Animist Museum

When Caroline and I traveled to Southern Senegal, we stopped by the coastal town of Cap Skiring. There was a tour guide there that had been recommended by some past volunteers, and their advice was literally “look for Abib”. At first we thought the chances of us finding this Abib fellow amongst all the people of town would be slim, but as we were walking down the street, Abib actually found us, and asked us if we were friends with the previous volunteers who came to Casamance. He is a practicing Animist and offered to take us on a tour of an Animist museum (In Casamance, there is much more religious diversity, with a higher population of more traditional African religions such as Animism, which is a stark contrast from the north which is almost completely Muslim). First off, it wasn’t a traditional museum. It was more of a trail through the woods, with periodic stops by enormous trees (fromage trees. Fromage is French for cheese. The French colonized Senegal in the early 1900s, and I guess named some trees after cheese?) which had exhibits leaning against them.

Some exhibits were more cultural, and dealt with traditional instruments, and agriculture techniques, and others were more religious in nature. These are some pictures from the more cultural tradition end of things.

A Senegalese guitar like instrument

Here is something used to gracefully climb trees

And here is me ascending the tree as gracefully as a forest lemur. What a natural!

This is a device used to catch fish in shallow water. You put this little cage over top of it and reach through the whole on the top to grab the fish.

In the middle of the museum were some Animist elements. Here is a picture of what is called a fetish. It is a pile of bones that the Animists use to communicate with the dead.

Most often, a maribout (pronounced “mariboo”) is present and he sits beside the bones and claims to translate what is being said by the dead. There are maribouts in Muslim culture too, and their presence in West African Islam is a relic from previous African religions. Next, Abib showed us something really freaky. It was this scarecrow thing with the skull of a bull that was dressed as a woman.

He said that if there is no rain for a while, they sacrifice a black bull to it, and then it will rain. I imagine a clever maribout would probably check the local weather forcast just before the sacrifice. Caroline and I were trying to remain focused on what he was saying, but standing next to that thing really gave us the willies. Being alone in the woods didn’t help the situation, and I felt for a second that we were those two people who always die at the beginning of a horror movie.

Afterwards, we stopped by a little village and Abib showed us how cross-village communication is possible. Here it is

To deliver a message, the large metal drum is taken out of the hut and hit an appropriate amount of times to deliver a message to the adjacent village. However, strangely enough, in this remote African village I actually had a couple bars of cell phone reception. More so than a couple places in my hometown in Marlyand….

And finally, this wasn't part of the museum, but we found one of those huge African termite mounds.

This concluded our day at Cap Skiring and we traveled to the town of Zuiginchor before heading back to Dakar by boat the next day.

On a really sad note, my long time friend Delaney has left Senegal. To quote Michael Scott "it feels like someone took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears". She arrived a little before me back in August and we immediately became friends, and we were the only people left in Senegal from that original group of volunteers back in September. Life here isn’t always easy, and there are many times when you need a friend who can relate to your problems when Senegalese life presents its many challenges. She is a great friend and I will miss her so very much.