11/27 Mdina, Mali
The trader Togola easily found, has a compound down by the river, stinks of dead things, curing animal skins abound, his two wives and uncounted children all at work scraping, skinning, salting, drying. Showed him the Olo artifact?observed him closely. Saw fear first, then feigned ignorance. Told him I wanted to be taken to where he found it. I flashed big money, not hard to overawe people who see $500 in a good year, should be ashamed of myself but am not. I have the fever. I kept laying twenties on the mat as I talked, Togola staring at stack like a hypnotized hen. When I reached fifty bills I stopped, and took up half the stack. This when we start, and this (the other half) when we arrive. And as much again when we return here. Fucker rolled. W. looked at me with contempt, neocolonialist me, prob. remembers me and Colonel Musa, and how my overbearing worked out in that case. Don’t give a shit anymore.
11/28 Mdina
W. and Malik our driver off to Nossombougou to get supplies, while I stay here and keep Togola company, so he won’t scram with my advance. And he is frightened, too. No luck getting him to cop to source of the fear, language problem, I think, 80 % of what I say = i ko mun, roughly “come again?” or “what did you say?” According to T., Olo are all witches, if they don’t want you to find them, you won’t find them, that the river is full of jina, or diables, that the Olo are eaters of human flesh. I am dying to go meet them.
More worried about half-assed way we are planning to leave. December is high water, I want to be sure that wherever we float off to there will be enough water in the channels to float us back, why I decided not to go back to Bamako and do serious logistics. Box with valuables in it is with Dolores at the mission so
Later. They’re back. Asked W. if he got everything OK and he said, Yeah, we went to Wal-Mart. Feeble, but really the first little joke he has made in a long time. Maybe he is coming around. Sent Malik back to Bamako with message for Dolores, telling her to call or wire Lagos to let Greer know what we are doing. Said we might be gone as long as a month amp; if anything turns up will come back and mount a serious operation.
12/2 On the Baoule
We are in an 18-foot pirogue with a seven-horsepower outboard, Togola at the stern, the two of us midships under a woven raffia sunshade with our supplies and gear in bags and baskets arranged around us, maybe six inches of freeboard. Area we are entering called the Boucle de Baoule, the “buckle” of the Baoule River = inland delta?an area of about three thousand square kilometers w/ no significant roads. Channel here varies from 60 to 20 meters in width, 3 to 5 m depth. Thick vegetation on the high banks, shrubs and small acacia trees, occasional larger ironwood and red silk-cotton trees. Large numbers of trees skeletal. Togola says river was much higher in the old days, reached to the tops of the banks and beyond at high water. I believe him; the whole of Mali is drying up, the desert moving south. Meanwhile, the region is alive with birds, we putt-putt through a continual chatter and screech. Saw a paradise whydah and a martial eagle, the latter on a dead limb with what looked like a monkey.
I have not been in a boat in a while, I find myself ridiculously happy. It is Swallows and Amazons again, me and Josey exploring the channels of the Sound in our skiffs at age eight and eleven, pretending we were in Africa or Amazonia. Now this is Africa, and I am with W. and our faithful native guide. Ridiculous, our guide farthest thing from faithful amp; my pal and husband replaced by surly stranger. But he will come back, I know it, I see little sparks of the real him all the time, when his guard is down, like that joke about Wal-Mart, and this morning he made a joke about getting lost and having to eat human flesh. Tastes like chicken, a running gag, he says it of every new food. Pathetic hopes. But what else can I
12/3 On the Baoule
We proceeded on, as Lewis amp; Clark used to say. Millet porridge and coffee for breakie, rice, beans, peanut sauce, for lunch, w/ tea. Tea and sesame sticks around four. When it gets dark, we find a low bank and camp. DEET vs. mosquitoes, they swarm around us anyway. Togola lights a fire, and I set up our tent (a French military thing, and clumsy) while W. mostly idle. Then I cook our evening meal. Togola watches, fascinated; he has never seen a white woman cook before. This convinces him that I’m indeed a woman and not some weird third sex peculiar to the tobabou. A mistake to generalize about African culture, but a fairly safe one might be that men don’t cook. Decided not to stand on my high feminist horse, too exhausting. Can’t help noticing W. seems to prefer me as an African (or “real”) woman. Absurd man.
12/4 On the Baoule
Passed a herd of hippos today. T. steered far as he could away, jaw clenched. Odd being in water with them, feelings of total vulnerability, not familiar to us tobabou zoo goers. Probably more people killed by hippos than by leopards and lions combined. How ignoble to be crunched up by a hippo. I sang the chorus to Flanders amp; Swann’s hippopotamus song in a lusty voice to show courage: mud, mud, glorious mud! W. knows all the verses but he did not join in. T. told me to shut up.
Saw first hornbills, clouds of bulbuls. River deepening and widening as we approach what passes for the main channel. I asked T. how long to get there, but he is silent when I ask him things now, since I am only a woman after all. He talks to W., tho, who answers in his high-school French. W. is interested in me again, however, at night. I let him hump away, feeling little beyond the usual relief of tension. The sex life of nine-tenths of the world’s women perhaps, or maybe even a little better. I still have a clitoris, although maybe he will decide to change that. Where I will draw the line, however.
12/5 Baoule R.
Beautiful sunbird (Nectarina pulchella) lit on the prow of the boat today. Besides that, nothing new. Channel narrowing. T. poles the boat to save gas. He is more nervous; he has dreams at night. We hear him shouting. Have passed no one during this trip, nor seen signs of habitation in the past three days. Supplies getting a little low.
12/7 same fucking river
Caught a big Nile perch today on my troll line. Channel shrunk to four m, 2.5 m deep at center. No current to speak of. Ate the perch for supper with (what else) peanut sauce, and rice. W. and T. thick as thieves now, T. has a bottle of rum, the bad Muslim! And they passed it back and forth without offering me any.
Thought of Dad, how much I miss him now, not like we are now but the way we used to be when I was a kid, and I got him mixed up with God the Father. A little weepy, but suppress it as usual. It would be good if I had a husband I could talk to about these feelings.
We have rice and sauce enough for another two weeks. T. has an old Lebel; I suppose we could shoot a monkey. Maybe I will get lucky again with the trotlines.
12/20 Danolo
Success and disaster in rapid succession. This morning just before noon the channel debouched into a wide (50 m) shallow (3 m) pool, the western edge of which was a long mud beach lined with log pirogues. Togola nosed us in among them. This is the place, he said. He was sweating and wild. He helped me unload our personal gear and got back in the boat, said he was going for his stuff and our other supplies.
W. spotted them first, woman standing at a break in the foliage, at the head of a path. She had a little girl with her, about eight years old. I waved and they both nodded and touched hand to chest. I did the same. Then I heard the rip of the outboard starting up and Togola had it in reverse, sliding fast out into the middle of the pond. Like an idiot, I shouted and ran into the water, he threw the motor into forward and roared off. I sloshed back feeling stupid for not having yanked the fuel line before leaving the pirogue, had failed to see no amount of money enough to fight his irrational terror. W. mimed checking his watch, said don’t worry we’ll catch the six-seventeen, we both burst into hysterical laughter. Worth being stranded in the middle of Africa to hear him laugh, to have us both laughing together. The two Olo were watching us silently. They did not look scary enough to chase off a big, tough professional hunter. Both of them were dressed in a simple white cotton robe, homespun, both of them had on a headcloth of the same color and fabric, tied so as to throw up a stiff triangular flap above the forehead. It gave both of them a kind of medieval look. The little girl came up to me and said something that I didn’t catch amp; I did my i ko mun amp; she spoke more slowly. I found she was speaking a funny kind of Bambara: i ka na, an kan taa = come on, let’s go. Woman said good afternoon, in Bambara, amp; I came back with the female response to the greeting amp; after whole greeting ritual, told me her name was Awa and this is Kani, my imasefune (?). I will take you to your place, and I said, Are you Olo, and she looked at me strangely and answered, Oso, nin yoro togo ko Danolo. Yes, this place is called Danolo. One of the great moments in anthro. We lifted up our bags and backpacks and followed her.
The path led to a wider road, which went through a gate in a high mud-brick wall and then we were in the village. I was stunned. It was like a piece of a larger town or city, picked up and stuck in the middle of nowhere. Houses of one or two stories, made of mud bricks, stuccoed and whitewashed or colored in pale colors, pink, blue, purple, with carved wooden doorways, laid out in neat wide streets, with gardens between them. In the center of the place there was a plaza, and the plaza was paved with pottery shards laid out in a herringbone pattern interspersed with white stones. A major, major discovery!!! The Yoruba used exactly that kind of paving in what they call the Pavement Era, which started in around a.d. 1000. It’s supposed to be unique to them. In center of plaza, right in our path, was a thin stone shaft about twenty feet high, studded in a spiral pattern with iron nails, looking almost exactly like the opa-oranmiyan, in Ife. W. asked me what it was and I told him there wasn’t supposed to be anything like that within two thousand km of here, or within a thousand years, the staff of Oranmiyan, the son of Ogun amp; mythic founder of the Oyo monarchy. I said it was like stumbling on a village in Turkey in which everyone was wearing chitons amp; worshipping Zeus amp; spouting Homeric Greek. Impressed him, he started singing the theme from Brigadoon. There were plenty of people in the plaza, most of them sitting or standing in the shade of an immense baobab tree near the column. Everyone was dressed in white or dun-color.
The house we were taken to was built around a central courtyard, paved in the same antique style. It was pink-ocher, two stories, with an external staircase. Awa took us to a room on the ground floor furnished with cushions and a low table. She said she would bring us some food, and left, her kid trailing after her.
What’s wrong with this picture? Two Americans, one of them a blonde, arrive in an isolated African village. We should be mobbed by curious people. There should be kids staring at us through the windows. But people seem to be going about their business with only the most blase urban-type curiosity about us. It was like getting off a bus in the Port Authority terminal in New York. Even more spooky: no Tshirts, no shorts, no rubber shoes. Western charities dispatch huge bales of used clothing to Africa and somehow it gets into every corner of the bush. Except Danolo, apparently. Everyone we’ve seen so far is dressed traditionally, the women in robes and headdresses, the men in a kind of sarong, with the older men affecting an off-the-shoulder cloak, all in what looks like hand-woven cloth. No plastic either. I have never seen an African household without a plastic basin or jerrycan, or some utensil recycled from tin cans or telephone wire. Here we have pottery and local ironwork. All the adults have parallel keloid scarring or tattooing on their faces. Never seen that in Mali before. It’s Yoruba, and old-fashioned Yoruba at that, the mark of civilization.
Awa came back with food. Fried fish lumps on a bed of something like couscous, but not, flavored with a sauce that’s got coco in it and other stuff I don’t recognize. It was pretty sophisticated cooking amp; also nothing not native to ancient Africa?no rice, no manioc, no yams. With it we got a thin, bitter beer. The meal was served on pottery decorated with rouletted and combed designs, not all that different from the Ife ware displayed in the museum in Lagos. This kind of stuff should not be in Mali. OK, pottery is conservative, but still. The beer mugs were brass, also with parallel marks, beautifully made, museum-quality stuff. W. said they were fattening us up for the cannibal feast. He was enjoying himself, the situation amp; my confusion. He said, This looks like the real Africa. Oh yeah amp; scary because of it, although I don’t mention this to him. There shouldn’t be any real Africa anymore.
Another woman removed the food amp; utensils. Little later, three elderly men wearing white robes and carrying carved wooden canes came in and removed W. He was quite jolly about it: See you in the pot, Janey.
Hour or so after that, Awa and another woman, older, who introduced herself as Sekli, led me out through the village to a high mud wall barred by a wooden gate. The gate and doorposts were heavily carved in the combination of abstract and naturalistic characteristic of ancient Yoruba art.
We got hustled through the gate too fast to really study it, noted the ram’s head, amp; on both doorposts figure w/ crested coiffure, club, and horn prob. = Eshu-Eleggua, had the horrible trickster smile too. Inside found several houses, w/ beautifully made high-peaked roofs of finely woven oiled matting amp; carved wooden verandas. The center of the compound was Pavement Culture pave, concentric circles around a rough-looking standing stone, with paths leading to the doorways of the several structures. The woman gestured for me to sit down and wait, then left.
Unpacked and checked the Nikon, the Sony camcorder, the Sony microcassette machine. Discovered the camcorder battery was dead. Discovered the cassette recorder had somehow picked up water on the trip, and the batteries were all split and corroded. Unpacked the solar charger, walked outside, unfolded and set it up in the sun. Loaded the Nikon and took some pictures of the compound. Something was wrong with the film advance. Opened the camera. A long loop of exposed film popped out. Trashed that roll, put in another. Carefully threaded it, closed the camera. Sighted on the group of women, pressed on the shutter. Nothing. I figured a piece of grit must have slid in there when I had it open. Hung it around my neck, planning to break it down later, blow it out. Grit always a problem in this part of Africa. Checked the solar charger and noticed that the little red charging light on the Sony was off. It was on when I plugged in the cable, I thought, but maybe not. Getting a little confused now, I sat down and checked the cabling, which was fine, but when I looked at the little control board on the solar charger I saw that instead of five volts, the transformer was set to twelve, which meant I had fried the Sony battery. I cursed, yanked the battery out of the Sony and stormed toward my hut, meaning to get the spare from my bag.
But I tripped on the rough pavement and went down on my face. Sony and Nikon both totaled. Blubbered like a baby, not because of the smashed equipment, but from fright, ashamed of it, couldn’t help the fear. Dejr vu. Chenka all over again. I’m supercareful person with equipment, there was Something going on. I sat down on the doorsill of the little house and shivered and snuffled miserably for a while. When I looked up he was standing there, a small old man in a white robe and sandals, carrying a carved black staff. I hadn’t heard him approach. He said something in Bambara that I didn’t get. I held up the smashed camera and said, in English, You wouldn’t by any chance know if there’s a certified Nikon repair facility in this town? He said something else I didn’t get, and then I really looked into his face for the first time.
Hard to describe this. In the faces of some nuns, some Hindu holy men, you’re supposed to see a look of unearthly goodness, the sense that what is staring out at you from their eyes is not an ego like your own but a fragment of divinity. Seen it myself in a nun or two, can’t vouch for the Hindus. This was like that, but not the same. It was as if a piece of sky or a wild animal or a tree had achieved consciousness. Or the moon. Original participation, not just at the height of a ritual, but all the time, in the light of afternoon. I could feel my heart knocking. He came closer and said something else and I caught dusu be kasi (the heart is crying) and the interrogative particle and I figured he meant to ask me why I was unhappy. I shrugged and indicated my broken things, although that was not the reason my heart was crying. And he asked me if I spoke Bambara and I said only a very little. He nodded and came over and sat down on the doorsill next to me.
Had he turned into an ostrich I could not have been more surprised at what he did then. He said, Perhaps you would be more comfortable then, if we spoke in French. My name is Ulune Pa. This is my compound you are in. What do you call yourself, Gdezdikamai? Close your mouth, so that flies do not fly into it.
I said, Jane, my name is Jane. What was that name you called me?
He said, Gdezdikamai, explaining what it meant. And lifted a hand to touch my hair. We have been waiting for you, Jeanne Gdezdikamai.
12/?? Danolo
Have not written in some days, no longer know date with precision. Moon tonight in new crescent. Will have to keep track of passage by her from now on, as in old days. How anthro of me! Almost needless to say my cheap watch stopped, and the local drugstore does not stock watch batteries. Writing slow anyway, something.
I must have drifted off. It seems hard to form letters, have to really focus. Was not the case in Chenka, that I noticed. Here is maybe deeper into the no-write zone? List of facts:
— the place I’m in is called a ganbabandole. It is a kind of sorcery institution. You come here to get unwitched or to get oracles or like that, just like you go to a post office to get stamps. The man who runs it is my pal Ulune. He is the babandole, the chief sorcerer in charge.
— the people here speak Olo, a language that seems to use both Yoruba and Bambara roots, but the tone structure and grammar are not like either, and it is more agglutinated than the typical Kongo group language. It’s not like anything I have heard of, but I am not expert in African languages. A creole of some kind. Bespeaks migration, fairly recent as these things go.
— Ulune says he knew I was coming. I am an important person for some reason that he can’t explain just yet.
— My husband is an important person, too, ditto on the explanation. I have not seen him in however many days it has been. Four? A week?
— I am to be taught ndol, sorcery of a type not taught to women. This is because I am not officially a woman. (Note: analogous to Gelede, where women don’t dance but men dressed as women do?) As name implies. Gd = female; ezil = gold(en); dik = outsider, not Olo; ama = head; ai in the terminal position indicates a partial negation of the primary indicator of sex, size, or position. I think. Thus Gdezdikamai means “goldenheaded not quite a female foreigner.” Ulune himself will be my owabandolets, my “father-in-sorcery.” It is quite an honor, or maybe it is a doom. Everyone in the compound treats me with wary respect.
— The Olo, says Ulune, came to Danolo a long time ago. Before that they lived in Ile-Ife, down in Yorubaland. They taught the Yoruba about the gods, the spirits, about Orun, the otherworld, which here they call m’arun. They also taught them Ifa divination, and just a little bit about m’doli, the unseen world = bridge between m’arun and m’fa, the world of the here and now. Don’t know if I believe this. Explains some things, obscures others. Confirms Tour de Montaille. Want to call Greer and ask him.
— Ulune showed me a photograph. As far as I can tell it is the only photograph in the compound. It’s old, cracked, and faded. It shows a man who looks vaguely like Ulune in the uniform the French colonial infantry wore in the years before the Great War. This is impossible, unless he is over a century old, so why does he want me to believe it? Age = status? Ask trick question. Jane: Why did he let himself be photographed? Wasn’t he afraid his soul would be trapped? I was a different man then, he says. That man is dead.
Someday, Danolo
U. doesn’t approve of writing things down. Writing kills the spirit of the thought, he says. He wants me to train my memory. Too late, I’m literate, the rot is too deep. Therefore, I try to keep the stuff in my mind, and then write it down at night, like now. I have pages full of stuff. Ifa verses, spells. Moon in waxing quarter.
Anthropology. Family and clan structure? Who knows? A good deal of ritual life goes on in compounds, each with a central babandole, all very secret one from the other. U. used to teach sorcery in a kind of university they have here, but not any longer. Now his only student is me.
Ulune’s compound is inhabited by Awa and the girl, Kani; by Sekli, who is supposedly something of a sorceress in her own right (although I have not seen evidence of this) and a formidable battle-ax. She is the majordomo of the compound. Then Loltsi, a jolly, portly woman, and Mwapune, who is quiet and has a little girl of about five named Tola. My favorite is Tourma, a lovely creature of about eighteen, who is pregnant with her first child. At first I thought all these women were U.’s wives, but when I voiced this theory, he seemed shocked. Olo sorcerers are celibate, more or less permanently. Sex makes too much noise in the spirit realm (m’doli); the orishas and spirits get jealous, and rival sorcerers can use the distraction to get at you. This is also the answer I get when I ask about W. I can’t see him lest we be irresistibly drawn into sexual congress. Little do they know. Prob. why sorcery never caught on at American colleges and universities.
The women in the compound are in fact staff, and honored for it. They have husbands they visit on their day off, all except Sekli, which may account for her temper. The other thing is that Kani and Tola are not the birth children of Awa and Mwapune. They are imasefune, soul-children. The Olo believe that when weaning concludes, at about age three, the original connection between birth mother and child has quite faded and that the child then becomes the responsibility of anyone who forms a relationship with it in sefune, the affective soul. Most often this is a close relative, an aunt or uncle, but it can be a stranger from the other end of the village. Unusually, it can even be the child’s own mother or father. But in vono ba-sefune, as it is called, the merging of souls, both parties immediately understand what has happened, everyone accepts it, and the child immediately moves into the household of his or her new owasefune or gdsefune, the soul-father or soul-mother, becoming their imasefune, soul-child, until puberty.
When I asked U. whether a child ever failed to find a soul-parent, he looked bleak, and told me sometimes not, such children are damaged in the soul. No one talks to it, or feeds it, and it dies. On very rare occasions, it does not die, though; it scavenges food, and lurks on the edge of the village. If it survives to its twelfth birthday, it is considered dontzeh, a person under the protection of the spirit world, not quite human, but considerable. It enters the household of a superior babandole of the town, and is taught various aspects of magic. All dontzeh become witches, and if you ask the Olo why they help them to the knowledge that will enable them to work evil, they say, who are we to reject what the god has touched? Find myself thinking about four-year-old kids no one will talk to, starving to death in plain sight. Poison in paradise.
As for W., he is well, I am told when I ask, he is fulfilling his destiny. U. won’t divulge what it is. Pay attention to your own, he says. Fulfilling destiny a phrase much used around here, by the way. Many people, says U., wrongly suppose life is like a fishing net on a nail. Shift those nails and the meshes fall into completely different patterns. In fact, it is not a net, but a hook and line. Ifa hooks us in our mother’s womb and although we thrash this way and that we are drawn along our line of fate until we are brought flopping to the seat of Olodumare. The same Olo word, ila, means fate and also a fishing line or a line scratched in the sand. I asked him, can no one escape their fate? Oh, yes, he replied casually, this is what we sorcerers are for, and laughed. This is so Olo, a profundity tied to a silly joke.
Later I press him on this. He has two expressions when I ask him for something he doesn’t want to tell me. One is kindly, like a dad saying It’s too complicated, darling, you’ll understand when you’re older. The other is almost embarrassed, like it’s something shameful. I get the latter when I ask him about changing fate, or manipulating time, or about where the Olo come from. All seems to be related.
Just another day, Danolo
I probably missed Christmas already, and New Year’s. Moon gibbous, a little over half full.
I’m sick a lot nowadays from the stuff he makes me eat and drink. He says my body has to be changed, so that part of me lives in m’doli all the time. This is something I’ve learned, how the chemical magic M. was always talking about really works. Didn’t believe him at the time. Beyond that?there are as yet only intimations. Did my first sorcerous feat today, after three days of prep, nauseous, pissing black, night sweats, horrible dreams. These are all good signs, U. says. First thing in morning, we discuss my dreams. Never recalled dreams much before, but now they’re as vivid and recollectable as Casablanca. U. doesn’t think dreams are meaningless random discharges in the sleeping brain.
My sorcerous feat was that I was finally able to “smell” dulfana, the trace essence of magical operations. We took a walk out of town, because inside it’d be like trying to find a pickle blindfolded in a garlic factory. I found a little bag of fenti U. buried under an acacia, just like a truffle pig. Ridiculously pleased with myself. Now I realize the source of that itchy not-quite-odor I have been sensing for the past day or two.
On the way back, a guy steps out of some bushes and starts following us. I smell dulfana strongly off him, and I ask U. if he’s a sorcerer, too, and U. laughs and says no, just a paarolawats. This word means “destroyed person” in Olokan. When the wind shifted, we were bathed in the sour smell of dead meat. U. did not seem particularly concerned. I asked him why the thing was following us. He said it was Durakne Den, the witch, spying on us, riding in the paarolawats. It was, however, a very old one and falling apart, so we were in real danger. I asked was it dead, and he laughed. No, Jeanne, the dead sleep, they don’t walk. Only, the person who used to be inside is locked up, and the witch rides him like a horse. Never let them touch you?he’s very clear about that.
U.’s fairly limited French vocabulary won’t handle magical concepts to the requisite depth. Lucky me, I don’t have to know that stuff yet because we’re only working with komo, which is anti-sorcery stuff, both the substance and the methodology. I have to learn that first, because if I were to try any actual sorcery without being protected, I would be a sitting duck out there in m’doli, which is apparently a kind of Dodge City place.
In our spare time we do Ifa. I am supposed to memorize the verses like U. has done, but I cheat and write them down. U. does not throw Ifa for me. He says he already did, but won’t tell me what the oracle said.
I brought the subject around to this witch, Durakne. U. seems reluctant to use his name, calling him m’tadende (the “outside one”) or “our dontzeh. ” Apparently, Durakne is the only surviving dontzeh child now in Danolo. U. trained him, and he was a good pupil. Now a rival, it seems. Oedipus in the Sahel? Need to query U. on moral structure. Failed again to get him to discuss history: why did Olo leave Yorubaland? Also seems preoccupied, sometimes stops talking and falls into what seems to be a light trance. Making lots of komo, preparing little packets and burying and hanging them around the compound. The war is heating up, it seems. Durakne apparently behind it, with some of the other sorcerers, who should, according to U., know better. Our arrival associated with this in some way, but he’s mum on the details?changes the subject when I ask, pretends not to understand. He’s good at that.
A day in the life, Danolo
My period started today, and if I am as regular as I usually am, I estimate this is the 33rd day of our visit here. Henceforward, I will keep track. Moon full. U. is a little nervous of me, and I wonder why, until Sekli takes me aside and says it is my flux. All very well to make me an honorary man but the spirits are not fooled. She gives me elaborate instructions about what to do with my “cloths” so as to prevent witches and grelet from taking advantage of this vulnerability. I must spend next three days with the women, however, which I do not mind at all. I spend most of my time with Tourma. She seems, unlike most of the people here, to possess the sort of innocence much prized by anthropologists who go native and Rousseauian. I suspect that is a personal, rather than a cultural, detail; perhaps that sort of anthropologist picks out people in the native village that even the native villagers think are a little fruity. In any case, Tourma is happy, trilling all the day long. She weaves on the horizontal loom, long strips of multicolored cotton that she sews into bags, shawls, and sashes. It is quite thrilling to watch figures appear under her fingers.
While she works, I worm out of her some Olo info. Their cosmology is quite similar to that of the Yoruba, their psychology not so. Psychology, a funny word. We use it as a placeholder for talking about thinking and emotions, learning and dreaming, although as far as people are concerned there is not much in it. We don’t really (except for Jungians I suppose) believe in the reality of the psyche, that the psyche has the same reality as cobalt or North Dakota. The Olo do, and here they seem to be right in line with the Chenka. Ogga again, but here they are called grelet. The Olo think that grelet invade the mind and grow there like Guinea worms do under the skin. They grow by attracting your attention, making you worry about whether you are handsome enough, or sexy enough, or smart enough, or have sufficient cattle or children. You can starve them out by concentrating on the moment, on the unfolding m’fa. Or you can have a sorcerer remove them. A grel is an independent entity. The stronger ones can take people over, and work mischief.
Tourma asked me what kind of grelet there were in the land of the dik. I had to tell her that in my part of Diklandia they did not believe in the grelet at all. She thought this hilarious. Do they believe in colors? she asked. In water? In beans? A riot among the ladies amp; I laughed, too.
Day 34, Danolo
Took Tourma to my little house (my bon) to see my treasures, but she wasn’t that impressed. She wanted to know if I had made the Bic pens and lighter, the colored pencils, the various articles and implements, and was bored when I told her no, and even more at my halting attempts to explain late capitalism. Merchants do not have high status among the Olo. The visit ended badly, when I showed her my Olo artifact, which I did quite innocently. I saw it in my bag and asked her what it was. It is apparently an idubde. She cried that out, backed away, and ran like hell was chasing her back to the big bon.
Later I made up with her, but she would not tell me what an idubde was for. Sekli scolded me for showing it to Tourma?the worst possible thing to show to a pregnant woman? ch’andoultet.Didn’t I know anything? Not much.
Tourma sings to the child within her and talks to it. It’s a girl. She knows this. She hopes she will make sefune with this child. It occasionally happens and is considered a terrific omen. Tourma also sings to the birds, the clouds, the bushes and rocks. She says they sing back to her. Can’t you hear them, Gdezdikamai? No, I can’t.
Day 36, Danolo
Dreamed about Dad last night. Nothing Freudian, just floating peacefully over him as he went about his business, supervising Frank the groundsman at Sionnet and having lunch (tunafish on toast and bouillon) and working on the ‘29 Packard. Extremely peaceful, but lonely-making. Am out of contamination now, so I told U. about this dream and he scoffed that it wasn’t a dream at all, but merely bfuntatna, soul-travel, and not a message from the orishas. On the other hand, the fact that I could do it boded well for my magical career. He is in a talkative mood today, or rather a discursive one. He’s never surly, but often he speaks gnomically or in riddles. He missed me? Maybe he is bored, maybe he is tired of the sorcerers’ war that’s been brewing, and I offer some relief. Comic relief? An experiment, teach a woman ndol, like teaching a dog to talk?
His view of time. Every moment in time is accessible through the m’doli, which exists outside normal time and space. Ifa is the guardian of time, which is why we go to him for oracles, but he also guards the past. Why does the past have to be guarded? asks the novice. He gave me a pained look. Because it can be changed. But that is adonbana. An act that afflicts the world, he translated. The reason for our travels. He used the word ilidoni, literally “going down,” but that is also used as if capitalized to reference the hegira of the Olo from Ife of glorious memory to this place, Danolo, or Den ‘aan-Olo, “where the people have to stay.” I lit up, of course, because I thought he was going to let me in on the unspeakable secret, but he did not. He said, I will tell you when you require it. How will I know this? You will know, and he wouldn’t say anything else.
Asked how can the past be changed? The past is past. Except in our memories. He rapped me gently on the head. Jeanne, Jeanne, why can’t you understand this? The short course in Olo ontology. Only m’arun is real. M’fa is a show, only shadows, a game. Plato in Africa. But it is a gift of the orishas. They let us sorcerers play with it, as a father may let his little son play with his spear, his bow. But not use it. Not break it. We must observe debentchouaje. New word = harmonious connectedness? Way things are supposed to be? What happens if a sorcerer doesn’t? Then the orisha comes, he said. I said, But the orishas come all the time. Ifa comes to give oracles, Eshu comes to open the gates, the orishas ride their devotees at the ceremonies of the Yoruba … No, no, he said, I mean the orisha comes in himself. Not as a spirit, as in the ceremonies of the Yoruba and the Songhai gaws. The true orisha. And what happens then? I asked him. He shrugged. It depends on the situation. A disaster. A great blessing. Have you ever seen this? Once, he said, a long time ago. I don’t want to see it again.