology is to me a passion rather than a profession. I like it because it tells a story, the one of human beings, which, to me, couples well with poetry and literature.” As I keep silent, he goes on, “I wanted to be a doctor as well, a psychiatrist, but as I sided with Frelimo in the fight for Mozambique’s independence I had to quit medical school and then, when I went back to school, I realised, looking at my wife who is also a doctor, that I would not have time without remorse to literature, so I studied biology instead.” But before that you were a journalist, I say, actively returning to our conversation.

“Unfortunately the Party made me head of a newspaper. I really enjoyed journalism but, being a government newspaper, I started realizing the difference between theory and practice. So I started growing apart from the newspaper and later the party.” I insist on that point. “The thing is that, in the so-called ‘civil war’, there was a very strong religious component, because Frelimo tried to banish traditional beliefs labelling them as ‘superstition’. That is the only thing that may explain the enormous emotional component, the level of harshness of the war.” In the book’s final speech - I ask him - when you talk about the danger of being ruled by others, are you referring to South Africa’s control over Renamo? “No, I meant a more general idea” he answers, intentionally brief. And now, the beast being dead - as stated in that speech - is the danger of civil war in Mozambique gone? “Yes, I think so”, he answers with moderate conviction, “but the beast does not die, you know, it gets smaller, tamed. That is something unpleasant about humans and wars make it visible. The friendly people you have found on your trip are the same that reached the level of savagery seen during the war.”

Although he keeps giving me his attention, as people keep calling him I understand that I must end. So I give it all: And now, do you still believe in the power of literature, of imagination to make the world a better place? We had previously discussed that when he was younger he was more naïf, he believed that things could quickly change in a single generation, and that he now believed that social changes had a different timing, but he still found hard to believe that peace agreements had been signed in the time between the delivery of his finished book, his cry for hope, and the publishing of the book. So much hope and so much death. As I watched his clear and smiling eyes I was eager to hear his response.

- Yes – he answers, bluntly. And his next words dissolve as in Sleepwalking Land, turning into air, poetry and again into something physical, a book, a gift to me.

-Happy birthday – he told me. And so it was ;-)

The untameable Ken Bugul, the lioness of African literature

[Translated from the original spanish version by Diego Urdiales. Thank you Diego!!]

Barefoot, wearing a simple colour-dotted white kaftan, Ken Bugul appears parsimoniously amongst the workers, as though feigning an old age that she is yet to reach.

We go up to her home, sober and comfortable, with a splendid Benin throne surrounded by bookshelves as the sole note of flamboyance, and we start by directly talking about her book “The Abandoned Baobab”, about the magic of the sacred baobab which protects and punishes the people that worship it, which laughs, cries and dreams with them, and about her own baobab (a real and specific one) with which she wanted to identify herself, with its robustness, with its strong roots.

― I killed it. It died so that I could live… 

Knowing the story of her novel beforehand ―her story, ― was of no use. A girl separated from her mother at a young age and without explanations. A young woman who, after managing to travel to the West, is unable to find her missing roots there. A woman who, after returning to her country, finds her baobab again, still standing, still apparently alive, but…

“I had an appointment with the baobab, I didn’t go but I couldn’t warn it, I didn’t dare. That meeting I didn’t attend caused it great sadness. It went crazy and died shortly after.” (p. 181)

Did that really happen? Can a baobab die of sadness?

― Not a baobab, the baobab. In Senegal, you can see many baobabs, trees like any other. But in each village there is a sacred baobab, a tree completely linked to the life of that village, which it knows and protects. And when suddenly, with no prior sign of illness, it dies and falls to the ground, the people know that it has died to save them from some danger.

In my case, I know it died so that I, after my traumatic experience, could start a new life.

I point to her that the book seems to have been written in the midst of an emotional breakdown, with an often dismembered structure which reflects very well the feelings of the main character.

― While I was in Belgium I wrote very little, just a few notes of homesickness about my birthplace, which also carried the baobab in their title. But I only wrote the book ten years later, after the terrible experience I went through in France, ―abused by the man she loved, which she later related in “Ashes and Embers”― which left me in tatters.

Some friends had kept my notes. I asked them to send them to me, but I realized that was no longer the story I wanted to tell, so I wrote the book without looking at them.

And how did you manage to “take root” again? ―I ask her petrified in my armchair, fascinated by the strength of this brave woman. Did you try to recover the relationship with your mother?

― You must consider the importance of modesty in Africa. You can’t directly go to your mother or your father and tell her that you feel abandoned or something like that. There is the figure of your maternal uncle to talk to your mother (or paternal aunt to talk to your father), but in my case he was already dead, so I couldn’t resort to him.

My relationship with my mother was not distant, but it wasn’t intimate either. And that I couldn’t get back. When I came back from Belgium, I lived with some friends, not with relatives, I was already an independent woman. But luckily there are other roots, a union with the people and the birthplace…

To go out of those painful memories, but still talking about the first book, I praise her braveness to bring up the subject of bisexuality/homosexuality when she discovers that her partner in Belgium has “homosexual tendencies” and compares him to a “family slave”…

But homosexuality was fully accepted in Senegal before! ―she laughs. Gor-Djigen, as we called him, man-woman, was respected in spite of his manners ―and, full of naturalness, she starts imitating the gestures and way of speaking of her “slave”. Humour is probably the least well known register of this multifaceted woman, but it fills the rest of our conversation with hilarious moments.

In Africa we still affectionately call “slaves” the descendants of the true slaves that belonged to the family. Also our paternal cousins, who are theoretically our slaves. But they like it, it’s a way of feeling “attached” to the family. Belonging, having your place in society, is very important. 

For instance, when you leave, my daughter could come and tell me ―again, her acting in full flair― “Who was this badolo who came home this early and didn’t even bring bread or any breakfast?”― and we both start laughing, myself a little ashamed by the sudden accusation.

“Badolo” is a derogatory term even if it’s sometimes said affectionately, to refer to the common man, who has no caste, who is no griot or royalty or craftsman… In fact, if griots wanted to embellish their speech when singing your praises, to get some money from you, they would call you “guer”, a euphemism…  As you have no caste, you must be a scholar or someone important.

And what caste are you?― I ask.

― Badolo― she states forthrightly and we both burst into laughter.

You must also take into account that, with the crisis in the eighties and the tough adjustment plans from the World Bank, Senegal ended up borrowing money from the Arab countries, which sent “undercover” envoys to the country and tried to impose their way of seeing religion, the sharia… And that is partly the cause for the “schizophrenia” that present Senegal suffers from, amidst its own traditions, the different versions of Islam and capitalism. It is surprising that we are now talking about this referring to “The Abandoned Baobab”, given that it is the subject of the book I have just finished.

But before the conversation diverts towards the pathways of today, I do not want to miss the chance to ask her about the experience she relates in “Riwan or the Sandy Track”, where, after coming from the traumatic experience in France, the “freed” and westernized woman becomes… the 28th wife of a marabout!

― It was a wonderful experience. But I was not exactly a wife. A marabout, like any Muslim, can only have four wives. One must be from his own family, one from a scholar family, one from a royal family, and finally one from a different family. The rest are “taco”, which means “link” (“le lien”, in French) ―she repeats as she clinches her fists to stress the importance of that immaterial “something” that bonds them.

I knew him since I was a child. And when I came back from France in tatters, everyone rejected me (that is why now I hardly tell anyone that I’m here, it’s hard to forget how they treated me). So I went to him for spiritual help, and he supported me and gave me advice, and tenderness. One day he proposed me “taco”. But this has nothing to do with sex, he was already over ninety years old! I didn’t even live with him. I walked to see him almost every day, which is why the book’s title is “the sandy track”.

Oftentimes, the marabout shelters women who have been rejected by society in his home, and he “binds” to them to give them value, self-esteem. Think about it, not only does he tell you how much you’re worth, he even chooses to bind himself to you. That makes you recover a lot of self-confidence. 

Moreover, the marabout’s other wives taught me a great deal. Me, the supposedly “liberated” woman, ―we resume the pantomime― but who, like many women in the West, was obsessed with “having” a man, dominated by the idea of possession and by jealousy.

“Mariétou, tend to your affairs”, they told me, laughing about my stories from the West, where every woman waits for a prince of charming. “Why wait?” And they were right. Sharing my life with these other women brought me the peace I needed to remake my life, read, write and tend to myself. 

The conversation now shifts to the bourgeois marriages in old-time Europe, where the spouses had separate rooms, which Ken Bugul finds essential. 

― I can only love someone who is superior to me in some aspect. Who has a passion. Or several. A musician, a painter like Picasso (well, not him, he had too special a character, better Dalí). Someone who is not on top of me all the time, who lets me live my own life. What matters is that when we’re together, our conversation, our “bond”, is something special.

I want a lover, not a husband ―she concludes, forthright and smiling.

And could you accept being someone’s second wife?

― Pff ―she leans back in her chair.― That is just for great personalities, a genius, a marabout… who are capable of that. But yes, if I can live my life and when we are together, the bond is special, yes. It suits me ―she adds with a slightly ironic smile. 

It is impossible to write about every subject that came up in the conversation, or how we ended up talking about meeting in the Himalayas, her great project.

― I’m going to climb to the top of the Himalayas, even if takes the rest of my life ―she says, unmoved. And if she was not Ken Bugul, nobody would take it seriously…

Ken Bugul, which means “one who is unwanted” in Wolof (sometimes as a trick to free a child from the early death which supposedly awaits him), sits me in the Benin throne for a picture, hugs me and then walks me, barefoot and vigorous, greeting the workers by their names. She can no longer hide her overflowing energy, and when a neighbour approaches her to tell her about her problems and ask her for advice, it becomes apparent that her pen name does not match the respect and admiration she commends.

She will not leave until, having put me in the taxi ―the driver is an aspiring son-in-law of hers, she informs me, ― she gives me two kisses and we shake each other’s left hand to make sure we will meet again. 

I should start getting my boots ready for the Himalayas…