Black Magic

As I mentioned earlier I was excited to sleep on my roof under the stars. Well little did I know the controversy I would stir up with this seemingly simple act. No one in the village sleeps outside. They believe that at night the evil spirits come out. Ngone was so scared in the tent that she was shaking and couldn't sleep. She was the first person of the village in hundreds (or thousands) of years to sleep outdoors. So I broke some longstanding traditions to say the least.

Ngone's mother is a traditional medecine woman specializing in fertility. She became a medecine woman back in 2001 or so when she started having visions. She is able to communicate with the spirits. But there are also other traditional medicine men (called Marabouts) who do bad things against people with these powers.

Ngone's mother was told about a new Marabout in a nearby village who came from Mali. So she took us to visit him. He looked like a young man but was actually in his 40s. He said he has a son in the United States, but he lives in a small rented room in a village house with no furniture except for two floor mats. He told us that he couldn't sleep the night before because he knows there is a gris-gris (like a voodoo charm) planted in Ngone's mother's house. He proceeded to read our futures in the sand. Then that night he walked to the house (he doesn't take wheels). He sat in the middle of the compound with Ngone's brother. Then he got up and walked next to the entry door. He pointed at a place in the ground and told Ngone's brother Abdou to dig there. Abdou dug down a few inches and sure enough hit a small thing which looked like a cut goat's horn with things stuffed inside. It looked old. I wouldn't believe he knew exactly where that gris-gris was buried if I didn't witness him point to its location myself. And Ngone and her brothers are almost as skeptical about all this stuff as you and I. He proceeded to say special prayers to cancel the evil effects, including flipping two shells that happened to land open side up, whose openness ensured freedom from evil. The two pictures above are him digging a new hole for the new gris-gris he planted to protect the house.

I also included a picture with the eldest Imam of the village. He prayed at every baptism and funeral, but is now retired and Ngone's mother's husband has taken over that task. The elder's wife is Ngone's father's (he died when Ngone was a few years old) sister. The other pictures are of her (the lady smiling with Ngone) and Ngone's mother.