As many of you know I am not a religious person. I have little spiritual faith, I don't believe in god, and I can be quite the cynic. These things all still hold true. I was raised Jew-ish which coming from a small, rural, white farmstead town in Vermont meant the world to me. As I grew older what it meant to me to be Jewish changed as did my perspective on judaism. As of this post I'm still trying to figure out what I am and how I want to identify myself. I'm an atheist and I identify as culturally Jewish, beyond that it is a huge abyss. But this post isn't really about religiosity in Vermont, but rather my experiences in Senegal. I have been in Senegal for 18 months. Upon arriving we were taught a bit about the Muslim culture that encompasses life in Senegal. I began to truly understand a bit of the Muslim religion, daily prayers, giving alms, etc. I lived it. I didn't participate directly, not being a Muslim myself, but I did observe, watch, and admire the devotion my family and friends give in the name of their religion. Islam is one of the most generous, beautiful, and conscientious religions I have encountered. The more interesting encounters I have had with Islam involve marabouts. Marabout (or mori-ce as we say in Bambara) is a religious leader and teacher in West Africa. They often wander throughout the lands, surviving on alms and helping people with sicknesses, creating amulets, and telling the future. They are often also scholars of the Quran. I have had three separate and distinct encounters with marabouts. They all occurred in my village, one I sought out, the others came to me.
The first time I saw a marabout I was sick. I had a some gastrointestinal issues, not uncommon in Peace Corps, but I wasn't getting better and instead worse. I had tried pepto bismal and had called my Peace Corps doctors but had not heard back. I thought, why not just go and see the marabout. Everyone else in my villages does, maybe his stuff actually does work. The marabout in my village is one of the wealthier men in my village. I know this because he doesn't farm, he travels to Tamba almost every day on a motorcycle, and his compound does not have any huts, only large buildings with zinc (metal) roofs. I told him I was sick and he brought me into a room, filled with old soda bottles filled with random liquids. On the floor lay piles of papers, all written in arabic, a wooden tablet, and some random shells and prayer beads. I described to him my symptoms and he searched for a specific prayer in his pile of papers until he found the one he was looking for that would take care of my problem. Once he found the prayer he took some black water/ink and a wooden pen and copied the prayer onto the wooden tablet. He then said a prayer in arabic with his prayer beads and then washed the prayer off into a bowl so that the black ink filled the bowl. He then took a sip of the black water and passed the bowl to me. I took the tiniest sip ever, skeptical about the whole situation and set the bowl down. He filled the empty water bottle I brought with the black water and told me to rub it on my stomach and drink some every day. He also said to make meat soup and eat that and that would cure my stomach issues.
The second time I visited a marabout, it was more a situation of, the marabout visited me. There was a visiting marabout from the Gambia who came to my village during the day. He spoke some english, pretty good actually. Every day my dad would go pick him up from Tamba on his moto and bring him back to Botou. One day we were sitting together and he asked me if I had ever had my future told my numbers. Of course I said no and he brought out these wooden pieces that looked much like scrabble pieces and laid them out. He put them in two columns and told me to pick a number and remember the number but not tell him. He then moved the wooden pieces between the two columns and kept asking me which column my number was in Eventually he asked me to pick a second number, which I did and he did the same thing with the two numbers. Then he asked me if my grandmothers name was Anna. Stunned I said indeed it was, my maternal grandmother. I was impressed. He then went on to tell me to buy a string of beads to string around my waist, three kola nuts for old women, 6 oranges for young women, and some bananas for the young kids. The impression he had made of getting my grandmother's name shortly wore off, but nonetheless, and experience worth having.
The last marabout I saw was a visiting marabout from Mali, staying across the road from my compound. He called me into to his room one afternoon and told my fortune with cowry shells. He told me I would have many projects and other accolades that I take down to the simple generalities you can make about that one white person living in a small village in Senegal.
The three visits to the marabouts were intriguing to say the least, but what they provided me with most was an inside look into traditional medicine, belief, and faith characteristics that I have very little experience with.
