Merlin and mermaids

"Tu connais les sirènes?" "Have you heard of mermaids?"
My friend Abdon, lawyer, father of thirteen children by three different wives, and a very sensible and responsible person, asks me a serious question.
"Yes, of course," I reply.
"So what do you think they are?," he asks.
I tell him that I believe they are mythical creatures, invented by lonely sailors on long voyages at sea.
Abdon laughs.
"No," he says, "they are very real."
He explains that 'mermaids' are supernatural creatures who live in the water with powers that it is best not to trifle with. I guess the look on my face is rather incredulous and skeptical, for he laughs at my ignorance.
"We all know they exist," he says.
He tells me the story of the engineer who designed and built the great bridge on the Sanaga river: "He went in the water and stayed there for several days. Only then did they start constructing the bridge. And when he died, he was buried next to the bridge."
I tell him that we have even longer bridges in the Netherlands, one even spanning an entire sea arm, and that as far as I am aware any preliminary underwater activity is to assess the state of the river bed in order to build a sturdy foundation.
"I have never heard any of our engineers say that they had to confer with mermaids before they could start constructing their bridges," I say, as if that would settle the matter.
Abdon is not convinced, however: "Of course it would be a secret, so he wouldn't be telling you, now would he?"
It is kind of hard to argue with that, but I try anyway: "But in the West we don't believe in witchcraft and magical creatures anymore. We use science, which is much more effective."
"Oh, I know that," Abdon says. "I once had this book that explained it all."
He proceeds to tell me that in this book he read that two or three hundred years ago all the sorcerers of the West were called together by their great head sorcerer ("il s'appellait Merlin" - "his name was Merlin.")
"Merlin had them all sign a pact in which they promised that from now on they would only perform 'daylight magic' that was supposed to benefit the people, instead of 'night magic', which has only negative purposes."
I don't have the heart to try and explain to him that Merlin, like mermaids, is considered a mythical creature.
Later he takes me to meet his friend, Tonton Louis. Louis is blind and has no obvious means of income, but he lives in one of the nicest houses in Obala. They tell me that is because he acts as a sort of counselor to the wealthy and powerful of Cameroon. After discussing the football World Cup for a while, Abdon tells him that I don't believe in magic.
I try to explain that my faith in science is much stronger than my faith in superstition. Like Abdon, Louis is amused.
"Science is nothing but the white man's brand of magic," he says.
I explain that whereas magic is shrouded in secrecy, science depends on openness.
"That has allowed science to progress to the point that we now have electricity and airplanes an cars."
"Ah, but magic makes progress too," Louis exclaims. "I remember that when I was young the sorcerers couldn't work their magic across a river or stream. They can now. And it is well known that when we first got electricity the sorcerer's magic couldn't penetrate houses where they had electricity. But electricity is no longer a barrier against African magic."
I still find it all very hard to believe.

Clap hands!

When we were little, in a long gone century, my sisters and their friends used to play these games that involved all sorts of rhythms: hopping and skipping games, and a complicated rhythmic leaping game, almost a little dance, which involved a loop of elastic string.
I am not really all that well informed about the origins of children's games - I have the impression that not much effort has been put into scientific research into the matter by others either. It would appear that these games have been taught almost exclusively by children to children over the course of generations. I could guess that the origins of this ritualized kind of play go a very long way back - they may be the most ancient form of culture that we have left, possibly dating back to prehistoric times.
Maybe today's children in our western societies still play the same games as my sisters all those years ago - not having any offspring of my own I can't tell. But I would assume that this style of playing is much less common now than it was then. Kids have so many other stimulants in this day and age, after all - computers, the internet, game consoles - that they just have less and less time to spend on neolithic gameplay.
All this is just an excuse to share this short video of my two little friends from Cameroon, Jordynie, who is 8, and her aunt Lolita, who is 7. They play an ancient little hand-clapping game that reminded me of some games my own sisters used to play. It is accompanied by a song about 'coca cola' and 'fanta', which is obviously of much more recent origin. I have seen them do similar games with lyrics about sick grandmothers and wedding days whose origins date back probably a lot further.
Their almost surreal singing reminded on me of the lyrics of 'The Clapping Song', an old Shirley Ellis hit:
Three, six, nine
The goose drank wine
The monkey chew tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke, the monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat.

Flying a beetle

Elvine, Jordynie and Lolita, the little girls in the house, are standing around the dinner table, all excited. I go over to see what all the fuss is about.
They have captured a rather beautiful, custard yellow beetle and are trying to attach a piece of string to one of its legs. This is not an easy task, especially as the girls seem a bit reluctant to actually touch the beastie. It's only when their elder cousin, Babette, turns up that their efforts result in success. Babette is not scared to pick up the beetle between thumb and index finger while she instructs little Jordynie to make a loop in the string and tie it to one of the insect's six legs.
After two failed attempts they finally manage to attach the string to the hapless beetle. The excitement mounts: "Go, go, take it outside", Babette urges her younger cousins. On the porch she instructs little Jordynie, who holds the piece of string with the beetle dangling from one end, to throw it in the air.
At first the poor beetle doesn't seem to understand what its captors want of it, but after having been tossed into the air a couple of times it finally opens its shield, spreads its wings and tries to fly away. Of course it can't get far with its leg tied up. The girls scream with delight as it buzzes around like an animated little kite on the end of its piece of string.
Fortunately for the beetle the string hasn't been attached to its leg all that firmly. After a few minutes it manages to free itself and flies away. The girls run after it, laughing and squealing.

The man in the jar

We're sitting in a taxi in downtown Yaounde. In Cameroon, people share cabs - up to 5 passengers in a little, old Toyota Starlet - so it is not uncommon to find yourself in a taxi with a bunch of total strangers. The two guys in the front seat next to the driver are talking about something they heard on the radio: "Quelques enfants ont trouvé un homme dans une bouteille de mayonaise" - "Some kids have found a man in a mayonaise jar."
"Did you hear that?," my friend Razi asks me. "You don't believe in witchcraft, do you? Now you'll see!"
"Yes," one of the guys in the front seat says. "They're going to show it on the tv news tomorrow's what they said."
The next morning the news on CRTV, the national tv channel, does indeed show an item about the 'man' in the jar. Plied and folded little limbs in a murky, pinkish liquid which makes it hard to see the whole creature. According to some sources it was moving and therefore still alive at some point.
Apparently the police have confiscated the jar with its spooky content and plan to rebury it. A priest is interviewed about the affair. He warns against the dangers of witchcraft. No mention is made of experts in medicine or biology who might investigate the thing inside the bottle scientifically.
"You see?," my African friends cry out. "This proves that witchcraft exists, doesn't it?"
I tell them I never doubted the existence of witchcraft, just its efficacy. "To me it looks like it probably was a fetus."
My friends mock me: "A fetus with limbs that are so perfectly formed? Impossible!"
Of course I'm no expert in prenatal anatomy, but it would seem to me that the most obvious and natural explanation, i.e. that the little human figure is indeed a fetus, would be the most probable one.
As for the reason why someone would want to put a fetus in a mayonaise jar, I can only guess. It might be a premature birth, the result of an illegal abortion, or, indeed, the work of some deluded witchdoctor. Newborn babies and, I presume, fetuses as well, are apparently considered to possess powerful 'juju.'
To my African friends, who firmly believe in the objective reality of witchcraft, the supernatural explanation (in this case the notion that the thing in the jar is indeed a grown man, reduced in size by some powerful marabou) will forever be the most obvious one, however. Occam's razor cuts both ways...
(Pictures by CRTV)
Link: Ghanaian author Kofi Akosah-Sarpong reflects on the power of witchcraft in Africa.

The perfume tree

Little Vances (short for Vanceslas) is only five years old. The two of us are sitting on the porch in the late afternoon. Suddenly he points to the tree that stands in front of the house: "Ça, c'est le parfum" - "That is perfume, over there."
"Comment ça?," I ask my little friend - "How so?"
"You take the leaves and crush and rub them on your skin and then you smell very nice," he explains.
We walk over to the tree. "Which leaves?," I ask. Vances points to some narrow, curly leaves that grow on the end of some of the lower branches and that look quite different from the tree's regular leaves - obviously they're some kind of blossom.
I pluck some of them and we return to the porch. "Will you show me how to make perfume with them?," I ask. Vances nods enthousiastically. He takes a couple of the petals and rubs them vigorously on his arm. Then he holds it up to my nose: "Smell!"
The leaves do leave a sweet, soapy scent on his skin.
Later on I ask his 'mami' Agnes what the the name of the tree is. "I don't know," she replies. "We just call it the perfume tree."