Call to Prayer

Hello! So Ali arrived here safely on Friday and as with Parkie, things have been full steam ahead. She jumped right into helping me with the research, and after only 2 hours of sleep, she and I went to the hospital to interview women the morning after her arrival. On day 2 of her visit we went to a Bori ritual ceremony on the outskirts of Niamey. The Bori has been described to me as an animist religion, one that is practiced by Housa and Zarma peoples alike, and has resisted the spread of Islam over the centuries. There are people who are soly Bori, although many others are publicly Muslim and privately incorporate Bori practices.

So an American guy who lives here has hooked up with Hisham to do some filming of the Bori cult spirit possessions. Brian came here for the first time in 1999 as a BU study abroad student and has now bought land, and dabbles in spirit possession. Great. So... he and Hisham had brokered a deal to ask the spirits if he could film future possessions. With Ali and myself following closely behind, we arrived at one of the grand priests' house (read: cluster of grass huts) where we found the ceremony already 3 or so hours into it. There were several men seated in the sand under a shade structure. They were playing calabash with stick wisks, and from time to time, there were men and women who got up to dance to the music. About 2 more hours later, several of the mediums got up to lie down in the sun. Evidently, it was a form of sacrifice- asking the spirits to have pity on them in the sun and to come into someone for a visit. The people dancing were all mediums at a certian point when things got serious. Mediums are men and women and are usually afflicted with a spirit sickness at some point in their life, where the only cure is to accept the spirit and allow them tp use the human body in communication. Once they accept and go through an initiation, the spirit sickness goes away. They are then obligated to be present at ceremonies and at times when someone is at need. So after some time, there was one women whose eyes grew huge and she started making coughing noises in the back of her throat. She started pacing back and forth, her arms swinging back and forth violently. She then ran over to another medium and smacked her in the head. Evidently, the Lightening spirit had entered her long enough to choose the meduium it wanted. The women that was just smacked on the head then became the object of attention of a man with bells on a small staff. He was calling, welcoming the spirits into the new woman. The one that just lost the possession, just collapsed in the sand. Once the spirit fully entered its chosen medium, she cried out and was taken to a special hut to be dressed in the clothes that the spirit always wears. In this case, it was a red boubou with a red cap. The spirit was also given two scorched millet stalks. Suddenly there were people around us and next to us starting to feel different spirits enter their bodies. Over behind my right shoulder a young boy that was just listening to head phones, stiffened, jerked, and fell to the floor foaming at the mouth. He was possessed my a certain spirit from a spirit familiy, called hauka, that embodies characteristics of the colonizers. There were others across the compound who were mediums for this same spirit family, and although not possessed at the moment, they stared making motions that immitated a salute, to pay respects to the possession. There are some of these spirits that speak English, others French, and each has its own personality-drunk, violent, mad, etc. This young boy continued to foam at the mouth. In another minute he was seated in the dirt looking started and blinking into the sun. The spirit decided not to stay. Then someone else around the compound fell to the dirt. Another started banging their leg into the ground, and yet others, cried and coughed in the initial stages of a possession. There were only two spirits who decided to stay and talk this afternoon- Lightening, and the large colonizer spirit, Kaffer. At one point, an old man began to practically do backflips- the drunk hauka spirit entered him. But then a fight broke out in the background among some women and so the spirit left suddenly. The sun began to set, stars appeared, and the possessions slowed. Finally things were over, we watched everyone pack up their things in between gazes at the sky. The mosque just outside the fence called everyone to prayer for the evening. And as we left, I hooked one foot into the 4x4 and before getting in the car, glanced up to see people bent in prayer, foreheads to the ground. I guess here in Niger, all things are possible.