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…
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