Day 40, Danolo
Fortieth day in the whale’s belly, although I feel more as if for the first time I am on the outside of the whale. I am not talking to rocks yet, but it is quite something to feel at least some intimations of what original participation is like. I got up this morning, for example, and was well into the day before I “came to myself” as they say. What a great deal we have traded for our power over nature! This is what happened to M., I imagine, this total unity with the environment and the culture. I never understood that, I was too young.
But this isn’t Shangri-la, the worm in the apple is sorcery, the same thing that protects us here. These are the healthiest people I have ever seen in Africa?virtually free of the usual tropical maladies amp; they are well fed. But there are not many of them, and there are fewer kids than you would expect. Everyone in Africa believes that sorcery is the major cause of death and misfortune. Here, it may even be true. There is a kind of cloud over everyone’s psyche, and I occasionally catch on people’s faces the expression one sees in shots from the Depression or war zones?helplessness, fear. But the rule is a remarkable cheerfulness and calm, especially among the ordinary townspeople, who are kind and generous.
There is the horrible business with the dontzeh children, although in balance, I have also never seen children treated better (certainly not in traditional Africa) once they have formed that mystical sefune bond with an adult.
Reality of the spirits. Of course I don’t believe in them … but they’re there: not so amusing here, dear M.! In Danolo, one feels unaccountable chills, breezes that touch the cheek but don’t stir the leaves, that sense, familiar in public places in the West, too, that one is being observed, things seen in the peripheral vision that don’t come into focus when you try to see them plain. Again, maybe it is the drugs.
Another unaccountable event. U. demonstrated faila’olo today, disappearing from my sight and reappearing behind me as I sat at the door to my bon. Of course, he doesn’t actually disappear. He throws a brief trance on the subject, walks around her, and wakes her out of it when in the right position. I got some monofilament from my bag and tied a cat’s cradle barrier across the door, but that didn’t slow him down at all. He thought it was very funny. Would it work with an objective observer? Is there such a thing? Clearly, there must be some lost time involved and, in my increasingly infrequent fits of science, I wish for automatic timers, infrared beams, movie cameras, and all the other objectifying impedimenta of my culture.
After the demo, we mixed up kadoul, sorcerous compounds, a very Julia Child sort of afternoon. U. is very strict about spells. The word makes the power?the kadoul is worthless without it, so says my master. I have to memorize them; it ruins the spell if it’s written down. It has to be burned into the soul, says U. I can’t do it, I screw up the chinte, in both substance and word. U. is patient and forgiving, although some of the stuff is rare and valuable. Little steps, Jeanne, little steps, he says. I always say, Yes, Owadeb. It means good father, an honorific.
Training in attention, staring at a pebble for hours. Essential. The worst thing you can do, apparently, is lose attention. You might pick the wrong mouse or frog to be your magical ally, for example, and that would never do.
Day 42, Danolo
A ceremony tonight, dancing and drums. As a good anthropologist I should be taking notes but can’t seem to generate the distance. Inside it too deep, a danger as M. said. U. says the ceremony is asking the orishas for forgiveness, some kind of anniversary of their exile from Ife. Asked, forgiveness for what? Wouldn’t say. Talking in riddles again. At height of craziness, dancing myself (and I can’t dance), W. appeared, smiling, face shining with sweat. Said to call him Mebembe, now. Little helper? Asked him what it meant, but he just shrugged. Brief conversation before Tourma pulled me away. She seemed upset but wouldn’t tell me why. Was he really there, or yet another Olo weirdness? If real, he seems happier than he’s been in a while. Writing is going well, he says.
Day 46, Malinou
I see I have been neglecting this journal.
We have been making house calls, U. and I. We paddled his pirogue downriver and visited a string of villages on the borders of the park, where U. did oracles and a little witch-doctoring. He is famous here and greatly feared. The people are totally whacked out by his performance, although the issues they bring to him are mainly just the petty decisions of agricultural life. Sell the cow? Plant another field of yams? There’s occasionally a heavier one?am I being hexed? Should the second son marry that girl? I haven’t seen a customer go off unsatisfied. There’s also private consultation with the witch-afflicted, but I don’t get to see that, not yet. I asked him if I could do an oracle and he said yes, when I am ready, but I must be perfect in my verses.
Watched U. take grel out of a man. It was quite dramatic and New Testament. He put it into a chicken, which was then killed and thrown into a fire. Stench! An interesting ritual, I took careful notes. The patient seemed totally exhausted, but a lot better off than the chicken. Or the grel, according to U. He says you can extract a grel into yourself and then spit it out and burn it, but it is disgusting and fairly dangerous. A chicken is better.
U. withdrawn and short-tempered tonight. He snarled at the woman who brought us our evening meal, which I’ve never seen him do before. I thought she was going to piss herself with terror. I asked him what was wrong. Ignored the question, told me some kind of parable. Suppose a leopard is attacking your goats. Then you get all the strong men of the village together, with spears, and you wait for the leopard to come to the goat pen and you kill it. That’s easy. But suppose you hear that a leopard is attacking the goats of your cousin far away in another village. In that village all the men are weak and their spears are broken. What then, Jeanne? Should you help your cousin? How should you do this? I don’t know, Owadeb. You could tell your cousin to set a trap. You could tie a goat over a pit and then the leopard might attack the goat and fall in. This answer seemed to please him a great deal, and his mood improved. He called for beer and we both got a little buzzed. A good answer, Jeanne, he said. But it would have to be a brave goat, the one who stays at the pit. Yes, I said, a brave goat and maybe a stupid leopard. He laughed his head off. I wish I knew what the hell he was talking about half the time.
Day 51, Boton
My first divination today. Wife of a Fulani herder, Maramu by name, a young childless woman, hence of rock-bottom status. No one with any clout would have risked it. We did it in the open under a canopy. I gave her the full verse in Olokan, which, of course, she did not understand, and then translated into halting Bambara. She would have a child but had to make sacrifices to ensure the child did not become an enemy. She was radiantly happy, embarrassingly grateful; the other wives gave me dirty looks. You can’t please everyone in the oracle business. After that, business pretty good. All girls, of course, no man would stoop so low, although I give good discounts compared to U. Most of the findings concerned children and sick relatives; women don’t make too many big decisions in these parts. A couple, though, about witchcraft.
Again, it’s hard to explain. I don’t have to think of what to say. The interpretation just pops into my head. Later, told U. about this. He’s not surprised. Ifa is my pal, according to him.
Day 52, Danolo
We are back here, in the midst of some unexplained disaster. Last night, after throwing Ifa all day, I collapsed on my pallet in the room the villagers provided for us, and fell instantly to sleep. Awakened by a dream. A man I’d never seen before, an Olo, was talking to me over a fire. I could see his face quite clearly. He was holding a sorcery box, not a cake tin, but one carved of wood. He opened the lid and showed me the contents. It was a little black statue, and I knew that it was a statue of W. The guy said, in Olo, Come join your husband, he’s lonely without you. And in the dream I felt this burning desire to enter the box, it was like the ultimate happiness, and I was about to step into it when I looked up at the guy and saw that his black eyes were the heads of worms. Then I woke up. U. was up, too, lying on the pallet across the room from me. I could see his face in the moonlight. What is it, Jeanne Gdezdikamai? I told him the dream. He became agitated, and immediately began to gather our stuff into straw carrier bags. I asked him what was wrong. He said, The okunikua, we have to go back, quickly, quickly! Now, at night? Yes, it is already too late. I have been a stupid old man. And that’s all he would say. He kept repeating something, though, like a prayer?Creator and head, fight for me!
Ten minutes later we were in our pirogue, launched into inky water striped down the middle by a three-quarter moon. I was in the front, paddling like mad, he was in the back, chanting, steering us God knows how through the channels. Terrible sense that other passengers were in the boat, like feeling the presence of Eshu behind you in the oracle, but different. The Eshu feeling is of something huge and old, like the loom of an island in the fog before you see it. This was of something spiky and wet, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to turn around in the pirogue. The canoe seemed sluggish, too, like something was grabbing at it with weedy fingers.
The moon was down and it was dark as a cellar when he turned the pirogue onto a beach. He jumped out and crashed into the bushes, with me on his tail. Remarkably, it was the right beach?we were in Danolo. When we trotted through the gate he stumbled, and I grabbed his arm. Loltsi was waiting there with a smoking torch. By its light U. looked as though he had lost two inches and forty pounds?for the first time he looked like a little old man. In the compound, everyone was awake and wailing, even Sekli. Tourma is missing. According to Sekli, everyone went to sleep in good order. Sometime in the middle of the night Mwapune, who shares a room with Tourma and the two kids, got up to pee and found the other girl gone, and raised the alarm.
U. looked close to collapse. The women put him to bed. From what I could make out before they shooed me away, he is under attack from some rival sorcerer and it has something to do with me. I am not popular just now. I went back to my own bon and leaned against the wall. Something landed on the roof, heavy, with claws. An oppressive, crushing sense of despair, of evil. I looked up and there were eyes staring through the thatch, more than two, green ones, and red. I threw powders, chanted tetechinte and thanked God he had made me memorize the words. Voices in my head, urging murder and suicide. I filled my head with the chant, and after a while things returned to what passes for normal around here. I went outside and watched the sun come up.
Walked into the center of town and made sketches. Unusual atmosphere about the place, not many people on the streets, the houses closed up, as if a war was expected.
Sitting on my front step, chewing tamarind, I watched Sekli come out of the big house carrying a bag. She grabbed up one of the cockerels scratching in the dust, and walked across the compound to me, indicating with a jerk of her head for me to follow her. We went into the center of the compound where the big stone stands in the eye of the pavement spiral. She gave me the bird to hold and from her bag took some clay pots and what I guess was kadoul, but of a type I hadn’t seen before. She ignited a fire with flint and steel in a mass of fuzzy brown matter, and when the smoke was up and thick she took the cockerel from me and cut its throat with a sharp piece of obsidian. The blood spurted and she sprinkled it in patterns over the standing stone. I recall thinking I should take notes, but I did not. I also recall thinking that although this stone is an important cultural artifact, I had never, before this, thought to come near it. She was chanting in Olokan all this time, too fast for me to follow. I did note that what had seemed natural discolorations in the rock were actually the marks of dried blood, very thick and probably very old.
Sekli squatted and sliced the cockerel open. Haruspication, divination by entrails. I had never observed this before among the Olo. It is rare in Africa in any case. She passed her hands through the chicken guts several times, peering closely at their bloody coils. Then she rose abruptly and tossed the chicken against the stone. She stared at me, her face wooden. It is well? I asked, one of my few Olokan phrases. Without answering, she clutched my arm and pulled me back to Ulune’s room. He was lying on his pallet.
A rapid dialogue between them followed. U. beckoned me closer and spoke to me in French. Do you know what is happening, Jeanne? I don’t, Owadeb, I said. He said, Something very bad. Durakne Den, the witch, has suddenly grown very much stronger. He has eaten someone, and now he has more power, more than me right now. I said, You mean he has eaten someone, like meat? No, not that way. Not m’fa eating; m’doli eating. His spirit. So, now that he is strong he attacks me and steals Tourma. I think he is trying to do a forbidden thing with her, a very great chinte that we don’t allow. Why don’t you? The orishas don’t like it. It has to do also with the Ilidoni, the Shameful March. He made the warding-off-evil sign that the Olo make on the few occasions when they happened to mention it. I must admit I was excited; all my anthro neurons were aglow. At one level; at another level I was quaking with fear. Will you tell me more about this, Owadeb? He said, It is better not to have that in your head. You might write it down. Here a faint smile.
He patted my hand and I felt the heat of his skin, feverish. Look, Jeanne, here is what you must do. I need a weidouline. You understand what that is? I said, Yes, Owadeb, a magical ally. Good, he said. This ally is a small brown snake, about this long. He held up his hands a few feet apart. You must go north, out of Danolo through the north gate; Sekli will take you there. There is a path through the bush, north, north. In a while you come to a red rock like a tent (he made a shape with his hands) so, and bones of cows all around it. Wait there. This kind of snake lives in the rocks. Wait there for the sun to just disappear, and one will come out to you. Grab him quickly and put him in your bag and come back here. Now this is important, Jeanne. Don’t talk to anyone you meet there at the rocks. Whoever it is don’t talk to them. Do you understand? Now, go; and take this. He pulled the amulet he always wore over his head and draped it around my neck, a small red leather pouch. The mission seemed simple enough and I was glad to do it. Sekli said something, angry, gesturing at me. U. calmed her down somehow, and indicated that we should leave. Sekli grabbed up a finely worked homespun bag and thrust it into my hands. She went out and I followed behind her.
We walked through deserted streets, through a part of the town I had not seen before. The buildings were not in good repair. Mud brick takes a lot of maintenance, and many of the structures we passed had slumped back into the soil. Danolo had obviously once been more populous than it now was. Explains the scarcity of children? Why don’t they breed? Ask U.? Through a half-ruined gate.
We walked a path through rough bush?thorn, stunted acacias, cran-cran, broken rock?in silence for about an hour, I estimated. I could see the tent rock from a long way off in the flat terrain, a tumble of red platelike boulders maybe four meters high. There were cattle skeletons strewn around. She pointed and turned to go. I asked her in Bambara if U. would get well. I don’t know, she said. I think he was (something?) to teach you ndol and this is the result. As I told him. I told him he should (something?) you, but he has a hard head. He told me it was (something?) for debentchouaje. Incomprehensible. I just bow.
I asked, It’s because of me that the witch attacks Ulune? No, she said, the witch would have attacked anyway. Witches attack him all the time, and he throws them off easily. The witch is attacking you. Ulune is protecting you, so he can’t protect himself. She said something else in straight Olokan that I didn’t get, and walked off.
I dropped down and put my back against the warm rock. I was hot, and I drank some water from my canteen. Bright sky above, dome of Africa, the Sahel pressing down, empty of God, of any help. Found some tamarinds in the sleeves of my robe, chewed them, tried not to cry. I wondered if Sekli was telling the truth. I wondered what I would do if she were. Sacrificing himself to save me? It didn’t seem like the U. I knew. Not personal, then, only part of his deep game? I am completely lost, here among the simple primitive people. Thought, anthro such a crock of shit sometimes.
As the sky went scarlet, he just walked out from around the rocks, I didn’t see or hear him approach. I was so surprised I cried out and jumped to my feet. He grinned and laughed. Janey, you’re looking good. I see you’ve gone native too. That outfit suits you. He was wearing an Olo sarong and cloak. He came closer, and touched my headdress casually. Long time no see, he said, and opened his arms. I hesitated a second and jumped in. I was so lonely, like in a fucking dumb Elvis song. We hugged. We kissed. He said, What’re you doing here out in the middle of nowhere? I said, I have to get a snake for my sorcery teacher. And then I laughed, we both laughed. Because it felt real, not weird, American, a couple of culture-shocked Americans in Africa. We talked. What’ve you been doing, Janey? I told him amusing anecdotes about my life with U. And you? Oh, you know, writing, taking notes. Learning a little anthro, too. Learned the language a little. Really? Say something in Olokan. He did and it was true, he spoke it better than me. Sound of a bird, then, saw it, too, the looping flight of the honeyguide. Purr-purr-purr WHIT. We laughed. He said, Yeah, that’s my bird, he sympathizes with me, poor Witt.
And then I remembered what U. had said about not talking to anyone. Suddenly, I was frightened, and I saw the brown snake too late, it was right in front of me sliding along and I scrabbled after it on my hands and knees, and just missed it. It went down a hole in the rocks. I stood up and said, Goddamn, I missed it. But Witt wasn’t there. I ran around the rock pile, scattering cow bones, and he wasn’t there. I climbed on the rocks and looked around, I could see for a long way, and nothing at all.
I walked back in the dark and now I am writing this on my pallet. U. is in some kind of coma, and no one will talk to me, not even the kids. U.’s compound filling with other Olo sorcerers, all grim-looking. Tourma still gone.