African Power West African Mediums Catering to Surinamese Clients in the Netherlands

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60

brill.com/afdi

Amber Gemmeke* University of Bayreuth, Germany [email protected]

Abstract

This paper explores how West African migrants’ movements impacts their religious imagery and that of those they encounter in the diaspora. It specifically addresses how, through the circulation of objects, rituals, and themselves, West Africans and Black Dutchmen of Surinamese descent link, in a Dutch urban setting, spiritual empowering and protection to the African soil. West African ‘mediums’ offer services such as divination and amulet making since about twenty years in the Netherlands. Dutch- Surinamese clients form a large part of their clientele, soliciting a connection to Afri- can, ancestral spiritual power, a power which West African mediums enforce through the use of herbs imported from West Africa and by rituals, such as animal sacrifices and libations, arranged for in West Africa. This paper explores how West Africans and Dutchmen of Surinamese descent, through a remarkable mix of repertoires alluding to notions of Africa, Sufi Islam, Winti, and Western divination, creatively reinvent a shared understanding of ‘African power’.

Keywords

Black Caribbeans – Sufi Islam – Winti – marabout – diaspora – ritual

* I thank Prof. dr. Tinde van Andel, Dr. Karel Arnaut, Dr. Linda van de Kamp and two anony- mous reviewers for their valuable suggestions for this article.

Résumé

Cette contribution explore l’impact des mouvements migratoires des Africains occidentaux sur leur imagerie religieux et celui de ceux qu’ils rencontrent dans la diaspora. Cette contribution adresse spécifiquement la question comment, à travers la circulation des objets, des rituels, et eux-mêmes, les Africains occidentaux et les Néerlandais noirs d’origine surinamais relient la protection et la force spirituelle du sol africain dans un milieu urbain hollandais. Les «médiums» d’Afrique de l’Ouest offrent des services tels que la divination et la fabrication d’amulettes depuis une vingtaine d’années aux Pays-Bas. Les clients néerlandais-surinamiens forment une grande partie de leur clientèle, sollicitant une connexion au pouvoir spirituel ancestral africain, un pouvoir que les milieux ouest-africains imposent grâce à l’utilisation d’herbes importées d’Afrique de l’Ouest et par des rituels tels que des sacrifices d’animaux et des libations en Afrique de l’Ouest. Cette contribution étudie la réinvention creative des Africains de l’Ouest et des Néerlandais d’origine surinamais, à travers une amalgame remarquable des notions d’Afrique, de Soufi Islam, de Winti et de la divination occidentale, une compréhension partagée du «pouvoir africain».

Mots-clés

Noirs des Caraïbes – Soufi Islam – Winti – marabout – diaspora – rituel

Introduction

In the Netherlands, West Africans ‘mediums’, as they most often call themselves, advertise their services broadly in urban areas where, predominately, migrants live.1 They distribute advertisements in mailboxes and on the street, in local newspapers, and in magazines specifically targeted at Surinamese and Antilleans such as Pleasure, a free entertainment and lifestyle magazine. The following advertisement, for example, was distributed in November 2013 in the Rotterdam area of Crooswijk:

1 Since ‘medium’ is the term my informants used mostly I will employ the term throughout this chapter, rather than ‘healer’ or ‘marabout’,terms more often used in, respectively, English- and French-language settings.

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figure 1 “No life without problems, no problems without solution … Mr. Faïsale. I introduce myself: A real African, international, very efficiently working medium. I offer help with: the return of your loved one, your career, your exam, chance at happiness, sexual potency, infertility, bad spirits, even with hopeless cases and all other occult dealings. If you come you will be happy! A small advertisement is read as well … As you see. Result 100% guaranteed.”2

Dutch media makers frequently used these advertisements to contact these mediums under the pretext of being clients, ‘unmasking’ West African mediums, sometimes by means of hidden cameras, as charlatans. Dutch media generally portray clients of these mediums as being naive, unstable, and superstitious (Gemmeke 2011; Kuczynski 2002). ‘African magic’ is thus portrayed as inferior otherness. As such, it reproduces binary oppositions of science-magic, traditional-modern, superstitious-secular, and African-European, part of the legitimation of Europe colonising Africa (Meyer & Pels 2013). The simplis- tic oppositions of occult, irrational African thinking and transparent, ratio- nal Western thinking – often implicit and therefore all the more basic – are omnipresent in today’s Western press, with Western press capitalizing on sen- sational stories of Africans ‘magic’ (Geschiere 2003: 159).3

2 Faïsale is a Muslim given name frequently used in francophone West Africa, especially in Benin. 3 In line with the pioneering work of Tambiah (1990) and Asad (2003), I regard ‘magic’ and religion to be socially and culturally influenced orientations to reality constructed by the context in which they operate. For specifically the West African context, Mommersteeg adopted the term ‘magical-religious’ (1996). Other terms have been used as well, such as notably by Soares who has employed the term ‘esoteric sciences’ in the West African context; “a convenient way to discuss […] various practices […] as there appears to be no universally

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Wether or not West African mediums deliberately try to con their clients remains outside the scope of this paper. Skepticism, fear or suspicion of charlatanism, is inherent to a clients’ visit to a West African medium. Regardless this scepticism, or specifically because of it, clients visit West African mediums specifically for their promise to offer ‘African’ spiritual powers.4 Far from being inferior or traditional, religious ideas, symbolisms, and practices con- cerning West African magical-religious power is re-configured in the settings of transcontinental relations with their local embeddedness, and thus essen- tially modern and urban (cf. Hüwelmeier & Krause 2009). West African mediums are active in a number of European urban areas, dis- tributing the exact same advertisements as the one above (in local languages) in cities such as Paris, Bruxelles, London, and Lisbon. The presence of West African mediums in the Netherlands is, however, interesting for two reasons: firstly, an absence of both a colonial history with and a geographical proxim- ity to West Africa, and secondly, the relation between West Africans and Black Dutchmen of Surinamese descent. In the Netherlands, West Africans mediums and their Dutch-Surinamese clients share not only socio-geographical areas (migrant filled outskirts of urban centers or low-cost rundown inner city areas) but alsoWest Africa as a reference point and source of ancestral spiritual power. Both groups, often facing precarious livelihoods due to illegality, financial hard- ship, or other socio-economic problems, and marginalized in Dutch society as a whole, refer to ‘Africa’ as a source of identity, power, and authenticity, wherein notions of the powerful and healing properties of the West African soil play and important role (see also Abranches 2014: 266; Saraiva 2008: 262). These notions are reinforced by the use of herbs imported from West Africa and Suri- name in potions and amulets, by animal sacrifices and libations arranged for in West Africa, and by incantations and spirits sent from the Netherlands to Africa and the Caribbean as well as from Africa to the Netherlands and the Caribbean. In this way, the transatlantic slave trade and European colonial rule

accepted local or regional term that covers all of the kinds of knowledges and practices that can be included under this rubric” (2005: 127). See also Brenner’s excellent analysis of geomancy in an Islamic, African context (Brenner 1985: 78–98). In Senegal, to name one regional example, terms often used are the French maraboutage and the Wolof liguee (work). In this chapter I use the encompassing terms ‘magical’ and ‘magical-religious’. In this respect, I follow both Kuczynski (2012) and Van Andel et al. (2013), describing West African and Surinamese practices in Europe respectively. 4 Part of this skepticism is fed by the fear that the medium has in fact great powers, but uses them in malicious ways to abuse the client’s vulnerability. Scepticism and faith work, here, in tandem (cf. Taussig 2003, Kirsch 2004).

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access african power 43 resulted in the travelling of religious ideas, practices and symbols from Africa to the Caribbean, from the Caribbean and Africa to Europe, and within Europe between Europeans of Caribbean descent and Africans. West African mediums are, although most share a Muslim orientation, a highly diverse set of religious practitioners. What is more, West African mediums and their clients have quite divergent religious backgrounds, namely, Sufi Islam and Winti – ‘an Afroamerican religion which centres round the belief in personified supernatural beings’ (Wooding 1979: 35). In the Netherlands, however, West Africans and Dutch-Surinamese develop multi-faceted relationships, of which the medium-client relationship is one. Following Krause (2008), Krause and Hüwelmeier (2009), and Saraiva (2008 and this issue) I explore in this paper how Africa-related religious imagery and practices creatively are reinvented in an European urban setting. West African mediums and their clientele of Surinamese descent negotiate, in intimate one-on-one encounters, an understanding of ‘African power’; a liberating, protective, and enabling force in a predominantly white, Dutch, secular environment. I thus argue that by circulating themselves, their artifacts, and their spirits, West African migrants not only recreate their own beliefs and practices but also the ones of those they cater to in the diaspora (cf. Banchoff 2007; Meyer & Pels 2003; Ter Haar 2009). As such, this chapter contributes to the study of a ‘circum-Atlantic reper- toire’ (Matory 2005: 267) and the continuity of identity-forming in an Afro- Caribbean-diaspora setting based on shared notions of ‘Africa’ and ‘African- ness’.As Matory argues, these notions are shaped not through place but through dialogue. To explore this dialogue, this chapter is divided in two parts: the first part is focused on West African mediums’ in the Netherlands including their modus operandi, the second part is focused on Black Dutchmen of Surinamese descent in the Netherlands, including their interaction with West African mediums. The chapter starts with a presentation of the specific migratory background and socio-economic position of West African mediums in the Netherlands as compared to other European countries (France and Portugal). Next, I analyse their services and marketing tools, exhibiting a remarkable mix of repertoires alluding to ‘Africa’, Sufi Islam, Winti, and ‘Western divination’. Subsequently, I discuss the migratory background of Black Dutchmen of Surinamese origin in the Netherlands and notions of ‘Africannes’ as developed by part of this group. Lastly, I explore ways in whichWest African mediums employ notions of ‘Africa’ to empower their clients of Surinamese origin. This chapter is based on interviews with ten West African mediums and two Winti-experts in the cities of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Delft, Leiden and The Hague in 2012–2014. My earlier study on West African Islamic specialists in

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Dakar, Senegal (Gemmeke 2008, 2011) contextualizes the dynamics of the mediums’ work in the Netherlands. The domain of (West African) mediums is, by default, thriving on mystery and secrecy. As a result, the research upon which this chapter is based does not encompass the opinion of Surinamese clients on their interaction with West African mediums. More in-depth research on the relationship between medium and client is therefore needed. The two Suri- namese Winti experts I interviewed on this topic both asserted they had never visited such mediums themselves, but that these mediums do have a reputa- tion, and are feared for, having great spiritual powers (interviews 22 November 2012 and 6 December 2012).5

West African Mediums in the Netherlands Musa, a Gambian now in his early forties, offers divination sessions, spells, amulets and potions in the run-down inner-city area of Rotterdam West.6 His clientele consists mainly of people with relationship issues, he says, but he also receives drugs dealers looking for protection, undocumented people in need of documents and work permits, and those living on social welfare struggling to make ends meet. Coming to Europe in 1993, Musa first spend some time with his brother in Paris before coming to the Netherlands. According to Musa, he left Paris because “there was too much competition among mediums” and he tried his luck in Rotterdam. Here, after a six-month stay, he obtained a legal status by marrying a nurse originating from Curacao. Nine years on, having since divorced, Musa now rents a 20m2 room in a house he shares with Hungarians and Russians. When asked if he has any Dutch clients, he said:

Dutch people do not believe in this. What is more, they do not even like it. I also do not have many West African clients. West African people call home to Senegal or Gambia to get a treatment or advice, where they trust the people they contact and where costs of treatments are cheaper. Most of my clients come from Suriname and from the Antilles. They believe strongly in what we do, and of course they know about it since their forefathers brought the knowledge from Ghana. The Surinamese, they love to do baths, and I always make sure I have herbs from Gambia to give them baths. Interview 30 January 2013

5 Kuczynski, describing West African marabouts residing on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, mentions a similar attitude of Antilleans towards West Africans: they are mistrusted, but sought after for their secret forces (2007: 83). 6 All informants’ names are pseudonyms.

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Musa thus indicates that ‘Dutch-Dutch’ people are not among his clients. In another interview he explained this absence by the lack of a colonial history with West Africa: “The Netherlands did not have any colonies in Africa, I think that is why. In Belgium or France is a very different situation, there they believe.” (interview 17 April 2013). Musa also indicates that Africans in the Netherlands do not trust the services of a Netherlands-based medium, and so neither form the majority of his clientele. Musa explains the dominant presence of Dutch people of Surinamese or Antillian origin among his clientele, by specifically mentioning their colonial history with West Africa, albeit a different region (Ghana) then his own (Gambia). Ghanaians form the largest group of West Africans in the Netherlands (and second largest, after Somalians, of Africans) and it is possible that Musa mentions Ghana for that reason. He says to specifically cater for the ‘love’, as he calls it, of Surinamese for herbal baths, and to supply African herbs coming from Gambia for this reason. Like Musa, most of the West African mediums operating in the Netherlands orig- inate from Muslim (and often francophone) West African countries such as Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, and Mali. From the tenWest African mediums I interviewed, nine are Muslim and member of a Sufi brotherhood (two Senegalese, two Gambians, one Malian and three men from Guinea Conakry), and one is Christian from Ghana. Of these ten, three had been married to Dutch women of Afro-Surinamese or Antillean descent, and seven among them claimed that Surinamese formed the majority of their clientele.7 In West Africa, spiritual mediums are omnipresent. Often called marabout in Francophone areas, they offer services in a Sufi Islamic context and frame and phrase their services as such. These services include the manipulation of Qur’anic verses, Arabic geomancy (ramalu in Mandinka and Wolof), astrology ( falakiya), dream interpretation (istikhara), and prayer retreats (khalwah). A significant aspect of the political and economic power of marabouts is intimately tied to the mystical Sufi notion of baraka: divine grace and/or blessing. Baraka is obtained through kinship, teachers, and exemplary behavior. It is associated with knowledge, a strong personality, wealth and power (see also Cruise O’Brien & Coulon 1988 and Soares 2005). It encompasses the capac- ity to give blessings that protect against a wide variety of misfortunes (Bop 2005: 1113). In the postcolonial period, the exchange of blessings and prayers

7 Babou, in an African Diaspora chapter on Senegalese Sufi master Dièye, similarly notes that he had limited success among Senegalese in France, and that it was mostly black Frenchmen and Americans who saw in the teachings of Dièye a form of pan-West Africanist ideology rooted in Islam (2011: 42).

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access 46 gemmeke for commodities intensified and proliferated. Through urbanization and liber- alization of the press, marabouts became more and more ‘free-floating sancti- fiers’ (Soares 2004: 153), aggressive entrepreneurs, avidly looking for clientele in West Africa’s urban centers. Unconstrained by social control, urban centers – filled with rural migrants struggling in a highly competitive environment for jobs, spouses, accommodation – presented unparalleled opportunities to virtu- ally anyone, including women and those without marabout family affiliations, to offer spiritual empowering, protection and divination sessions (Gemmeke 2008). In Europe, where especially after the 1980s increasing numbers of West Africans migrated to, a further ‘democratisation of baraka’ takes place, in which the distortion of former social status and a lack of social control offers to anyone the opportunity to present himself as a ‘medium’ or ‘spiritual medium’, and collect himself a stock of knowledge to this end (Kuczynski 2002). West African mediums offer their services in former colonizing countries France, Great Britain and Portugal since the beginning of the 20th century and, as of the beginning of the 1990s, also in southern European countries Spain, Italy and Greece. In the Netherlands, their presence is relatively recent: since about the end of the 1990s. Based upon Hoffer’s publication (2009) and my research, I estimate that at this moment a few hundred West African mediums are (intermittently) active in the Netherlands. This amount sharply contrasts with nearby Paris, where their numbers are said to be much higher, running in the thousands (Kuczynski 2002). In France, the first few marabouts arrived in the 1960s, working, like their fellow countrymen, at various industrial sector jobs, as construction work- ers, and as rubbish collectors (Kuczynski 2012: 1). According to anthropologist Kuczynski, West African’s position in the competitive market for ‘practical religion’, took place progressively. She attributes this change to the visibility of marabouts through their advertisements and the way in which they combine a moral and religious system inspired by Islamic values, Sufi Islamic techniques of amulet making, and an adjusted lexicon and divination techniques, which resulted in Paris (like in the Netherlands) in an urban customer base beyond African immigrant communities (Kuczynski 2012: 6–8). Kuczynski notes that lexicons changed, for example, client’s ‘genies’ in ‘guardian angels’ and ‘evil eye’ in ‘bad vibes’.She furthermore remarks that one of the most canonical practices in Africa, that of dreaming as divination technique, has become supplanted in certain cases by the throwing of cowries. The construction of amulets, however, did not seem to undergo much change (Kuczynski 2012: 17–18). In France, in contrast to the Netherlands, a large number of marabouts are registered by the tax office. This phenomenon is the remarkable effect of a shift in French

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access african power 47 policy from considering divination by West Africans a criminal act to be prose- cuted, to a professional category to be taxed.8 In France, like in the Netherlands (albeit on a much larger and more regulated scale in France) marabouts thus seem to be largely ‘religious independent entrepreneurs’, as Kuczynski calls them. In Portugal by contrast, most ‘mouros’ (as marabouts are called) are of a family-system operating from Guinea Bissau. Guineans started migrating to Portugal after 1974, subsequent to Guinea’s independence, and especially from 1984 onwards, when Guinea-Bissau, following the end of Luís Cabral’s regime, opened up to the outside world and adopted a more Western economic and democratic model. In spite of several development plans and international aid, however, the country has not emerged from a situation of severe poverty (Saraiva 2008: 255). According to anthropologist Dias, having interviewed fifty- two mouros in Lisbon, most are the younger members of mouro-families in Guinea to earn money in Europe (Costa Dias 2007: 189). The majority among them, according to Dias, reside with a tourist visum in sub-rented or sub-sub- rented apartments in migrant filled areas of Lisbon, without their wife and children, and often travel frequently between Guinea, Portugal, and nearby European countries such as France and Spain (Costa Dias 2007: 184–187). Like in the Netherlands and in France, however, also mouros advertise their services in printed media and flyers. A more in-depth comparison between West African magical-religious experts operating in various European countries would be highly interesting, not in the least since the scarce information available indicates that they are extremely mobile, moving both between Africa and Europe and within Europe. While some characteristics seem to apply for several groups of West African mediums operating in European areas, such as the use of advertisements in the host-country’s language, local differences appear as well. In the Nether- lands like in France, West African mediums are often ‘independent religious entrepreneurs’. In the Netherlands as well as in Portugal, they are often highly mobile, living in sub-rented apartments. An estimation of the number of West African mediums operating in the Netherlands is therefore highly approxima- tive.Whether having a residence permit or not, they seem to move houses regularly, both within the Netherlands and internationally, as well as visiting clients inside and outside the Netherlands on shorter or longer periods. One Guinean

8 For an extensive overview of French perspectives on the figure of the ‘marabout’ including schoolteacher, priest, charlatan, criminal, evil force, therapist and diviner, see Kuczynski 2002.

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access 48 gemmeke medium, for example, whom I called for the first time in November 2012, was in the following months in Paris, where he visited his brother. He returned to Rot- terdam in January, but received notice from his landlord and returned to Paris. In April 2013, he was back in Rotterdam, staying with a friend, and trying to find another room. Having failed so, he returned to Paris once again. In July 2013, during the last phone call I received from him before his Dutch mobile number stopped functioning, he asked me to help him find accommodation in the Netherlands. Similarly, over the course of my in total ten months of fieldwork, three other West African mediums moved house, one of whom was evicted for not paying the rent, and seven others travelled regularly to clients in Belgium, Germany, and France. In the Netherlands, I met two types of mediums: firstly those who received, as part of a marabout family, a (more or less extensive) Sufi Islamic education in West Africa prior to their arrival in the Netherlands (three men), and secondly those who decided during their stay in the Netherlands to offer ‘spiritual’ services and collected, to this end, knowledge from friends and family within the Netherlands and abroad (seven men). Four of the men in the latter group stay illegally in the Netherlands, and told me they see this work as one of the very few opportunities to earn money. All mediums I spoke to asserted that business had slowed down since approximately 2005 and that generally, life was much more difficult now than when they arrived. Amadu, a Guinean who has lived since 1998 in Rotterdam, was one of them. Amadu has, like Musa, a wife and two children living in West Africa, where he build a small house for them. He, like Musa and two other mediums I met all asserted that they did not intend to bring their families to the Netherlands but instead to return themselves to Africa. Both Amadu and Musa planned to work a few more years in the Netherlands and then start plantations and import-export business from respectively Guinea and the Gambia. Amadu told me: “I started with this work during my application procedure as an asylum seeker, because I was not allowed to do any other work. Until 2003, 2004, I could earn a nice living with this work, but now, I struggle to pay the rent.” Many West African mediums thus live in precarious circumstances and offer their services in a commercial setting. Their consultancy fees range between 35 and 50 euros, with prices for further treatments amounting to hundreds of euros. Their services are among many other new religious ‘commodities’, offered on the ‘market’ of world-views, broadcast by growing international mobility and by the influence of media (cf. Wohlrab-Sahr 2006: 71). Despite the commercial aspect of their services, however, their work is not regarded, by themselves nor by their clients, as purely fee-for-service. Clients negotiate with the medium about the fees to be paid, as well as about the treatment

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access african power 49 to be given, and the degree of effect it has. Mediums, on their part, cater to their clients’ (perceived) wishes by adopting a wide range of spiritual techniques. Amadu told me he preferred to work for non-African clients as they “know less about our work. African people are very suspicious of mediums living here and they always ask a lot of questions. It is easier to work for clients who do not know anything about this work.” (interview 20 June 2013). Amadu thus indicated being insecure, not necessarily doubting Sufi Islamic or ancestral powers in general nor necessarily doubting his own access to these powers, but being insecure in his interactions and negotiations with his clients.

African Power Musa orders family members in the Gambia to collect roots and bark, he said, and to send that with travelling countrymen to the Netherlands. “It is safer to send material with people,” he said, “because if a package is searched by the police and others touch the material, the power could be broken.” (interview 30 January 2013). Besides herbs and plants, some West African mediums suggest their clients to use animal sacrifices as part of a treatment. Three mediums told me that they do animal sacrifices in the Netherlands for some of their clients. Since the slaughtering of animals is strictly regulated in the Netherlands, they are not allowed to do the sacrifices themselves and have to order this for a butcher to do. Three mediums gave me the prices for slaughtering animals such as chicken and goats, in various sizes, and referred me to the butchers that they placed these orders at. They all said, however, that they would advise their clients to place the order in their African country of origin (Senegal or Gambia). Lamin told me: “A number of my clients prefer that I call my family in Senegal for a sacrifice, it is cheaper there, and you are sure it is done properly.” Musa, on his part, said that he occasionally did a chicken sacrifice for his clients in the Netherlands. “This treatment is especially sought after by drugs dealers,” he said, “since it protects them. I have to be very careful for the police, and have to do this in a place where they will not find me. Therefore, it is sometimes better to ask my relatives in the Gambia to do the sacrifice” (interview 17 April 2013). Besides a life-giving link to the African soil, relationships with family members in Africa thus guarantees treatments to be executed ‘properly’, circumventing Dutch regulations and life-styles. Most West African mediums in the Netherlands receive their clients in an ‘African’ and ‘Muslim’ setting. Musa, for example, invites his clients to sit down behind his sofa, on a carpet underneath a large black tapestry with in glittering Arabic the shahada. Hanging on the same wall is a brown mud cloth or bogolan

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access 50 gemmeke shirt with geometric patterns.9 When working, Musa uses candlelight: about ten packages of tea lights are lined up on the carpet. Musa receives his clients dressed in and a dark red or green grand boubou [long, loose-fitting garment worn in West Africa] and a white, crocheted kufi – a brimless cap worn by West African Muslims. The other mediums I met employ similar settings: seated on a carpet on the floor, in a darkened room lit by candles and perfumed with incense, the walls often covered with Arabic texts or an image of the Kaaba in Mecca. All but one of the mediums I met wore, when meeting clients, a colorful West African boubou, in one case with a leopard pattern, and one medium having small mirrors attached to his garment. The mediums’ outfits were in all but one case complemented by Islamic head covering and in all cases by one or more chains of prayer beads. All but two of the ten mediums I met had placed, on the carpet, one or several calabashes, some decorated with kauri shells and red cotton strings, several (plastic) bottles filled with fluids, and kauri shells. Two consultations rooms featured, furthermore, one or two goat skulls and goats’ horns. Compared to the spaces reserved for clients of marabouts I visited in Sene- gal, the artifacts and decorations of African mediums in the Netherlands seem rather eclectic. In Dakar as well as in the Senegalese countryside, these spaces tend to be emphasizing either Muslim faith with Arabic texts and images of the Kaaba, or refer to the powers of spirits dwelling in the bois sacré with kauri shells, the color red, and goat skulls.The two spheres of religious power are, neither in Senegal, mutually exclusive. Marabouts do, however, tend to emphasise either one of the two ends of scale, specifically as an alternative to the other, by the use of artefacts and decoration (Gemmeke 2007). In the Netherlands, instead, West African mediums seem to encapsulate their clients in Islamic symbols combined with ‘clichés of Africa at large’ (Ndjio 2008: 17).They emphasise an African ‘darkness’ by receiving their clients in darkly, candlelight lit, and confined spaces: all ten mediums I met received their clients on a space of a few square meters, often secluded from the rest of the room by curtains; in one case placed in a meter cupboard, and in one case in an under-stairs cupboard. African mediums in the Netherlands offer Islamic esoteric techniques generally used inWest Africa. Some mediums do combine these, however, with European techniques such as for example palm reading, tarot reading, and dates of birth, methods unknown in West Africa, where, more commonly, the mother’s name

9 Mud cloth or bogolan garments are traditionally died with fermented mud and became a symbol of specifically Malian cultural identity, although they are worn in the whole of West Africa and exported worldwide.

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figure 2 Left: “Medium Bamba helps you with solving all your emotional problems such as love, return of partner, protection. 100% result guaranteed within 5 days.” Middle: “Professor Douty medium, helps with problems in luck, love, business, work, exams, financial relations. Payment after 100% result within 24 hours.” Right: “Professor Amin, 30 years of experience medium, return of partner, luck, strong relationships. Payment after 48 hours result 100%.” is used in divination. In a further ‘globalization’ of their services, mediums often use a generic jargon, mentioning ‘spiritual problems’ instead of ‘evil genies’ and ‘faith’ or ‘trust’ instead of ‘Islam’. Three mediums indicated that they regularly sought contact with other mediums, including Surinamese bonuman (priest/medium), to discuss which techniques they could use for their Surinamese clientele. Musa said he main- tains a regular contact with a Surinamese man who runs a nearby ‘kulturu’ shop, a shop selling, among other items, herbs, roots, oils, and perfume used for magical-religious purposes. Musa declined to tell me what he learns specifically from his Surinamese colleague but did disclose that they exchange knowledge on how to use plants and herbs in treatments. If and how West African mediums engage in a ‘Winti-discours’ when catering to Dutch Surinamese remains unclear to me. Musa indicated, however, that “Surinamese people seem to have less problems in their families with jealousy than African or Moroccan people”. He did think that Surinamese people, by contrast, suffered more frequently from inherited spiritual problems through their ancestors (interview 30 January 2013). A Dutch Surinamese Winti expert confirmed this observation: “while within the Surinamese community kroi (jealousy, envy) is a problem, inheritance (erfgoed) is a bigger problem. Within families inherited problems that bother the young need to be addressed” (interview 22 November 2012). It seems, thus, that at least some West African mediums actively enrich themselves with knowledge about Winti and other religious world views and offer their clients consequently a mix of (Sufi) Islamic techniques and world views, generic ‘esoteric’ jargon, and elements of a Winti discours. As indicated earlier,West African mediums advertise in Dutch, using generic terms describing themselves as ‘African’, ‘Mr.’ and ‘Prof.’. These three advertisements, for example, were published on 6 March 2013 in the local Rotterdam newspaper De Havenloods (see Figure 2).

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Although these advertisements show remarkable similarities, as they do with advertisements published in other European countries (in local languages), and although these advertisements are written in Dutch, they are not intended (nor expected) to attract a Dutch-Dutch clientele. Rather, they use the lingua franca of Dutch to communicate their services to a wide variety of migrants, among them Moroccans, Portuguese, and, mostly, Dutch Surinamese.

West African Mediums’ Clients in the Netherlands As Musa’s quote indicated earlier, Africans do not tend to form the majority of West African mediums’ clientele. Several West Africans I spoke to in the Netherlands preferred to consult a marabout in their country of origin who they knew from before departure or who was recommended to them by family or friends (Gemmeke 2007). European urban centres, where mediums live far from their kin and teachers, are perceived to corrupt any baraka, or spiritual power, since baraka is strongly related to modesty and piety. Urban anonymity fosters callous commercialism since it allows ‘anyone to offer anything you want to pay for’, as one Senegalese man living in the Netherlands told me. Furthermore, ‘truly powerful’ mediums are not expected to advertise themselves, but to be recommended by satisfied clients. For Africans in the diaspora, magical-religious experts are providing a link to their homeland. If they are missing that link themselves, their work becomes, in the eyes of many African migrants, invalid. African mediums’ migration from West Africa to Europe and their subsequent high mobility within Europe and within the Netherlands, thus is, for many Africans, conclusive evidence of their incapability, inefficacy, and untrustworthiness. For the Dutchmen of Surinamese and Antillean origin who consultWest African mediums, on the contrary, theWest Africans seem to form a link to an ancestral power. Unlike migration from former colonies to other European countries such as France and Great Britain, the migration from Surinam was prompted by panic. In the early 1970s, after the Dutch government announced that the colony of Surinam would become independent in 1975, about one-third of the Surinamese population migrated to the Netherlands. The Surinamese civil war of the 1980s led to a further exodus. In 2014, the amount of Surinamese in the Netherlands is estimated at 350.000, which is about half of the population of Suriname (cbs).10 Overwhelmed by their numbers in the 1970s, the Dutch state authorities housed the emigrants in unsafe and unhygienic boarding houses, in for example the infamous Bijlmer in Amsterdam, frequently dubbed

10 www.cbs.nl last accessed 10 July 2014.

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‘Little Surinam’. The labour market was unable or unwilling to absorb them, and many drifted into drugs and crime. In the Netherlands, Afro-Surinamese were perceived as ‘Other’, whether as a spectacle or as dangerous. The general public imagined Afro-Surinamese as knifers and junkies on the one hand, or fostered folkloric images of, often sexualized, natural musical talent on the other (Balkenhol 2011: 141). After independence from the Netherlands in 1975, a new nationalism appeared, reevaluating Surinamese cultural identity and traditions (Stephen 1998). A new intelligentsia emerged, reconstructing its own ‘Africa’ (Van Weter- ing 1995: 212). ‘Africa’ in Amsterdam has become a positive point of reference in recent years. Especially youth centres focusing on young black people have adopted ‘African’ culture and heritage as positive points of reference which young blacks can identify with. Projects directed especially at young blacks in the Netherlands depict Africa as a noble place with rich traditions, and with great achievements (Balkenhol 2011: 146–147). Similarly, an ‘emancipation’ pro- ces of Winti takes place. While secrecy remains an important aspect of Winti and the activities of Winti experts are rarely openly discussed, neither in Suri- name nor in the diaspora, Winti is now practiced more openly. Since the 1980s, mainly due to the publications of the high-educated such asWinti-expert Henri J.M. Stephen (1983, 1998), Winti practices and believes became known to a wider public in the Netherlands. Winti literally means ‘wind’ but also refers to spirits, invisible energy and the belief itself. Among practitioners, the religion is also known by the terms Komfo (gods), Kulturu (culture) and Obia, which is used to define both healing spirits and supernatural medicines or objects (Tho- den van Velzen and Van Wetering 1988; Wooding 1979). Several authors regard the Afro-Surinamese Winti religion as the most traditional magical-religious system among blacks in the Western Hemisphere, as it preserves more West African religious elements than Vodou, Santería or Candomblé (Van Andel et al. 2013: 248; Herskovits 1941; Wooding 1979). In colonial times, Surinam typ- ified the large-scale Caribbean plantation economy. The average number of slaves per plantation and the ratio of West Africans to Europeans were higher in Suriname than anywhere else, the system of slavery was harsher and more wasteful of human lives, and violent resistance and communities of maroons (escaped slaves) were more pervasive, persistent, and successful in Suriname than in any other Caribbean slave colony, with the possible exception of Haiti (Price 1976: 1–39). Most successful rebel groups were led by religious leaders and skilled herbalists, who consulted the spirits for the best way to escape and provided the enslaved with obia that made them invulnerable for their prosecu- tors (Price 2008). Considered by the authorities as hotbeds of resistance, West African dances and rituals were forbidden by the end of the seventeenth cen-

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access 54 gemmeke tury (van Lier 1971). Winti was forbidden by Dutch law from 1874 until as late as 1971, and until the early 1980s by Surinamese law, and was strongly condemned by most churches in Suriname as idolatry (Van Andel et al. 2013: 10). In the last two decades, Winti is gaining popularity among higher educated urban Creoles in Suriname (cf. Matory 2005 on the popularity of Candomblé in urban Brasil). Due to the urbanization of Maroons, the growing Surinamese economy, and the improved socioeconomic position of Surinamese migrants in Dutch society, the trade in herbal medicine is expanding to the Netherlands (Van Andel et al. 2007: 362). Van Andel et al. (2007: 361) estimate that the total Surinamese medicinal plant trade is worth $1,576,180 per year, of which an estimated 54,600kg per year with a value of $453,180 is for export, mainly to the Netherlands. New forms of magical uses of plants in herbal baths and herbal medicine arose in the Netherlands. Dutch plants such as marigold and creeping woodsorrel are used in potions and herbal baths, as well as synthetic oils and perfumes rather than scented herbs. Furthermore, in the Netherlands, Surinamese visit besides Winti experts also Indian Ayurvedic and West African mediums (Van Andel 2008). West Africans and Black Dutchmen of Surinamese descent share numer- ous relationships based on cooperation among ‘fictive’ and ‘real’ relatives (cf. Beuving 2006). Undocumented West African migrants often use the identities of look-alike documented Black Dutchmen in order to be able to work and in return they pay them about 30% of their salary (see Garces-Mascarenas and Doomernik 2007: 14–15, 23; Mazzucato 2008: 209). For illegal West Africans entering the Netherlands, before a change of the law in 2006, the most well- known way to obtain legal status in the Netherlands is through marriage with a Dutch citizen. Three of the mediums I met had been married to a Surinamese or Antillean woman and obtained their residence permits in this way. John, a Ghanian medium who lives more than 25 years in the Netherlands, told me it took him five years to find someone to marry him and thus obtain a legal residence status:

I came to Amsterdam, to the Bijlmer, in 1987 and have never moved since. After five years I finally found a Surinamese woman to marry, and we have daughter who is now 14 years old. They live in Suriname, we are divorced. I have worked ever since I came here. I worked for McCain Foods, I imported and exported cars from Rotterdam in containers. I had a bar and I sold marihuana before I started to work as a medium. My first client was a Surinamese lady who I knew for a very long time and who could not sleep well. Interview 7 December 2012

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John thus indicated that his work as a medium is one of the many (more or less legal) income generating strategies he employed, and that he engaged a Surinamese contact to start his work in this domain. Relationships between West Africans and Black Dutchmen of Surinamese (and Antillean) origin thus include cohabitation, business, marriage, and the spiritual. In conversations with my informants, it was often mentioned that while the Netherlands offers better opportunities for employment, social welfare, and formal health care, quality of life is nonetheless worse than in West Africa or in Suriname. Cold weather, foreign food, uprootedness, social strains caused by expectations of the family in the country of origin and social-economic hard- ship in Europe upset both the body and the mind of the migrant (cf. Abranches 2014, Saraiva 2008). In this context, uprootedness is seen as a disruption in the relationship between the person and the land (Van Binsbergen 1988: 393). The Ghanaian Kofi, for example, explained how ‘Africa’ is a life-bringing source by referring to the Dutch medical system and the Dutch climate. Calling himself an herbalist, he shared from 1997 until 2009 an office for his business ‘Kofis Herbs’ with the Surinamese co-founder and representative of the Caribbean Association of Researchers and Herbal Practitioners (Carapa) in Amsterdam. He said: “My colleague moved back to Suriname. Although we had different ways of working, he used, for example, bottled herbs, we shared our belief that the body is a natural entity for which there are natural, and not chemical, solutions. Here, they use too much chemical medicines.” Kofi asserted that he never used Dutch plants: “My plants come from Ghana, Togo, and Burkina Faso. The climate is different here, here trees die in the winter. I cannot protect or empower (kracht geven) my clients by treating them with dying trees. My herbs have to come from Africa.” (interview 6 November 2012). Plants and herbs, as well as other ‘home-found and soil-bound’ materials such as animal products, cotton, and coal scraped from cooking pots to write Quranic verses with, form a link to the spiritual powers of a life giving ancestral land, a healing and soothing remedy for the uprooted and displaced body and spirit.The land’s life-bringing force is what creates this link: beyond its economic importance, the land performs the vital function of producing life, generating relationships between people, and enabling the spirits’ or the ancestors’ mediation of those relationships (Abranches 2014: 266)This link to ancestors is further emphasised by the mediums’ frequent references to their older, and thus more knowledge- able, family members in Africa and their frequent contact, by telephone and visits, with them.

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Conclusion

West African mediums occupy, in many respects, a marginal place in the migrant filled areas of Dutch urban centres. Especially when compared to other European cities such as Paris, they are small in number and offer their services since relatively recently in the Netherlands. Often struggling financially, many of my informants consider their work as a ‘medium’ as one of the few ways to make a living and, more often than not, consider their stay in the Netherlands, as well as their work as a medium, to be temporary. Adding to their marginality is the scepticism with which their services are regarded: clients and the general public fear their services are fueled by callous commercialism at best and malicious mystical powers at worst. Fellow Africans in the Netherlands regard them being far from their African soil and family as a sign of their spiritual weakness. Those who do consult African mediums in the Netherlands are equally skepti- cal: precarious financial situations, illegality, and criminality (such as fraud and drugs dealing) as well as fear of charlatanism causes strains and suspicion in the exchanges between medium and client. Despite their at times precarious lifestyles, however, West African mediums are reputed to have spiritual powers associated with their West African homeland. Like in other European cities such as Lisbon and Paris, West African mediums in the Netherlands target a clientele beyond the African diaspora. In the Netherlands, their position is of specific interest to the study of religious circulation: through their interaction with Dutchmen of Surinamese origin memory and history gain new meaning in Europe, where both groups meet. The diaspora of African religions is, thus, not only the result of Africans leav- ing Africa and taking their religions with them, but it is also happening through spiritual seekers who feel attracted by ‘African’ religions. As Van de Kamp mentioned in the introduction to this edited volume, in a universal intensification of ‘spiritual tourism’ (Badone and Roseman 2004) Africa is imagined as a place where people still live ‘authentic’ lives, intimately related to nature and tradi- tion. This seems to be part of a global revival of discourses on Africa and on being African, including an increasing fascination for so-called African cultural products and aesthetics (de Witte and Spronk 2014). The religious practitioners described in this chapter do not necessarily frequently travel themselves between Africa and Europe, but their religious discourses do, over telephone and Skype, and their animal and vegetable products are easily transported in suitcases (see also Abranches 2013). Towards their Black Caribbean clientele, West African mediums tend to emphasize a shared ancestry and a shared understanding of health and the human body as being upset and uprooted in the Netherlands. They offer clients

African Diaspora 9 (2016) 39–60 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:07:52PM via free access african power 57 familiar with Winti alternative ways to solve their personal issues, namely Sufi Islamic methods. At the same time, however, they use a generic ‘esoteric’ jargon including terms as ‘spiritual problems’ and present a rather eclectic mix of ‘African’ and ‘Islamic’ decorative elements to their clients. Additionally, they tap into a Winti discours by relocating the source of spiritual unrest from living family members to ancestors and propose ‘African’ plants and herbs as a ‘natural’ empowering and protective source in the foreign, confusing, and at times hostile Dutch setting, a practice familiar to Dutch Surinamese. Matory has called this process “the irony at the core of this story”, namely, that “the circum-Atlantic forces […] which range from the slave trade to the return migration of Afro-Latin Americans to Africa, as well as Boasian anthropology itself, have also produced a range of novel West African ethnic identities.” (2005: 3). Similarly, new ‘West African’ identities are thus formed in the intimate space created by West African mediums and their Dutch clients of Black Caribbean origin: ancestral African forces and Sufi Islam, providing both tan- gible and intangible connections to the African soil – in a Dutch urban setting.

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