CHAPTER 10
I Am an Other
The double nature—confined and open—of the body-self, particularly in relation to listening and to speech, may be perturbed in two opposing ways: either the body may become too closed on itself, or it may merge with the other.
—René Devisch
Thornton Wilder's masterpiece, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, begins with a tragedy that seems to defy explanation. A rope bridge gives way as a group of travellers are crossing a deep canyon, and they are thrown to their deaths. A Franciscan priest who witnesses the accident is both stunned and mystified. “The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break.”1 Brother Juniper doubts that a benevolent God would allow this fate to befall innocent people. There must surely be some reason for their deaths. “Why did this happen to those five?” Wilder's book recounts Brother Juniper's attempts to research the backgrounds of the victims and arrive at a theologically meaningful explanation of why they should have died at that time, and at that place. For those of us who repudiate the idea of divine omniscience and design, it is still not easy to accept that life may be devoid of ultimate meaning, and that accidents happen for no good reason. Though we may receive windfalls without much questioning, ill fortune tends to provoke great soul-searching. It seems outrageous, for example, that a young and beautiful woman should die of cancer, or that a brilliant writer, at the height of his powers, should perish in a car crash, while a corrupt tyrant enjoys health and happiness. Surely life is more than just a lottery. Surely the good do not deserve to suffer, or evil go unpunished. Surely there is some reason some of us should live in hell, while others inhabit paradise.
Faced with the unequal distribution of fortune and misfortune, human beings tend to embrace very different explanations. Some accept that inequalities are simply in the nature of things, or are divinely decreed. Others seek a person or persons who can be blamed for the unjust state of affairs. Still others refuse to accept inequality, repudiate “the blame game,” and prefer to determine the social causes of human inequality. These different modes of explaining misfortune entail quite different courses of action. If one believes that some daemonic, extra-human agency is behind the differential distribution of fortune, one may be inclined to accept one's lot fatalistically. There is little one can do about it, except endure it stoically and perhaps pray that the powers-that-be that have deserted one today will visit one tomorrow, rewarding one's perseverance and faith. If one believes that one's misfortune has been caused by some malevolent other—a witch, a sorcerer, an enemy—one will, if one has the means to do so, seek to bring that malefactor to justice, or take one's revenge upon him or her. If one believes that social forces (class struggle, colonial history, racism or sexism, etc.) underlie the way things are, then one will seek to change the status quo through social action. In practice, however, these different modes of action and explanation are usually co-present and variously combined in any particular situation, which makes it impossible to justify the view that entire societies or particular individuals exemplify any one of these modes alone. Thus, while Brother Juniper presumes that God is benevolent, he cannot accept the tragic collapse of the bridge unless he finds clues in the biographies of the victims that explain why God allowed them to perish. This difficulty of working out the relative weight of different factors in explaining a particular event recalls the case of the Zande granary that collapses on and kills an unfortunate person who happens to be sleeping in its shade. It is readily acknowledged that the immediate cause is dry rot or termite damage, but the question as to why the granary collapsed at that particular moment, killing that particular individual, can only be answered by seeking, through divination, the “witch” that wished the victim dead. In Zande parlance, the “first spear” was the witch, while the “second spear” was the weakened structure of the granary.2
In modern states, arguments rage over whether the plight of the disadvantaged is a reflection of their personal failings or the historical and structural failings of society, and whether the individual or the state is responsible for redressing inequalities. Even if we accept Sartre's Marxian view that we both make our history and are made by it,3 it is by no means clear in any particular situation what weighting we should assign free will and determinism.
The methodological difficulty of choosing between a “what” and a “who” is not unlike the problem anthropologists encounter with “structure” and “agency.” To what extent do we explain a person's susceptibility to spirit possession in terms of their social marginality, their structural position? And if we introduce agency into the picture, what kind of agency can a person be said to possess when overwhelmed by a power over which he or she exercises so little control?4
Clearly, anthropological theorizing shares many of the same uncertainties that anthropologists find among the people they study.5 While we historically prefer explanations of human behavior and thought that are focused on shared or collective factors—ethnic, cultural, social, class, caste, age, or gender—it is clear that no two individuals, born to the same roles and undergoing the same socialization, ever turn out to be identical. And every life course is in many ways unpredictable and unique, as George Devereux notes, invoking the Roman adage Si bis faciunt idem, non est idem (If two people do the same thing, it is not necessarily the same thing).6
This tension between different models for explaining any human situation—whether drawn from anthropology, philosophy, or so-called folk traditions—reflects the ambiguity of human existence, in which we are acted upon by the world to the same extent that we act on the world, wherein we are both determined and free, anonymous parts of an infinite whole, and autonomous members of finite and familial lifeworlds. Yet we persist, both in our lives and in our reflections on the human condition, in characterizing people as either closed in on themselves or merged with others when, for the most part, consciousness is continually wavering between these hypothetical extremes. Ironically, as René Devisch points out in his Yaka ethnography, a person who fully realized either of these extremes would be ill or insane.7
WILLING AND WAITING
One afternoon, in Freetown, I was walking down Spur Road in the direction of Lumley when a heavy lorry belching black smoke lumbered up the hill toward me. Printed in large letters above the windscreen were the words “Hard Work.” No sooner had the lorry passed than a red poda poda appeared. Its logo, emblazoned on the cab, was “Blessings.” This coincidence started me thinking about the interplay between stoic waiting and willful striving in everyday life and the different conceptions of a person's place in the social and cosmic scheme of things, for while patience implies accepting the status quo and not standing out from the crowd, striving may involve flouting custom and taking one's life into one's own hands.
According to a Kuranko adage, there is a lot of water in this world, but the water you drink is destined for you alone. If you are meant to live, the wherewithal of life will be there for you. If you are not meant to live, the wherewithal of life will be taken from you or given to someone else. In matters of life and death, divinities and ancestors have the last word. This is why people will sometimes put less effort into advancing a personal career than into divining the life course that has already been inscribed for them. In the West we are taught to assume responsibility for our own actions, to determine our own fates. If we work hard, apply ourselves, and do everything in our power to realize our ambitions and fulfill our dreams, then we will succeed. In West Africa one learns to be patient, to wait for doors to open and opportunities to arise. The powers-that-be, in their own good time and for reasons we cannot fathom, will give what they have to give and take what they have to take. If fortune smiles upon us, it is because we dutifully and stoically endured our time in the wilderness. If fortune passes us by, it is because we failed the test, ignored the advice of our elders, or fell foul of some sorcerer who stole what was meant for us.
This contrast between a fatalistic and a willful attitude to life may be overdrawn. In West Africa people are rarely so resigned to their fate that they do nothing to avert misfortune should a diviner see it coming, or ignore good fortune if it comes their way. No one is so bereft of any sense of oneself as an autonomous being that one is nothing more than an anonymous figure in a crowd. Even when people conform to certain protocols, doing their duty, going along with others without dissent, their reasons for doing so remain partly their own, and their experiences are seldom identical to the experiences of others.
In January 2002 I was staying with my old friend S. B. Marah in Freetown. As the president's brother-in-law, politicalally, and right-hand man, S. B. had a large number of people at his beck and call—servants, security personnel, chauffeurs, and camp followers—and every day he received petitions from villagers and propositions from businessmen, entrepreneurs, and diplomats. Among his most devoted assistants was a man in his forties called Fasili Marah, and in the run-up to the general election in 2002 S. B. had put pressure on the National Electoral Commission to hire his faithful underling. On the morning that the news reached us that Fasili's appointment had been confirmed, I congratulated Fasili on his good fortune. Though Fasili said that he owed everything to S. B., S. B. was quick to point out that “it was not for nothing,” and that Fasili's good fortune was well deserved. “He has stuck with me through thick and thin, and it is only right that steadfastness and loyalty should be rewarded.” There were several Kuranko elders at S. B.'s house that morning, and all concurred. One man added, however, that Fasili's success reflected the qualities of his mother, for, as the Kuranko see it, the blessings bestowed by one's paternal ancestors are contingent upon one's mother's behavior. If she is a hard-working, faithful, and dutiful wife to her husband, then her children will receive the blessings of their patrilineal forebears, and become duwe dannu (blessed children). If she fails in her duty by being lazy, unfaithful, or disobedient, then the path along which the patrilineal blessings flow will become blocked, and her children will be cursed. This is why the Kuranko say, “A man has many children; a woman bears them; a man's children are in her hands” (Ke l dan sia; musu don den; ke l den wo bolo) and observe that you are (i.e., your destiny is) in your mother's hands (i i na le bolo), or that the book your mother wrote is what you are reading now (i na l kedi sebene, i wole karantine kedi), which is to say that one's actions and disposition are direct reflections of one's mother's actions and disposition. In other words, though one's fate is ultimately determined by the ancestors and by God, all depends in practice on the dutiful work of women in serving their husbands and caring for their children. For many, such views encourage a fatalistic submission to life, a tendency to place one's hope in benefactors, mentors, or saviors—an attitude characteristic of many of those who now throng the new Pentecostal churches in the hope that good fortune will follow from giving up the little they do possess to the preachers and powers-that-be. For others, however, subjugating oneself in this way is seen to be both foolish and irresponsible. S. B., for example, took the view that “You are what you make of yourself.” This was his constant refrain when upbraiding the young men who fetched his bathwater in the mornings, washed and ironed his clothes, helped him dress, carried his bags, and attended him. “If you don't work hard, you'll get nothing in this world. You must be honest and straightforward. Young people today want something for nothing. They are not serious. Even my own children, I often think about them all night long. I don't sleep for thinking of them.” And S. B. told me how much he wanted his sons to “do well,” to be men of substance, status, and influence. That they worked as waiters in London restaurants filled him with shame. “Would I want people to know my sons are servants?” he asked. “These useless jobs. Living underground because they do not have residence visas.” When I pointed out to him that Abu and Chelmanseh were doing courses in hotel management in London and were not simply waiters, S. B. said he wanted to be proud of them, that he didn't want his sons to disappoint him. “These things weigh on my mind,” he said. “After I am dead, what will happen?”
FOOLS RUSH IN WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
That we in the West extol the virtues of hard work does not preclude fatalism from entering our thoughts, especially when our diligent labor and determined endeavors do not pay off. As the following story suggests, even the most ambitious and egotistical European will fall prey to fantasies of malevolent fate when his way is blocked and his efforts prove unavailing.
In 1868 a thirty-year-old Englishman called Winwood Reade arrived in Sierra Leone, determined, as he put it, “to open up a new region, and to have a red line of my own upon the map.”8
Reade was the nephew of Charles Reade, whose adventure novel The Cloister and the Hearth had been published in 1861. For ten years, the lesser-known Reade had also sought to make his mark as a writer, publishing an account of a journey to Gabon in search of gorillas, a history of the Druids, and three novels. His novels were slated by critics for the banality of the dialogue and the shallowness of the characters. As for his tendentious travelogue, it fared little better, and he might well have taken the opening sentences of his uncle's best seller as a description of his own situation. “Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep; their lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record them.”
In Freetown, Reade rented a cottage in the hills. The rainy season was breathing its last. Ink-colored clouds slipped back from the bush. Indigo lizards with bright-orange necks peered and skittered across mildewed concrete, and at dusk bats flitted upward from the direction of the sea, mewing and squealing.
The city overwhelmed him—rutted streets sown with Bermuda grass, the stench of open drains, the cryptic exuberance of the Krio market women who plied their daily trade in thread, ribbons, fishhooks, nails, and madras cottons and sat at night in the high windows of frame houses overlooking the harbor. He cut his official visits to the minimum, preferring the humid wilderness of the hills to the hubbub of the city. Every morning he wrote, and in the afternoons he attempted to assign Latin names to the curious lacquered shrubs—black, deep purple, and mottled lime—that filled his garden.
It was not until December that his vague ambitions metamorphosed into a feasible plan. During a visit to the government interpreter, Reade chanced upon a copy of Alexander Laing's Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries. That night he read it through and resolved to travel to the source of the Niger in the remote borderlands between anglophone Sierra Leone and francophone Guinea. His years of inertia and mediocrity were over. He would fulfill Laing's ambition and connect his own name forever with the Niger. At the same time, he would study firsthand customs that might throw new light on the history of religion.
He left Freetown in January 1869. Although the Royal Geographical Society had lent him a sextant and artificial horizon to make precise measurements at the Niger source, Reade regarded the instruments as encumbrances and left them behind. As for finding his way north, he placed every confidence in Laing's 1822 map. But the map was far from accurate, and it took Reade many months before he reached the town of Falaba in the far north, where the Yalunka chief, who had never before seen a white man, offered the stranger hospitality and protection.
Through his servant and interpreter, Abdulai, Reade learned that the chief's domain did not extend as far as the Niger, and that Falaba was at war with the Fula town of Dantilia. Mindful of Laing's tribulations in Falaba forty-five years earlier, Reade decided not to risk angering his host by announcing his plans to travel through Fula lands.
Every day, caravans of gold, ivory, and hides passed through Falaba. Laden donkeys and scores of bearers filed through the great palisades of cotton trees, heading south toward the coast. Reade talked to the caravaners, who told him that the Joliba, or great river, that Europeans called the Niger, was but a three-day march to the east. The impatient Englishman heard the same fabulous stories of the source that Laing had heard in his time.
In his journal, Reade anticipated his goal. “I shall associate my name forever with its course, and earn a place in the history of Africa, for I shall strike it higher by at least a hundred miles than any other European. The Niger is only fifty miles off: let me reach it, and I have my reputation!”
Five weeks passed. Unable to endure further delays, Reade told the ruler of his plans.
He was immediately rebuffed—Fulas besiege us, enemies live in that direction, the country is unsafe. I cannot let you go!
The explorer lapsed into melancholia. Even the capture and execution of a Fula spy failed to arouse him. “All has been in vain. I have done nothing. I have merely reached a point where another traveller has been. I am close to the Niger, and yet I might as well be a thousand miles away. Am I never to succeed? For ten years I have been writing and writing, and fiasco has followed fiasco; that is my own fault; I have only to curse my own incapacity. But here I have done all that a man could do. I selected my route with prudence; I have followed it up with resolution; I have patiently submitted to tedious delays and vexatious degradations—yet all is in vain. It seems that this passion for glory by which I am tormented is an evil spirit devouring my life. Had I not been ambitious I might have been happy; but what am I now? A man who has mistaken his vocation. A man who has climbed in public and has fallen, and who must go through life with the stigma of failure upon him. Even if I write a good book, people will always be able to say, ‘Yes he did that well enough; but he broke down in Africa, you know.’ And then I shall have to answer such questions as these: ‘Why did you not go to the Niger when you were so close? Well, I would not have given up. Don't you think that Baker or Livingstone would have managed to get on somehow or other?’”
His mental and moral exhaustion was now exacerbated by the effects of dysentery and fever. Unable to leave his sickbed, he succumbed to hallucinations. Preparing for death, he penned a rambling letter to an imaginary mistress, declaring his fidelity, assuring her of his tenacity of purpose.
Despite malaria and despair, Reade lived to learn that during his illness the Fula had attacked Falaba and been repulsed. The road to the south was now open; he was free to return whence he came.
During his convalescence in Freetown, the colonial secretary paid Reade a visit and formally forbade him from making further forays into the interior.
Reade protested. “Had Major Laing found everything easy, he would have left nothing in this country for me, his successor! My failure is eating into my soul. I would not care for captivity or sickness if I had only done something! I will go at it again. I will not leave Africa til I have written my name somewhere on the map!”
A month later Reade set off for Falaba, this time travelling light, determined, as he put it, to live off the land.
This time the Yalunka chief raised no objections to the white man travelling east. Reade took this to mean that his will had finally prevailed. But the open road simply meant that military campaigns had been called off with the onset of the rains and the demands of planting.
And so Reade reached Dantilia, and two days later he found his way to the banks of the Niger.
Elephant grass cut his hands as he thrust his way to the river's edge. As he watched the turbid water slipping by under a somber sky, an immense sadness took hold of him. By finding the river, he had escaped the opprobrium of complete failure, yet he felt no sense of success.
As three canoes crossed the river toward him, he asked his guide where they came from. Sankaran, his guide, answered. You will need their permission to go further.
Reade opened his journal. He wrote: “I feel all unstrung; it seems to me as if I am in a dream.”
The Sankaran men drew their canoes onto the greasy riverbank. Abdulai asked how far they were from the source of the Joliba.
There are slave hunters there, he was told. All the towns are spoiled.
Reade patiently extracted more information. The river near the source was called the Tembiko. It was two days distant. The source belonged to a Kuranko clan, the Koroma, who killed a black cow there every year, casting the head into the river as a sacrifice to a djinn. If the offering was accepted, the djinn brought the cow back to life; its head would reappear downstream, with ears pricked up and eyes wide open.
Reade had heard these stories before. But new to him were the Sankaran men's reports of gold in the Boure country far to the east. Even if the gold does not exist, Reade thought, I might reach Bamako, Mungo Park's highest point on the Niger, and so unite Laing's discoveries with Park's. This surely would win me a celebrated place in the history of African exploration.
Forgetting about the Niger source, he arranged to be ferried across the river, and hastened on through unmapped lands, intoxicated by every vista. “This is mine,” he exclaimed. “Here no European has been; it is Reade's Land! That hill, that river, that lake. I can call them what I please!”
He reached Bamako in September. Though the gold proved illusory, he was convinced that he had done more than enough to secure his reputation.
Back in England he presented an account of his travels to the Royal Geographical Society, only to be taken to task for his lack of firsthand observations and precise measurements, and to be reminded of the great value that the society set upon the discovery of the source of the Niger and the calculation of its height above sea level. Mere descriptions, culled from African informants, were worthless.
Your lack of scientific data is regrettable, he was told. And your romantic inclination and impetuosity unsuited to the business of exploration. But there is much to discover, and you have made a courageous beginning.
Humiliated by this condescension, Winwood Reade withdrew from society, forgot about Africa, and wrote an encyclopedic denunciation of the established church. The Martyrdom of Man was published in 1872 to scathing reviews.
He began to imagine the friendship of a refined and intellectual woman, and to dream of the patient understanding, esteem, and pure pleasure that such a woman might give an unjustly maligned man. He composed letters to his imaginary mistress, addressing her as “Margaret” and assuring her that he desired only her devotion and regard. Gradually, these letters brought him back to Africa and led to the publication of The African Sketch-Book in 1873.
Beset by heart and liver ailments, and struggling to complete a novel called The Outcast, Reade died in 1875. Ironically, his fame would come to him posthumously through The Martyrdom of Man that, by 1940, had gone into its twenty-fourth edition.
I have always been struck by the coincidence that Winwood Reade was writing his self-pitying tracts about disappointed ambition at the same moment the sixteen-year-old Arthur Rimbaud was writing against the world in which he had been raised, and already envisaging a place like Africa, “far from everywhere,” where he might lose himself and become another person entirely. Ironically, it is only in giving up the dream of making one's mark that one can fully become part of these worlds where great rivers arise and new understandings may be born.
The same year that Reade died, Rimbaud wrote his last poem.