Chapter 2: Witch Doctor
The hut I am in is just like every other hut I have seen so far in Africa; low thatched roof, dirt floor, mud walls. The huts generally are clustered together around a central courtyard with the backs of the huts against an enclosing wall. These are little fortresses against the wild animals, stray dogs and covetous neighbor. Often the wall will have broken glass set atop and inlaid into the mud. Entire generations of extended families share the courtyard and the central fire burning in the middle. At night the pigs, goats and chickens are brought in and locked up. There are far too many predators and hungry people in these remote areas to risk leaving out such valuable livestock.
This particular compound is in some village in the Northern part of Burkina Faso. My sister in-law told me I would get a chance to see an “honest to goodness” Witch Doctor and this is one of many I have seen since going into the bush. She can spot them by their scars, their medicine bags, the way the others respect them. Slowly I am learning to do the same.
I had to stoop to walk into his hut. The Witch Dr. eyed me curiously. He looked to be very old, but here in Africa people age quickly. I guess he might be 60, I am sure he was the oldest person I had seen my entire time in the bush. He sat cross legged on the dirt floor of his hut and motioned for me to sit across from him. I wonder what story the scars across his face tell, what they mean to him and his tribe. I would ask my guide about it, but to talk to anyone here takes forever. Everything has to be translated from English to French, French to Bamanankan, the desert trader’s language of the Sahara, and then back. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because the guides French is rough, a dialect of French. My brother and him often babble back forth for a long time just to get a basic understanding of each other.
He puts a dry bony hand to my face and stares deep into my eyes. I wonder when the last time he washed his hands with soap was. I have seen their idea of a toilet, sitting over a pit and then cleaning your backside with water from a pitcher and rubbing any leftover residue off with your hand. I make a mental note to wash my face with baby wipes when I get back to our compound.
He says something which I don’t understand.
“He wants to know why you are here,” my brother translates.
I am still trying to figure that out myself. I am here to see something no one else will. I am here because my sister in-law is doing PhD. research on the weavers of this area. I am here because I hate modern society and want to see the way real people live. I am here because when my sister in-law asked me to go I knew I had to. I am here for bragging rights, to impress women back home.
But now I am really wondering why am I here. Why am I sitting sick and miserable in the dirt on the wrong side of the world? The Witch Doctor means what is my particular problem, why have I sought out his help. Where to begin?
“I want to be happy.”
That’s the only thing that I can come up with. I think it is true. I know I am not happy back in the states. I have heard that you can’t run from your problems but by creating new problems you can forget about your old ones. Here every day is a new problem, food, water, bugs…
After it is all translated back he takes a small rug from behind him and sets it between us. He hands me some bones and I am told to scatter them on the rug. Looking at the bones I see thousands of years of history that is quickly disappearing. The traditional animist priests are dying off, disappearing, their followers being converted to Christianity or Islam. Animists are seen as uneducated and backward. One religion makes as much sense to me as the next, and for some reason I like this wizened old man.
“Your problem is women.”
He stirs the bones with his hand and chatters on to the guide. After a while of this he stops and the guide speaks to my brother, apparently there is a lot of confusion because the guide has to ask the Witch Doctor several questions for clarification.
“The Witch Doctor says he can cure you with a simple laying on of hands, he just has to touch you on the forehead a few times. He says all your problems will go away. He says if you don’t like the cure just find another priest, it is easy to fix”
I consider this for a moment, I don’t want to seem rude and here is a poor Animist Priest offering to help. I nod my consent, a universal thing which needs no translating. He reaches over and taps me lightly three times low on my forehead, between my eyes.
Leaving his compound we say thank you’s and shake hands with everyone several times. The people here are just happy to see someone interested in their culture and the five dollars the witch Dr. made for his services is serious money to these people, about three months salary to a healthy grown man.
We head back to the compound we are staying in. Very simple rooms made of concrete blocks and infested with bugs and vermin. It beats a mud hut, but just barely. I am just trying to keep from falling over, something is not right within me. It could be the heat, the food or some bug I picked up but I know I am breaking apart quickly. I tell my brother I need to lie down. He asks what is wrong, I tell him I don’t know, just don’t feel right. His wife comes to my bed side to take my temperature, 104. Now we have a real problem.
I know that my brother and his wife have left to discuss what to do with me, they both looked concerned. The guide poked his head in to say “Hi Cowboy” about all the English he can speak. I stare at the ceiling and think about the witch Dr., he never told me how to be happy.
My brother his wife come back and press pills into my mouth, and set a fresh water bottle by me. The water is hot from sitting in the truck but tastes good and washes some of the dust from my lips.
“We are going to stay here until your fever breaks.” I am told. That is fine with me; at this point I just want the oblivion of the pills and the bliss of sleep. They leave me to rest and I hear the ocean roar in my head as the pills kick in.
After 36 hours the fever breaks. I have to admit, for being on a cot under a mosquito net in Africa, without AC, with running water being “run to get water”, it was one of the best 36 hours of my life. I don’t know if I hallucinated or dreamed but the entire time I had a fever my mind roamed the world. It must have been the pills, some strong anti-biotic magic there.
We throw our gear back into the truck. I have been trying to figure out what sort of truck this is. The steering wheel says Range Rover on it, but the truck panels say Mitsubishi. The seats must have come from some other vehicle, they don’t seem to fit in it correctly. Regardless, it is 4 wheel drive, and has been very reliable. Except for flat tires we have had no problems.
The plan is to go to the place where the weavers dye the cotton with indigo before we leave this area. My brother, being something of a history expert, explained that the indigo, though beautiful, stinks to high heaven. In the middle ages they kept the indigo pits far from town and on the downwind side. I think to myself that it must smell like death because the open sewers running through the streets and piles of burning garbage have made me gag more than once.
We get to the dyers compound and find weavers and dyers hard at work. They not only do the dying here but live here and farm the surrounding area for millet and vegetables. The smell, while bad, is much like the rest of Africa, you get used to it.
My brother and his wife are bartering for cloth with what appears to be the matriarch of the clan, he holds up a beautiful weaving with variegated shades of blue. Each weaving means something different, which my sister-in law records. “This means ‘Forgetting the bad in your Past’, or ‘Putting the past behind you’, depends on how you translate it.” My sister in-law writes this down and photographs it for future reference.
I yell over to my brother as I hop up from the shad of a scrubby tree, “I’ll take it, how much does she want?” My brother asks and after much talking with the guide tells me it is five hundred cefas, or about five dollars. He adds that we are paying the “white price” since we ar
e foreigners they ask outrageous sums of money. At least that is what the guide told him. He thinks it is a joke, five dollars is a beer in the airport.
I give her the money and as an added gift a small notebook and pen. Paper and pens are rare here, but I did not realize how rare as the old weaver looked over the notebook with her family. They examined each page talking about the gift excitedly. The guide translates some of it to my brother, “The family would like to thank you very much for this gift. With it they will be able to write down the names of their fathers and fathers fathers.” He listens to the guide for a minute more. “Oh, I see, they are going to make a family tree, so they can pass it down to their children. They say they can trace it back so far that it is getting hard to keep track of. That they tried carving it in wood but termites ruined it.”
I am a bit embarrassed of their thanks. It is a simple gift, I had no idea how much it would mean to them. At the same time I feel guilty for paying so little for something that took hours and hours of labor to make. I mentally run through what other things I have brought along that I could part with. All of the natives have been amazed at my flashlight, it is the LED crank kind, never needs batteries and worth a fortune in the bush, but I can’t part with it. There are no lights here and using the bathroom is challenge enough, I can’t imagine doing it in total darkness . As gifts I brought pens and paper, four bottles of aspirin, which I have already given away to various medicine men. I promised the guide my compass, and he has reminded me repeatedly of that, with it he says he will be able to cross the Sahara. Other than that I have nothing but a Swiss army knife, clothes and my personal medicine. Instead I buy another one of their weavings and they seem more than happy. Between my brother, his wife, and myself, they have made more money in a day than their crops and weavings would normally bring in a year.