Some anecdotes: from traditional car healers and me sleeping on graves

In the village of Batia where I do some of my research life always offer some surprises. One evening my research assistant Lucien and me found two Ghanaian guys with their car that didn´t start anymore. We found a technician in the far out village but after some hours, he just could inform us, that the starter has a problem – who guessed? The guys were very hungry and we found some grilled maize and fried yams. They had to stay the night in the village and the one with rasta-hair gave an excellent reggae concert with the car radio… The next day the other one went to the next town (42km) to find another technician. He even came back with two. They started to demount the whole car, the seats, some parts of the starter and they were checking all kind of cables so the car didn´t look like bringing home these guys soon. Nothing worked out the technicians didn´t find the damaged piece. Luckily there are other ways to heal a car. An older man found his way in zick-zack lines to the car, looked interested, sat down on the ground in front of the car and started to sing. It was a smooth and rhythmic song like some American Indians may sing and the car seems to like it. About one hour later, the man was still singing, the technicians still pulling out more and more cables out of the car. Then they tried to push the car to make it start and – it sounds incredible I know – in exactly the same moment, when the singing car healer stopped his meditative melody the car started. Reggae wasn´t able to help, technicians had their problems but the traditional car healer made it…

Unfortunately I couldn´t record the song – it would have been very useful to have this song always with me when driving around. This is the funny side of the story, but I have to mention the other side of it. Quite a lot of people drink regularly strong alcoholic drinks in the villages and some of them spent a lot of money in drinking, some may even be alcoholics. This has become a serious problem in the region.

But there is another singer in the village who doesn´t need alcohol to sing – the village chief himself. I usually sleep in his home and one afternoon he came to sing again. Who thinks that rap has been invented in American Slums has to hear his performance…

Life is different here and nothing is what it seems to be. That´s the way it is and sometimes even the very experts - for example BIOTA botanists - become the victim of this. He (if I discover his name he may loose his job) went out to find some tomatoes and brought home what you can see in the photo…

But these are no tomatoes at all, these are aubergines. To be honest, he is not the only one who confuses some of the things you meet here…

When it is very hot in the village Lucien and me go outside the concession to eat in the shadow under two big trees. The gulmancé people have the graves of their family members always close to theirs homes. Sometimes the graves are just some stones on the ground, sometimes – when the person was important – the grave is covered with a plate made of concrete. The proximity to the graves renders them an element of all-day life. People sit on them kids play on them and we eat on them. After lunch we often are tired, so we put a mat on the grave and we sleep right there. It took me some time to realise what we were doing on the grave, lying with the back on the cold stone, just some centimetres above a death body. When I get it I laughed because I imagined to do the same thing on some graveyard in Germany…Life is different – everywhere…

Biodiversity taken seriously

At the beginning of my stay in Tanguiéta:

We are not living alone. There are always some “friends” with two or more legs… When I arrived in my new flat I had to clean it up. Fortunately there was a group of some 10 children who came over to help – for them it was fun to put the whole flat under water and brush everything. They found a turtle - my first friend with more the two legs - in a corner of the house. During cleaning we met quite a lot of cockroaches and spiders. Some of them we killed, others committed suicide by throwing themselves from the walls – when they fall on their back they become pray of the ants who clean everything what might be eatable. The first night a cricket found it funny to sing his ear-splitting song right beside my bed – I put her out in the court… Then came the time of the mosquitoes who liked to pass for diner – white men’s blood must be for African mosquitoes something like French kitchen in Europe. Later on, I found praying mantis, flies, frogs that greeted me in the morning from inside my backpack, mice, cats, a very small, very sweet baby chameleon and other friends in my house.
I am happy that the lions, elephants and buffalos of the park stay way they are… till now I haven’t had the opportunity to watch them but this will come one day as well…

The anthropologist’s work around a national park

There are animals and plants in the park that some institutions want to protect and to conserve. There are people around the park who want to use the soil for agriculture and the plants and animals for food, constructions, medicine, ceremonies and so on. (the photo shows the bicycles of poachers that have been confiscated by the park administration)

This is the reason for quite a lot of conflicts between farmers and ranchers and the park administration, between the eco-guards and hunters who have no authorisation. There is a permanent need for communication and negotiation between these parties. The park administration tries to attract local development project, implies the local populations in the surveillance and the decision-making by institutions of co-management. These institutions of co-management shall help on the one hand to communicate the needs of the local population and on the other to sensibilize and responsibilize them. Therefore the park administration promoted the foundation of villagers associations called AVIGREF (Association Villageoise de Gestion des Réserves de Faune) in the villages close to the park.

The installation of these kinds of institutions has evidently an impact on the local political structure. The new positions which are linked to these new institution like the president, the treasurer and so on give to these persons access to financial and social resources they haven’t had before. This changes the local power relations. These changes are one point of interest in my investigations.

As there are quite a lot of sources of conflict I have to concentrate on one of them. That’s why I mainly focus on the phenomena of hunting without official permission and sport hunting. The implication of local villagers in the surveillance of the park may cause a splitting of the village in people who want to hunt even without permission and those who take part in the co-management conservation approach. By means of hunting or of positioning in socially and politically influential positions people struggle for resources to survive and or to increase their influence. (the photo shows the repartition of meat from the sport hunting which is usually sold to the people living around the park)

What to do with this situation? For me there is no question that people are more important then wildlife. But wildlife conservation may lead – in the long-term – to better living conditions than hunting and a not sustainable exploitation of natural resources. So how to find a way acceptable for all? I hope some of the decision makers and or of the locals can help to develop some ideas on this problem…

to arrive - ankommen - arriver

26 june 2008: I am sitting in a small room in a cheap hostel at Tanguiéta. It is raining cats and dogs (or better lions and hyenas) and I am thinking about arriving... Here my first hypothesis: To arrive in whatever place is much more a psychological question as it is physical.

To arrive physically seams to be easy in Benin: You sweat as if you were in a hot country. When it rains you get wet as if you were in the tropics and your digestion tells you - more or less gently - that you are not eating the same things than in Europe. When the electricity shuts down you have to look for your torch or wait for it to came back. The body doesn´t ask the question if you accept all this. he tells you very explicitly if he likes what you are experiencing or not.

To arrive psychologically seams much more complex: You do not understand why people answer "yes" when you ask if it is "A" or "B". You are curious about the way things work and you try to compare with what you know in order to understand. When you want to buy something you still expect a fix price indicated on the merchandise. At 3 pm you still say "bonjour" and people answer "bonsoir". When people shake hands they have a special manner to snap their fingers mutually when they leave the hand of the other. If you can´t do like they do you feel like a stranger (although everybody tries to let you feel very welcome).

Especially this last example shows that my hypothesis is somewhat mistaken. What you do with your body influences what you perceive with your mind. Every movement I do is a movement in a new and unknown environment. My steps are like walking on eggs because I do not (not yet) know how to move. Both parts, body and mind, are connected, are part of one unit. To arrive, both have to walk hand in hand: The mind has to accept and the body has to accustom, then you can feel having arrived and start to understand better how things work.

first impressions - premières impressions

I’m in Africa! This was clear from the very first moment when we went by bus from the airplane to the customs. This is what we do in many airports in Europe you will think – but not if the distance between the plane and the customs are about 20 meters and the bus ride takes 50 meters… Some things have different meanings in different worlds.

Today, I went out to get a mobile phone chip and some money. The idea to do this be feed gave me the possibility to learn about tropical rainfall (and it became a strong TROPICAL RAINFALL). Streets turned into streams and there were plenty of passages which became impossible to take. Sometimes I just lifted my trousers, sometimes I had to go back and try a different way. Cotonou looked a little like Venice – just without boats and a slightly different architecture. But it was nice to feel the warm rain, stop under a small roof to get some rice fish and a spicy sauce to eat.

To get the money and the chip took almost the whole day. Especially it wasn’t easy to find a way to get money with a Visa card that has no PIN. I went from one banc to the next and there was always at least one reason why they couldn’t give me money: no machine, machine out of order, the responsible absent, not responsible for these problems… But this way you get in contact with many people and most of them are really friendly. A street seller I talked to was asked by a mixed African-European couple if he knows Roger (a quite common name in Benin). The answer was that Roger is his brother and that he moved to France recently. So the conservation started… The ways people meet are so different.

As distances from one bank to the next became too large I took the famous Semi-Djan Motorcycle-Taxis. The streets are full of small motorcycles which fly around like bees - I am writing quantity-wise AND organisation-wise. They have to take care of puddles of holes and the other vehicles… always a little adventure – luckily they never get that fast…

The evening I eat in a restaurant a steak for the price of a Döner-Sandwich in Europe. Thinking about the day I realised: It was a really nice day, a welcoming à la Africa. I arrived…

Transit - phase liminale

11.000 mètres sur la surface entre terre et espace seulement le bruit des machines nous renvoie à l'idée de notre gravité, à ce que nous pesons, à ce que nous tient sur la terre. En descendant de l'immense bleu en passant par quelques nuages qui nous laissent sans orientation nous regagnons la terre. Elle paraît étrange d'ici haut. Nous ne connaissons pas ses reliefs car normalement nous en faisons part. Nous sommes dedans. Des petits points dans une vallée, sur une route devant une maison. Avec chaque mètre que nous approchons la terre, elle redevient de plus en plus celle que nous connaissons. Nous revoyons les contours des vaches, des gens et des cultures sur les champs. La terre autour de Casablanca est sèche, mais là où elle est irriguée, elle porte des fruits, elle est d'un vert ou d'un marron profond. C'est évidemment un paysage plutôt rural - avec un aéroport au milieu. A l'atterrissage, la terre nous regagne et nous la terre.
En partant de l'avion, je suis les panneaux "transit" car Casa n'est pas ma destination finale. Il me restent quelques heures pour arriver à Cotonou. Assis dans la halle de correspondance, j'ai donc assez de temps pour réfléchir sur la situation en transit.
D'en haut, j'ai vu quelques agriculteurs dans leurs champs. Je m'imagine qu'ils ont transpiré, qu'ils ont été sals de la terre, fatigués et contents de leurs travaux. Maintenant, dans la halle, il y a, autour de moi des gens qui écoutent leurs ipods qui se longent fatigués sur les banques et un qui écrit sur son ordinateur portable. Dehors, il fait quelques 30 degrées l'intérieur, il fait 20 dgréees. Les halogènes au plafond sont déjà allumés pourtant qu'il fait encore jour. Une voix de femme annonce des vols en français et anglais. Entre deux on écoute un peu de musique marocaine - peut être le seul signe que je sois au Maroc. On parle peu, on bouge avec lenteur, seulement quelques enfants font ce quÕils font toujours... ils jouent au cache cache...

Etre en transit, c'est être entre deux mondes ou même être nulle part. C'est excitant car d'ici on peut aller par tout. CÕest rassurant car les règles ˆ suivre sont très claires et simples. C'est une phase liminale - une possibilité de départ vers des nouveaux horizons. C'est également une situation aseptisée, sans vie, sans improviste, sans décisions à prendre si on ne le veut pas. C'est une position zéro - un point de départ.
Vers où ? Je connais seulement le nom de la ville... curieux de savoir plus...

Balast abwerfen vor Abflug

Es bleiben noch 48 Stunden bis zum Abflug. Kofferpacken steht auf dem Programm und das heißt entscheiden, was mitkommt und was hier bleibt. Ich würde Euch gerne alle mitnehmen oder zumindest irgendwann in diesem Jahr in Benin einmal bei mir willkommen heißen. Da das aber nur ein schöner Traum ist, will ich Euch wenigstens durch diesen Blog ein wenig mitnehmen, Euch an der Reise und den Erfahrungen teilhaben lassen und wenn Ihr denn wollt weiterhin mit Euch im Austausch und Kontakt bleiben.


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