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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

BETWEEN PRAYERS:

THE LIFE OF A WEST AFRICAN MUSLIM

By

DIANNA BELL

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2013 Dianna Bell defended this dissertation on March 1, 2013.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Joseph Hellweg Professor Directing Dissertation

Michael Uzendoski University Representative

Adam Gaiser Committee Member

Peter Garretson Committee Member

The Graduate school has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university policy.

ii

For Hamidou Samaké

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Carrying out ethnographic research depends on the kindness and support of an

array of people at different stages of the project. I offer my deepest gratitude to Joseph

Hellweg for his unfaltering guidance and encouragement through each stage. Joseph

oversaw the early design of this research, read and edited funding proposals, counseled

me before my move to Mali, visited me in Ouélessébougou during my fieldwork, and

closely guided me through the writing process after my return to the United States.

Profound thanks also goes to my other committee members, Adam Gaiser, Michael

Uzendoski, and Peter Garretson for offering their time, interest, and input to this project.

I extend my gratitude to Bourama Samaké and Kadja Ballo and all of their

somɔgɔw, especially Yirigoi and Djègèni, for their hospitality and full inclusion in their lives and family. Special thanks to J’aime, who tirelessly transcribed my interviews by hand in Bamanankan and Miriam for washing my clothes each week, as well as those who worked near Amadou and me, namely Koniba, Lamine, Fulabougouni Dugutigi,

Sedou, Karimou, and Miriam, for the friendship and tea. Also, my appreciation to Joe for breaking from his own research demands to visit me in Mali.

I am very lucky to have family and friends who have encouraged me to pursue my educational goals. I thank my parents and sister, Shannon, for their personal support and for helping me manage my affairs while in the field. I especially thank my father, Jim, for voluntarily reading and editing drafts of each chapter and for his enthusiasm for my research in Mali. Thank you to Yeah and Marissa Samaké for their friendship and support during my time in Mali. I also wish to thank Susan Stetson, Susan Minnerly, Jon

iv Bridges, and Andrew Watson for their administrative assistance, especially during the fieldwork phase of this project.

The Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University financially supported preliminary field research for this project in 2010. Thank you to

Terry Coonan, the executive director of the Center, for encouraging the research. I am grateful for the International Dissertation Fellowship Program at Florida State University, which provided financial support for my fieldwork in 2011.

Lastly, my love and thanks to Amadou, for trusting me with his past and including me in his present and future.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii ABSTRACT...... ix CHAPTER ONE ...... 1 Understanding Religious Life and Baraji through Life History ...... 9 Fula and Mande Ethnicity in Ouélessébougou...... 21 Orthography ...... 29 Project Methodology...... 30 Project Outline...... 47 CHAPTER TWO ...... 49 Early Fula Conversion...... 50 Nineteenth Century Fula Jihads ...... 52 Islam in Ouélessébougou ...... 59 Religious Leadership among Muslims in Ouélessébougou ...... 65 Currents of Islam in Ouélessébougou ...... 71 Doctrine of Baraji among Muslims in West Africa...... 76 CHAPTER THREE ...... 85 Conclusion...... 127 CHAPTER FOUR...... 128 Conclusion...... 176 CHAPTER FIVE ...... 178 Conclusion...... 217 CHAPTER SIX...... 219 Conclusion...... 255 CHAPTER SEVEN ...... 258 REFERENCES ...... 264 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 281

vi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Amadou Diallo crafting a rope at his usual workplace ...... 2

Figure 2: Koniba Doumbia works repairing watering cans for a community garden ...... 7

Figure 3: Location of Ouélessébougou...... 22

Figure 4: Yirigoi washes her young grandson with an elixir she prepared to instill courage in him...... 35

Figure 5: Amadou Diallo’s home and courtyard ...... 38

Figure 6: Fula jihad states in West Africa, c. 1830...... 56

Figure 7: Exterior of the largest mosque (misiriba) in Ouélessébougou...... 64

Figure 8: Yacouba Traoré consulting an Arabic text during an interview ...... 78

Figure 9: Artistic depiction of a subaga (Drawing by Laye Doumbia)...... 99

Figure 10: Mosque located in the center of Npièbougou’s Fula district...... 103

Figure 11: Amadou Diallo and me visiting Amadou’s favorite childhood swimming hole in Npièbougou ...... 107

Figure 12: In 2011 Amadou visited Npièbougou and examined his family’s herd, which was then cared for by Daramani’s grandsons...... 135

Figure 13: The various forms of West African amulets ...... 145

Figure 14: (L –R) Koniba, Amadou and me during a typical workday in 2011...... 162

Figure 15: Amadou picks berries from fruit tree he formerly frequented while herding in Ouélessébougou’s forest as a young man...... 174

Figure 16: Amadou’s wife, Nouhouba Bagayoko, in 2011 ...... 188

Figure 17: The 1,127-kilometer one-way route Amadou routinely walked from Bamako to Monrovia ...... 193

Figure 18: The interior of Fousseyni’s eclectic shop...... 224

vii Figure 19: Amadou (center) sitting among town elders and Muslim leaders and studying the Qur’an during a posthumous sacrifice...... 231

Figure 20: Amadou demonstrates raising his hands to his ears for a call to prayer ...... 235

Figure 21: A group of slender cattle enter a forest on the outskirts Ouélessébougou for grazing ...... 247

Figure 22: Muslim women in Ouélessébougou participate in a special prayer meeting at the mosque to pray for rain...... 253

Figure 23: Amadou in 2011 ...... 257

viii LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: The Bamanankan alphabet...... 30

ix ABSTRACT

Muslims in the West African state of Mali use the concept of baraji—which

translates from the vernacular as “divine reward” or “recompense”—as a framework for

understanding proper religious practice and the role of Islam in daily matters. In order to

understand the various ways through which Muslims in West Africa seek measurable

units of baraji, this work presents the life history of Amadou Diallo, an elderly Fula man

and former cattle herder living in the town of Ouélessébougou in southwestern Mali.

Drawing from ethnographic research, I show how Muslims in West Africa use

baraji to find religious relevance in everyday and ritual life by exploring the practices,

experiences, and feelings that have driven Amadou’s lifelong aim to acquire the

unspecified amount of baraji that God requires for a person to gain salvation and admission into paradise. Amadou’s personal narrative unfolds the lived experience of

Islam in everyday life in West Africa by revealing the intricate ways that Muslims search out baraji. I explore baraji as a form of value through which West African Muslims

discern the different religious practices and daily choices that they employ during their

lifetime while highlighting how the acquisition of baraji changes with age and

circumstance, revealing Islam as dynamically embedded in the life cycle.

x CHAPTER ONE

PROJECT INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY

It is odd to think back to the day that first I met Amadou Diallo and realize that we were once strangers. Our unlikely relationship began because vendors in the open-air marketplace in Ouélessébougou, a town in the southwest corner of the West African state of Mali, would not sell their customers a single banana. Instead, sellers carefully organized their fresh produce into loose, small piles to vend as a group. During the summer of 2010, while living in Ouélessébougou and conducting preliminary field research for my dissertation, I spent my mornings walking around the marketplace in an attempt to improve my language abilities and better understand life in Mali. Each morning, on my way into the central market, I purchased a small bunch of bananas from a woman who sold fruit on the quiet edge of the marketplace. A single piece of fruit always satiated me, and I faced the daily dilemma of where to place the additional bananas that marketplace norm had required me to purchase. I found that giving the bananas to people inside the crowded market brought me unwanted attention, as those who witnessed the exchange would shout and ask me, sometimes in good humor and other times in earnest confrontation, where their banana was.

I soon developed a routine in which I would buy a pile of bananas, eat one, and retrace my steps by about one hundred meters in order to give the remaining bananas to an old man who made rope by hand near the market. I passed the old man every morning on my way into the market from my home, and his familiar voice and pleasant shout of “i ni sɔgɔma!” which means “good morning” in the Bamanankan language, brought me

1 daily cheer. I found that the man happily took the bananas I presented him with an easy

smile that revealed the wrinkles in his aging but handsome face and crooked front teeth,

which were among the few remaining in his mouth, and a polite thank you. I would

acknowledge his expression of gratitude by briefly replying “nse,” the proper female

response to a greeting in Bamanankan, before returning to the market.

Figure 1: Amadou Diallo crafting a rope at his usual workplace

One morning, while sitting on a bench in the market and sipping a coffee that had been overly flavored with sweetened condensed milk, I visited with a small group of people who were also enjoying their morning perk. We spoke lightheartedly of our origins, interests, and plans for the day.

“Where are you from?” I asked the man sitting next to me.

2 “I’m traveling from south of here, the city of Sikasso. I drive a sotrama,” he explained and gestured toward the main road to a van used for public transportation in

Mali.

Suddenly a middle-aged man approached the bench and shouted for everyone to stop talking. He pointed at me and told the people that I was a spy (kolajɛba) and would

undoubtedly use whatever information they told me to further oppress Africans. I

watched with flabbergasted humiliation as my conversation partners looked at my

accuser with confusion and then slowly turned their eyes to me with suspicious glares. I

lamely and timidly muttered, “It’s not true” (tinɛ tɛ) before rising from the bench and leaving. I strode around the market feeling embarrassed and dejected for several minutes

before I decided to go home for the remainder of the morning.

On my return from the market, the idea to go visit with the old man to whom I

gave my bananas to each morning suddenly caught my mind. I walked to the old man’s

workplace, where I found him crafting a rope and visiting with the welder who worked

next to him. I gave a shallow obsequious bow and introduced myself to the two men

using my Bamana name, Mai’i Samaké. The welder shook my hand and immediately

invited me to sit with them, producing a metal-frame chair with rubber webbing for seat

and back support. The old man I shared my bananas with introduced himself as Amadou

Diallo and told me that his friend who welded next to him was named Koniba Doumbia.

Silence set in shortly after the three of us exchanged basic greetings and introductions.

For several minutes I watched, mesmerized, as Amadou’s hands moved like a

choreographed dance as he plaited rope. I broke the pause by asking Amadou whether

his work was difficult. He said that making a good rope was challenging and offered to

3 teach me the basics of his craft. Amadou reached into an old grain sack sitting next to him and pulled out a slender stick that had been cut from a tree. He quickly began to twist plastic strings into a cord, which he soon after wound around the wooden stick. He handed me the stick along with an organized assembly of white plastic strings from used rice sacks that had already been divided and tied together into discrete sections, and instructed me to continue the motions of winding the cable while adding new groups of string into the cord. I worked on the rope in Amadou and Koniba’s company for the remainder of the morning and slowly felt myself recover from the uncomfortable confrontation that had happened earlier in the market. Two hours later I told Amadou and Koniba that I needed to return home for lunch but asked if I could join them again the next morning.

I continued to make rope with Amadou every morning for the remainder of my

2010 field stay. My primary aim was to integrate into everyday life in Ouélessébougou, and I found that the more time I spent making rope the more the town’s populace began to accept my peculiar presence. Amadou gradually taught me all the steps for his style of handmade rope construction. The process began by cutting the seams of a grain sack to turn it into a flat sheet. Next, I learned to tear apart the sack by individual strands that were then tied into groups of approximately eight to twelve strands. These sets of tied strands were subsequently wound one by one, introducing others at any moment depending on the desired diameter, into a long cord that eventually measured twice the length of the desired finished rope size. Once the cord was finished I divided it into two separate spools, and Amadou instructed me to hold tension on each line by and begin plaiting them together into a two-stranded braid. Some rope makers in Mali sold two-

4 strand ropes, but Amadou insisted on always fortifying his rope by crafting a third cord that he lastly wound between the grooves of the previously plaited two-strands. Amadou demanded that I uphold his reputation for making beautiful and high-standard ropes and, when I first started studying under him, he often told me to redo my work when my rope had too many loose fibers sticking out or had asymmetrical elements in its diameter or plaiting.

Amadou was a respected town elder and by closely associating myself with him I suddenly found myself receiving an unprecedented level of regard from townspeople.

Rather than staring or namelessly shouting “tubabuni!” (little white person) at me in the market, women began to address me by name and asked me questions about my new occupation: Did I sell my rope? For how much? How many meters? When would I finish my next rope? These conversations helped me realize the importance of rope in

Ouélessébougou. Amadou’s job may at first seem a simple occupation for a poor African man, but residents used rope to fetch water from their wells, secure cargo when traveling, and tie their livestock. People in Mali would face life-threatening problems without dependable rope. As I learned about Amadou’s life and his understanding of Islam, I came to find it especially fitting and profound that Amadou made rope as his professional occupation. During my fieldwork we both continually employed analogies, shared throughout this work, between Islam and rope making to clarify the nature of the relationship between strengthening religious devotion, practice, and understanding to the craft of making strong and reliable rope.

As time went on, I took further notice of Amadou’s work environment and the details of his appearance. Amadou stood only five and a half feet tall with a medium

5 build, and commented that he blamed his mother for his short height. His hair had turned white with age, but several black whiskers remained in his cream-colored beard.

Amadou’s wrinkles highlighted his smile, which was the most striking feature of his face.

He smiled often, even when there was ostensibly nothing to smile about. When Amadou laughed his whole face expressed his amusement, tipping his head back when he found a joke particularly funny while his eyes shined with happiness. I loved Amadou’s sharp sense of humor and noticed that he entertained everyone who worked near us with his stories, short jokes, and deadpan wit. He excelled at physical comedy and dramatized each sneeze and cough while repeatedly accusing his best friend Koniba of practicing sorcery that had caused him to become sick.

Everyday Amadou wore a kufi, a brimless and rounded cap worn by old men throughout West Africa, and dressed in a flowing cotton robe (boubou) with long sleeves and matching pants. Amadou loved white, tan, and light blue and typically selected clothes in these muted colors. His cell phone hung from a lanyard attached to a padded case around his neck, which Amadou typically placed in his chest pocket to keep from swinging in front of him while he worked. He also stored a small black leather address book in his pocket in which he wrote the phone numbers of his friends and family in

French numerals while his contacts’ names were transliterated using the Arabic alphabet.

His body bore the visible signs of a life spent working in the sun. Small black freckles dotted his cheeks and temples, and his feet and hands bore cracks and calluses alongside jagged and broken nails. The joints on both of his second toes stuck up, making his toes point permanently in a right angle. He told me the warped shape of his toes did not come from any sudden injury but was rather the result of walking too much during his lifetime.

6 He enjoyed perfect sight from his right eye but complained of blurred vision in his left and said that is was difficult to find a pair of glasses that would adequately correct his ocular problems. Amadou owned two pairs of eyeglasses, one with thick black rims and a second pair with thin gold frames. He unsatisfactorily rotated between the two during the day.

Figure 2: Koniba Doumbia works repairing watering cans for a community garden

Amadou and I worked on a raised platform of cement that stood about two feet high from the sandy road in front of us. Conical thatch and square metal roofed homes, passing motorcycles, donkey-pulled carts, and a cacophony of nearby conversations and radios surrounded us each day. Amadou sat on small leather cowhide with a rice sack placed upon it for additional padding. Every evening Amadou conspicuously stored the leather hide in the low rafters of the aluminum sunshade that covered our workspace from the bright daylight. He told me he did not worry about thieves taking the hide because it 7 was too small to be worth anything to anyone but him. Despite our combined efforts to keep the workspace cleared and organized, each day we found ourselves surrounded by the frayed rice sacks and constantly looking for the knife and scabbard that we shared.

Koniba Doumbia, Amadou’s friend, worked next to us, and the three of us sat together and talked whenever Koniba was not welding. People in Ouélessébougou normally used their possessions until the objects became exhausted and beyond repair. Koniba served residents by welding their broken motorcycles, chairs, tables, kettles, sunshades, cups, and bicycles.

During the summer of 2010 Koniba, Amadou, and I became friends and they incorporated me into their daily lives. I often thought of Koniba and Amadou after I returned to the United States at the end of my research trip. I had conducted research on religious practices in Ouélessébougou for five months in 2007 and one month in 2009 but had not felt a strong connection with any informants until I met Amadou and Koniba in

2010. After I left Mali that year, I stayed in touch with Koniba and Amadou through regular telephone calls, and they would always ask me when I planned to return to see them again. I selected Amadou in my mind as someone with whom I wanted to work extensively when I returned to Ouélessébougou for my dissertation fieldwork. Amadou was a talented speaker and storyteller with a quick wit and sense of humor, and I knew that I could rely on him to answer the questions I had been formulating about practices, culture, and daily life in Mali. I did not, however, realize the full role he would take in my research until I returned to Ouélessébougou the following year to formally begin my dissertation research.

8

Understanding Religious Life and Baraji through Life History

After my return to Ouélessébougou in 2011 I spent several weeks adjusting to life in the town by establishing a daily routine, which included making rope daily with

Amadou. As I began to ask questions about Amadou’s past, his stories and personal experiences began to fascinate me and I found myself wanting to learn more about key events that had led him up to the moment when we happened to meet. Amadou was talkative by nature, had a gift for vividly describing his experiences, and spoke fully of the subjects that interested me—especially the role his Muslim beliefs had played throughout his life. The clear connection between Islam and Amadou’s experiences came into obvious focus as he frequently recalled memories from the various jobs— which included cattle herding, gold mining, farming, and trading—that he had held during his lifetime. Amadou, like most Malians, found it difficult throughout his life to earn enough income to support his family and lived under the stress of perpetual poverty.

As one of the poorest countries in the world, Malians in 2011 faced economic inopportunity as a major problem that I observed during my research. Unfortunately, things did not improve for Amadou and other Malians in the years following my research, and fighting between the south and Islamic militants in the north continued to threaten the physical and economic security of Malians. Amadou said that he never had the chance to earn a lot of money, but he consoled himself during moments of special hardship by saying that his hard work had religious worth and had earned him baraji.

I noticed during my conversations with Amadou that he often focused on explaining how his experiences and decisions had generated baraji. I questioned other residents about the meaning of the word and soon realized that that the concept of baraji, 9 which loosely translates from the vernacular as “divine reward” or “recompense” (see

Bailleul 2007: 31; Soares 2005: 166-167, 1996: 744), offered a framework for

understanding Islam in daily life in West Africa.1 My preliminary research in

Ouélessébougou taught me that, as religious diversity had increased in Mali, the meaning behind an affiliation such as “Muslim” become increasingly complex. I noted that

Muslims in the region approached their religious lives and decisions primarily in terms of baraji, as informants uniformly emphasized that they hoped to acquire units of baraji

through various religious practices and daily pursuits. In questioning people further

about the meaning of the word, I learned that the organizing principle of baraji

represented a value that Muslims in West Africa attributed to the range of religious rituals

and other practices associated with Islam.

Here, I argue that baraji works as a symbolic representation of virtuous behavior

wherein a person applies his or her understanding of Islam to everyday life and pragmatic

activities to acquire an eventual reward. I also document how baraji works to extend and

maintain ties between both living and deceased kin. As such, ideas regarding which

actions could potentially generate baraji directed what practitioners considered proper

behavior between one another and in the world. The anthropological concept of “value”

offers a framework for understanding this state of affairs, specifically how people in

Ouélessébougou incorporated Islam into daily life through baraji as an outcome for

inspired behavior. Scholars have used the concept of value to understand how people

differentiate each other in terms of merit and discriminate physical objects from each

1 A definite etymology for baraji eludes researchers. Some linguists believe Fulfulde speakers originally adopted the term baraji from the Arabic word baraka, which means blessing (Smeltzer 2005: 47; Vydrin 1999: 96). 10 other in terms of their allure (Barthes 1967; Baudrillard 1968; Graeber 2001; Gregory

1997; Sahlins 1976).

Cultural anthropologists have expanded understandings of the economic sense of

value and used the word to describe value in terms of the merit and promise of societal

prosperity that certain events and actions carry (Buggenhagen 2011: 714-732; 2001: 373-

401; Evans-Pritchard 1950: 120; Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 150-151; Stanner 1985: 113-

125). Value, according to Radcliffe-Brown, indicates the manner through which people

endow attachment to their and other’s participation in cultural services, practices, rituals,

and exchanges. The common associations and significance that bind two or more persons

together through culturally sanctioned behavior expresses significance, or social value,

that members of social groups depend on to maintain themselves (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:

150-151; Stanner 1985: 113-125).

Value, in this study, connotes the way that people in Ouélessébougou ranked

various religious and daily practices in terms of their desirability and potential to access

baraji. It describes the meaningful differences and worth that persons and collective

groups in Ouélessébougou applied to the array of religious affiliations and variations in

practice that existed in the town as Muslims organized their lives around the moral

concept of baraji (see Dumont 1983; Graeber 2001; Gregory 1997; Otto 1958: 52-59;

Piot 1999; Wilk & Cliggett 2007; Wilson 1971). I observed that Muslims developed,

displayed, and defended their religious beliefs and practices as expressions of value in

terms of their potential to earn baraji. Thus, baraji represents a system for valuing all things in relation to Islam and God. This project explores value and the notion of baraji

11 as the primary means through which West African Muslims discerned the different religious practices and daily choices that they employed during their lifetimes.

I observed that baraji, as a form of value, inspired specific conduct in Muslims’ ritual lives and social interactions. I understand value, in this context, through Gregory

(1997) as the “invisible chains,” or ropes, that linked people to varying degrees to a range of ritual practices, relationships, and daily activities (12). Just as Amadou produced ropes with varying widths and tensile strengths, the imaginary ropes that attached

Muslims in Ouélessébougou to an array of ritual activities, relationships, and everyday matters also varied in their strength and dispensability. Using this imagery, for example, an exceptionally strong rope connected Muslims to the practice of praying fives times per day, as prayers remained an inextricable generator of baraji. Eating peanuts between meals, in contrast, could be understood as connected to Islam through a very tenuous rope. A person could earn baraji while eating peanuts if they generously shared the snack with their friends, but the practice alone was not viewed as essential in obtaining the baraji needed for salvation. It is worth noting that, for some practices, people in

Ouélessébougou could articulate the numerical sum of baraji that the action brought. But most practices were deemed immeasurable in terms of the exact number of baraji they produced. For instance, Amadou reported that reciting the Arabic greeting, bismi-l-laahi earned a Muslim seventy baraji, while similarly noting that attending a funeral amassed an unidentified number of baraji.2

The value of earning baraji was taught to children in Mali from a young age. But as people aged and moved through life, their understanding and practice of Islam and

2 A popular expression that is commonly translated from Arabic into English as, “In the name of God.” 12 methods for earning baraji changed. Accordingly, Amadou’s life history highlights the

ways he actively and continually broke, retied, reinforced, and built new ropes between

himself and the practices that he believed furthered his acquisition of baraji. Amadou,

like other Muslims, reckoned behavior in terms of its contribution or detriment to earning

baraji and reaching paradise in the afterlife and making up for sinful behaviors that put

him in debt to God and bore negatively on his attempts to ensure his salvation and

admission into paradise (lahara or alijɛnɛ) in the afterlife.3

The practice of ascribing varying levels of baraji to a range of practices formed

Muslim consciousness and ideals in Ouélessébougou. Hence, baraji acted as a

“paramount value,” or value that principally governed Muslim behavior in everyday

dealings (see Dumont 1983: 215-216). As a value system, Malians used baraji to posit

equivalences between different overtly Islamic practices, indigenous ritual, and local

culture. For example, fasting during Ramadan was commonly recognized for its potential to produce baraji, as was burning incense in the evening to protect children from sorcerer attacks. Accordingly, the notion of baraji reflected local understandings of the way a diverse range of Islamic and indigenous practices were encouraged by Muslims with reference to their potential to generate baraji. Through baraji, Muslims in Mali built a value system that prized and converted everyday actions, indigenous rituals, and Islamic practices into the common currency of baraji. Baraji, thus, represented a person-

centered economy through which an array of practices became functionally valued and

related to one another through their conversion to baraji (see Piot 1999: 71-75).

3 Amadou indiscriminately rotated between using the words lahara and alijɛnɛ in his references to paradise in the afterlife. 13 As a paramount value, baraji stood in contrast to and was even threatened by other value spheres (see Weber 1946: 323; Bohannan 1955, 1959). Although Dumont credits paramount values for creating and determining social order, Robbins (2004) rightly highlights that it is when paramount values change that real cultural change takes place (12). In the twenty-first century, Amadou, like many other Muslims elders, placed baraji and money in a struggle against one another for the position of paramount value in

Mali. Amadou granted that money, if used properly, could complement rather than compete with baraji. Similarly, Piot (1999) points out that money often finances ritual

systems (73). For Malian Muslims, money could maximize baraji, and many used their

means to purchase sacrificial animals and kola nuts in order to hold naming and marriage

ceremonies, celebrate Muslim holidays, hold posthumous sacrifices, and participate in

gift-giving relationships. But as Amadou watched an increasing number of Muslims

place material greed and the pursuit of wealth over their pursuit of baraji, he grew

increasingly nervous about the future of Islam. Accordingly, Amadou’s life history

shows the various ways that he sought to uphold his understanding of the importance of

and methods for earning baraji in a changing world. This in-depth study of baraji also

reveals the intricate ways that West Africans connect their beliefs to everyday life by

appraising practical actions in terms of baraji.

Because Muslims in Mali appraised their practice of Islam primarily in terms of

baraji, it was easy for me to investigate how people in Ouélessébougou understood the

concept as a framework for everyday life. Informants explained that all of life was

centered on baraji, and the concept served as a social substance that connected Islam to

seemingly pragmatic activities, such as providing food for one’s family or participating in

14 gift giving relationships. Despite twentieth-century prophesies that Muslim societies

would soon drift away from their innately religious roots, this work adds to efforts to

show the degree to which Islam remains embedded in everyday life and discourse in

twenty-first century Africa (see Brenner 1993: 1-20; Lewis 1968). Accordingly, Muslim residents in Ouélessébougou incorporated Islam into their quotidian lives and believed they would obtain baraji through participation in practices that were evidently Islamic

(such as prayer and fasting) and by behaving with honor in their private lives (such as by carrying out domestic chores and daily vocations with integrity). Baraji represents an image of proper religious expression and holds a definite worth. Muslims in Mali speak of baraji using the same vocabulary that they employ when discussing money. For example, people can search for (nini) and find (sɔrɔ) baraji and, when receiving a gift, it is customary for recipients to ask God to repay (sara) the donor with baraji.

This work further advances understandings of the principles and practices that guided daily life in West Africa, especially by detailing Amadou’s insight on the doctrine of baraji. Scholars researching religion in West Africa have so far paid negligible

attention to the concept of baraji and the personal, cultural, and theological lenses through which it is understood. Passing references to baraji in the existing literature focus primarily on describing baraji through economic undertakings, as researchers explain that Muslims in West Africa commonly give material gifts to religious leaders and elderly people with the expectation they will receive spiritual merit, or baraji, in return (see Hanretta 2008: 290; Schulz 2006: 219; Soares 2005: 166-167, 1996: 739-753).

Minor mentions of baraji in writings on Islam in West Africa reveal that the concept of baraji extends throughout West African countries and Mande and Fula groups. Yet there

15 is a clear lacuna between how often Malians reference baraji as an instructive component in their religious and daily lives, and how seldom scholars use the concept in their attempts to explain religious ideology among West African Muslims. Susan Smeltzer

(2005), a field researcher for Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) International, a

Christian nonprofit organization that studies, develops, and documents language, has produced the most comprehensive and sophisticated overview of baraji in West Africa to date. Smeltzer argues that Soninke Muslims seek to earn baraji to benefit themselves in the afterlife primarily by observing the five pillars of Islam (jɔsenw duuru) during their earthly existence (6, 48-55). Muslims may also acquire what Smeltzer terms

“supplementary baraji,” which practitioners earn through pious deeds viewed as supererogatory (farida) and which complement the effects of baraji earned by observing the principal five pillars (57).4

My project grew out of the desire to address omissions in the literature on baraji and to advance scholarly understandings of the topic by presenting the life history and personal perspectives of Amadou Diallo, with a detailed focus on how he has understood and applied the concept of baraji to his life. His life history narrates how Muslims acquire baraji through the five pillars of Islam alongside the innovative supplementary actions Amadou has used to earn further baraji for his Day of Judgment (faraɲɔgɔnna

don). This ethnography shows how Muslims in West Africa use baraji to find religious relevance and comfort in everyday life by exploring the practices, experiences, and human feelings that have driven Amadou’s lifelong aim to acquire the unspecified

4 Consistent with the widespread tenet, Amadou identified the five basic pillars of Islam as (1) belief (dannaya), (2) prayer (seli), (3) offerings (sarakati), (4) fasting (sun), and (5) pilgrimage to Mecca (hiji). 16 amount of baraji that God requires for a person to enter paradise in the afterlife (lahara or alijɛnɛ).

My use of life history as a primary research method adds to assertions that

analyzing religious beliefs and practices of Muslims on an individual scale constitutes a

reasonable, valid, and significant way of contributing to studies on Islam in Africa (see

Launay 1992: 1). Amadou’s personal narrative reveals the intricate ways that baraji is

pursued during a single lifetime and shows how the acquisition of baraji changes with age and circumstance, promoting an understanding of the dynamic nature of religion in the life cycle (see Vásquez 2001: 231-232). Other studies on the relationship between religion and the life cycle tend to focus on Judaism, Christianity, and indigenous religion and provide explanations on how elaborate rituals complement the stages of human development (see Cresser 2007; Dieterlen 1941; Fuller 1988; Griaule 1970). My research contributes to the study of religion in the life cycle by, first, taking account of

Islam and, second, offering a more delicate approach to understanding religion and the life cycle by featuring the subtle changes that led Amadou to understand, practice, and experience Islam differently throughout his lifetime. Amadou’s history demonstrates that there is no static understanding of how Muslims understand and acquire baraji, and that views about baraji dynamically change as people move through various life stages, learning new ways and acquiring new capacities for earning baraji as they advance in age.

Twentieth-century anthropologist Monica Wilson deeply impacted my approach to fieldwork and ethnography. In the 1930s and 40s, when most anthropologists were focusing on African societies as static examples of tradition, Monica Wilson spearheaded

17 new and more sophisticated understandings of religion and social change in Africa. She

set an example for anthropologists to follow during her fieldwork among the Pondo of

South Africa and Nyakyusa in southwest Tanzania, advocating extended time in the field,

linguistic competence, and detailed ethnography. Wilson avoids major dogmatic and

theoretical conclusions in her writing, and rather lets the people she worked with speak so

that their actions and values can be understood through their own interpretations

(Brokensha 1983: 84-87). Wilson drew attention to the unsaid “first step” in Victor

Turner’s (1967) popularly used theory of analysis in which, “The outsider guesses and

tells his reader what he supposes the participants mean” (1971: 55). Instead of trying to

theoretically classify what she experienced, Wilson sought to understand the local

meaning and significance of the things she saw and heard. In keeping with Monica

Wilson’s methodology and understanding of religious life in Africa (see 1971; 1965;

1957), this writing seeks to limit participation in the guesswork that characterizes the

over-theorization in anthropology that Wilson criticizes as damaging ethnographers’

interpretations of other people and rather focuses on the expressed purposes and ends that

Amadou and other Muslim informants achieved through their practice of Islam and

pursuit of baraji (see 1971: 55; 1957: 6-7).

The literature on Islam in West Africa often suffers from the same type of esoteric

theoretical arguments and over-theorization that Wilson criticizes, and the absence of in-

depth explorations of baraji shows researchers’ reluctance to listen to the ways African

Muslims define, understand, and practice Islam in their own unique terms. Wilson’s characterizations of African cultures gave voice to community-wide interpretations of religious life while arguing that small-scale societies foster conformity among its

18 populace. I, conversely to Wilson, researched in a town with thousands of inhabitants

and found it difficult in my investigation on Islam in Ouélessébougou to discover

identical explanations for religious practices and understandings of baraji between informants. Since 2007 I spent a combined fifteen months living in Ouélessébougou and found that as my knowledge of town history, culture, and language improved, my confusion concerning Islam increased. Within a single Muslim congregation, for instance, I documented continual disagreement between members’ convictions about what constituted unadulterated Islam. I chose to use life history as a primary research method when I realized that I could not, as Monica Wilson had confidently done, offer a unified interpretation of religious experience, understanding, and beliefs related to baraji in Ouélessébougou. Documenting Amadou’s life history offered an opportunity to fairly portray aspects of Islam, West African culture, and baraji through the case of a single individual’s narrative (see Marcus & Fischer 1986: 57-58). This work shows the significant importance of Islam and baraji in shaping Amadou’s life, specifically how his experiences became permanently conjoined with his religious feelings and beliefs, throughout his life. Amadou’s personal history demonstrates a lifelong effort to act in ways that he deemed appropriate and in accordance with his virtues and goal to earn baraji, and shows how life experiences deepened the convictions of his thoughts.

This ethnography unfolds the lived synthesis of Islam and everyday life in West

Africa by investigating religious life, history, and culture in Mali through Amadou

Diallo, a single individual who spent his entire life outside of the powerful and elite in

West Africa. The work relates Amadou’s memories by presenting stories from his childhood, adolescence, adult life, and elderhood and connects his experiences with the

19 traditions and practices of Malian culture, especially detailing how Amadou has

continually acquired baraji amidst the historical, political, and environmental changes he has faced in his lifetime. As such, this style of research supports recent subaltern turns in

African studies (see Feierman 1990). Subaltern studies grew primarily from the concern that modern historiography and ethnography in of South Asia promoted a selective understanding of daily life by focusing on the presence and decisions of colonial powers, the privileged upper class, and others with material advantages (see Asad 1993: 1-14;

Bhabha 2004: 79-84; Guha 2002: 1-3). Subaltern historians, in reply to such accounts that focus on the points of view of kings, heroes, military leaders, sovereigns, and nobility, have argued that scholars must change the subject of their observations to the majority of the population to find the greatest possibility for understanding human history and culture. In keeping with the goal of subaltern studies to recover repressed histories and recognize the experiences and personal idiosyncrasies of the underrepresented masses, this ethnography works to give credence to a single African life while exploring issues related to Islam in Mali. Though Amadou did not live in affluent circumstances or become a commanding leader, this writing shows how a simple and modest man nevertheless lived as a great historical figure. In this spirit, Amadou’s life shows how an individual can speak to historical processes even when living outside the urban and upper-class echelons of society (see Kessler-Harris 2009: 625). This work specifically contributes to ethnographic turns in religious studies and the study of “lived religion” by demonstrating how working-class civilians in Mali support, drive, and challenge daily

life and culture through the pursuit of baraji and in tandem with their Muslim beliefs and

20 practices (see explain how Islam is understood and practiced in everyday life in West

Africa (see McGuire 2008).

Fula and Mande Ethnicity in Ouélessébougou

I arrived in the town of Ouélessébougou for eight months of research in May

2011. Ouélessébougou is located eighty kilometers southeast of Bamako, the capital of

Mali. The town lies in the administrative area (cercle) of Kati in the larger Koulikoro region of southwestern Mali and was historically part of the Jitumu chiefdom. The mayor during the time of my research, Yéh Samaké, estimated that the town had approximately 7,000 inhabitants, ninety percent of whom, he said, identified as Muslim.

Since the sixteenth century various Sufi orders have taken root in West Africa (see

Levtzion & Pouwels 2000: 6-9; Soares 1996, 2005), however Muslims in

Ouélessébougou did not identify with any particular Sufi group and simply identified themselves using the broad term, “Muslim” (silamɛ). 5 There were eleven mosques in

Ouélessébougou and two Christian churches, which served the growing but minority

Christian population.

As a growing town astride both rural communities and near Mali’s sprawling

capital of Bamako, I often felt that living in Ouélessébougou offered me unique insight

into both rural and urban ways of life. For instance, I rented a room in a family

compound with electricity and enjoyed the benefits of electrical lighting in my two-room

home and the ability to easily recharge my telephone and computer batteries. Employees

with Mali’s Department of Energy operated a solar panel farm within town limits to

5 A great number of Sufi orders exist throughout the Islamic world. These orders and suborders are traditionally associated with mystical traditions in Islam, and each rely on a particular set of practices and rituals designed to help practitioners aspire to higher levels of righteousness and religious understanding (see Ernst 1997). 21 produce electricity for residents, yet eighty-four percent of people in Ouélessébougou continued to live without electricity. Most people lived outside of the few neighborhoods in which electricity was available or said that the cost of installing the needed wiring and subsequent monthly bills made the technology too expensive.

Figure 3: Location of Ouélessébougou

The town of Ouélessébougou lies in the Guinea Savannah in an ecosystem positioned between the semi-arid north and the wet southern forested savannahs and rain forests of West Africa. Plains of short, discontinuous, wiry grasses that are primarily used for grazing cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys, permeate the outskirts of

Ouélessébougou (see Adebayo 1991: 12-13). There are no longer any permanent rivers in Ouélessébougou, but a large aquifer beneath the town gives inhabitants dependable access to open well and hand-pump water. Bamanankan speakers identify three main

22 annual seasons: a rainy season (samiya), hot season (futeni), and cold season (nɛnɛma).

The mean elevation is about 1,100 feet above sea level, and temperatures range from

50°F during the cold season to above 100°F in the hot season. June, July, and August are

typically the rainiest months of the year in Ouélessébougou, with August ranking as the

wettest. Yearly rainfall typically varies from thirty to forty inches. A cold and dry

season lasts from November until February, followed by a three-month hot dry period

from March through May.

People in Ouélessébougou told me that historically their town had expanded while

nearby villages remained small because of the wise leadership of their village chiefs

(dugutigiw) and the populace’s general acceptance of strangers and visitors. A local

legend recounted that at the turn of the twentieth century the chief of Ouélessébougou,

Niankòrò Samaké, sought the counsel of a ritual expert (soma) for guidance on how to ensure that his village would peacefully grow and develop. The priest gave Niankòrò three specific instructions. First, he told Niankòrò to sprinkle fini, a fine cereal crop used for making couscous, around the boarders of Ouélessébougou. Upon fulfilling this task,

Niankòrò was instructed to sacrifice a cow within the village limits. Lastly, the ritual expert forbade Niankòrò and his progeny from raising sheep. Niankòrò observed all of the priest’s advice and further held a family meeting in which he addressed the people in his lineage and commanded them to welcome strangers who passed through

Ouélessébougou. The residents of Ouélessébougou quickly developed a reputation for their tolerance, and over the last century people from a range of ethnic groups and West

African countries have immigrated to live and work in the town.

23 Like many permanent inhabitants in the town, Amadou moved to Ouélessébougou during his adulthood. Amadou was born into a Fula and religiously Muslim family during the 1940s in Npièbougou, a small village situated approximately six kilometers south of Markala, a city in Mali’s central Ségou region. Fula people are recognized for lives that center on cattle ownership and herding, and Amadou moved to Ouélessébougou in 1968 upon hearing that cattle owners in the region regularly hired experienced Fula men to care for their animals. Although when I met him in 2010 he had lived in

Ouélessébougou for more than forty years, most residents still vaguely referred to

Amadou as “Fula man” (fulakɛ) when speaking with or about him. One day I asked

Amadou if this epithet bothered him. Amadou said that he loved his nickname and that the moniker was his neighbors’ way of acknowledging and honoring the differences between themselves and Amadou.

Most of the people in Ouélessébougou identified as Bamana, and Amadou enjoyed explaining his perceptions on the dissimilarities between Fula people and the

Bamana majority he lived among. Researchers have long been in contact with Fula people and scholars refer to the group in literature under a variety of names, including

Fulani, Fulbe, Peul, Fulan, Abore, Haalpulaar, Felaata, etc. (de Bruihn & van Dijk 2003:

288; Stenning 1959: 4). When questioned where Fula people currently lived, Amadou first stated that some reside in the Republic of Turkey, drawing attention to Fula participation in intercontinental migration in the African diaspora. Most Fula people, however, continued to live primarily as minority groups along the savanna belt of West

Africa spanning to the edges of North Central Africa and Sudanese North Africa (de

Bruihn & van Dijk 2003: 285-287). The degree to which Fula had assimilated into the

24 predominant culture and language they lived among varied. For example, many Fula

living in Hausaland, located primarily in present-day northern Nigeria and Niger, had

from the thirteenth century onward adopted Hausa language and practices. Records

reveal high rates of marriage between self-identified Hausa and Fula people, and the practices that once differentiated Fula from their Hausa neighbors became “completely swallowed up by the Hausas” (Ibrahim 1966: 171). However, some Fula in Hausaland consciously chose to intermarry, raise cattle, speak Fulfulde, and live in accordance with conventional Fula culture and physically apart from the Hausa majority. These people made up a group that eventually became distinguished in the region as Bororo, meaning

“bush” or “cow Fula” (171-176).

Fula people typically claimed an eastern origin, saying that their early ancestors migrated from Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Fertile Crescent to West Africa

(Adebayo 1991: 3; Wilson-Haffenden 1967: 96). Amadou specifically recounted that his

Fula ancestors wandered (yaala) from Ethiopia to West Africa with their cattle in order to

help Bamana people, who were traditionally occupied in agricultural activities and

possessed no herding skills or access to coveted milk products. Conversely, some oral

traditions ignore eastern ancestral claims. Linguistic analyses of Fulfulde, the Fula

language, is classified as belonging to the Atlantic (Senegambian) branch of the Niger-

Congo language family, and some scholars contend that Fula people originally migrated

west to east from the Senegal River Valley that encompasses present-day northern

Senegal and southern Mauritania (Adebayo 1991: 3-11; Hopen 1958: 6).

More significantly than understandings of their origins, Muslim identity governs

the life of many Fula people. Riesman (1958: 96) rightly notes, “the fact of being

25 Muslim is inseparable from the fact of being Fula” and elsewhere it has been argued that

Fula identity is more of a cultural-religious identity than an “ethnic” one per se (see

Azarya 1993: 53). As fervent Muslims, Fula use their Muslim beliefs to understand and

navigate the natural world around them. Fula people traditionally worked as semi-

nomadic herders and traders, and for centuries Islamic principles have guided Fula

behavior as they have migrated across West Africa. Historically, Fula were responsible

for the significant propagation of Islam throughout the Niger Delta region, especially

through participation in religious wars, or jihads. Important Muslim figures in West

African history, such as ‘Uthman dan Fodio, Ahmadu Lobbo, and ‘Umar Tal all

identified as Fula and helped expand Islam by leading jihads across West Africa during

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see Brenner 2000; Hiskett 1973; Hopen 1958;

Levtzion 1986; Sanneh 1997; Trimingham 1959).

In addition to their dedicated practice of Islam, Fula people are recognized for the

close and gentle relationship they share with their cattle.6 A.G. Adebayo (1991: 2)

writes, “It is difficult for a non-pastoralist to understand what cattle mean to the Fula …

they are a measure of wealth, a unit of account, a treasure, and a property.”7 I once asked

Amadou why Fula people love cattle so much. “Ah!” he yelled with affection at the very

thought of the beloved animal, “A cow (misi) is everything!” In consideration of cattle survival and prosperity, Fula pastoralists have walked and settled all over West Africa in search of increased rainfall and better vegetation for their herds, while also carefully

6 Marguerite Dupire shows that the degree to which Fula identify with both Islam and cattle husbandry varies depending on a variety of factors, most importantly whether the group is sedentary or nomadic. She argues that sedentarized Fula have historically been more highly Islamic and less interested in cattle ownership than nomadic Fula (1996: 29-32). 7 Fula in southern Mali selectively raise Zebu cows (gonga) because of their resistance to ticks and ability to withstand severe heat. 26 evaluating the presence of bovine diseases and availability of markets before each migration (Adebayo 1991: 2; Dupire 1996: 24-27; Stenning 1959: 4). In response to the drying climate in the West African Sahel, it became common in the 1960s for rural Fula in the northern zones of Mali to migrate to rural regions in the south in search of improved environmental security and employment possibilities in cattle husbandry (de

Bruijn & van Dijk 2003:286).

Amadou was among many Fula men who migrated to Ouélessébougou and nearby villages in the mid-twentieth century. Throughout the twentieth and early twenty- first centuries, drought and deteriorating environmental conditions led Fula communities to migrate and break down more than ever (Tonah 2006: 152-153; see also Frantz 1990;

Schneider 1997; Stenning 1959). Fula people have thus become increasingly intertwined with the dominant cultures that surround them, and this project seeks to detail Amadou’s personal reflections on this trend. Amadou’s life history adds to efforts to balance and unite the characteristically separate bodies of literature in Mande and Fula studies (see

Amselle 1998) by describing how a Muslim man who strongly identified with his Fula heritage lived while encountering considerable Mande cultural influences.

Like most Fula speakers in Mali, Amadou learned the Bamana language, called

Bamanankan by Bamana speakers, as a second language during his childhood. Along with French, Bamanankan has, in effect, become the interethnic lingua franca of Mali

(Amselle 1998: 55). 8 I have not studied Fulfulde, and Amadou and I spoke only

Bamanankan with each other in all of our interactions. Even decades after his arrival,

Amadou continued to point out and joke about the physical differences between Fula

8 Bamanankan is a member of the Niger-Congo family of languages and is primarily spoken in Mali. It is also spoken to a lesser extent throughout West Africa, particularly in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast (Bird et at. 1977: 2). 27 migrants in Ouélessébougou and Bamana people, whom he deemed indigenous to the

region. Fula people typically have fairer skin than Mande descendants, and the name

“Fula” is derived from a Berber root “ful” meaning “the red men” (Wilson-Haffenden

1967: 7). In addition to their light skin, Amadou noted that Fula people stereotypically

had longer and fuller eyelashes, thinner lips, higher cheekbones, straighter and narrower

noses, and less coarse hair than Mande people (see also Amselle 1998: 44; Dupire 1952:

1-16; Wilson-Haffenden 1967: 96).

Most people in Ouélessébougou during my research identified as Bamana or from

another source of related Mande ancestry. Mande people depended largely on agriculture

for their livelihood and are reputed by some West Africans as weakly Islamized in

comparison to Fula Muslims (Amselle 1998: 50). Similar to the Fula, Mande people

were spread across a discontinuous area in West Africa and there were no encompassing

or centralized political or social systems for those indentifying as Mande or Fula (Bird &

Kendall 1980: 13; Dieterlen 1950: 124). Mande and Fula people in West Africa

historically lived integrated with one another, and although people in Ouélessébougou

actively identified with disparate ethnic groups, all residents shared cultural ideas that

defined kinship, politics, and economic life in their town (see Amselle 1998: 43-57)9.

In 2011 most Mande inhabitants in Ouélessébougou worked as farmers, most

commonly cultivating cotton and peanuts, while Fula people in the town continued to

earn income through livestock husbandry. However, many residents in Ouélessébougou

9 Amselle’s uses the concept of mestizo logics to show that language, culture, and religious practices among disparately identified ethnic groups are not entirely fixed nor isolated from one another. Using this premise, his work considers the contemporarily designated Fulani, Bambara, and Malinke ethnic groups in West Africa and traces their practices to show a historical and cultural coexistence. For example, defined codes of honor that are referenced using the variable terms “pulaaku” and “mɔgɔya” in Fula and Mande languages, respectively, are comparable in detail. 28 explained that their earnings as farmers and herders were less reliable due to drought and

an overall worsening environment, and people either migrated to cities in search of work

or found low-paying jobs as laborers in town. This work will show that, at every stage in

his life, Amadou’s vocations have profoundly linked him and his family’s welfare to

Mali’s environment. During our interviews, Amadou repeatedly offered detailed

reflections on the ecological transformations he has witnessed in West Africa. He noted

the rising temperatures, the drying rivers, and the difficulties these changes present for

sedentary farmers and cattle herders in Mali. Amadou’s account of climate change in

Mali prompted me to interview other people in Ouélessébougou about their experiences

and perceptions of the worsening environment. I gathered sobering stories, shared in this

ethnography, that offer detailed descriptions of climate change in southern Mali while

also describing the religious practices that Amadou and other Muslims in

Ouélessébougou used in an effort to safeguard their environment, assess which behaviors,

acquire baraji while working outside, and ultimately return to the temperate climate of

the past.

Orthography

Bamanankan terms and phrases appear italicized throughout this work. The chart

below serves to familiarize readers with the Bamanankan alphabet and offers a guide for proper pronunciation of the Bamanankan language (adapted from Bird et al. 1977: 3-7). I have written the names of towns and cities using French accents because most maps of and writings about the region feature such spellings. I have also used French accents rather than Bamanankan vowels in my spelling of personal and family names, as most of

29 the literate informants with whom I worked with on this project preferred to spell their

names using such accents.

Table 1: The Bamanankan alphabet

LETTERS ENGLISH APPROXIMATE a father b big c church d dog e bate ɛ or è bet f fool g gull h here i beat k canvas l log m man n note ɲ annual ɲ sing o boat ɔ or ò bought p pile r There is no true English equivalent. The Bamanankan /r/ is a tapped sound that sounds similar to a /d/ to an English speaker. s saw sh shoe t top u boot w woman y youth z zebra

Project Methodology

Soon after my arrival in Ouélessébougou I asked Amadou’s permission to collect

and use his life history for my dissertation. Using life history seemed crucial for

exploring something as complex as baraji, and I supposed that scholars interested in religion in West Africa could gain a focused and replete understanding of baraji through the lens of a single individual’s life course. I explained my hopes for the research project

30 and proposed that he help me to document the feelings and factors that he felt were

important to his religious life and attainment of baraji while discussing his whereabouts and opinions during major historical events and environmental changes that had occurred during his lifetime. Amadou agreed to the project, and we quickly developed a schedule in which we would sit beside each other and talk about his life while making rope. From the beginning Amadou appreciated the starting point of our project: that not all West

African Muslims agree on matters of religion or share the same experiences and motivations. We agreed to record his experiences and thoughts on a range of topics, starting with his earliest childhood memories and ultimately concluding with what it was like to be an old man (cɛkɔrɔba) in Mali.

A Bamana proverb which counsels that “a single visit does not create relations”

(sìnɛ kelen tɛ tɔgɔ ncɔ) shaped the approach I took to my fieldwork and informant

relationships. I found that my research improved by spending extended periods of time

with my research collaborators, especially Amadou. As part of my research, I

interviewed Amadou’s family and friends as well as political and Islamic leaders in

Ouélessébougou. I used these interviews, which flowed more as guided conversations

than according to any set protocol, to corroborate Amadou’s life experiences and hear

varied perspectives on community and religious life in Ouélessébougou. My schedule

often changed to accommodate my appointments with these participants, but Amadou

never complained when external interviews drew me away from my time with him.

When possible and appropriate, I arranged to spend additional time with my

informants outside of the interview setting. Paying social visits to informants helped me

to improve my Bamanankan and clued me into the subtle details of life in Mali that I

31 would have otherwise missed. For example, Amadou often arranged for me to prepare lunches with his wife, Nouhouba. Of all the activities I carried out with residents, I especially enjoyed these cooking appointments. During these meetings Nouhouba treated me very delicately and restricted the chores she permitted me to do. I pleaded with her several times to let me chop firewood or stir the sauce while it boiled, but she always insisted that the ax was too heavy or that ashes would fly into my eyes if I sat near the fire. I eventually accepted that Nouhouba’s hospitality would never allow me to carry out certain tasks in her home but enjoyed our time together nevertheless. Nouhouba told me fantastic stories from her life during these visits and helped me to understand the daily domestic chores that keep a compound functioning, all the while also teaching me how to prepare authentic Malian cuisine.

My informants each treated me with respect and I gave them each modest presents, typically tea, sugar, kola nuts, or fresh milk, to mark my appreciation for his or her participation in interviews. Gift giving is a vital custom in West Africa, and in

Ouélessébougou friends, family, and neighbors continually exchanged reciprocal gifts with one another to express their love, loyalty, and friendship. Both Amadou and Koniba played central roles in my research, and my gifts to them were consequently more extravagant than those I gave to other participants. I regularly purchased large sacks of rice and housewares for Koniba and Amadou and formally praised them for their help and support upon presentation of these presents. I wanted to keep these exchanges private to avoid drawing vulgar attention from residents to my comparative wealth, but the town’s culture did not support this wish. People in Ouélessébougou always remembered and publically drew attention to those who gave them gifts, and recipients

32 continued to laud those who gave them presents long after the time of the initial offering.

In his book, The Gift (1923), French sociologist Marcel Mauss argues that gifts create

social bonds between the giver and recipient and that material gifts are never free and

carry an expectation of return. Supporting Mauss’s argument, I noticed that the people in

Ouélessébougou dutifully repaid gifts. Inhabitants said that neglecting to return on a gift

made them look like a chicken that keeps its beak to the ground and never turns to see

where its feed comes from. Nearly every day Koniba and Amadou purchased for me

bowls of porridge (siri) or steamed bean patties (farin) as a late afternoon snack. I obviously did not expect Amadou and Koniba to match the monetary value of my presents to them in their reciprocation, but I truly appreciated the good-hearted generosity they extended when buying food gifts for me.

I enjoyed living in Ouélessébougou, especially because my work making rope structured my days and gave me a recognized position in the town. I quickly came to understand that to explore someone’s entire life takes a lot of time and effort, and consequently I spent most days with Amadou. On a typical day I arrived at work to make rope at nine in the morning and broke only at midday for lunch. I always went to the market before work in the morning to buy Amadou, Koniba, and me fried sweet bread and a small plastic pouch of potable water for each of us. Amadou maintained that caffeine made him sit straighter throughout the day, and we always started the morning by sharing our latest news while drinking small, concentrated doses of gunpowder green tea with mint and sugar.

I used the early hours of the afternoon to eat lunch and briefly visit with my host family, who lived a short walking distance from my workspace. During each of my visits

33 to Ouélessébougou I stayed in the residential compound (du) of Bourama Samaké.

Bourama and his wife Kadia shared the spacious compound with their seven children,

who ranged from sixteen years to nine months old. In 2011, Bourama was forty years old

and taught math and physics and worked as headmaster at a school in a nearby village

called Taamala while Kadia sold flavored ice in the town market. I learned from

observing who lived in family compounds throughout my neighborhood that membership

in residential compounds frequently changed, and decisions regarding who was eligible

to live in a compound rarely conformed to strict patrilineal and patrilocal schemes that

scholars have described as prevailing in West Africa (see Cissé 1970: 159; Leynaud &

Cissé 1978: 203-223). As such, two teenage boys whom Bourama classified in the

French as his “nephews” (neveux), but to whom he had no clear biological relation to lived in the compound because there were no opportunities for formal education in their rural hometowns. Like many Muslim men in Ouélessébougou, Bourama’s deceased father, Tiekòròfin, had married three wives in his lifetime.10 Bourama’s birth mother passed away in 2005, but Yirigoi, his father’s second wife, lived in Bourama’s compound and Bourama unquestioningly cared for her. In 2011 Tiekòròfin’s younger sister who was in her late seventies, Djègèni, also came to live with Bourama.

10 Surah 4, verse 3 of the Qur’an deals directly with the topic of polygymy. The passage states, “…marry those that please you of [other] women, two or three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then [marry only] one or those your right hand possesses. That is more suitable that you may not incline [to injustice].” Most Muslim men in Ouélessébougou understood this section as express permission to take up to four wives, provided they treated each wife with equal emotional, physical, and material consideration. 34

Figure 4: Yirigoi washes her young grandson with an elixir she prepared to instill courage in him.

Yirigoi, who everyone in the compound called “grandmother” (momuso),

impressed me from the first time I met her in 2007. She spent the bulk of her time

making medicines and visiting sick elderly friends within town limits. Bourama’s

children habitually teased Yirigoi about her preoccupation with health and remedies, and

she laughingly defended herself by yelling insults. She lamented that her grandchildren

were animals (dantanfɛn) and baboons (gɔnw), and made fun of the shape of their noses.

The children always got the last word in during these playful arguments by lifting their arms and quickly snapping them down against the side of their body to show their contempt. Despite the ongoing jokes, whenever anyone in the compound became ill or injured, they always first summoned Yirigoi for treatment and comfort.

35 I originally considered concurrently gathering both Yirigoi and Amadou’s life histories to use for my dissertation research. Two reservations stopped me from taking this approach. First, I had practical worries about time and knew that I could not adequately collect two complete life histories in the space of eight months. Second, I decided that I wanted to keep my relationship with Yirigoi personal and our conversations ultimately private. In many ways, however, Yirigoi helped to advance my research and understanding of Islam. She always invited me to attend Friday prayer services in the mosque with her and gladly introduced me to her friends who also prayed there. The relationship between Yirigoi and me was quite different from the one I shared with Amadou. I met Yirigoi when I was a young woman and we spoke to each other with an uplifting and familiar closeness about marriage, housekeeping, health, sexual relationships, work, and childbirth. I often felt it was impossible to ever fully stop working when living in Mali for fieldwork. I consciously tried to use my time with

Yirigoi as a needed break from the constant stream of records I otherwise felt compelled to keep.

I mindfully reserved my evenings and early afternoons for my host family, but otherwise happily spent my time with Amadou. Within one month of regularly working together, Amadou deemed that the rope I produced was of a high enough quality to sell to the public. Given that I did not need the income, I originally felt reluctant about putting my rope up for sale. Amadou, however, pointed out that I would ruin his market if I began distributing rope for free and we ultimately agreed to sell our rope for the same

36 price, 200 francs (about $0.40) per arms-length.11 On a productive day, Amadou could make 500 francs, while my slower hands typically earned me around 100 francs per day.

He typically worked steadily throughout the day, though he sometimes complained of the strain that a full life of physical labor had on his aged frame and allowed himself the indulgence of a short nap. Amadou usually deemed it time for us to stop working sometime during the five o’clock hour. The two of us always rode home from work together on our bicycles. Amadou owned a rickety, black bike that he frequently paid to have repaired, as it needed maintenance and new parts. We would pass my house first, and he always blessed me to spend the night peacefully (ka su hɛrɛ caya) as he continued pedaling out of sight down the dirt road to his home.

Amadou lived in a half-acre family compound in the residential center of

Ouélessébougou. As the property owner and oldest man living in the unit, Amadou served as the head of the compound (dutigi) and oversaw and settled all major domestic matters. Many family compounds in Ouélessébougou had twenty or more residents living together, and Amadou’s compound population was relatively small compared to those of his neighbors. Only six members of Amadou’s kin group lived permanently in his compound: his wife, Nouhouba Bagayoko; their 30-year-old son, Modibo, whose mental retardation kept him from marriage or employment in town; Amadi, their 27-year- old son who worked as a motorcycle mechanic; Amadi’s wife, Binta; and two young grandchildren. As was the convention in Ouélessébougou, a member of Amadou’s compound stayed home at all times in order to protect their property and receive visitors.

11 The West Africa CFA franc, a common currency throughout Francophone West Africa, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea, was freely convertible during the time of my research into Euros at a fixed rate of 1 Euro = 655 CFA francs (Clément 1996: 1-3). 37

Figure 5: Amadou Diallo’s home and courtyard

The compound had three disconnected mud homes used primarily for sleeping and storing personal possessions. Amadou and Nouhouba occupied separate private bedrooms in the compound’s largest quarters, an arrangement that many young and newly married couples in twenty-first century Mali chose not to observe but that

Nouhouba insisted was necessary in order to keep secrets (gundo). Amadi, Binta, and their two children lived in an adjacent two-room home, and Modibo inhabited a single- room dwelling. A small structure used to store household cooking supplies, pit latrine, animal corral, garden, and water well rested on the various sides of the square compound.

A short, mud brick fence surrounded the property limits and each night Amadou closed the wide entrance to his compound with a gate made from gridded tree branches. Family and communal life took place primarily outside in the compound’s sizable courtyard.

Three large mango trees spaced in a triangle stood in the middle of the compound.

38 Amadou’s wife had opportunely tied a clothes wire between each of the trees’ heavy limbs. The trees’ shadows stretched across the courtyard during the day, allowing family members to carry out their chores in the shade. Amadou’s family, like most of the populace in Ouélessébougou, lived without electricity. Every evening the family built a small fire and sat together near Amadou and Nouhouba’s house. Amadou’s family otherwise depended on moonbeams and starlight from the lucid night sky, jocularly called by townspeople, “the big unpickable cotton field” (foroba kɔɔri jɛli bɔbaga t’a la), to see their way around the compound at after dark.

Amadou’s compound reflected his love for all animals. Cows were his favorite, although he did not have any cattle at the juncture of his life in which I met him. But I noticed that the mood of his voice changed and a childlike smile came across his face whenever he talked about his cows and reflected on far-away memories of herding.

When I met him, Amadou owned a four-year-old dog called Louie, a cat named Mòsh, three sheep, one goat, and five chickens. He also built a small ground-level birdbath out of cement near the door to his home to draw birds to his compound. Every evening

Amadou’s son, Modibo, swept the dirty water from the small pool with a coarse hand broom and replaced it with fresh water drawn from the family’s well. I only saw

Amadou lose his temper once during the course of my research. On this occasion, a group of school children amused themselves by throwing rocks at a lizard on the road in front of our workspace. Amadou shouted angrily for them to stop, calling them “cursed”

(danga) and “children of hell” (jahanama denw). The children laughed at Amadou and continued to abuse the small animal. Provoked, Amadou rose from his work and stepped directly onto the dirt road, without pausing to put on his sandals. He chased the children

39 away, picked up the lizard, and walked barefoot down the street until he found a bush to

place the frightened reptile. Amadou continually told his elderly friends that he hoped to

die from a lion attack, opining that becoming a meal for a hungry animal would procure

him an honorable death.

Amadou insisted on taking Fridays off from our work in order to explore the

market, visit with friends, and attend prayer services at the mosque. Amadou volunteered

as the muezzin at the town’s largest mosque (misiriba). As muezzin, he was responsible for calling residents to obligatory prayers five times per day and for alerting congregants to attend an additional formal sermon and prayer meeting each Friday at noon. Amadou devoted significant time to his muezzin duties. Muslims participate in five required prayers each day that are timed according to the position of the sun: a prayer at dawn

(fitiri), near midday (selifana), in the afternoon (lansara), before dusk (safo), and at nightfall (fajiri). On Fridays Amado arrived at the mosque to begin to call to Friday services (jumaseli) at eleven o’clock and did not leave until after the sermon had concluded, usually around one o’clock in the afternoon. On regular workdays Amadou broke from his work to perform the lansara and selifana calls to prayer at the mosque, which was providentially located directly next to our workspace. He always wore a metal digital wristwatch, which softly beeped twice at the top of every hour. He told me that a working watch was needed to keep his calls to prayer punctual but said he often felt ridiculous about wearing a timepiece because God had put such a reliable clock in the sky in the form of the sun. Amadou began his repeated calls between forty and thirty minutes before the prayer was scheduled to began. He said that an early reminder of prayer gave

40 Muslims plenty of time to momentarily put aside their work, travel to the mosque, and ritually wash before conducting their prayers.

During the day, we spoke mainly about Amadou’s life and opinions. I found that

Amadou was also keenly interested in learning about my life in America. As much as

Amadou enjoyed discovering our differences, he particularly liked to ask me creative questions designed to show the similarities between Africans and Americans.

One afternoon Amadou broke a period of comfortable silence between us by inquiring, “Is George Bush’s grandfather alive?”

I responded that I was not completely certain, but that I assumed his grandfather had passed away.

Amadou’s eyes danced, and he assumed a posture of playful superiority when he realized that I did not immediately see the point to his question. “Oh!” Amadou shouted in delight, “The most powerful man in the world, yet his grandfather is dead! Just like mine!”

Koniba, who overall had a milder and less emphatic personality than Amadou, beamed and laughed loudly at Amadou’s message. The entire scene sent me into my own fit of laughter.

Amadou needed little guidance during formal interviews and informal conversations and spoke easily and at length about each of the topics and life stages that I prompted him to discuss. In addition to chronicling his life story, Amadou and I had topical interviews in which he explained his thoughts on an array of subjects including politics, Islamic history, and climate change in West Africa. Some informants acted nervous and needed reassurance during interviews, but Amadou always remained his

41 natural self and seemed comfortable sharing his personal experiences and thoughts with

me. I regularly arranged times to formally record my conversations with Amadou.

Amadou originally resisted having his voice recorded. As an old man with a gregarious

reputation, Amadou loved observing the daily bustles and cares of the dirt road in front of

his workstation and greeting the people who moved about on the street. He felt that the

visible and bizarre presence of my digital voice recorder alienated him from his friends

and passersby. I argued that recorded interviews were essential for the project because of

my imperfect Bamanankan, saying that voice recordings allowed me to listen to our

interviews repeatedly until I understood the complete details of the memories and stories

he related. Amadou agreed to let me record him, and I showed my concern for his

hesitation by always asking permission to conduct a recorded interview with him at least

one day beforehand.

Amadou’s interest in recorded interviews began to degenerate four months into

my research. I worried about the fate of the project when Amadou began to make

excuses for postponing interviews to another day. At this same time, I had started

passing the warm evenings listening to Yirigoi and Djègèni recount folktales to one

another in our family compound. These elderly women criticized me for sitting quietly

while they spoke, and taught me how to properly listen to a story by Malian standards.

They encouraged me to repeat phrases from the tale, clap my hands, laugh loudly, and

forcefully interpose expressions such as, “What’s next?” (naamu?), and, “I don’t believe

it!” (n’dalen tɛ!), and even interrupt the speaker when I thought that I could predict what would happen next. I started applying these listening principles to my interviews with

42 Amadou and found that by doing so his enthusiasm for the research and recorded interviews returned.

Most days I worked without a voice recorder and I made continual and rapid jottings in a small moleskin notebook to preserve experiences from each day. A single page of my notebook contained collections of stories, folk tales, overheard dialogues, descriptive scenes, Bamana proverbs and expressions, new vocabulary, and overall feelings from throughout the day. Each night I typed the contents into more ordered and organized fieldnotes. Amadou loved to watch me write, and at times he even reminded me to record certain moments and pieces of information in my notebook. One day he complimented me for the ease with which I wrote, saying that he never grew tired of watching me scribble. Upon hearing Amadou’s admiration, my mind drifted to the literature on the fetishization of writing in Africa, which argues that historically, West

Africans attributed magical qualities to writing and saw literacy as a mysterious ability that was valued for its capacity to mediate between the natural and supernatural worlds

(see Goody 1971: 455-466, 1987: 125-126; Masquelier 2009: 96; Mommersteeg 1990:

63-76; Niezen 1991: 226-229).

But Amadou interrupted my arrogant thoughts saying, “When I watch you write it reminds me of the way French settlers reacted when they watched us Fula people milk our cows—they would praise me!”

Although the literature is quite one-sided on the issue, I instantly realized that the fetishization of foreign abilities occurs by both parties.

I believe that I owe the success of my research to Amadou’s and my shared admiration and curiosity about one other. Amadou and I got along well with each other

43 for the entirety of the project. It seems remarkable that, even with the vast differences

between our ages, gender, and cultural backgrounds, we never encountered any major

troubles or misunderstandings. Our close friendship changed to kinship over the course

of my fieldwork, and by the time I returned to the States in January of 2012 Amadou

affectionately called me his grandchild (mɔden) and I referred to him as my grandfather

(mɔkɛ). Some people in Ouélessébougou laughed at our “imaginary” kinship, but our time together left us with a bond thicker than blood. I treasured the experience of recording the full tale of Amadou’s life and know that he found a similar enjoyment.

Amadou commented many times that he saw my chronicling his life and insights in writing as an effective preservation of his experiences and as a way for his progeny to know him. Amadou said that younger generations in Mali knew comparatively less about their ancestors than the people of his generation, recalling that as a child his grandmother used to tell him stories about their relatives every night until he fell asleep. Children in the twenty-first century, Amadou complained, preferred to listen to televisions and radios to the voices of their grandparents. Amadou often felt uneasy about the cultural, political, environmental, and material changes he had witnessed since his childhood and continually questioned his place in the contemporary world.

“I’m a person of the past” (n ye fɔlɔfɔlɔ mɔgɔ ye), Amadou constantly reminded me as he guided me through his life story.

I continually complimented Amadou for his fascinating life and personality and told him that he was the ideal protagonist for my project. Amadou dismissed these remarks and insisted he was everyman and often extrapolated his unique experiences and opinions as common to all people. For instance, I once asked him to share his earliest

44 memory, and he told me that all people have the same first memory of eating their favorite food for the first time. Despite Amadou’s regular inferences that he, as a single person, could explain the whole of humankind, it is important in reading this work to remember that Amadou’s life narrative represents the experiences and perspectives of one individual. To an extent, however, Amadou was right that his life story offers a relatable experience. Paul Riesman has written ethnographies on Fula life that promote a more sensitive and humanistic understanding of culture, arguing that as humans we are all made of the same “human material” and encounter shared experiences and feelings

(see Riesman 1992: 1-7). I related to Amadou during our conversations, and his life story gives a touching expression of the joys and misfortunes that mark every person. This is not to suggest that his life course reflects wholly universal concerns; when Amadou made personal choices and interpreted events he acted largely within the elements of the cultures that he inherited. As such, the integration of the Fula and Mande cultures that

Jean-Loup Amselle (1998) posits features prominently in Amadou’s life story and is illustrated through his actual experiences and behavior.

This ethnography demonstrates the principles of culture in Mali by relating the thoughts, actions, and circumstances of one individual. The work gives a purposeful account of Amadou’s life story, with special focus on Islam and his achievement of baraji, while considering the impact that West African history and politics, environmental changes, and culture have had on him as a Muslim man. The project is a mindful effort to deviate from cultural anthropology’s usual emphasis on the group, which comes at the expense of depicting individuals as passive carriers of tradition (c.f.

Benedict 1934: 46-48; Sapir 1949: 509-512). Edward Sapir famously chastised cultural

45 anthropologists for systematically showing little concern for informants, pointing out that anthropologists paradoxically rely primarily on the personal accounts of informants to manufacture impersonal ethnographies that conventionally extrapolate individual accounts as shared by a homogenous cultural group (Sapir 1949: 569, 593).

In Continuities in Cultural Evolution, Margaret Mead complements Sapir’s case and adds that researchers typically understand culture by discerning what members of a society have in common. Yet, “Much of culture is not common to all members of society,” and Mead warns that the familiar concept of culture can lead anthropologists to homogenize groups and ignore or exclude alternative points of view (Mead 1999: 33). At times in this work, the reader may have cause to disagree with Amadou’s experiences and opinions and feel warranted in consequently dismissing his life narrative altogether. In the seminal essay “Why Cultural Anthropology Needs the Psychiatrist,” Edward Sapir illustrates why scholars should take Amadou’s version of the world seriously, even when

Amadou’s accounts contradict more prevalent beliefs, practices, and sensibilities elsewhere documented in West Africa. Sapir tells the story of American ethnologist J. O.

Dorsey’s informant named Two Crows, whom Dorsey described as a mercurial and influential member of the Omaha tribe. Two Crows denied Dorsey’s understanding of how many clans there were in Omaha society, alleging that there were only seven when most informants had reported eight (Sapir 1949: 570-571). Sapir reproaches Dorsey for relegating Two Crows to a footnote. Deviants, Sapir writes, are never absolutely wrong and should not be dismissed: “If we get enough Two Crows to agree we have what we call a new tradition, or a new dogma, or a new theory, or a new procedure, in the handling of that particular pattern of culture” (571). In light of this potential, Sapir

46 encourages us to allow for Amadou’s account, recognizing his life history as an

illustration of the freedom and creative participation that people have in their culture and

community (316-321).

Project Outline

I collected Amadou’s life history over eight months of daily interviews, which

have been edited and reordered to put his narrative in a flowing and chronological order

that illuminates his religious life and attainment of baraji (see Atkinson 1998: 24-26;

Marcus & Fischer 1986: 57-59). I translated my notes and interviews from Bamanankan

to English with minimal outside input or assistance and have tried to keep my writing in

the words of Amadou according to these translations. To retell Amadou’s life story, I

have organized this ethnographic account into seven chapters that concentrate on how

Islam has mattered to Amadou during his lifetime and on his acquirement of baraji amid

various vocations, circumstances, and environmental conditions. Although the five

required Muslim prayers have shaped Amadou’s daily schedule throughout his life, the

goal of this research is to show Amadou’s vision of the world and how he has understood

and practiced Islam between his participation in prayers and other overtly Muslim

practices. This project explicitly aims to understand how Amadou’s understanding of

Islam and conception of reality became plaited together, like a finely made rope, to bring

shape and understanding to his everyday life since childhood. As such, the work focuses

on Islam in the way in which Amadou has understood it as a tool and in relation to baraji.

I begin my exploration of Amadou’s life with a chapter on the emergence of Islam in Mali, with a specific focus of Amadou’s understanding of the historical spread of

Islam throughout West Africa and the prominent doctrine of baraji. From here, chapter

47 three explores Amadou’s childhood in Mali’s Ségou region and shares his early

experiences with herding, Fula family life, and Islamic education. This chapter

documents Amadou’s childhood fears and perceived tensions over the ethnic and

religious differences he encountered in Npièbougou and how he worked to resolve these

fears through his understanding of Islam. Chapter four details Amadou’s adolescence

and early adulthood at the turn of Mali’s independence from French colonial powers and

considers how Amadou balanced his concern for obtaining baraji with an interest in material wealth in the newly independent Republic of Mali during the early 1960s. The chapter focuses on Islam and early Malian politics while describing Amadou’s maturity alongside his first travel and work experiences outside of Ségou. Next, chapter five discusses kinship, Islam, and the onset of Amadou’s adult life as a migrant in southern

Mali and reveals how Amadou relied on his understanding of the acquisition of baraji during adulthood to accept family responsibilities at the expense of his formerly independent lifestyle. The chapter argues that researchers interested in kinship in West

Africa will find it more useful to understand kinship in West Africa in terms of value,

Islam, and baraji—as baraji represents a kind of shared substance that joins kin—rather than encoded biological ties. Chapter six discusses aging, funeral practices in Mali, changes in the environment and politics that Amadou has observed in his lifetime, and details on Amadou’s life as muezzin and an acknowledged elder in Ouélessébougou. The chapter examines how Amadou reconciled his preference and longing for the past with his present circumstances as an elderly man in the early twenty-first century. I lastly conclude with a brief review of the insights that Amadou’s life brings to understanding

Islam, culture, history, baraji and daily life in West Africa.

48 CHAPTER TWO

ISLAM AND BARAJI IN WEST AFRICA

“In the past, nothing made nothing. Then God built everything in six days,”

Amadou told me.

In detailing the earth’s creation, Amadou said that God next made an agreement with humankind: if people fasted and prayed, He would record their baraji and reward them with paradise (àlìjinɛ) in the afterlife. In this paradise everyone lives in a well-

appointed home without the daily worries of sickness, excretion, aging, and work that

plague earthly existence. During the seventh century God explained the full details of

this arrangement to His final prophet, Muhammad, who compiled these revelations into

the Qur’an (Kuranɛ). As Amadou explained it, after Muhammad’s death, Arab Muslims continued to proselytize Islam to unbelievers (kafiri) throughout the Middle East, North

Africa, and West Africa.

Amadou recognized that Islam has played a major role in the historical transformation of Saharan and sub-Saharan societies throughout Africa and his account of the spread of Islam in West Africa largely matched those of professional historians.

Drawing on historical monographs as well as interviews with Amadou and other

Ouélessébougou residents, this chapter will introduce the chronological spread and contemporary practice of Islam in West Africa in order to show how historical circumstances and the religious milieu in twenty-first century Ouélessébougou shaped

Amadou’s personal religious faith.

49 Because this research focuses on Amadou’s practice of Islam throughout various

regions and countries during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in West Africa, a

brief explanation of the historical spread of Islam to the areas and ethnic groups pertinent

to this work is needed. This chapter shows that Amadou recognized himself as a Muslim

within the context of an extensive history of Islam in West Africa by describing Fula and

Muslim history as the background for his religious convictions. The chapter begins by

describing the first instances of Fula conversion to Islam. The history of Fula Muslims

cannot be understood independently from their participation in military jihads throughout

West Africa. Therefore, I recount Fula participation in jihads to explain the spread of

Islam to remote Fula groups and Mande people. This section begins by sharing

Amadou’s knowledge of jihads in West Africa and their connection to baraji and then offers a more detailed focus on the jihads of ‘Uthman dan Fodio, Ahmadu Lobbo, and

‘Umar Tal. Next, I explain the conversion of the Bamana majority in Ouélessébougou to

Islam during the early twentieth century and the impact this change had on French colonization. The chapter then turns to a description of the different currents of Islam in

Mali and Ouélessébougou and the activities of local Muslim religious leaders. Lastly, I examine the details of the concept of baraji in order to advance a more careful understanding of the concept in relation to how people in West Africa evaluated the historical spread of Islam in West Africa alongside their other ritual practices and moral choices.

Early Fula Conversion

Beginning in the eighth century, after the conquest of Muslim North Africa, trans-

Saharan trade encouraged Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa to expand

50 commerce in West Africa, and, with them, Islam soon after began to influence ritual and

economic life in the area (see Sanneh 1997). The Prophet Muhammad reportedly said,

“The trader is God’s favorite,” and merchants (who were often also Muslim jurists) slowly spread their transcendent beliefs to Africans (Martin 1986: 100). Islam initially attracted only a modest number of converts, most of whom were rulers, government officials, fellow merchants, or members of royal lineages (Warms 1992: 485). On the whole, early Muslim proselytizing in sub-Saharan Africa was largely informal and limited in scope, especially in comparison to later Christian missionary efforts (Hodgson

1974: 407). Traders were originally the best candidates for conversion to Islam, as frequent travel and the need for networking with Berber and Arab contacts in the area made membership in a shared, universal religion appealing (Bravmann 1974: 8; Levtzion

2006: 21; Martin 1986: 100; Sanneh 1997: 12; Trimingham 1959: 54). Some historians have argued that Africans were predisposed to receive Islam because of the degree of similarity between African and Muslim practices, specifically that both allowed polygyny and taught cosmologies that acknowledge a multiplicity of spirits (Hopen 1958: 144;

Owasa-Ansah 2000: 480; see also Horton 1971; Lewis 1968). History indicates that non-

Muslims in Africa were curious and intrigued by Islam and rarely behaved with hostility toward Muslim practitioners (Blakely et al. 1994: 8). Islam slowly spread into the countryside and, by the time of European colonization, Islam was the most powerful religious ideology functioning in North and West Africa, as well as within minority groups in East and Southern Africa (Brenner 1993: 20; Harrison 1988: 10-27; Warms

1992: 486).

51 Fula people were among the first West Africans to convert to Islam during the

fourteenth century and are highly associated with the continuation and propagation of

Islam in West African history. Fula can be found across the Western Sudan, from

Senegal to northern Cameroon, and their shared Muslim practice has historically united the Fula people. During the onset of Islam among those who identified as Fula, many

Fula men learned Arabic and acted as scribes. Most of these scribes also continued their

occupations as pastoralists and traders, which required continual roving between large

towns and throughout the countryside. Early Fula Muslims used their travels to develop

knowledge of Islam and gain converts throughout the wide regions of Fula habitation

(50). As Amadou tells it, as growing numbers of his Fula ancestors converted to Islam,

they noticed that their neighbors did not worship or respect God. Fula witnessed their

neighbors’ sins (jurumu or haramuya) and felt burdened that these unbelievers (kafiri)

were certainly not earning enough baraji to gain salvation and enter paradise. Their

response was jihad. The next section will describe how in the nineteenth century many

Fula Muslims spread Islam through intensive participation in jihads that took place

throughout West Africa.

Nineteenth Century Fula Jihads

According to Amadou, God instructed Fula Muslims to spread Islam and establish

unbelievers to God’s favor by the sword (npanmuru). During the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, Amadou recounted Fula people participated in major jihads that are

credited with significantly spreading Islam to non-Muslim groups throughout West

Africa. Amadou particularly highlighted the importance of Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo and

‘Umar Tal’s jihads in spreading Islam in Mali’s present-day Mopti and Ségou regions.

52 Amadou expressed profound respect for these men and maintained that they fought solely

because of God (Ala kama), although researchers note that West African jihads were more than religious revivals; these jihads were also grounded in gaining political domination and control of regional commerce and slavery (see Searing 1993: 88).

Regardless of their motivations, Amadou identified these jihads as key historical moments that shaped the social landscape in which he lived and practiced Islam during the twentieth and twenty-first century in Mali.

Jihadists criticized periodic lapses into paganism among Fula Muslims and aimed to purify Islam among Fula while extending Islam to non-Muslim ethnic groups in

Africa (Hopen 1958: 7). ‘Uthman dan Fodio, a renowned Fula Muslim scholar and author born in Gobir in 1754 to a religiously Muslim family, is most recognized for his role as the leader of a jihad during the first decade of the nineteenth century in present- day northern Nigeria. ‘Uthman’s jihad transformed the political, social, and religious atmosphere in the region and resulted in the overthrow of Hausa hegemony in the region.

‘Uthman changed the name of the city of Gobir to Sokoto and founded the Sokoto

Caliphate in present-day Nigeria, which was modeled after what ‘Uthman saw as an ideal form of a Muslim polity (Brenner 2000: 145). ‘Uthman’s use of militarism signified a radical departure from earlier patterns of nonviolent Muslim practice and conversion in

West Africa (Levtzion 1986: 22).

During his childhood ‘Uthman was educated in Qur’anic exegesis, hadith, and

Islamic law and history and extensively studied with his father, relatives, and numerous influential scholars. ‘Uthman was literate, and writing in the region was especially associated with Islam. Literate Muslim preachers, such as ‘Uthman, who traveled and

53 taught the non-literate majority about Islam, benefitted Muslims in West Africa by

familiarizing illiterate groups with scriptural sources to which they would ordinarily have

had no access (Goody 1971: 454, 464). ‘Uthman, an initiate of a Sufi brotherhood, also

used his writing to detail mystic experiences.12 His most significant vision occurred in

1794 in which great Sufi scholar Adb al-Qadir al-Jilani and the Prophet Muhammad

appeared and appointed him “Imam (alimami) of the Saints,” endowing him with the

“Sword of Truth” and compelling him to turn from a career of pacifism to militancy

(Levtzion & Voll 1987: 34-35). Aiming to rid the region of pagan practices, ‘Uthman

began preparing for a jihad against both unbelievers and non-practicing Muslims. The

incorporation of African ritual and cultural practices into Islam became a political issue

for ‘Uthman, and he sought to “purify” Islam in Africa of these practices. The boundary

between “Muslim” and “non-Muslim” in West Africa was extremely unstable in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ‘Uthman roused Fula Muslims to wage war on

both local non-Fula unbelievers and Fula seen as feeble in either their practice or

understanding of Islam (Şaul 2006: 20; Hiskett 1973: 63, 81).

By 1804, tensions between ‘Uthman and the state of Gobir had worsened, and

‘Uthman and his crowds of followers moved to the countryside. Once safely in a remote location with his followers, ‘Uthman’s migration gave way to a widespread military jihad

(Levtzion 2006: 25; Brenner 1987: 48; Hiskett 1973). During the jihad ‘Uthman aimed

to organize his army according to Muslim principles. Although he did not take an active

12 The Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya orders are the two most important Sufi brotherhoods associated with military jihads in West Africa (Launay 1992: 179). ‘Uthman belonged to the Qadiriyya order, the older of the two. The Qadiriyya lineage has been traced back to twelfth century Baghdad (Miles 2000: 213-214). ‘Umar Tal, a nineteenth century jihad leader in Senegal and Mali, associated with the Tijaniyya order. The Tijaniyya brotherhood began in North Africa by Ahmad al-Tijani who claimed to have received a direct revelation from the Prophet Muhammad to propagate the order (Robinson 1985: 93; Vikør 2000: 450-451).

54 part in battles, ‘Uthman planned strategies, organized infantries, identified goals and

objectives, and appointed military commanders and, after the jihad, he served as the first

imam of Sokoto (Hiskett 1973: 102-104). The transition from military role to an

administrative was difficult, as ‘Uthman had no experience running an Islamic state and

held idealized notions on how the Sokoto Caliphate should function based from readings

of Islamic law and jurisprudence (Trimingham 1959: 142). ‘Uthman envisioned a

centralized caliphate with the primacy of shari’a, as exemplified in the Qur’an and by the life of the Prophet. He constantly dealt with groups informally splitting off from his

territory, as peasants continued to recognize the political power of former chiefs, and he

circulated letters to leaders within Sokoto asking for oaths of allegiance from such

dissenters (Last 1967: 36, 69; Trimingham 1959: 136). Despite its problems and

setbacks, ‘Uthman’s reform of Hausa society changed the political, religious, and social

practices of the people living in the area and Fula clerical leaders became a ruling and

aristocratic class in the region (Sanneh 1997: 23).

‘Uthman’s jihad still stands as one of the important events in the historical spread

of Islam across West Africa; his revolt introduced the political ascendancy of Islam in

West Africa and inspired subsequent Fula men to lead jihads in nearby regions (Levtzion

2006: 21-22). Between the years 1818 and 1820 Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo successfully

incited Fula herdsmen in the present-day Mopti region in Mali to violently seize religious

and clerical control over the non-Fula and non-Muslim populace along the inner-Niger

Delta upstream from Timbuktu. By 1820 Ahmadu established the Masina Caliphate and

founded Hamdullahi as its capital. Although Lobbo had less education and community

veneration than ‘Uthman, historians credit Lobbo for effecting more religious reform, and

55 he more firmly established a state grounded in Islamic law (Bohannan & Curtin 1988:

326).

Figure 6: Fula jihad states in West Africa, c. 1830

A generation after Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo’s jihad in Masina, the combative practices of Fula Muslim ‘Umar Tal further established Islam in West Africa, purposefully spreading Islam to non-believers in what is today Mali. ‘Al-hajj ‘Umar was born in 1797 in Futa Toro (Hanson 1996: 29), located in present-day northern Senegal.

Like ‘Uthman, ‘Umar was the son of a Muslim scholar. ‘Umar spent most of his youth studying Islam in Futa Jalon, in the mountains of present-day Guinea, and successfully made the hajj to Mecca during his early adulthood (Hanson 1996: 29). While in the

Middle East, ‘Umar joined a Sufi order, and before he returned to Africa the leaders in

56 the Sufi brotherhood commissioned him to clear paganism from the West African countryside (Vikør 2000: 451).

Upon arriving in northern Guinea, he established a secluded sanctuary through which he gathered apostles. During this time, ‘Umar steadily exchanged slaves for firearms, which suggests that he conceived of the importance of jihads through warfare and planned to eventually take military action against non-believers (Djata 1997: 30). In the 1840s he finally began to articulate the objectives of his military jihad, arguing that armed measures were needed to conquer both Muslim and non-Muslim societies and to convert all West Africans to his particular Sufi brotherhood (Sanneh 1979: 2). ‘Umar secured local obedience and was successful in controlling Futa Toro in the beginning of his military efforts. French colonizers eventually overthrew ‘Umar from his moment of political control and pushed ‘Umar east and out of Senegal. ‘Umar consequently turned his efforts to the Bamana Empire along the Niger basin in Ségou and made preparations to attack it (Hanson 1996: 19; Robinson 1985: 16-32).

‘Umar’s jihad in the western Sudan required extensive and constant military recruitment from Guinea and Senegal. To gain civilian support, ‘Umar argued that

French occupation and domination over Africans polluted Senegal and made migration into the eastern Sudan obligatory (Hanson 1996: 32), specifically saying, “Leave, your country is no longer your own. It belongs to the European and life with him will never be good” (quoted in Robinson 1985: 225). Inordinate numbers of young men migrated to join ‘Umar (Hanson 1996: 44-79; Robinson 1985 126-8, 217-9). Bamana leaders in nineteenth century Ségou had established an empire supported by extensive commercial trading and a professional military, and rulers in Ségou originally employed armed

57 defenses against ‘Umar (Djata 1997: 10). Nevertheless, ‘Umar and his disciples

ultimately weakened and defeated the Ségou Empire. After victory, ‘Umar claimed

enormous spoils, destroyed temples, and burned all amulets he could find. Most of the

Bamana population of Ségou initially refused to convert to Islam, but the rural

populations of Ségou readily converted, and urban inhabitants slowly began to associate

with Islam (Robinson 1985: 252-273). ‘Umar Tal’s jihad accomplished widespread

Islamization in West Africa, but historians consider his legacy controversial in West

Africa. For Fula and people in Senegal and northern Guinea, ‘Umar is a local hero

committed to the spread of Islam in West Africa. However, many West Africans

remember ‘Umar as an imperialist who used Islam to justify his greed for resources and

power (374-5). Regardless of ‘Umar’s divisive motives and legacy, the Ségou region, in

which Amadou was born in the 1940s, rapidly became one of the most deeply Muslim

areas in Mali.

After ‘Umar’s armed jihad in Ségou, the type of jihads exercised in Mali changed.

The doctrine of jihad in Islam has been debated and discussed since the death of the

Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, and deliberations about the principle have given way to

an array of interpretations and protocols. The word “jihad” literally means to strive or struggle but, in a religious context, it suggests an internal spiritual war as one struggle against evil or exerts oneself for the sake of Islam (see Bonner 2006; Kelsay 2007; Peters

1996). For instance, Muslims can apply themselves as participants in jihad by peacefully converting nonbelievers or bettering the Muslim community (umma), and such peaceful actions are frequently referred to as the “greater jihad” (Bonner 2006: 22; Levtzion &

58 Voll 1987: 34). When I questioned Amadou about jihad in present-day Africa he

answered that the nature of jihads in Mali had changed during his lifetime.

“In the past, we cut the throats of anyone who would not convert. Nowadays we

don’t use swords and we don’t use sticks. We don’t kill and we don’t hit. We use our

tongues now.”

Amadou said that Muslims in modern-day Mali remained involved in personal

jihads and Muslims in Mali continued to spread their religious convictions through their

speech (kuma) and righteous example after military and armed jihads ended.

Islam in Ouélessébougou

The jihads of Ahmadu Lobbo, and ‘Umar Tal never reached far enough southward to have impacted the religious lives of the people in Ouélessébougou. By the end of the nineteenth century most Bamana inhabitants in south Koulikoro, a region to the immediate west of Ségou, remained unbelievers (kafiri). In fact, in the Mande word

bamana etymologically means “refuser” and references Bamana historical reluctance to

accept Islam (Launay 1992: 55). During the last decades of the 1800s a Jula and Muslim

leader named Samori Touré established control throughout Guinea, northern Côte

d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and southern Mali (Person 1975; Wilks 2000: 107-108). People

in Ouélessébougou told me that Samori and his forces traveled through the area during

the 1880s searching for slaves and soldiers. Most informants maintained that Samori had

uncharacteristically peaceful relations with the people of Ouélessébougou, and residents

believed that Samori Touré ordered his forces to retreat from Ouélessébougou because

the leaders of the town held the praise name (jamu) Samaké, which denotes that they

59 came from the same ancestral line as Samori Touré himself.13 The chief of the compound

I lived in, Bourama Samaké, said that Samori respected the ritual power of descendants

from the ancient Jitumu chiefdom, adding that Touré consulted a local ritual expert

(soma) when he passed through Ouélessébougou.

Only one informant, Famori Bagayoko, noted that Samori Touré created trouble

for the populace of Ouélessébougou. Famori belonged to the local association (donsotɔn)

of initiated hunters (donsow). According to local donsow lore, donsow guarded the

perimeter of the local forest whenever Samori Touré or his soldiers were believed to be

nearby. The armed men stood daily on the edge of the forest in order to protect local

farmers while working in the wooded outskirts of the town. According to Famori,

Samori’s presence in southern Mali terrorized the region, and farmers felt afraid to travel

and work in their fields lest they fall victim to an ambush and capture by Samori’s troops.

Inhabitants in Ouélessébougou relied chiefly on locally produced food, and farmers’

reluctance to tend to their crops provoked fears of an imminent food shortage. The

donsow took command and announced that they would serve as official guards for

anyone who worked within the local forest. Farmers trusted that the donsow could successfully defend against Samori’s superior forces and returned to their daily work in their fields.

Although I heard many claims that people in Ouélessébougou had successfully staved off Samori Touré, it is essential to acknowledge Touré’s achievements in order to understand the historical spread of Islam throughout the southern regions of Mali.

13 Samaké residents in Ouélessébougou explained that some West African languages (such as Maninka and Songhay) change the Samaké praise name (jamu) to Touré, connoting that both names represent the same lineage. 60 Historians argue that Samori sought to implement radical social and religious reform in

the towns he attacked, converting the conquered to Islam, building mosques and Qur’anic

schools, introducing Islamic law to his subjects, and working to unite West Africans

against the French through Islam (see Person 1975; Wilks 2000).

Amadou held a different memory of Samori Touré. He recognized Samori as a

Muslim but maintained that, unlike Ahmadu Lobbo and ‘Umar Tal, Samori was a man of

low morals. When I asked whether Samori had led a jihad, Amadou thought for a bit and

decided that Samori’s efforts did not qualify as a jihad because he was merely an invader

motivated by commercial greed and power. Although accounts given by historians argue

that Fula jihadists similarly sought wealth and political control through their efforts,

Amadou unhesitatingly labeled non-Fula military endeavors as unreligious and defended

the intentions of his Fula ancestors as entirely religious. Interestingly, many Bamana

residents in Ouélessébougou also echoed Amadou’s claim that Samori’s efforts were

nonreligious, saying that he did little to convert people in their town or teach them

Muslim practices. I learned from interviews on the history of Islam in Ouélessébougou

that only a few families in Ouélessébougou identified as Muslim by the time the French

apprehended Samori in 1898.

When I asked inhabitants in Ouélessébougou to tell me how Islam originally came

to their town, everyone directed me to speak with Mori Doumbia to learn the complete

history. During my research, Mori Doumbia served the community as the imam

(alamami) of the largest mosque in the village. I knew Mori Doumbia and greeted him nearly everyday when he passed by my workspace on his way to lead prayers in the mosque, but to have asked him outright for an interview myself would have been crass.

61 People in Mali typically arrange to meet formally with an unfamiliar person through an

intermediary (sababu). Amadou knew the imam well and I asked him to act as my

sababu. I told Amadou that I wanted to interview the imam about his family and the

history of Islam in the town. Amadou privately asked Mori to consider participating in a

recorded interview with me. Days later Mori consented and Amadou arranged for us to

meet at ten o’clock the following morning. On the day of the interview Amadou

accompanied me to Mori’s home to introduce Mori and me to one another.

My interview with Mori Doumbia furthers awareness of the expansion of Islam

in southern Mali through the contributions of “faceless and nameless” civilians (see

Gramsci 1971: 54; Gillen & Ghosh 2007: 124). According to Mori, his ancestors spread

Islam throughout Ouélessébougou and effected lasting religious change in the area. Mori

told me that his family had lived in Ouélessébougou for four generations, and his great-

grandfather was a diligent Muslim and moved to Mali from Guinea and found that there

was no mosque in Ouélessébougou. He had lived in Ouélessébougou for two years

before he asked the town elders’ permission to build the first mosque in the town and

serve as the town’s imam. The elders agreed, and people in the town began to call Mori’s

great-grandfather “teacher” (karamɔgɔ). According to Mori, before Islam, the people in

Ouélessébougou subscribed to their “bamana-ness” (bamanaya) as a ritual system and relied on power objects and sacrifice to communicate with their ancestors and invisible forces (see also Leynaud and Cisse 1978: 85; Cissé 1970). There was no sudden moment when people in the town accepted Islam. The conversion of townspeople happened slowly through a jihad of the tongue, wherein Mori’s ancestors and other Muslim residents patiently proselytized through their speech and example.

62 Mori told me that more than half of the families in Ouélessébougou identified as

Muslim by the time of his birth in 1947. Yet still no Muslim school (medersa) for studying Arabic and the precepts of the Qur’an had been founded in the town. To ensure adequate Muslim leadership in Ouélessébougou, Mori’s parents sent him when he was eleven years old to study at a medersa in Touba, a town located in Futa Jalon in the Labé region of northern Guinea.

“I would be ungrateful if I didn’t say that Touba was an amazing place! I stayed for four years,” Mori remembered.

Mori studied the Qur’an, the words and deeds of the prophet (hadith), and the

Arabic language while living at the medersa. These subjects were difficult to Mori, and he identified thoroughly Arabic and Islam as an endless endeavor. Even so, Mori returned to Ouélessébougou at the age of fifteen. Upon his return, adult Muslims in

Ouélessébougou acknowledged Mori for his education and deferred to him as a religious leader. Mori said that in 1997 the townspeople asked him to serve them as imam at the town’s largest mosque (misiriba), which was located close to Ouélessébougou’s central market. The mosque had the highest rates of attendance for daily congregational prayers and exclusively provided Friday afternoon and holiday sermons (wajuu) for

Ouélessébougou’s entire Muslim populace. Mori originally felt apprehensive about the position and told his petitioners that the profession was too great for him. However, the village chief (dugutigi) summoned Mori and privately persuaded him to accept the position as “big imam” (alimamiba). Mori finally agreed to the appointment and had continually served as alimamiba for Ouélessébougou’s Muslim population for fourteen years at the time of our interview.

63 “The work is fine because God insists that I do it,” Mori replied with a careworn

face when I asked him whether he enjoys his many responsibilities.

Figure 7: Exterior of the largest mosque (misiriba) in Ouélessébougou

Mori led five prayers daily in the mosque, which was located about a ten-minute walk away from his compound. He also prepared sermons in a combination of Arabic and Bamanankan for Friday services each week, officiated at marriage ceremonies, presided over naming ceremonies for newborn children (den kun di), and regularly attended sacrifices held for deceased town members. During Mori’s lifetime many people in Ouélessébougou converted to Islam, and first and second generation Muslims accordingly needed detailed instructions on how to properly practice and live in accord with Islam. Mori made himself available at his home to visitors with questions about

Islam and regularly resolved religious disputes and clarified proper Muslim practices for

64 town congregants. He received minimal compensation for performing his duties as

imam. The tithes (jaka) collected at prayer services were used primarily to pay the

monthly electric bill for the mosque and other maintenance projects.14 Mori and his

family sold bundles of firewood outside their home to supplement his meager income.

In 2011 there were eleven mosques, strategically situated to serve every section of

the town, in Ouélessébougou. Most people prayed in the mosque that was closest to their

home for morning and evening prayers and attended whichever mosque was nearest their

work place in the afternoon. People typically prayed in a mosque whenever possible.

Amadou commented that prayers done in the mosque earned each worshipper twenty-

seven baraji while a prayer performed alone at home earned only one. Every mosque

had a different imam who served his local community. Imams were primarily

responsible for leading prayers and other rituals, such as circumcision, naming

ceremonies, and burial rites (Berliner 2005: 581; Trimingham 1959: 69).

Religious Leadership among Muslims in Ouélessébougou

Muslim inhabitants in Ouélessébougou routinely sought the guidance of imams

for assistance in their daily lives and ritual practices. Although Amadou and many other

Fula residents in Ouélessébougou reported that they came from long lines of Muslims

and had a strong sense of Muslim practice and history, most of Amadou’s Mande friends

in the town were only first or second-generation Muslims and often asked for guidance

on how to properly practice Islam and understand its history. For example, Koniba

Doumbia, Amadou’s close friend and the welder who worked by us, explained to me that

14 Mori said that electricity was necessary to broadcast calls to prayer and Friday sermons over an intercom, run ceiling fans while the mosque was in use on hot days, and light the inside and exterior of the mosque for early morning and late evening prayers. 65 he moved as a child to Ouélessébougou during the 1950s from a small village named

Falajé located thirty kilometers west of Ouélessébougou. During Koniba’s early

childhood his father became ill, and Koniba’s parents decided that he would have better

access to Western medicines and medical care in a larger town. He chose to relocate to

Ouélessébougou. Koniba’s father converted to Islam shortly after his family’s arrival in

Ouélessébougou, but Koniba recalled that his mother remained an “unbeliever” and never

took interest in Islam.

“She was without God,” he said, “and it really bothered me.”

As a child, Koniba respected his father’s Muslim faith because he felt they would

lead to his father’s salvation, and he wished that his mother would share these

convictions. Koniba also alluded that his family felt an element of social pressure in

Ouélessébougou to conform to town values that had become tied to Islam. When I

questioned him further about his mother, Koniba’s tone became more sympathetic to his

mother’s decision to remain an unbeliever.

“Islam was not widespread during her youth and early adulthood. She didn’t

understand why she needed to change.”

Koniba’s father took exclusive responsibility for Koniba’s religious upbringing

and showed him how to live as a good Muslim man. However, because Koniba’s parents

did not share the same outlook, Koniba said he did not truly belong to Islam during his

childhood years. At the age of twenty-five Koniba unhesitatingly decided that he agreed

with the precepts of Islam and joined the faith by reciting the shahada and additionally informing religious leaders in the town of his conversion.

66 As a convert to Islam, Koniba regularly asked Amadou questions about Muslim

practices and the history of Islam. I observed that Fula men in Ouélessébougou were

revered for their historical allegiance to Islam, and townspeople often sought blessings

(dubaw) and advice from elderly Fula men in addition to town imams. People in

Ouélessébougou also regularly asked local holy men (moriw) for counsel and spoken

blessings.

I interviewed Yacouba Touré, the director of a popular Muslim school (medersa)

in Ouélessébougou on the history and role of holy men in Mali. Yacouba was born in

Ouélessébougou and studied as a child at the same medersa that he oversaw when I met

him in 2011. The medersa stood across the dirt road from Amadou’s and my workplace.

Youcouba often joined us throughout the day for tea and short visits. He had a notable

ability to turn everyday conversations into discussions about God and Islam. Given his

overt regard for and commitment to Islam, I often asked Yacouba to expound his views

about matters pertaining to Islam and its history in Ouélessébougou.

Yacouba explained that at the outset of Islam’s expansion in Ouélessébougou,

people in the town only understood the sinful (jurumukɛla) Bamana rituals of their ancestors. Confusion and disagreement concerning religion became commonplace in the town as conversion rates to Islam increased. Holy men helped to relieve this phase of religious instability by serving as guides (yiramɔgɔw) who taught converts the proper precepts of Islam and made judgments on whether or not practices were in accord with

Islam. Originally this group of holy men consisted exclusively of elders who came from reputable Muslim families and had studied in medersas in childhood. Yet, as Islam grew

in popularity in Ouélessébougou so did the number of males who identified as holy men,

67 and the qualifications for distinguishing oneself as a holy man soon became fewer and vague. Suddenly self-purported and illiterate “holy men” who knew little about Qur’anic injunctions, the deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, or Muslim history worked throughout the town.15 Yacouba called these men charlatans in French, saying that they monetized their status by eliciting cash payments from the populace in exchange for offering religious counsel or performing healing and divinatory rites.

Yacouba considered himself one of the few legitimate holy men in town explaining, “I say a blessing, not a price, when someone tells me they need help.”

Yacouba taught me that the methodology and tasks holy men utilize in their work varies between individuals. Holy men in West Africa often restrict themselves to certain specializations and may select one area of expertise, such as divination, amulet construction, or teaching Arabic and the Qur’an as their sole focus (Mommersteeg 2012:

30-31).

As an educated Muslim and town elder, Amadou desired to take part in the activities of holy men. He had learned many practices used to access supernatural powers, and many people in Ouélessébougou called him a holy man. Identification as a

Muslim, Amadou reported, necessitates that a person fasts and prays regularly.

Assuming the role of an authentic holy man was a more consuming endeavor.

“Do you think a holy man sleeps? No! Holy men stay awake and study all night.”

15 Many Muslims in Ouélessébougou, as is the case throughout West Africa, acknowledged the authority of moriw who could not speak, write, or read Arabic and instead relied on oral traditions (see Amselle 1987: 83; Trimingham 1959: 68). Both categorizations of literate and illiterate holy men played a role in the historical spread of Islam in Africa and were mutually acknowledged for transmitting specialized knowledge of Muslim practices and prohibitions (Bravmann 1974: 10; Launay 1992: 67). 68 Amadou next implicitly denigrated his aptitude by reporting that he slept every

night, but he nevertheless admitted that he studied the matters of holy men (moriya) by

reading, reciting, and copying verses from the Qur’an into a private notebook each

evening before bed. He also said that he hoped to master more practices in the coming

years.

The key to becoming a holy man, Amadou stated, was associating oneself with an

eminent teacher (karamɔgɔ) qualified to teach an orthodox and pure (gɛrɛgɛrɛ) version of

Muslim history, beliefs, and rituals. Amadou was straightforward in his criticism of

alleged holy men who practiced un-Islamic customs without any basis in the Qur’an,

warning that many men in West Africa posed as holy men but were in actuality sorcerers

(soma). In order to fully understand Islam in West Africa, it is necessary to examine practices that Muslims deemed wholly African (farafinna) and contrary to the precepts of

Islam.

In Ouélessébougou I heard varying opinions from Muslims on the status of sorcerers ranging from classifying them as heretics, who did not earn baraji, to helpers who God rewarded with baraji. Discussions on sorcerers often organically led to debates about who qualified as a sorcerer and who acted as a holy man. The Bamanankan language clearly distinguishes between the two categories of holy men (moriw) and sorcerers (soma), but marking a definite point of distinction between them was difficult.

For example, many Muslim holy men in Ouélessébougou summoned spirits (jinɛ) by

lighting fires and burning incense (wusulan). The holy men would write the wishes of their clients down on scraps of paper, throw the pieces into a fire, and pledge that their requests would soon come to fruition. Amadou classified this particular practice as un-

69 Islamic and said that neither the holy man nor client earned baraji for participating in the ritual. Thus, engaging in sorcery could damage a person’s chances for paradise.

Amadou sympathetically recognized the difficulty inherent in defining the boundary between a sorcerer and holy man.

Amadou acknowledged the ambiguity that characterized life by joking, “It’s a bat!

The head of a dog and the wings of a bird!” He frequently relied on this imagery by discussing how challenging it can be to determine whether a person is a holy man or a sorcerer.

Amadou declared that Ouélessébougou was full of “bats,” men whose work lay in the nebulous area between pure Islam and African witchcraft. But some inhabitants in

Ouélessébougou considered sorcerers useful members of their community. For instance

Koniba maintained that sorcerers often healed those suffering from illness and injury but who could not afford Western medicine or other professional treatments. Sorcerers accessed baraji through such philanthropic practices, Koniba claimed. Amadou did not recognize the worth of sorcerers and said that he never sought their help, even when he faced critical problems. Rather, he regularly asked local holy men for their counsel and to fabricate amulets and elixirs that offered security. Amadou only directly encountered a sorcerer on one occasion, and, like several other residents I questioned, he admitted that he anonymously went to a sorcerer’s house once out of curiosity. The sorcerer showed

Amadou the essentials of how he predicted the future by deciphering sand markings and prepared traditional medicines. Amadou observed with interest but recalled that he resisted asking questions out of fear that he would appear to be a sorcerer himself. In interviews Amadou maintained that he had no need for sorcerers’ services and relied on

70 Islam for support. Although the majority of people in Ouélessébougou identified as

Muslim (silamɛ), the next section will show that people did not necessarily assumption about how to worship and live as adult Muslims.

Currents of Islam in Ouélessébougou

The history of jihads in West African shows that contestation over religious orthodoxy has long been a feature of West African Islam. I documented in my fieldwork frequent disagreements between self-identified Muslims about what constituted membership and normative practice within Wahhabi and more mainstream Muslim groups. This section introduces the types of religious diversity that differentiates

Muslims from each other in Ouélessébougou and explains how people in town defended their personal religious standpoints.

Wahhabism, a conservative Muslim group founded in Saudi Arabia during the eighteenth century, was the most significant religious movements among Muslims in

Ouélessébougou at the time of my field research. Wahhabism in Mali began to increase in popularity during the 1940s when an increasing number of Malian Muslims either made the pilgrimage to Mecca or completed university studies in the Middle East

(Amselle 1987: 80; Piga 2003: 15-18). Well-educated and traveled West Africans frequently returned to West Africa with anti-marabout and anti-Sufi viewpoints.16 Many

16 In the literature on Islam in Africa, Muslim leaders are typically referenced as “clerks” or “clerics.” French colonizers in West Africa, moreover, broadly applied to word “marabout” to any Muslim leader (Trimingham 1959:68), although the title “marabout” is esoterically associated with the cult of saints among the Moors in North Africa (68,89) and forms of “magical Islam” in sub-Saharan Africa (Warms 1992). Scholars who distinguish clerks from marabouts usually differentiate between the two types on the basis that clerics are literate in Arabic while marabouts do not speak or read Arabic and rely on orality for communication (Trimingham 1959:68; Amselle 1987:83). Both kinds of leader played a role in the spread of Islam in Africa and are mutually acknowledged for transmitting specialized knowledge of Islamic practices and prohibitions (Launay 1992:67; Bravmann 1974:10). In my research, informants did not distinguish between clerks and marabouts and broadly used the term “holy man” (mori) to reference all 71 were eager to expose marabout men as “lazy and ignorant,” debasing marabout on the basis that they were illiterate and do not speak Arabic (83). Wahhabi Muslims in Mali also stressed the importance of secular work, arguing that Muslims cannot live by Islam alone. As Wahhabis gained a reputation as merchants in West Africa, they attained bourgeois status (Amselle 1987: 83-84). In order to delegitimize local holy men,

Wahhabi men organized debates with local holy men on Islam, through which urban

Wahhabi scholars attracted many supporters by publicly outclassing and out-thinking their holy men opponents (80).

In the twentieth and early twenty-first century, Muslims involved in the Wahhabi movement in Mali have worked to identify and overturn practices deemed “African” from a reformist perspective, and Wahhabi actions had the potential to split Muslim communities in Mali (Launay 1992: 77-89). Amselle (1987), in his study on Wahhabism in southern Mali, describes the struggle between Wahhabi Muslims and majority

Muslims who also engage in “pagan” practices, identified as amulet use, singing, dancing, ostentatious gift giving, drumming, praise songs, revering non-Muslim ancestors, and scarification with Islam. The Wahhabi in Ouélessébougou practiced an austere form of Islam and showed extra discipline in their daily lives, but they had not uncompromisingly divided themselves from other Muslim residents. Few women in the town wore burqas, and those who did nearly all belonged to Wahhabi families. The majority of Wahhabis in town lived together in a common neighborhood, which had a reputation for public cleanliness. Piles of uncollected trash and cinders lined every dirt road in Ouélessébougou, but I noticed less litter whenever I visited the Wahhabi quarter.

Muslim leaders associated with Muslim pedagogy, healing, divination, and making amulets and potions (see Austen 1999:14).

72 Women in the area were also required to remove their shoes, a practice unique to this

neighborhood, when using the communal hand pump to prevent the cement platform

surrounding the water source from becoming filthy with mud.

Overall, mainstream Muslims in Ouélessébougou spoke respectfully of the

Wahhabi Muslims in their town. People especially recognized a Wahhabi doctor, Oumar

Bagayoko, who directed a private medical clinic in the town, with esteem for his non- discriminatory policies, quality healthcare, comforting bedside manner, and fair prices on medicines and medical procedures. Like other Wahhabi men in the town, Dr. Bagayoko and his primarily Wahhabi male staff wore long beards. People in Ouélessébougou often drew attention to religious differences between townspeople through jokes that made their dissimilarities funny rather than frightening. Koniba blithely told me, when I asked why Wahhabi men wear untrimmed beards, that the Wahhabi think that upon their death

God will reach down, grab them by the beard, and throw them into paradise (lahara).

Wahhabi prayed and attended services in the same mosques as other Muslims in

Ouélessébougou. Mosque attendees noted differences in the manner Wahhabis prayed, most notably that Wahhabi held the wrist of their left hand with their right hand while standing during prayer. Wahhabi in Ouélessébougou defended this practice by claiming that this is how the Prophet Muhammad prayed, according to a hadith narrated by Wa’il ibn Hajr that states: “Once when I prayed with the Prophet, upon whom be peace, he placed his right hand over his left upon his chest” (Sābiq 1991: 132). Some Muslim residents countered that this hadith was recorded on a particular day when the Prophet had hurt his left had, which required him to cradle his injury during prayer. Because the

Prophet only prayed with his hands folded across his chest in one abnormal instance,

73 Muslims should stand with their hands at their side during prayer, as the Prophet normally did. The Wahhabi fashion of praying prompted some Muslims in

Ouélessébougou to accept the Wahhabi style of prayer without otherwise affiliating with

Wahhabis. These Muslims self-identified as “hand takers” (bolo minɛ) as opposed to

“hand descenders” (bolo jigin), who placed their arms freely at their sides while praying.

Some “hand takers” accepted the hadith that the Prophet Muhammad prayed with his arms clasped. Others said it was a moot issue and that Muslims should pray in whatever manner was physically comfortable to them.17

Koniba and Amadou prayed differently in the mosque. Koniba took up his hands when he prayed while Amadou left his at his side. Amadou contrasted their styles of prayer through playful jest. One day Amadou showed me how he prayed by standing straight and with focus while his arms rested at his side.

Amadou maintained the religious traditions of his Muslim kin through this posture, and he commented, “This is how my father also prayed.”

Amadou next gave an exaggerated demonstration of how Koniba looked in the mosque by standing hunched and shivering with his arms folded together.

He turned to address Koniba, who was smiling and wagging his head to communicate his mirth, and wondered, “Are you a Wahhabi or just cold?”

“Wahhabi?” Koniba retorted. Do you see a beard on my face? It’s comfortable to pray with my hands clasped.”

Amadou ended the exchange with a short laugh and a blunt, “It looks ridiculous!”

17 Worldwide, most modern-day Sunni Muslims hold their hands during prayers and cite the sunna of the Prophet for this posture, saying that Muhammad regularly led prayers in this style (Dutton 1996: 13-40). 74 Given that Sufi philosophies played a significant role in the jihads that spread

Islam through rural West Africa, I found it surprising that residents in Ouélessébougou did not overtly identify with Sufi dimensions of Islam. Many residents were also unfamiliar with the division between Sunni and Shi’a denominations in the larger Muslim world. Although it has been argued that the concept of Sufism is largely a scholarly innovation (see Ernest 1997), the term had some practical use in Mali. Amadou reported that numerous Sufi Muslims lived in Mali but that most had migrated from Senegal and spoke Wolof. He classified Sufis as Muslim, just like him, but noted that members of the

Sufi order cultivated different physical and personality styles. Sufi men grew their hair long and styled it in dreadlocks, wore ragged clothing, and obsessively listen to of reggae music, such as Bob Marley (who, according to Amadou, came from Fula ancestry).

Amadou presumed Sufi adherents dressed and lived in eccentric styles because their teacher (karamɔgɔ) had these predilections, although he saw no problem in venerating teachers and religious leaders through imitation.

Although I witnessed an overall cooperation between the various Muslim communities in southern Mali, this does not, however, mean that practitioners held a uniform view on how to properly practice Islam. Among Muslims in Ouélessébougou I noted that ideas on how to acquire baraji led to fine points of religious diversity between townspeople. For example, many Muslims in Ouélessébougou stated that Wahhabi residents did not earn comparable baraji to them because Wahhabi did not hold elaborate naming ceremonies (den kun di) for their children. Amadou joked that a Wahhabi den kun di cost less than 500 West African francs, while other Muslims spent more than

75 50,000 francs to mark the rite.18 West Africans, Amadou said, are obliged to hold den kun di services for the newborn children of their family members and neighbors, and hosts should serve attendees bread and beans to eat and coffee to drink. In Amadou’s mind, financially investing in a costly den kun di was a good spiritual investment. The

ritual generated baraji for both host and guest, but most importantly it brought about initial baraji for the newborn baby. Neither parent, participant, nor progeny acquired baraji by taking part in modest den kun di ceremonies. Thus, some residents who could not afford to buy refreshments for attendees skipped holding a naming ceremony for newborn children all together. Despite the prevalent attitude in Ouélessébougou that den kun di celebrations produced large amounts of baraji, Wahhabi Muslims refused to acknowledge the ceremonies as essential for salvation in the afterlife, insisting that

Muslims who abjured the rite and still succeed in earning adequate baraji to gain paradise. Dissent over how to successfully earn the required amount of baraji to cross the threshold to paradise motivated religious differences between Muslim residents in

Ouélessébougou and yet gave people a common “currency” for articulating their differences. The following section will consider the doctrinal foundation of baraji in

Islam and will advance efforts to understand how the concept represents a form of value that directs currents of religious life and fosters pluralism across a range of religious groups in West Africa.

Doctrine of Baraji among Muslims in West Africa

The concept of baraji plays a vital role in West Africans Islam (see Smeltzer

2005: 46). During my field research I learned that Muslims in southern Mali placed a

18 About $100.00 USD. 76 unique and particular emphasis on baraji in their daily speech and conduct, and I discovered that the basis of their understanding lay soundly in the original Arabic content of the Qur’an.19 Surah 9:100 nicely illustrates the desirable consequences of acquiring baraji. The verse references the recognized helpers (ansar) of Medina who first pledged

their allegiance to the Prophet Muhammad and describes the “first forerunners [in Islam]

among the Muhajireen and the Ansar and those who followed them with good conduct—

Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him, and He has prepared for them

gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide forever. That is the great

attainment.” This single passage nicely depicts the series of suppositions that righteous

Muslims in West Africa tied to their actions; by behaving with good conduct they would

please God and attain paradise. The doctrine of baraji figures prominently in these

expectations. Malians believed that God kept a meticulous record of all of the good

deeds performed in their lifetime. One acquired varying amounts of baraji from God

with each good deed and through an invariable accounting of baraji, God would fairly

calculate and determine on an individual basis those who could enter paradise.

Yacouba Touré, the director of the medersa located near the spot where Amadou

and I made rope each day, had studied Arabic for over thirty years at the time of our

interview. He offered with total profundity four translations of Arabic words used in the

Qur’an that expressed the persistent theme and united concept of baraji. First, and most

significantly, he translated baraji into Arabic as adjr, meaning “reward,” “payment,”

“recompense,” or “wages.” Various forms of the word adjr occur in both religious and

legal senses in a great number of passages throughout the Qur’an. Qur’anic passages

19 Yusuf Ali translation 77 wherein adjr takes on religious significance specify that fulfilling religious and moral

obligations entitle the person participating in the event to a divine reward (Schacht 2001).

For example, surah 16:41 uses the idiom adjr to indicate that “the reward of the Hereafter

is greater” and surah 39:74 similarly promises, “excellent is the reward of [righteous]

workers” (emphases added). Surah 95:6 teaches that human beings will live outside the

company of God in the afterlife, “Except for those who believe and do righteous deeds,

for they will have a reward uninterrupted” (emphasis added). Yacouba uniformly

interpreted the reward promised in these verses, and in other uses of adjr throughout the

Qur’an, as baraji in the Bamanankan language.

Figure 8: Yacouba Traoré consulting an Arabic text during an interview

78 Yacouba next translated baraji as jazā’ and thawāb in Arabic. Akin to adjr, jazā appears repeatedly throughout the Qur’an as a form of divine “reward” or

“compensation” that worshippers can expect when God assesses their life on the Day of

Judgment. Surah 2:48 reveals, “And fear a Day when no soul will suffice for another soul at all, nor will intercession be accepted from it, nor will compensation be taken from

it, nor will they be aided,” and 29:7 similarly promises that God will “reward them

according to the best of what they used to do” (emphases added). Thawāb similarly appears in the Qur’an, although less heavily than adjr and jazā, to refer to godly

“remuneration.” Surah 3:148 gives a poetic guarantee of “repayment” for good deeds, affirming twice with the word thawāb: “So Allah gave them the reward of this world and

the good reward of the Hereafter. And Allah loves the doers of good” (emphases added).

Yacouba listed baraka as the final word used in the Qur’an to reference baraji.

Baraka varies slightly in meaning from adjr, jazā’, and thawāb. It expresses both

blessings sent to humans by God and a beneficent force of divine origin (see Colin 2001).

Surah 7:96 relates, “And if only the people of the cities had believed and feared Allah,

We would have opened upon them blessings from the paradise and the earth” (emphasis

added). In 3:44 baraka appears to describe how the sacred revelations contained in the

Qur’an were transmitted: “on a blessed night,” and 40:64 declares, “blessed is Allah,

Lord of the worlds” (emphases added). In Islamic tradition, baraka also commonly

refers to the human possession of divine powers or spiritual influence. Informants

commented that exemplars of virtue, typically holy men (moriw), have the sacred power of baraka in them, but ordinary believers can also attain portions of baraka through

physical and proximal contact with holders. Thus, Muslim followers in Ouélessébougou

79 often interacted with religious leaders in order to have access to their symbolic capital, or

baraka (see Soares 2005: 33, 40; 1996: 746-747). In Mali, the word baraka was

incorporated into the vernacular and occurred in everyday speech to express strength and

spiritual power. Some ethnographic research suggests that baraka differs from baraji in

that people can use the power of baraka during their earthly existence while baraji is reserved exclusively for the afterlife (Smeltzer 2005: 46). However, Yacouba argued baraka could potentially also be used interchangeably with the more prevalently employed word baraji.

The topic of baraji featured regularly in conversations I had with Amadou. He cared about the number of baraji credited to him, and his daily life reflected an obvious effort to accumulate more through supererogatory actions (farida). Amadou said that he did not know the exact number of baraji he had earned over his lifetime; no one does.

This uncertainty did not bother him, and Amadou trusted God’s method for keeping a clear and precise register. Amadou explained that God commissioned angels (mɛlɛkɛ) to

sit on the right and left shoulders of every human being. The angel on the right shoulder

marks all good deeds and the angel on the left chronicles sinful acts. This imagery comes

from surah 50:17-18: “When the two receivers receive, seated on the right and on the left.

Man does not utter any word except that with him is an observer prepared [to record].”

This passage reveals that “observers,” which Amadou deemed angels, only made note of

readily observable acts. Amadou stated that God, however, hears the deepest thoughts of

all people and keeps an additional record of moral and immoral thinking. God also

potentially deducted baraji from the seemingly moral actions that angels recorded if God

determined that the actor performed the deed to gain the attention or praise of others.

80 Amadou explained that, because of the merciful (hinɛ) nature of God, ten good deeds are

credited per each ethical accomplishment while every evil deed counts as only one

demerit. The Qur’an 6:160 corroborates this system and accordingly details, “Whoever

comes [on the Day of Judgment] with a good deed will have ten times the like thereof [to

his credit], and whoever comes with an evil deed will not be recompensed except the like

thereof; and they will not be wronged.”

Amadou bestowed his understanding of baraji upon his six children and his oldest son, Mohamadou Diallo, explained to me that non-Muslims could earn baraji for good deeds and an upright disposition with the same ease as Muslims.20 The mayor of

Ouélessébougou estimated that five percent of the people in Ouélessébougou identified as

Christian during my fieldwork with one Evangelical Protestant church and one Roman

Catholic church in the town. Beyond this small population of Christians, a smaller minority of people lived in the town who said they were either unreligious or practiced what they considered exclusively African forms of ritual practice. Most of the populace in the town recognized that all people, regardless of their religion, possessed baraji. The salutation “baraji be with you!” (i ni baraji!), or more dynamically translated as, “May you receive baraji for what you have done,” was one of the most common greetings used between adults (see Smeltzer 2005: 51). Friends and neighbors uttered the greeting in friendly earnest, regardless of any religious differences between speaker and listener.

The importance of eternal reward also resonated for Christians in

Ouélessébougou, and Bamanankan translations of the Bible use the word baraji

20 Mohamadou died after I left Mali, on the evening September 8, 2012, after a long and terrible bout of illness that Malian doctors could not identify or treat because of their insufficient training. 81 throughout the text of the Old and New Testaments.21 One can broadly understand the

role of baraji in both Islam and Christianity by turning to the terms Bamanankan

speakers in Ouélessébougou used to describe religion. Bamanankan idioms for religion

include: road (sira), road to God (Ala sira), character (diinɛ), and road to character (diinɛ

sira). Thus, religion references a moral model for behaving in the world. People in

Ouélessébougou fused this model for reality with models of reality that determined behavior. Baraji served as the ultimate measure of the value of a person’s character.

Although all people possessed baraji by virtue of honorable works and humility, Amadou commented that orthopraxis and the recitation of Muslim prayers five times per day and fasting during Ramadan generated the copious amounts of baraji needed to enter paradise

after death. Ergo, Amadou and his children doubted that a non-Muslim could ever

manage to earn the needed amount of baraji to access paradise, although it might be

possible, Amadou admitted.22

Amadou’s life history explores how the concept of baraji is subject to individual

interpretation by considering how such a value system regulated Amadou’s quest for

baraji throughout his lifetime. Because people in Mali attain baraji in varying ways

throughout their life stages, my effort to gain a general understanding of baraji in West

21 The published (1987) Bamanankan version of the Old Testament (Layidu Kɔrɔ) employs the idiom baraji in Genesis 15:1; Ruth 2:12; 2 Chronicles 15:7; Psalms 127:3; Proverbs 11:18; 13:13; 25:22; Ecclesiastes 9:5; Isaiah 40:10; 49: 4; 62:11. The Hebrew Old Testament uses the words shākār and shalem, meaning “repayment” in the places where the Bamanankan and English translations employ the terms “baraji” and “reward.” The New Testament (Layidu Kura) references baraji in Matthew 5:12, 46; 6:1, 4, 6, 18; 10:42; Mark 9:41; Luke 6:23, 35; 1 Corinthians 3:14; 9: 17, 18; Colossians 3:24; and Hebrews 10: 35. The original Greek version of the New Testament uses various words (apodidomi, atapodosis, and misthapodosia) to reference what is unanimously translated as “reward” and “baraji” in English and Bamanankan versions, respectively. 22 Amadou never pressured me to convert to Islam. He said it made him happy to see me at Friday services at the mosque and he also complimented my clothing whenever I wore the long dress, head wrap, and shawl that Muslim women in West Africa donned to prayer services, naming ceremonies, sacrifices and funerals, and Muslim holidays. When Amadou spoke of the afterlife, he often included me in his description of Paradise. 82 Africa requires the study of a single life in depth. Amadou’s story shows that, as a child, he relied on his parents and siblings to unify Islam and daily life into a coherent system, and he learned how to acquire baraji by observing and participating in an array of religious practices and rituals with members of his kin group. During his late childhood and adolescence, Amadou’s independent relocation to Bamako and work as a cattle herder required him to develop an individual interest and sense of accountability for his acquisition of baraji. In adulthood, as a husband and father, Amadou’s attention returned to the connection between Islam and kinship as he became responsible for the religious lives and accumulation of baraji in his family. My final chapter explains how elderhood gave Amadou a chance to earn baraji at an unprecedented rate while being recognized by his community as an asset of wisdom and experience.

In this chapter I have illustrated that Amadou connected his religious convictions to a long history of Muslim convictions among Fula people in West Africa, and that Fula

Muslims attempted to purify their practice of Islam and spread their beliefs to other ethnic groups through military jihads. As more people in West Africa accepted Islam, the number of religious currents in the region began to increase, and the Wahhabi branch of

Islam was the most prominent divergence from normative rural Islam in twenty-first century Ouélessébougou. Yet despite disparate religious affiliations, the chapter argues that people in Mali rely on the principle of baraji in order to understand and evaluate their religious lives and moral conduct. Amid such diversity, I now turn to Amadou’s vivid childhood memories and his upbringing as a Fula and Muslim child in central Mali.

Amadou’s early life experiences reveal the moments, relationships, and factors that led to the initial integration of his Muslim moral values and experiences, especially his

83 conception that opportunities to act righteously and acquire baraji lie in everyday dealings and associations.

84 CHAPTER THREE

CHILDHOOD

“My mother used to say that she made me short, but God made me a coward,”

Amadou told me while recalling memories from his childhood.

Indeed, an element of fear marked most of his early recollections. Amadou spent the first years of his life intensely afraid of wild animals, noise, the ire of volatile adults, people who spoke other languages, death, witches, violence, and the mysterious French settlers who lived near his village.

This chapter examines Amadou’s upbringing in order to understand the foundations and resolutions of his fears in conjunction with the formative moments of his boyhood and specifically how Amadou’s growing knowledge of Islam and baraji helped settle his emotional fears of impending harm. I reveal that the fears Amadou felt as a child were linked to a set of moral standards about people, situations, and behavior that he deemed dangerous and contrary to the principles of Islam. The writing pays special attention to vignettes that exemplify Amadou’s early religious life and education and the experiences that shaped his understanding of baraji, human moral character, and family relationships while soothing his anxieties during the first approximate eleven years of his life.

Amadou’s upbringing yields rich information about how West African children comprehend Islam and the complex concept of baraji. This chapter deepens understanding of baraji by showing how Amadou’s understanding of baraji and his tactics for acquiring it changed throughout his life. Accordingly, Amadou’s relationship

85 to Islam and baraji presents religion as a personal accomplishment and not something

that can be wholly understood by attention to public rituals, doctrines, and history.

Amadou’s memories show that from a young age he understood baraji as a way to evaluate the deeds of his everyday life and ritual practices. To begin, the chapter describes Amadou’s birth and the early ritual experiences and relationships that he said established his character and personality. Then I explain Amadou’s initial friendships, domestic responsibilities, and interactions with non-Fula and non-Muslim people. I relate Amadou’s first encounters with illness and death as a child and finally review

Amadou’s experiences of formal Muslim education and of spending extended time away from his home in Npièbougou. This chapter shows that just as strong rope breaks withstands use, Amadou fortified an understanding of Islam that he relied on throughout his life through a dedicated course of study and devotion that began in his early childhood days.

☰ ☰ ☰

Amadou’s mother, Ina Diallo, gave quiet and untroubled birth to Amadou at home with the sole help of an elderly woman (tinminɛmusokɔrɔ) who lived nearby. The

women I met in Mali downplayed the pain and danger that North American women

associated with labor and classified childbirth as a peaceful experience in which God

sends two angels to fan both sides of the woman giving birth. Amadou’s parents had

eight children together, one of whom had died shortly before Amadou’s birth. As Ina’s

last-born child, Amadou occupied the special status of lagare in his family. I learned

from interviews and observations during my fieldwork that youngest children in Mali

regularly receive overt parental favoritism. As such, Amadou was especially pampered

86 by his mother and grew up with total confidence that he was his parents’ favorite child.

Studies on sibling relationships within Fula families indicate that such favoritism is

normally counter-balanced by comparatively harsh treatment by one’s elder siblings (see

Hopen 1958: 102 n.). On the contrary, Amadou reminisced that his older siblings never

cursed or beat him and treated him with the same level of love and tender affection as his

mother. When I met Amadou in 2010 he was the only living member of his immediate

family. He forlornly described this situation by saying, “That which is good to God is

often bad to people.”

Amadou’s parents scrupulously observed Fula early childcare practices.

Amadou’s life as a Fula Muslim formally began at his naming ceremony, which took

place in the early morning one week after his birth. Immediately following Amadou’s

delivery, his father, Hamadi, summoned all of his neighbors, friends, and relatives to

meet his new child the following week. Ina spent the next week caring for her baby and

making preparations for Amadou’s imminent naming ceremony. Fula naming

ceremonies involve ritually washing the infant, shaving its head, performing a sacrifice,

and publicly pronouncing the child’s name (see Riesman 1992: 111). On the morning of

the ceremony, the town imam whispered the call to prayer in Amadou’s small ear and

Hamadi next announced his son’s name in the midst of a crowd of family and friends.23

The name his father chose came from a variation of one of the Prophet Muhammad’s

many blessed names, and Amadou attached great significance to his first name.24 Hamadi

23 This portion of naming ceremonies traces back to and directly imitates the Prophet Muhammad, as the Prophet reportedly spoke the words of the call to prayer into his son’s ear before pronouncing his name (Lings 2006: 177). 24 Everyone called Amadou in conversation by his patronym, Amadou Hamadi, while he was growing up. This designation is traditionally applied to all Fula names, and follows the Arab naming pattern of combining a person’s given name with their father’s name in order to indicate paternal lineage (Duprire 87 also sacrificed an adult sheep on behalf of his newborn son and distributed cola nuts,

lamb, and millet to attendees of the ceremony. Fula people were typically disinclined to

eat their livestock but voluntarily killed their sheep and cattle to mark naming

ceremonies, weddings, and funerals (Franz 1978: 105). Participants repaid Amadou’s

parents for these gifts by pronouncing spoken blessings for Amadou’s future welfare.25

According to Amadou, his father made these offerings (sarati) to relatives and neighbors to establish Amadou’s place in the community, generate the first counts of baraji on his son’s behalf, and ensure that Amadou would grow up to become a moral and serious man

(see Riesman 1977: 58-63).

Shortly after Amadou’s naming ceremony, Hamadi arranged for a specialist to come to his home to make short, vertical incisions on the temples next to Amadou’s eyes as an additional birth rite. The permanent scars such cuts leave are considered beautiful in West Africa and many ethnic groups deliberately scar the skin by their eyes. For

Hamadi, the cuts protected Amadou’s future personality and ensured that his son would grow up to become a peaceful and diplomatic person. The man who made the incisions rinsed Amadou’s small eyes with the blood from the cuts. Amadou believed that the early act of washing his eyes with his own blood instilled compassion (hinɛ) in him,

noting that the practice him from feeling murderous rage (maafaala) during conflicts in

his later adult life. Amadou’s mother further guaranteed his future character through her

own Muslim and ethical proclivities, as Fula believe that people imbibe their adult

character from the milk they drink from their mother’s breast as infants (see DeLoache &

1996: 223-231). People typically did not invoke Amadou’s clan name, Diallo, when addressing him casually. 25 In Bamanankan suitable blessings for a newborn child include “May God grant the baby a long life” (Ala ka den balo), “May their destiny be bright” (Ala ka nakan diya), and “May s/he become a Muslim” (Ala k’a kɛ silame ye). 88 Gottlieb 2000: 193-196; Riesman 1992: 181-182). Amadou’s parents earned baraji for themselves and Amadou through their understanding of the rituals and practices that build moral character during early childhood.

☰ ☰ ☰

Amadou spent the first seven years of his boyhood living in Npièbougou, a small village in Mali’s central Ségou region. As an old man, Amadou expressed loyal devotion to his hometown (faso) and language (fasokan), and expressed regret that Npièbougou’s weak economy and worsening environment prevented him from living in the village as a married adult. Npièbougou first became a popular settlement for Fula herders during the early nineteenth century. Amadou recounted that Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo of Massina blessed Npièbougou to become a prosperous village while passing through the area on his way north.26 Amadou explained that his ancestors had historically lived in Diafarabé, a town north of Npièbougou in Mali’s Mopti region, and that his grandparents were the first of his relatives to settle in the Ségou region.

Amadou offered vibrant, descriptive, and engaging tales of his hometown during our conversations about his childhood. Npièbougou was divided into two neighborhood districts (sokala) that were separated by nearly two kilometers of empty landscape.

Amadou said that all Fula lived in the western neighborhood, and Bamana people lived together in the district to the east. Physical distance aside, Amadou said that differences in ethnic culture, religion, and occupation separated Bamana and Fula people in the village. Fula men earned their living strictly through cattle herding or by working as

26 Although Amadou said that Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo merely blessed Npièbougou and did not oblige Amadou’s ancestors to settle there, Azarya (1993: 50) argues that Sheikh Ahmadu Lobbo forced sedentarization by requiring Fula families to have a fixed residence. The edict regarding sedentarization was made for political, military, taxation, and religious reasons as well as to raise the proportion of Fula families in areas inhabited primarily by Bamana and Tuareg people. 89 Muslim scholars (karamɔgɔw). Bamana men worked as farmers (sɛnɛkɛla), blacksmiths

(numuw), and sorcerers (somaw), and very few Bamana identified as Muslim.27

Amadou stayed exclusively within the Fula neighborhood of Npièbougou for the first several years of his life. Many families in the Fula district spoke only dialects of

Bamanankan rather than Fulfulde and, even within the Fula quarter, Amadou grew up with many Fula children who spoke only Bamanankan. Ina and Hamadi spoke Fulfulde exclusively with all of their children and Amadou grew up learning two languages with equal competence. Like many bilingual children, Amadou could not always separate the two languages and often used Bamanankan words or expressions during Fulfulde conversations with his mother. Amadou remembered that this truly upset his mother, and she would swat at him whenever he spoke Bamanankan in her presence. Amadou hated disappointing his mother and said he quickly learned to distinguish between the two tongues.

Amadou’s experience growing up speaking two languages illustrates what

Amselle terms the common “oscillation” West Africans experience between the ethnic identities that West Africans observe and use to order themselves (Amselle 1998: 44).

According to Amselle, ethnic identities are not fixed. By speaking each other’s languages, learning each other’s crafts and subsistence practices, and living with one another, West Africans can “convert ethnically” to become members of different cultural and ethnic entities (45). Amadou resists this argument, and I respect Amadou’s own conception of his “pure” (gɛrɛgɛrɛ) Fula ethnicity (siya). Amadou spoke Bamanankan,

27 Amadou said that the few Bamana who had converted to Islam during his childhood traveled daily to Npièbougou in order to pray and study with Fula Muslim scholars. 90 had practiced Bamana farming techniques, and married a Bamana woman in his later life.

Yet despite his thorough understanding of Bamana language and ways of life (kɛcogo),

Amadou fervently denied that he had “become Bamana” (kɛra Bamana) in any sense.

Amadou, rather, understood what Amselle views as evidence of “ethnic conversion” and

“oscillation” as signs of peaceful cooperation (ɲɔgɔdɛmɛ) between discrete ethnic groups

living in diverse (ɲagami) communities.

Amadou taught me that being in trouble with his parents as a young boy did not

threaten his spiritual security. Amadou’s mother taught him that all children are born

sinless and that those who pass away before reaching puberty were automatically

destined for heaven without passing through the Day of Judgment (faraɲɔgɔnna don).

As such, Amadou said his accumulated baraji would not have been weighed against his offenses or otherwise factored into his salvation if he had died young. Yet throughout his naturally innocent childhood, Amadou’s parents cautiously prepared him to properly practice Islam and earn baraji so that he could live as a Muslim upon reaching an age of

accountability.

Ina allowed young Amadou to leave his family compound and play nearby with

other neighborhood children during his early upbringing. However, until Amadou was

about five years old he preferred to spend most of his time at home and by his mother’s

side. Amadou remembered that from a young age he keenly observed his family’s ritual

practices, especially those of his mother. He learned the basics of prayer and fasting by

watching Ina, but more importantly his mother taught him to see the ubiquity of Islam in

everyday events. It stood out to Amadou that whenever Ina made future plans or

91 discussed goals with friends and family she included the phrase “God willing”

(Insha’Allah) to mark her acknowledgement that all plans depended on the wishes of God for her. Amadou told me other stories about his mother’s devotion to Islam, specifically how she perceived the presence of God in everyday life. For example, one day Amadou sat outside in the sunshine and watched his mother complete her daily chores when the sky suddenly turned black. Ina fixed her eyes on the darkened sky and addressed

Amadou with total confidence.

“Amadou, God is testing us,” she said.

Although it was daytime, Ina instructed Amadou that they needed to act as though it were night to show God their dedication to Islam and gain baraji. Amadou and Ina rapidly returned home and put themselves to bed.

“Go to sleep,” Ina instructed Amadou.

Meanwhile Amadou listened to piteous cries of confusion from outside and told his mother in a frightened voice, “But I’m not tired.”

“Then close your eyes, and pretend to be asleep,” his mother directed.

Less than half an hour later daylight returned and his mother permitted Amadou to rise from bed and resume his afternoon activities. As an old man, Amadou beamed and told me that he now understood that he had witnessed a total solar eclipse: the moon had passed between the earth and sun and temporarily blocked the sun’s rays. Amadou identified this memory as an influential moment in his childhood, and Ina’s reaction to the eclipse and her immediate attribution of the event as a demonstration of God’s supremacy strengthened his impression of his mother as a devout Muslim who saw the potential to show her devotion to God and earn baraji in daily events.

92 Amadou relied primarily on his mother to explain how to act appropriately and

make proper moral choices within their Fula community, which, Amadou reflected, faced

increased exposure to outside diversity and foreign influence. Amadou’s parents used

their Muslim practices as means for explaining the difference between Amadou and his

Bamana and French neighbors. Amadou was born in the middle of the French

colonization of Mali, which lasted sixty-eight years from 1892 until 1960.28 Amadou’s parents often expressed their contempt for the French to their children and taught

Amadou to keep his loyalty with fellow Africans.

Ina reminded him on many occasions, “If you become powerful because of the

French, hate them. If you stay powerless because the French, hate them” (Ni se b’i ye, i t’u fe. Ni se t’i ye, i t’u fe).

His mother also told him about Catholic priests, whom she called “white holy

men” (tubabu moriw) and said that Amadou should never allow anyone to take him to a

church, as it would constitute a sin so big that it would outweigh all of his baraji on his

Day of Judgment.

Historians accept that French colonizers originally treated Islam as a fierce

adversary but argue that by the 1930s European settlers had built strong alliances with

Muslim communities on whom the French had become reliant for economic and political

support (see Harrison 1998: 97-202; Manning 2004: 170-172; Robinson 1999: 105-127).

28 It was difficult for me to ascertain Amadou’s exact age. He had no paper record of his birth and did not know his birthday. A medical identification card that a public health clinic in Ouélessébougou issued to him indicated that he was born in 1946, although Amadou did not know on what basis the clinic chose this year. A 1946 birth year would have put his age at 64 upon our first meeting in 2010. In 2011 Amadou typically told people he was 76-years-old, although at times he said that he thought he might be in his eighties. NASA records indicate that a total solar eclipse that reached greatest visibly near the borders of Mali and Mauritania occurred on September 1, 1951 at 12:51:20.1 UT. Because Amadou remembers that he was a young boy at the time of the eclipse, I believe that the clinic’s estimation of Amadou’s age was quite accurate and that he was born sometime during the mid- to late 1940s. 93 Amadou’s life history offers a case in which rural Muslims remained uneasy

toward French settlers throughout the colonial era. The mutually beneficial relationship

that French colonizers cultivated with urban Muslims, including Muslim leaders on their

payrolls, did not extend to Muslim populations in Npièbougou (Harrison 1988: 197).

Amadou’s parents expressed dissatisfaction with France’s lingering presence in West

Africa and adamantly insisted that Christians should not govern Muslims.

In 2011 Amadou continued to advance his parents’ view and said, “I have taught

my children the importance of electing Muslim leaders to lead majority Muslim

populations.”

Amadou often denounced Laurent Gbagbo, the evangelical president of Côte

d’Ivoire from 2000 until his 2011 who was arrested and, as of this writing, is being tried

at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for committing crimes against

humanity: the instructive example of what may ensue when an unbeliever (kafiri) governs

Muslims. Amadou said that he would never vote for a Christian political candidate since a non-Muslim would not encourage or appreciate the Muslim virtues and practices that led to the acquisition of baraji in daily life. Given the warnings that Amadou’s parents gave him against the French, it is not surprising that Amadou developed fear and revulsion for French people long before he ever had direct contact with colonizers in the region. Amadou remembered that many French settlers lived in Markala, most of whom were primarily involved in a major project from 1933 to 1949 to build a road bridge

94 across the Niger and an irrigation dam (barrage de Markala) that diverted water into networks of man-made canals (Marie et al. 2007: 35).29

Apart from his parents’ aversion to colonial rule, Amadou heard harrowing stories about the French from other neighborhood children. One friend told him that a callous

Frenchman who lived nearly would buy peanuts in bulk and hire African children to shell them. The man watched his young employees all day with obvious contempt. If he noticed anyone eating even a single peanut the Frenchman would accuse the children of stealing and refuse to pay them. At noon, instead of feeding his young employees, he would offer them only water. Out of spite he said that they could not enjoy an actual drink and ordered them to only swish the water in their mouths and then spit it out.

Amadou also grew up afraid that the French could damn his soul. Amadou’s parents cultivated Muslim habits in him from an early age, especially by encouraging him to participate in daily prayers. In Amadou’s mind, French colonization threatened his

Muslim beliefs and sensibilities. He heard stories of the French nabbing children and forcing them into French schools (lɛkoli).

“My neighbors told me that Europeans studied everything except God in their

classrooms,” Amadou recalled. From a young age he reasoned that studying this type of

curriculum would undoubtedly stunt his acquisition of baraji and send him to hell

(jahanama).

Although Amadou rarely left the Fula quarter of Npièbougou during the first

several years of his life, he nevertheless found various types of people and situations to

29 The 1945 colonial census record for the Ségou region details that 243 Europeans were stationed in the administrative area (cercle), eighty-five of whom lived in Markala. 95 fear even in his small neighborhood. Amadou said that he abhorred hearing people fight

and grew up with a hypersensitivity to overt conflict.

Even as an adult, he continued to hate violence and cautioned those around him

against fighting by reciting a favorite proverb, “Visiting doesn’t interrupt work, but

making a fist does” (Baro tɛ baara tiɲɛ nka a bɛ bolokulu bɔ o bɛ baara tiɲɛ).

Ina found Amadou’s distaste for conflict especially disconcerting and

problematic. Fula people may deliberately fight in public when settling disputes between

themselves and family members and neighbors. Aggressors view public arguments as a

way to defend their honor and interests while relying on public reactions to ensure that

the fight does not escalate (Riesman 1977: 163-165). Thus, Fula typically view it as a

social obligation to observe and mediate the fights that break out around them. Amadou

cried and hid, typically inside his house, whenever he heard shouting or saw aggressive

behavior. Ina sought to correct Amadou’s failure to mediate during fights, telling him

that shirking his moral duty to arbitrate was dishonorable and that observing an

altercation did not put him in danger and presented a chance for him to earn baraji by acting as a peaceful mediator.

Amadou doubted that he, as a young child, could successfully resolve a quarrel between adult neighbors and left that responsibility to adult men and women in the village. Amadou grew up with a profound respect for elders (mɔgɔkɔrɔba). He saw the

worth in growing old, as a long life presented many opportunities to earn baraji by pursuing good deeds (kɛwale ɲumanw), participating in daily prayers, and fasting during

Ramadan. As a consequence of the respect that comes with old age, Amadou especially admired that elderly men and women had earned more baraji than anyone else in town.

96 During his boyhood many elders in Npièbougou, according to Amadou, lived for over

two hundred years in full health, but poverty and deteriorating living conditions in Africa

(Farafinna) made such longevity in the twenty-first century impossible.

As a child, Amadou showed reverence for his elders’ knowledge and experience

by hiding whenever he saw an old person approaching. He ducked behind mud fences or

climbed trees to watch in quiet awe whenever a town elder passed by and felt ashamed

whenever elderly people took notice of him. Fula advocate this type of shame—

semtennde in Fulfulde—as requisite for their children. A strong sense of shame is

believed to guide children to a life of fortitude and self-control that thereby leads to

ample attainment of baraji (Hopen 1958: 76-77; Riesman 1992: 17, 23-26; Stenning

1959: 59). Although Amselle (1998) observed that Mande groups in West Africa have also stress the importance of shame (or maloya in Bamanankan), especially in their children, Fula believe that their finer bloodline enables them to understand better the implications of shame and achieve morally superiority in relation to outsiders (VerEecke

1995: 72). As a Muslim searching for baraji, Amadou attached value to the shame he felt in his early life. Shame stood as an important factor in developing honor and character, qualities that Amadou saw as crucial to the acquirement of baraji through exemplary conduct as an adult.

Although Amadou felt angst during fights and cowered at the sight of his elders, his exaggerated fear of witches (subaga) tormented him the most as a child. Both Mande and Fula informants during my fieldwork expressed concerns over the menacing characteristics and activities of these witches, specifically that they could kill local children. A subaga is a mysterious sorcerer who does evil things that violate societal

97 norms and ethics. They are most notably interested in the abduction and secret

cannibalism of children (Cashion 1984: 99, 152). The subaga figure provides an archetype of what Lucy Mair terms a “nightmare witch,” a figure that embodies what is considered the antithesis of the good, through vile and perverted qualities and actions

(Brain 1975: 188; Mair 1968: 38).30 Mande and Fula people similarly believed that

subaga roam and engage in sinister activities primarily at night while flouting the cultural

rules that govern the affairs of daily life (see Mair 1968: 36-37). As a type of nightmare

witch, subaga witches demonstrated the antithesis of expected human behavior. Their

deviant behavior mocked the Muslim virtues that earn one baraji and that Amadou

valued. Amadou claimed that subaga had extraordinary powers that released them from

the physical world. They walked quickly on their hands and had devised ways to travel

“faster than airplanes,” often visiting multiple distant towns in the course of a single

night.

According to Amadou, subaga preferred a diet of human flesh and especially

favored the fresh meat of young children. Hamadi and Ina relied on a number of

techniques to preserve their young and vulnerable children from subaga attacks. Most

effectively, Amadou remembered that his mother would wash him in leaf-based elixirs

meant to combat the subaga. As an extra precaution, Ina lit perfumed incense in the

doorway of the hut Amadou slept in each evening before he went to bed. Every night she

assured Amadou that the smoke from the burning embers (wusulan) created a screen that

30 E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1976) laid the basic foundations for anthropologically understanding the distinction between witches and sorcerers. He argues that sorcerers deliberately engage in magical practices and activities deemed immoral by their communities while witches psychically emanate thoughts that are believed to cause injury to others (226-227). Both embody oppositional qualities and violate social norms. Lucy Mair notes the same distinction between sorcerers and witches as E. E. Evans-Pritchard, but she calls the two “nightmare witches” and “everyday witches,” respectively (Mair 1969: 36-39). 98 prevented subaga from entering his sleeping quarters, a practice that Amadou used to

calm his own children’s fear of subaga later in his adult life. Whenever young Amadou had problems sleeping he called for his paternal grandmother, who lived in his compound, to come into his room and tell him stories. His grandmother recounted events involving Amadou’s ancestors and folktales until he fell into an untroubled sleep.

Figure 9: Artistic depiction of a subaga (Drawing by Laye Doumbia)

West African folklore offers numerous accounts of what ensues when a subaga abducts an ill-fated person. These tales describe the deformed appearance of subaga alongside the ordeals and trials that witches inflict upon their captives. In 2010 I hired an artist named Laye Doumbia living in Ouélessébougou to draw me a picture of a subaga.

The portrait depicts the abnormal appearance of a witch along with other widely held

99 ideas about subaga. A lush garden appears in the upper-left corner of the drawing, alluding to a popular belief that subaga could grow gardens without water. The black crow in the tree reminds the viewer that subaga often used birds as familiars to help with their malicious plots against hapless victims. People thought that subaga could transform themselves into cats to wander around towns observing humans or sent ravens and crows to spy on the goings-on of townspeople. The subaga pictured above also sits next to a wooden mortar and pestle that subaga reportedly use for mysterious ends, rather than for the conventional purpose of crushing grains and spices. Informants told me that victims of subaga learn the purpose of the mortar and pestle only shortly before their death. The artist also included three stacked pots (dagaw) in the lower right corner. Subaga often made cruel agreements with their victims: if the victims could accurately guess what was inside each of the three pots, the subaga would set them free.

“This is an impossible challenge,” one friend in Ouélessébougou assured me. “A pot could hold water, grain, or a could be empty altogether! No one, except another subaga, could correctly guess the contents of all three.”

As an old man, Amadou worried considerably less about subaga than he did as a child. The waning of his concern shows the dynamic nature of life histories. Amadou’s belief in the witches had not diminished, but his relationship to the witches had changed.

“A subaga would never search for the meat of an elderly person,” he said.

Despite Amadou’s fears during his childhood, he enjoyed growing up in

Npièbougou, especially once he reached an age at which he could wander the entire town and nearby forest.

☰ ☰ ☰

100 Amadou recollected many memories from the age of five to seven, and as an old

man he discussed this period of his childhood with joy and nostalgia. Once Amadou

turned five, Ina encouraged her son to play and do chores for the family outside of their

residential compound in order to become more independent. Amadou’s neighbor and

age-mate (tɔɲɔgɔn), Kaou Tamboura, became his closest friend as soon as Amadou was old enough to spend prolonged periods of time away from home. Amadou enjoyed his new autonomy. He and Kaou spent the majority of their time playing, talking, eating, and drinking fresh milk from the cattle that belonged to Amadou’s family. As a

Tamboura, Kauo’s last name revealed his family’s status as descendents of Fula-owned slaves. Amadou said his grandfather had owned Kaou’s ancestors but that French colonial authorities had freed all persons enslaved in their territories in the early twentieth century. Although Amadou’s family and other freeborn Fula in Npièbougou observed the French ban on slavery, former slave-owners in Npièbougou did not easily adapt to viewing Tambouras as equals. Amadou regularly joked with Kaou about his family’s status.

“I used to shout ‘slave!’ in a joking manner when I called for Kaou,” Amadou recalled.

His time-honored joking relationship with Kaou never strained their relationship.31 The time they spent together as children bound him and Kaou together as lifelong friends while developing their character in the process.

Amadou’s childhood friendships built his moral qualities in ways that benefitted him in his adult life. Kaou often defeated Amadou when they competed in games against

31 See chapter four for a detailed description of Fula and Mande joking relationships. 101 each other, which Amadou said distressed him as a child. As a favorite game, Kaou and

Amadou would bury a soft, small cushion in the shallow sand that filled their village.

The two boys them took turns trying to pierce the cushion by quickly throwing nails into

the sand. Winning required focus, aim, strength, and luck, and Amadou often lost

matches against Kaou. Amadou confessed that he would run away to cry in private after

each defeat. Amadou recalled that Kaou would similarly disappear whenever Amadou

won, and concluded that Kaou also left to weep after each loss. Amadou and Kaou

learned to restrain themselves from crying and losing self-control in front of one another.

Fula children develop a sense of honor primarily in the company of their age-mates

(Riesman 1977: 205). A child’s friends act as the first judges of pulaaku, a Fula virtue in

Fulfulde that encompasses honor, intelligence, dignity, and control over one’s public

actions and emotions (see Dupire 1962: 273; Riesman 1977: 108-109, 127-129, 205;

Stenning 1959: 55-59). Bamana speakers similarly rely on the concept of mɔgɔya as a

code of comportment that expresses honor in human nature and social relations (Amselle

1998: 44). But, as Muslims, Amadou’s family and neighbors saw their understandings of

honor and virtue as superior to those of nearby Bamana people.

Amadou’s childhood friends contributed to his character and helped expand his

worldview by providing him with his first exposure to non-Fula people and culture.

Amadou and Kaou often ventured, with their parents’ permission, to the Bamana

neighborhood to play with children there.

On my initiative, in 2011, Amadou and I traveled to Npièbougou for a short visit

with his family members who still lived in the area. The traditional Fula and Bamana

quarters remained separated by a vast landscape covered by shades of pale orange sand,

102 millet fields, and intermittent acacia trees and bushes.32 Within both districts, circular

mud homes with conical, thatched roofs lined narrow dirt roads. Bamana residential

compounds were smaller than those in the Fula district, as Fula homes had large corrals

for holding cattle.

Amadou had fond memories of playing with Bamana children during his

childhood, but he uneasily noted the absence of a mosque in the Bamana neighborhood.

Figure 10: Mosque located in the center of Npièbougou’s Fula district

32 Despite the separation between neighborhoods, Amadou observed on our visit that neither the Fula nor Bamana districts remained the ethnic enclaves of yesteryear. Both housed diverse populations, and Bamanankan reigned as the most commonly spoken language to facilitate inter-ethnic communication. In 2011 few people in Npièbougou, including Amadou’s young relatives, could competently speak Fulfulde as they once could.

103 “Kaou and I wondered about the dangers of spending time with unbelievers,”

Amadou said, “and we convinced each other that Bamana sorcerers (soma) would capture us if we stayed in the Bamana district past dark.”

In Amadou and Kaou’s imagination, sorcerers would eat their young flesh alongside servings of dog meat, and their devastated mothers would never find a trace of their dismembered bodies. Amadou found comfort in being with other Muslims and a level of mystery surrounded non-Muslims, so the two friends always returned rapidly to the safety and familiarity of their Fula neighborhood before sunset.

Ina occasionally gave Amadou money when he went to the Bamana quarter and instructed him to buy peanuts or grain from their farmer neighbors. Slowly Amadou assumed more responsibility for household chores and errands. He also began spending more time with his father than mother. As a child, Amadou continued his family’s history of cattle herding; they relied exclusively on cattle husbandry for their income.

His father, Hamadi, showed confidence in Amadou’s pastoral abilities by giving him occasional responsibilities to aid in caring for his family’s livestock, such as instructing

Amadou to keep the calves away from the family’s grain storage and tying up calves in the evening (see Hopen 1958: 24). Young children, Amadou explained, earn baraji primarily through obedience to their parents, and he felt proud when his parents asked him to perform chores.

In my fieldwork in Ouélessébougou I noted that the children in my host compound similarly reported that they received baraji by accomplishing chores assigned by their parents. The residents in my host compound identified themselves as Bamana and used the Bamana language exclusively while Amadou’s Fula family spoke Fulfulde.

104 This continuity between families supports understanding baraji as a pervasive trans- ethnic and linguistic concept in West Africa.

Five-year-old Amadou drew water up from ground wells for the cattle, learned to milk cows, and tended to the young calves in his family’s herd. By assuming such responsibilities, Amadou also began to spend time in the forests surrounding

Npièbougou.

“I didn’t like the forest as a child,” he explained, “I felt scared a lion would eat me. I’m sure it nearly happened many times, but I ran fast and escaped!”

Hamadi also taught Amadou how to make rope as part of managing the family’s calves. As an old man, Amadou continued to make rope using the same technique his father had taught him during his boyhood.33 All work held value for Amadou. Even though his family did not sell the rope he made as a child to generate income, Amadou’s balance of baraji grew as he became a contributing member of his household.

Through domestic chores Amadou also experienced his first contact with the

French settlers he had grown up fearing. Ina had arranged to sell one liter of fresh milk for twenty-five francs each morning to each of several French families living in

Markala.34 Amadou often walked the nearly four-mile distance to Markala to deliver the milk to his mother’s customers. Nervous at the prospect of meeting a French settler, the

French people in Markala surprised Amadou when they received him with kindness and appreciation for the long journey Amadou had made on their behalf.

33 Although his technique had not changed during his lifetime, Amadou originally learned to make rope using the strong fibers cut from baobab tree bark. In 2011 Amadou still preferred using tree bark to construct rope but said his customers favored ropes made from plastic. Amadou consequently relied on shredded grain bags as his primary material for rope. 34 About $0.05 USD. 105 “Most days the French women gave me an extra francs and told me to buy a piece

of candy or cookie to eat on my walk back to Npièbougou,” Amadou recalled.

Amadou was curious about the differences in skin tone between him and the

French and jokingly dubbed the sun “the French moon” (tubabu kalo) because its effulgent rays emulated the brightness of European skin. Yet during these visits to

Markala, Amadou realized that the primary divergence between him and the Europeans lay not in their marked physical differences but in their access to wealth and opportunity in comparison to Africans. On many occasions, after delivering the milk, Amadou sat on the banks of the Niger in Markala and waited to watch as seaplanes full of rich Europeans gracefully landed on the river. He strained to see insides of these aircraft and daydreamed that someday he would board one bound for Mecca and would amass the large sum of baraji ascribed to those who make this pilgrimage.

Amadou often found ways to mix his responsibilities with children’s pursuits.

Amadou and his friends taught themselves to swim in the man-made irrigation canals that surrounded their village, which were linked to the nearby Niger River. Occasionally

Hamadi permitted Amadou to take cattle with him on his daytime swims. Cattle are natural swimmers, Amadou recalled, and the animals often had more endurance than his young body. Amadou swam alongside them and once he became tired he would grab hold of a nearby tail and lazily float downstream. Amadou protected his herd and kept a careful eye out for crocodiles and the rare hippopotamus and quickly evacuated his cattle from the water upon seeing any threatening animals. On days when his cows did not go swimming with him, Amadou and his friends happily made small boats for themselves from discarded metal barrels and spent the day floating and splashing in the cool water.

106

Figure 11: Amadou Diallo and me visiting Amadou’s favorite childhood swimming hole in Npièbougou

One late afternoon, when Amadou was six-years-old, he wandered alone from his house to his favorite swimming hole without telling anyone of his plan to take a short dip before dark. Amadou’s father, Hamadi, grew worried that Amadou was missing as dusk descended on the village and began searching nearby compounds and asking neighbors whether they had seen his young son. Hamadi and Ina’s terror culminated when a woman told them that she had seen Amadou playing alone near the water several hours earlier.

Amadou found his mother crying in their family compound when he finally returned home shortly after dark. His mother rejoiced upon seeing Amadou and whispered, “I thought you had drowned,” in Amadou’s ear while she hugged him with all her might.

107 Hamadi then seized Amadou from his mother’s embrace and smacked him for the

panic he had caused the family. Amadou identified this as the only time he had ever been

beaten as a child. Hamadi next verbally reprimanded Amadou. He reminded his son that

Amadou’s older brother had suddenly died as an infant from an illness shortly before

Amadou’s own birth. Hamadi explained that he and Ina could not bare the sorrow of

another child’s loss and chastised Amadou for his inconsiderate stupidity. He shouted

that Amadou was too old to continue living a frivolous and unaccountable life and

announced that the time had come for Amadou to become a serious (sɛbɛ) Muslim.

Hamadi ended his lecture by saying that he would make arrangements in the coming year

for Amadou to move to study in a medersa in another village.

The idea of leaving Npièbougou and his family terrified young Amadou, but

Amadou told me that there was no space for children to express their will (sago) in

making such decisions.

☰ ☰ ☰

Hamadi himself became suddenly and gravely ill shortly after making his decision to send Amadou to a medersa. Within a week of the onset of his illness, he had died.

Amadou was terribly confused by his father’s passing. In his short seven years of life he had never known anyone close to him who had died. Amadou described Hamadi’s funeral rites as brief. Elderly men in the village ritually washed Hamadi’s body, dressed him in white, and buried his body outside Npièbougou within hours of his passing. On the morning following his father’s death, Amadou left his compound to go for a walk by himself. While aimlessly meandering down sandy roads Amadou became gripped by sadness and looked up at the trees with tears swimming in his eyes.

108 “I thought of my friends and their fathers,” he explained, “and realized that I was

the only child in the world without a father.”

Amadou and his father stayed linked together after Hamadi’s death through

baraji. Amadou’s family arranged to sacrifice a white bull on Hamadi’s behalf forty

days after his death. The family distributed the meat to an immense crowd of neighbors

and relatives. The sacrifice was designed to ensure that Hamadi received enough baraji

to enter paradise. Following this sacrifice, Ina explained to Amadou at the formative age

of seven, that Amadou and his siblings now had the responsibility to earn additional

baraji for their father. Amadou explained that, according to the Qur’an, family members

were not judged by God for one another’s sins.35 However, God did allow descendents to

benefit their ancestors by earning baraji on their forebears’ behalf.

Among West African Muslims, the deceased rely on their children to confer blessings on their behalf and add to their baraji through personal sacrifices and spoken blessings (Smeltzer 2005: 55-56). Accordingly, the relationship between children and parents takes on new significance after a parent dies. Fula and Mande Muslims in

Ouélessébougou explained that they wanted to continually remember and respect dead ancestors and believed that the deceased especially appreciated gifts, such as food.

People worried that their deceased relatives felt hungry or thirsty in the afterlife and believed that the living earned baraji by offering food gifts to their ancestors. People blessed their food by speaking the short blessing, “baraji be with you” (i ni baraji) on behalf of their ancestors before sharing meals. In Ouélessébougou I typically observed that people spoke blessings before consuming large meals, but Amadou was especially

35 Sura 35:18 of the Qur’an teaches, “And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another.” 109 mindful of his father. Amadou consistently sacrificed small snacks and drinks of water

by saying “i ni baraji” in confidence that the refreshments would likewise satisfy Hamadi

while accumulating baraji for both Amadou and his father. Even mere nourishment, if approached properly, became associated with ancestors and Islam as it carried the potential to maintain kin relations between the living and the dead when understood through baraji.

With the sudden death of her husband, Ina focused on keeping her family’s physical and emotional well being in tact while she completed four months and ten days of customary mourning (furuja or filiya). In speaking about death, Amadou deemed it unacceptable to cry publically for more than one day after someone close had died, and he credited his mother as a praiseworthy example in managing the emotions around death.

“After my father died I walked in on my mother crying privately in the house,”

Amadou said, but he made it clear that Ina never knowingly cried in front of her children.

Amadou explained that during his mother’s mourning period, which he described as a Muslim practice (laada), Ina stayed in the confines of her compound and did not

receive male guests. The period determined with certainty that Ina was not pregnant

when Hamadi passed away. Had she found herself pregnant, abstaining from contact

with males would have satisfactorily established the unborn child as Hamadi’s.

During her period of mourning, Ina relied primarily on Amadou’s paternal

grandmother, Fatou, to help her solve daily problems. Amadou remembered that he

caused the first major challenge that Ina and Fatou faced after his father’s death. One day

after playing in his neighborhood, Amadou returned home with two large lacerations on

110 the side of his belly. Amadou could not remember which rambunctious activity had

caused the wound, but in 2011 the lower left side of his abdomen still bore two large

scars from the accident. Amadou’s grandmother advised Ina not to worry and

volunteered to perform an incantation (kilisi) to heal her wounded grandson. Amadou

described his grandmother as an expert in kilisi healing practices, a power inherited

privately by Fatou from her mother.

“The people of Npièbougou brought their sick children, animals, spouses, and

parents to have my grandmother heal them,” Amadou recalled.

Fatou would massage the afflicted areas on her patients while softly uttering

select passages from the Qur’an and lightly blowing and spitting her speech onto the sick

person. Oftentimes people were too sick to travel to Amadou’s compound to see Fatou

and would rather send raw medicinal leaves to Fatou on which she pronounced blessings.

Fatou would recite the Qur’an, spit on the leaves, and instruct the courier to go home,

boil the leaves in water, and wash the injured person or animal with the infusion. Fatou

did not expect financial payment for her services. Patrons showed their respect and

appreciation by offering her kola nuts and assured her that she had earned baraji by performing her incantations.

In 2011 the grandmother of the compound I lived in, Yirigoi, was similarly regarded in Ouélessébougou as a kilisi expert. Yirigoi refused all forms of material compensation from her patients and told me that the baraji she earned was adequate

compensation. Young wives who worried about their fertility regularly visited Yirigoi

for homemade medicines and kilisi. Yirigoi also memorably helped in healing a four-

year-old boy, named Issa, who lived in a neighboring compound when he fell twenty feet

111 when climbing a tree. For two weeks following the severe accident, Issa’s mother

brought him to Yirigoi every evening for her to perform kilisi while massaging Issa’s

swollen body. Issa screamed in pain as Yirigoi rubbed his sore muscles with shea butter,

but Yirigoi ignored Issa’s cries for her to stop. She smiled softly and continued to

whisper blessings to Issa while forcefully kneading his back, arms, and legs.

Fatou similarly applied shea butter regularly to Amadou’s wound and performed

daily kilisi on his injured abdomen. Fatou promised Ina and Amadou that the cuts would close and begin to heal in a matter days. Unfortunately, the wounds split further open with time and Amadou developed a festering infection. Ina became inconsolable.

Amadou overheard her share with her female friends and relatives her fear that the infection might kill Amadou.

“My paternal aunt (tɛnɛmuso) decided on her own to seek the counsel of a

sorcerer (soma) from the Bamana district,” Amadou recounted.

The sorcerer told Amadou’s aunt to place gold on Amadou’s wound and wrap the

infected area with a fresh cloth. Ina followed the sorcerer’s advice and broke two small

pieces of gold off from a pair of earrings and placed the yellow metal on Amadou’s two

infected cuts. His cuts healed thereafter, but permanent scars remained as a reminder of

the crisis Amadou caused his family following his father’s death. When Koniba,

Amadou’s close friend who welded near us, overheard Amadou recount this story to me

in 2011, he insisted when I asked that the sorcerer had earned baraji by healing Amadou.

Amadou disagreed that sorcerers could earn baraji but said he nevertheless felt grateful

(waleɲumandɔn) for the sorcerer’s help.

112 Following Hamadi’s death, Amadou’s mother and grandmother often told

Amadou stories about his father. Throughout Amadou’s entire life, memories and stories

of his father often mingled with Amadou’s dreams. Amadou interpreted dreams that

featured his father as a reward for the baraji he had earned for him. Amadou noticed that dreams of his father increased when he acted in practical matters with a particular focus on his Muslim virtues, especially during Ramadan. I asked Amadou if he would narrate a dream that included his father, and he told me he preferred to keep the details of these dreams private. He did explain, however, that during these dreams Hamadi supplied

Amadou with moral advice originating from heaven, and these experiences provided

Amadou with a visual confirmation of his father’s immortality along with other insights.

Amadou slept with a notebook next to his bed for the express purpose of recording the contents of these dreams immediately after he woke up. Through dreams and pursuing baraji on behalf of Hamadi, Amadou successfully preserved his relationship with his father beyond death. Even as Amadou’s family adjusted their lives after Hamadi’s death,

Amadou relied on Muslim beliefs and practices to maintain his relationship with his father.

☰ ☰ ☰

In keeping with the common practice of the levirate in West Africa, Ina remarried after the end of her mourning period to her deceased husband’s younger brother

(Riesman 1998: 209; see also Wilson-Haffenden 1930: 106). Amadou’s uncle, Hamidou, already had one wife upon his compulsory marriage to Ina, and Amadou and Ina moved into Hamidou’s already established compound together after the marriage. The compound was just a short walk from Amadou’s original childhood home. According to

Amadou, his mother got along naturally well with her new husband and co-wife 113 (sinamuso). His uncle was now responsible for Ina in terms of providing her and

Amadou with food, clothes, and shelter, but Amadou did not spend much time living in

Hamidou’s compound as Ina carried out her late husband’s wish that Amadou begin studying in a medersa. Ina completed arrangements for Amadou to leave for Diafarabé, a

village in the northern Mopti region of Mali, to live and study full-time with Amadou’s

older cousin, a Muslim scholar named Abdoulaye Diallo who had learned as a child to

recite the entire Qur’an from memory and operated a medersa.36

From the ages of eight to eleven years old, Amadou studied for approximately ten

months per year at Abdoulaye’s medersa. He recalled that he left Npièbougou before the

hot season began in early February and stayed in Diafarabé through the rainy period and

shortly into the cold season, typically returning home to Npièbougou for a two-month

visit in late November. Amadou was housed in Abdoulaye’s compound, along with other

pupils who had similarly traveled from distant regions to learn to read Arabic and recite

the Qur’an with Abdoulaye. The majority of Abdoulaye’s students, however, lived with

their families locally in Diafarabé and traveled daily to Abdoulaye’s school to study.

Amadou estimated that one hundred children, both male and female, studied at

Abdoulaye’s school on any given day.

In 2011 Muslims in Mali continued to esteem and favor Qur’anic education for its

value, and many parents entrusted their children to medersas over public primary schools

modeled on the French education system. Teachers in Qur’anic schools went on strike

considerably less often than instructors in public schools, and parents rightly felt that this

consistency was more conducive to successful learning. Education at Qur’anic schools

36 Amadou classified Abdoulaye as his father’s older brother’s son (n fa kɔrɔkɛ denkɛ). 114 also offered opportunities to learn Muslim principles, scripture, and history, helping

children to grow into adults who could earn sufficient baraji for themselves and for their deceased kin by performing sacrifices and living in overall accordance with the precepts of Islam.

Because of his kin relationship with Abdoulaye, Amadou did not pay any tuition or living fees for his education, but he recalled that other students paid to study at

Abdoulaye’s renowned medersa. However, as happens everywhere in Muslim West

Africa, Amadou supported his teacher (karamɔgɔ) by helping extensively with

Abdoulaye’s farming affairs and other household tasks (see Mommersteeg 2012: 36, 44).

Living at a medersa required Amadou to devote his time exclusively to chores and

classroom studies, and Amadou said he abruptly stopped participating in childhood trifles

such as singing, dancing, and playing sports upon his arrival in Diafarabé.

Amadou remembered that he had a basic understanding of Islam before he arrived

at Abdoulaye’s medersa, but during his career as a student the separate strands of doctrine and Muslim history he learned in Npièbougou intertwined and gained strength that Amadou would rely on for life. While developing his understanding of Islam in

Diafarabé, Amadou learned to focus on the value inherent in completing daily chores and assignments. To Amadou’s younger self, prayer and fasting represented the primary ways to earn baraji, and Amadou’s studies made him cognizant of the potential to acquire baraji through ordinary affairs and feelings. During his studies Amadou learned the supererogatory (farida) aspects of Islam and techniques for earning superfluous baraji external to observance of the five pillars of Islam to ensure his salvation. For example, Abdoulaye taught Amadou that responsibility, vigor, and hard work produced

115 baraji and that commitment to honest work was as essential to salvation as observing the

five pillars of Islam.

Amadou had a basic understanding of Muslim doctrines, rituals, and baraji before he began his studies, but he credited Abdoulaye for sharpening his knowledge. Amadou developed manifold skills during the years he spent at Abdoulaye’s medersa including

the ability to read and write in Arabic, transliterate Bamanankan and Fulfulde using the

Arabic script, recite the Qur’an, recount Muslim history, and how to correctly perform

rituals and live daily life as a good Muslim. Although Amadou changed his external

habits and lifestyle upon his arrival at Abdoulaye’s medersa, inside he remained

preoccupied by various fears. Amadou told me that he loved and admired Abdoulaye,

but that with this respect came a tremendous amount of trepidation and shame (maloya or semtennde in Fulfulde) that he might disappoint or make a mistake in front of Abdoulaye that would cause Abdoulaye to beat young Amadou.

Children receiving elementary education in medersas ordinarily focus on copying from the Qur’an in Arabic, although they may not understand the meaning of what they are writing, and memorizing portions of the Qur’an by heart for recitation (Mommersteeg

2102: 36-40). Amadou similarly described these processes and the stress Abdoulaye placed on memory in his recollections of classroom activities and behavior at his medersa. Abdoulaye told his students to memorize large passages from the Qur’an by heart, and Amadou’s fear of being chosen by Abdoulaye to reproduce this material in front of other schoolchildren motivated young Amadou to work diligently on his writings and memorizations. Abdoulaye regularly called on select students to recite or write

116 assigned portions of the Qur’an and would interrupt, correct, and strike his pupils

whenever they made a mistake.

Amadou remembered, “I would stand in front of my teacher and say in a soft

voice: ‘Bismi Allahi arrahmani arraheem Alhamdu lillahi rabbi alAAalameen …’ and as

I began to forget what came next I would brace myself to be whipped. Then WHACK!”

Living in fear of such beatings motivated Amadou to study seriously and to internalize his studies.

☰ ☰ ☰

Although scholars researching Islam in Africa have produced contemporary studies on West African Qur’anic schools (see Brenner 1985, 1993, 2001; Cissé 1992,

Gérard 1992; Lange & Diarra 1999; Mommersteeg 2012; Weyer 2011), understanding of curriculum and policy in medersas also comes from reports commissioned by international developmental agencies, such as the World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO, and

U.S. Agency for International Development (Boyle 2004: 18). Such studies typically yield one-sided characterizations that diminish the educational merit of medersas, qualifying the schools’ focus on memorization as mindless and obsessive, a rote exercise used to indoctrinate children (18-28).

Ethnographic studies of Qur’anic schools in West Africa counter such reports and argue that teachers in medersas design early memorization of the Qur’an as a first step in a lifelong attempt to more deeply embed the content of the Qur’an in the mind by studying its meaning and history (see Boyle 2004; Mommersteeg 2012). Ibn Khaldoun, the fourteenth-century Muslim historian, purportedly wrote that instructors in Qur’anic schools use children’s submissiveness in order to impress the Qur’an in students’

117 consciousness for use and understanding later in life (Bouzoubaa 1998: 3; Boyle 2004:

85).

In 2011 residents in Ouélessébougou similarly stated that children made the best

candidates to learn the Qur’an, as they easily recalled the contents of the Qur’an

verbatim. Parents often referenced the complete Bamanankan proverb, “Children are like

fresh mud, one should work them before they dry” (Denmisɛn ye bɔgɔ kɛnɛ ye, a ka kan

ka baara san’a ka ja), in speaking of how they encouraged their children to memorize the

Qur’an from a young age.

Amadou substantiated this stance, claiming that he memorized portions of the

Qur’an with ease, especially in comparison with what he had successfully learned in his adult life. He also remembered that a number of old men and married women attended

Abdoulaye’s medersa, and these older students faced considerably more difficulty

completing assigned memorization and learning to read Arabic than Amadou and other

young schoolchildren.

Abdoulaye encouraged all of his students by expounding on the value of their

studies and ensured Amadou that Muslims earn copious baraji by reciting, copying, and

memorizing the Qur’an. This potential to acquire baraji led Amadou to a lifelong

interest in Qur’anic studies. Abdoulaye bestowed on Amadou a detailed understanding

of how to acquire baraji on which Amadou drew throughout his life. Abdoulaye even

stated a definite numerical sum of baraji that certain tasks achieved. For instance,

Abdoulaye taught that reciting the first surah of the Qur’an carried the potential to earn

the speaker 490 baraji, as each verse in the seven-verse surah was worth seventy baraji.37

37 Reading and reciting other portions of the Qur’an amassed baraji in unknown quantities. 118 During his studies in Diafarabé, Amadou became accustomed to living away from

his mother and siblings. Amadou told me that he remained grateful that he had the

chance to study as a child and that most of his friends never had such an opportunity. In

addition to its value in enhancing Amadou’s understanding of baraji and Islam, studying at a medersa benefitted Amadou with writing skills he relied on throughout his life. Most notably, Amadou retained and used his knowledge of Arabic to write in Fulfulde and

Bamanankan using ajami, a conventional writing system wherein a modified Arabic

script is used to write indigenous African languages (see Hassane 2008: 109-122;

Na’allah 2010: 39-51).

Owing to his knowledge of ajami, Amadou was able to accomplish many useful

tasks in his adolescence and adult life such as keeping personal vaccination records for

his cattle, documenting memories and dreams, and organizing phone numbers. In 2011

Amadou remained supportive and respectful toward medersas in Ouélessébougou, and he

encouraged me to spend time observing classes at local medersas in order to gain insight

into his childhood schooldays. I asked Yacouba Touré, the director of the town’s largest

medersa whom I had previously interviewed about the details of baraji, for permission to

watch him work with his students. Yacouba welcomed this request and extended an open

invitation for me to visit his classroom.

☰ ☰ ☰

During Ramadan, which in 2011 lasted from August 1 until August 30, Yacouba’s school offered an extracurricular afternoon summer school for schoolchildren in

Ouélessébougou for 1000 francs for the month.38 Most of the children, who ranged from three to twelve-years-old, were still too young to fast, but Yacouba ran the program on

38 About $2.00 USD. 119 the principle that they were mature enough to the use the month to deepen their

understanding of and commitment to Islam.

I regularly sat in on Yacouba’s classes, which lasted for two hours and began at

two o’clock in the afternoon, during the month and watched him teach dozens of students portions of the Qur’an, the precepts of Islam, and proper procedures for prayer. The medersa consisted of three classrooms lined up in a simple block building, not wired for electricity, with cement walls and floors and a corrugated metal roof. For me, enduring the heat of the cement classroom presented the biggest challenge in getting through

Yacouba’s lessons. The stuffy air and high temperatures seemed to go unnoticed by the children as they sat hip-to-hip with their friends on handmade wooden benches in front of rows of long desks that faced the front of the classroom. Rainstorms often passed over

Ouélessébougou during August, but these breaks in heat and sunshine made the classroom no more physically comfortable. Large drops of rain splashed through holes in the school’s metal roof and disrupted studies as children scattered to find bowls and pans to catch the drip. Humidity saturated the town after each rainstorm, and the moisture- laden air made the classroom warm and steamy. I had a difficult time tolerating these discomforts, but the children always seemed contented.

Like public schools in Mali, the boys and girls sat in separate sections from one another. The girls covered their hair while in the classroom with headscarves of bright and varying colors. Most of the girls did not wear head coverings outside of school, but obediently observed Yacouba’s request that they do so while in the classroom. These cloths often slid off the girls’ heads because they were not accustomed to wearing the

120 scarves, causing young girlfriends to quietly laugh and help one another resituate their

head coverings while trying to not disrupt the other students.

As the most common classroom exercise, Yacouba instructed his students to stand

and repeat sections from the Qur’an in unison while he pointed to the written Arabic on

the blackboard with a long, thin tree branch. Following rounds of group recitation,

Yacouba individually called on students to recite alone. Children expressed a willingness

to recite by waving their hands and snapping to get Yacouba’s attention, and Yacouba

rotated between selecting overly zealous and obviously reluctant students for individual

recitation. While students recited, Yacouba closed his eyes and voiced a rhythmic

“Ohon!” as he listened to faultless recitations and softly said “Eh?” with wide eyes to indicate a mistake. Yacouba told me that physical punishment remains commonplace in medersas throughout West Africa, but he said that he does not endorse the practice in his school on the basis that he finds any type of violence contrary to the teachings of Islam.39

After recitation Yacouba typically expounded in Bamanankan on the content of what his students had just memorized from the Qur’an. He purposefully designed such explanations to help students to develop an understanding of the doctrines and history of

Islam. School during Ramadan ended after students performed the third prayer (fitiri) in

the mid-afternoon. Every afternoon Yacouba reminded the students how to ritually

prepare for prayers by washing his face, arms, head, feet, and ankles in order three times

each in front of his pupils. Oftentimes Yacouba would intentionally only wash an area

39 Indeed, I never observed physical mistreatment of students when observing Yacouba or his staff working with schoolchildren. One female instructor, as a form of physical punishment, had girl students repeat squats while holding both earlobes with their arms crossed over their chest whenever they “failed in their studies” (dɛsɛra ka kalan na) and punished boys by having them do prolonged handstands against the wall. From my perspective, the children found these punishments to be amusing and smiled and laughed while carrying them out. The instructor also always fought a slight smile while she watched. 121 twice and the students would loudly shout to correct his error. Next, the students went

outside to wash themselves using a limited number of plastic kettles (tasali) supplied by the school. Small fights over who got to use the kettle next typically erupted while the students washed themselves.

After washing, the students lined up, ready for prayer, on old plastic mats that had been spread out in the medersa’s courtyard. The girls stood in a line behind the

schoolboys, and Yacouba meticulously inspected his students before leading the prayer.

He checked that the students stood with straight posture in an orderly line and often

pulled boys out of their position to button their shirts. Preparing the students for prayer

was a painfully long process, and even as an observer I often felt impatient with the

children; yet Yacouba always kept a kind composure when dealing with students and

managing his school. Yacouba expressed his willingness to integrate secular subjects

into his school’s core curriculum. He proudly showed me classroom materials for

teaching French and mathematics that had been donated to him by U.S. Agency for

International Development and that he used to assist him in teaching these topics.

☰ ☰ ☰

Amadou’s experience at Abdoulaye’s medersa varied from the education that twenty-first century medersa students received, and Amadou explained that he did not study French or any other secular topics during his time as a formal student. Amadou spent a typical school day studying the Arabic alphabet, memorizing portions of the

Qur’an, examining the life of the Prophet Muhammad, learning Muslim rites, such as proper procedures for prayer and fasting, and theology. In addition to these studies and the regular chores that Amadou accomplished in Abdoulaye’s compound, Amadou also worked as a child beggar (garibu) on behalf of his teacher. As such, Amadou and 122 Abdoulaye’s other pupils walked around neighborhoods in Diafarabé three times a day, at mealtimes, carrying a hollowed gourd as a bowl and reciting passages from the Qur’an in exchange for money or food donations (see Mommersteeg 2012: 44-46). Begging was difficult and humbling (majigin) work. According to Amadou, some residents in

Diafarabé mistreated beggars by ignoring or harassing them. Most people, however, saw beggars as an opportunity to serve both others and their own interests. As charitable donors handed Amadou coins or placed food in his bowl, the angel on their right shoulder recorded the moment as an action deserving baraji. Amadou also earned baraji from his effort by reciting the Qur’an in Arabic and pronouncing benedictions while soliciting donations.

At the time of my research, the common practice of begging in predominately

Muslim countries in West Africa had become controversial, as many Africans along with

European and North American interlocutors found the system exploitative (Dickinson

2006). Critics classified the practice as dangerous and questioned the wisdom behind sending young children out alone to beg. In urban West African cities, moreover, beggars stood at busy intersections and recited the Qur’an in Arabic while minding their safety amid fast-paced traffic (Dickinson 2006; Sengupta 2004). As population growth in

West African countries increased, the number of child beggars also rose. Many Muslims in Mali vehemently complained that the recent increase in begging children from medersas had ruined the region’s image and made it impossible to travel in towns in peace.

People who criticized begging normally spoke with compassion for the children but harshly condemned the medersa teachers who profited and even became wealthy by

123 taking advantage of young students. I recall that one afternoon I had lunch with a

German friend of mine who lived in Bamako. Beggars swarmed my friend’s car at every

intersection where we stopped while en route to the restaurant.

My friend said that begging presented an insoluble moral problem for Bamako

residents: “If we don’t give the beggars money, their teachers beat them for returning

empty-handed. Yet if we give them money, it ensures they’ll be back out on the streets

tomorrow.”

Despite these harsh reviews, in 2011 the practice endured, and even the critics I

spoke with recognized a level of value in the principles the begging perpetuated, namely

that it instilled the desired qualities of modesty and humility in children and offered a

chance for adults to help the unfortunate. Both parties also acquired baraji. As an old

man, Amadou complained less about the exploitative dimensions of begging than other

residents in Ouélessébougou. Amadou looked upon beggars with commiseration and

gave alms (saraka or sarati) to them whenever he could afford to. He sought to treat

beggars in Ouélessébougou with the type of compassion and generosity he admired in

adults when he similarly toiled as a child beggar in Diafarabé.

Amadou’s schedule at the medersa filled his days with chores, studies, and

begging obligations. Yet Amadou managed to develop friendships with the other

students who similarly lived at the school during fleeting moments of spare time over the

three-year period he spent at Abdoulaye’s medersa. The students that Abdoulaye boarded slept in a common quarters in his family’s residential compound and often stayed up late joking and telling each other stories. Late one night Amadou awoke from

124 his sleep and heard screams for help coming from a friend, Lamine, who was sleeping

next to him.

Amadou dramatically remembered, “I heard Lamine crying and yelling that a

subaga was trying to capture him.”

Amadou briefly opened his eyes and glimpsed at a large black shadow wrestling against Lamine, who was erratically kicking his legs and waving his arms. Seized by fear and panic, Amadou closed his eyes and pretended to sleep while reciting the Qur’an in his mind, reasoning that if the witch noticed his young flesh it would violently set upon him too. The following morning Amadou woke up and saw Lamine safely asleep on his bedroll. Amadou and Lamine discussed the subaga attack later that day, and both credited the leaf-based elixirs in which their mothers had washed them for repelling the subaga and preventing the attack from reaching a fatal end. This harrowing experience strengthened Amadou’s conception of life, especially verifying that the physical world was filled with a multiplicity of non-human entities with whom he had to deal directly and from whom he had to protect himself through his Muslim faith (limaniya) and practice.

By the time Amadou turned eleven he had found happiness in Diafarabé and mused less about returning to Npièbougou than he had in the early years of his studies.

One afternoon Amadou was surprised by the unexpected arrival of his older sister,

Fatouma, at his medersa. Amadou immediately noticed a mournful expression on

Fatouma’s face as she approached him, and his sister suddenly burst into tears and fell to

the feet of her younger brother.

125 Fatouma recounted that she had traveled north from Ségou to Diafarabé with her

three-year-old son, Amadou’s young nephew, in order to visit Amadou and other family

relatives in the area. As was typical at the time, Fatouma and her son endeavored to

make the over one hundred mile trip by sailing up the Niger in a small canoe (kurun) that

was built and captained by a Bozo fisherman. Near the end of their voyage the canoe that

Fatouma and her son had traveled in inexplicably flipped over and fell out of sight.

Nearby fishermen noticed the accident and frantically paddled their small boats over to

save the passengers and haul them ashore. Between tears and strangled gasps of anguish,

Fatouma explained to Amadou that his nephew had drowned and died in the disaster.

Abdoulaye planned for Amadou and him to accompany Fatouma back to

Npièbougou as soon as he heard the terrible news.

“I assumed I would return to Diafarabé with my teacher after passing the

mourning period with my family,” Amadou recalled.

However, Amadou’s mother surprised everyone by deciding that Amadou needed

to stay in Npièbougou and help with the family’s cattle herding. Once the time arrived

for Abdoulaye to return to his medersa in Diafarabé, Amadou dutifully escorted

Abdoulaye along to road out of Npièbougou toward Markala. When the time came to part paths, Abdoulaye, full of emotion, blessed Amadou and swiftly walked away.

Amadou stood alone on the road for a long moment and contemplated his future, realizing that he was nearly twelve years old, no longer a child, and about to enter the next phase of his life.

126

Conclusion

In this chapter I have reviewed the experiences, thoughts, and emotions that characterized Amadou’s childhood from birth until he reached approximately twelve years of age. The selection of memories illuminate the fears, joys, and relationships that emerged as Amadou, from a young age, formed a moral ethos grounded in his understanding of Fula practices and Islam alongside his experiences in Npièbougou,

Markala, and Diafarabé. Amadou’s childhood shows the ways Muslim children in West

Africa learned to understand Islam and baraji. I have shown that Amadou slowly absorbed an understanding of human character and relationships and began to understand how the ways these dealings lead to the acquisition of baraji, through which one eventually merits salvation.

This chapter has used Amadou’s life history to depict the ways Amadou acquired baraji as a young boy. I argue that the tactics Muslims in West Africa use to acquire baraji change depending on their age and circumstances. As such, as Amadou developed and matured, so did his techniques for earning baraji.

His life narrative now moves us into his adolescence and early adulthood. The next chapter continues to describe how his moral ideals, especially his goal to steadily earn baraji through practical pursuits, contended with his growing consciousness and first vocations. Amadou’s adolescent memories provide further examples of the ways West

Africans discern and apply the value of baraji in daily deeds and Muslim practices.

127 CHAPTER FOUR

ADOLECENCE

One afternoon in 2011 I accompanied Amadou to the local Orange Corporation office. Orange was the mobile brand of France Telecom, and a local office was located about a kilometer south of the main market on the only paved road (gidron) in

Ouélessébougou. Amadou’s cell phone had been having problems, and he suspected he needed a new SIM card. On our arrival Amadou and I found that the only employee at the Orange office was busy helping another customer, so we sat down to wait for

Amadou’s turn.

I felt self-conscious about speaking Bamanankan throughout my fieldwork in

Mali, and Amadou took our time in the waiting area as an opportunity to counsel me on the issue. He recounted several disparaging remarks I had made about my language abilities and wondered why I had said such things. I explained that I felt embarrassed when people laughed at my accent and that often times I wanted to give up on my language study.

“And what if I had stopped learning once I left the medersa?” Amadou canted his

head to the left and asked with a sidelong smile.

I sat calmly, contemplatively, and did not answer.

Amadou continued, “Courage always overtakes difficulty.” He concluded that I

should maintain my effort to master Bamanankan, just has he had persevered in studying

Islam. He cited the oft-quoted proverb, “Little by little the bird builds its nest” (Dɔɔnin-

dɔɔnin kɔnɔnin bɛ a ɲaa da).

128 Chapter three showed that Amadou relied on his immediate family and

Abdoulaye for religious instruction and to earn baraji during the first twelve years of his life. This chapter discusses how Amadou took personal responsibility for enhancing his knowledge of Islam and acquiring baraji after completing his formal education at

Abdoulaye’s medersa. I also explain how Amadou balanced his concern for obtaining

baraji with an interest in earning money in the newly independent Republic of Mali

during the early 1960s. In this chapter I show the dynamic utility of baraji in Amadou’s

life, as the methods he used for acquiring baraji changed according to his age,

occupation, and historical circumstances. The ways that Amadou adapted his practice of

Islam and means for earning baraji throughout his lifetime adds to arguments that

Muslims in West Africa, especially when individual life histories and personal

viewpoints are considered, cannot be viewed as modeled on a static, unchanging, and

monolithic Muslim tradition, but should rather be recognized for their dynamic, active,

and flexible appropriation of Islam (see Amselle 1998: 25-42; Brenner 2001: 85-130;

Masquelier 2009: 152-153; Piga 2003: 8-9; Sanneh 1997: 12). Moreover, Amadou’s

adolescence and adulthood shows how he understood politics, religion and culture at the

turn of Mali’s independence, while giving insight into the larger cultural, social, and

political processes during the 1950s and 60s in West Africa (see Kessler-Harris 2009:

625-627).

I continue Amadou’s life story by recounting his daily life after he completed his

studies and returned to Npièbougou and how he used his new religious education to

interpret events in his village while learning to tend cattle with his older brothers. This

chapter traces Amadou’s migration south to Ségou and then to Bamako in search of

129 employment and how his practice of Islam changed with his new knowledge and

circumstances. I then narrate Amadou’s return from Bamako to Npièbougou and the

economic and environmental conditions that prompted him to move permanently south

from the Ségou region in 1969 to Ouélessébougou.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

Although surprised by his mother’s choice to keep Amadou in Npièbougou when

he came from the medersa in Diafarabé for his nephew’s funeral, Amadou was overjoyed

when Ina announced that Amadou could remain in his hometown.

“If I am not in Npièbougou, I am planning my return to Npièbougou,” Amadou

concisely explained of his lifelong devotion to his birthplace (faso).

As he settled back into life in his village, he noticed that his religious education

made him keenly aware of how his daily choices and actions either encouraged or

dissuaded him in the achievement of baraji. For example, at the medersa, Amadou

learned that each prayer performed in the mosque earns a Muslim twenty-seven baraji

while prayers made outside the mosque amass only one. As such, Amadou endeavored to

pray in the village mosque whenever possible, but he found that his new responsibility of

caring for his family’s cattle often prevented him from doing so. Praying in the forest

brought on pangs of dismay as Amadou reflected on the extra twenty-six baraji he would have earned if he had been in closer proximity to the mosque.

Amadou also found himself paying more attention to village events and found himself interpreting them through his newfound understanding of Islam. Shortly after

Amadou’s return to Npièbougou, his family’s neighbor, Hassana Diallo, unexpectedly hanged himself and died. Though Fula typically accept the Muslim doctrine that

130 classifies suicide as a sin against God, they also regard a suicidal disposition as honorable because it expresses extreme sorrow and injury while demonstrating courage (see Hopen

1958: 76-77). Those who knew Hassana understood his motivations for suicide

(yɛrɛfaga). Amadou explained that Hassana’s wife continually humiliated Hassana by ignoring her domestic responsibilities in favor of wandering around Npièbougou and visiting with her friends. Her lackadaisical attitude compelled Hassana to carry out women’s chores in his compound, such as cooking and washing clothes—a shameful fate.

Amadou, along with Npièbougou’s Fula community, mourned Hassana’s untimely death. Amadou’s neighbors consoled each other by sharing their memories of

Hassana and expressing sympathy for the circumstances that they presumed provoked his suicide. The empathy they showed for Hassana and the laudatory remarks they made about his bravery made little sense to Amadou. Although Amadou was shattered by

Hassana’s suicide, his thoughts became absorbed in what surviving friends and family refused to say outright: Hassana had definitely gone to hell (jahanama)—a place of unending torment, flames, and isolation. Abdoulaye had expressly taught Amadou that surah 4:29-30 of the Qur’an forbids suicide: “And do not kill yourselves. Indeed, Allah is to you ever merciful. And whoever does that in aggression and injustice—then We will drive him into a Fire. And that, for Allah, is easy.” In accordance with these verses,

Amadou learned at the medersa that those who commit suicide forfeit all their baraji upon their self-inflicted death and are sent to hell as a result. Hassana’s death helped

Amadou understand the value of perseverance (muɲu) that Abdoulaye taught him, specifically that God honors endurance and patience, despite earthly adversity, by

131 bestowing baraji on the sufferer. Amadou and other Muslims in Ouélessébougou with

whom I spoke during my fieldwork emphasized that thinking of the baraji they had secured over their lifetime due to their hardships helped console them during moments of special difficulty as they lived under the chronic stress of poverty.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

Amadou learned to herd in the same manner in which he originally learned to

practice Islam and earn baraji—in intimate familial contexts. While contemplating the

importance of Islam and its place in daily life, Amadou filled his days rearing his

family’s cattle with his two elder brothers, Daramani and Mamadou.40 Daramani,

Amadou’s oldest brother, had also studied at Abdoulaye’s medersa as a child. Mamadou

never formally attended school as a child but had been continuously herding his family’s

cattle since his seventh birthday. Yet Amadou thought Mamadou was the more

intelligent sibling. Amadou proudly told me that Mamadou sought out adult literacy

programs in the Ségou region in his later adulthood and successfully learned to read and

write Arabic, French, Fulfulde, and Bamanankan using N’ko, a script developed by

Souleymane Kanté in 1949 for writing Mande languages (Oyler 2005: 117-128).

Mamadou’s intelligence was especially apparent in the domain of cattle herding.

“Mamadou paid careful attention to the forest and his cattle and taught me to do

the same,” Amadou said about his experience, learning that herding, like living as a good

Muslim, required continual dedication and careful attention.

40 The precise number of cattle the Diallo family owned fluctuated, but Amadou estimated his family had between forty to fifty head of cattle at any given time during his teenage years. He classified this as a moderate herd size and reported that some Fula families in Npièbougou owned more than one hundred cattle. Although herd size often reflects monetary wealth, according to Stenning (1958), Fula families also seek to attain an equilibrium between owning a herd large enough to feed their family and a herd size that allows Fula cattle owners the time to accomplish other necessary tasks, such as caring for infants, selling milk, and finding adequate pasturage (92-119; see also Riesman 1977: 41-42). 132 Amadou spent everyday apprenticing with Daramani and Mamadou in the forest and did not herd alone after his return to Npièbougou. Npièbougou’s forest rested in

Mali’s central Sudan savannah belt, a region recognized for diverse flora, an abundance of pasture and water, and an absence of tsetse flies that challenge herders in the West

Africa’s southern rain forests (Adebayo 1991: 12-16). Amadou’s early childhood instilled a love for cattle in him, and he relished learning the Fula system for raising and herding livestock. Although he had never managed a herd, Amadou understood from a young age the important role cattle played in his family’s prosperity and felt intimately tied to them (see Riesman 1977: 38-39). Even so, moments of sadness marked Amadou’s emotions during his herding education.

Amadou forlornly explained, “My father had taught Daramani and Mamadou how to herd, but he died before we had the chance to go into the forest together.”

Amadou’s description of his training in terms of learning cattle calls, driving up his herd, studying his herd’s genealogy, and memorizing the layout of the local forest is consistent with other ethnographies on Fula rearing methods and practices (see Dupire

1996; Hopen 1958; Riesman 1977; Stenning 1959). Everyday Amadou deepened his familiarity of the local forest’s layout and added to his knowledge about cattle tending through prolonged observation and imitation of Daramani, Mamadou, and the other herders he encountered. Amadou understood early on that Fula methods for herd management were specifically adapted to the local environment (Riesman 1977: 38). He learned the location of various perennial waterholes and pastures, the variable qualities of soil throughout the forest, which areas could sustain a heavy concentration of cattle, and what types of grass and foliage most appealed to cattle and met their dietary needs

133 (Hopen 1958: 25; Riesman 1977:38). With a knack for detail, Mamadou and Daramani taught Amadou to notice the varying quality of pastures within different parts of a single field. Near pastures and watering places, Amadou’s brothers showed him where to find edible fruit trees for occasional snacks for themselves. These fruits barely satiated

Amadou’s hunger, as most days he and his brothers left for the forest in the early morning and did not return home to eat a full meal until five or six o’clock in the evening. Several months after the end of each rainy season, grass gradually became scarce in the pastures in Npièbougou’s local forest. Amadou and his brothers often walked far into the forest and passed multiple nights in a row in search of watering holes and pastures for their herd. They sustained themselves during these trips by milking their cows each evening and sharing a bowl of milk with each other. Amadou and his brothers showed their capacity for self-control, one of the most important aspects of the Fula code of behavior (pulaaku), and never spoke of their thirst or hunger while working (Riesman

1974: 116-141).

As an assistant to his brothers, Amadou was initially responsible for driving up straggling cattle that had fallen behind the herd (Hopen 1958: 24-25). Amadou’s brothers explained to him the history of the herd and the different needs and characteristics of each individual animal while their cattle grazed.41 Amadou memorized the individual names for each cattle in the herd to which each always responded when called (Riesman

1977: 256). Amadou learned to make his own sandals using cowhide and practiced elaborate Fula cattle calls each day, which required considerable skill and vocal agility

(Hopen 1958: 25; Riesman 1977: 15-16). Amadou demonstrated a range of such calls for

41 Like the other Fula herders in Npièbougou, Amadou’s family selectively raised Zebu cattle (gonga) because of their resistance to ticks and ability to withstand severe heat (Wagenaar 1986: 14). 134 me, and loudly pronounced long measures of, “Hiiiiiiii! Heeeeeeee! Hoooooooo!” in a superb and unstrained voice although he had not used them in decades.

Figure 12: In 2011 Amadou visited Npièbougou and examined his family’s herd, which was then cared for by Daramani’s grandsons

Amadou initially had misgivings about the toll that spending extended time in the

forest would take on his accumulation of baraji. As a child Amadou had earned baraji primarily by praying in the mosque, successfully fasting during Ramadan, begging in

Diafarabé, and acting obediently toward his parents and Abdoulaye. Working in the forest presented a different series of circumstances. But, because of the dynamic nature of Islam, Amadou learned to assert his Muslim identity and earn baraji in his this new setting. Amadou completed obligatory prayers with his brothers and learned other ways to acquire baraji in his savanna surroundings. For example, he learned how to beat

snakes to death with a stick after Fula herders assured him that he would earn

135 supplementary baraji for killing snakes. Venomous snakes often struck cattle in the head

while they grazed, and their bites posed a fatal threat to Fula herders and others who

passed through the forest. Amadou loved all animals with the exception of snakes.

“The snake is Satan, and killing snakes pleases God,” Amadou explained.

In fact, multiple hadiths substantiated Amadou’s viewpoint, describing snakes as

cursed and as disguised evil spirits (jinn).42 Even when Amadou occasionally killed

snakes, he knew he lacked baraji because he was unable to pray in the mosque or fast

while herding in the forest. And although his brothers rigorously observed Ramadan

while herding, they forbade him from fasting during the Muslim sacred month.

“We fought,” Amadou remembered, “and I told them that I fasted everyday

during Ramadan at Abdoulaye’s medersa.”

But his brothers countered that Amadou’s body was still too young to handle the

demands of herding while foregoing food and drink during the day. Amadou submitted

to his brothers’ demands and did not fully participate in Ramadan until he turned

eighteen.

Learning to herd and practice Islam in the forest held Amadou’s attention for

more than two years after he returned to Npièbougou and he proved himself to be a

competent herder alongside his older brothers. In spite of their overall success in

managing their cattle, Amadou and his brothers realized the limits to their knowledge and

42 The Prophet Muhammad reportedly said, “Some snakes are jinn; so when anyone sees one of them in his house, he should give it a warning three times. If it returns (after that), he should kill it, for it is a devil” (Kitab Al-Adab 41: 5286). On a separate occasion the Prophet revealed that some Medina jinn, often disguised as snakes, had accepted Islam and accordingly instructed Muslims, “so when you see any [snake], pronounce a warning to it for three days, and if it appears before you after that, then kill it for that is a devil” (Kitab Al-Salam 26: 5557). 136 abilities as herders and relied on two primary resources to help them in the forest: dogs and dalilu, a type of specialized knowledge used to protect herders and cattle.43

Amadou said that dogs accompanied him and his brothers into the forest and played a vital role in herding. Amadou and his brothers owned and trained dogs to run in front of the herd and bark if they saw other people or groups of cattle ahead of them. He explained that Fula try to give one another space when herding, and his dogs often warned him and his brothers to steer their cattle in a different direction.

Amadou individually named each of his dogs but joked, “I’m an old man now and

I have long since forgotten the names of all my dogs. But I do remember that they all loved fresh milk as much as me!”

Dogs guarded the brothers’ camp in the evening, and at night in the forest, and altered the brothers through long howls and frantic barking to predators or approaching travelers. Striped hyenas (suruku), in particular, lurked in the forest at night and threatened cattle.

“In the past, hyenas abounded in the forest. I would see their shadowy figures passing everywhere around me at dusk,” Amadou remembered.

Hyenas were the most problematic wild predator Amadou encountered while herding, but Amadou reported that their number had decreased during in his lifetime.

Fula herders planted poison, carried rifles, and built traps to ensnare hyenas to prevent losing cows and dogs to the animal, and had drastically reduced the hyena population as a result.

43 Amadou and I discussed cattle dalilu (misiw dalilu) in particular, but dalilu in West Africa can broadly be understood as a secret power (sometimes procured from the supernatural) and “a form of articulation that draws knowledge into the realm of useful endeavor” (Conrad 2004: 198; Hoffman 2000: 151; McNaughton 1988: 43). Thus, dalilu experts in West Africa each have an individual focus coming from a range of specialties including hunting, blacksmithing, weather manipulation, and healing. 137 In addition to dogs, Amadou, like other Fula herders also relied on local

specialized knowledge (dalilu) to heal and protect his cattle. Numerous masters of cattle

dalilu lived in Npièbougou. Herders counted on these men to provide their herd with

longevity and a better quality of life. For instance, Amadou’s herd at one point included a small calf that refused to suckle its mother’s teat. Amadou took the young animal to a dalilu specialist who healed the calf through incantations (kilisi) and a specially prepared elixir. Amadou and his brothers also obtained elixirs made from bark, leaves, and wood from dalilu experts and periodically washed themselves in these concoctions to ensure their safety and prosperity in the forest. Dalilu experts charged minimal prices to their patrons in order to cover the expense for raw materials. Otherwise they trusted that God would pay them for their work with baraji. Amadou viewed cattle dalilu as an

occupation. He did not deem dalilu practices un-Muslim or belonging to the world of

sorcery so long as practitioners did not rely on power objects (jow) to enhance their

power and success. In the same vein, any occupation (farming, herding, trading, etc.) had

the potential to become satanic (sitanɛya) if workers used power objects to improve their

labor and profits.44

Amadou considered cattle dalilu in Ouélessébougou as “broken” (tiɲɛ) and

complained that “knowledge about actual dalilu has been replaced with schemes for how

to make money from dalilu.”

44 Dalilu has Muslim associations for Bamanankan speakers as well. The word dalilu is used in Bamanankan versions of the Qur’an and oral sermons on Qur’anic exegesis that I heard during my fieldwork to reference “evidence” and “proof.” For example, surah Al-Bayyinah (The Clear Proof) is translated into Bamanakan as “Dalilu Kɛnɛman.”

138 In 2011, purported dalilu experts in southern Mali often charged substantial sums for their services. Amadou linked the high costs to ineptitude. One quiet afternoon in a not unusual moment of social clumsiness, I asked Amadou if he had ever studied cattle dalilu. He sat impassively for a moment and then abruptly stood up and excused himself from our conversation without answering my question. Amadou’s close friend, Koniba, overheard my question and gently altered me to my blunder.

“A true dalilu expert,” he said, “never speaks openly about his ability in conversation.”

I felt horrible that my question had offended Amadou, and this incident reminded me that regardless of the close relationship Amadou and I had built with each other that I still needed to consider the delicacy of the topics we discussed beforehand. Amadou returned soon after to our workplace and resumed quietly his work plaiting a rope.

After several minutes of sitting beneath noisy, chirping birds, he leaned close to me and vaguely explained in a doleful tone, “Since I came to Ouélessébougou I only met one Fula man who genuinely knew cattle dalilu. He died last year. There are no real cattle dalilu experts in Ouélessébougou anymore.”

Herding opportunities for Fula men and access to dalilu waned in twenty-first century Ouélessébougou. But Amadou recalled that as a young man in Npièbougou during the late 1950s, tending cattle held endless prospects for him and the promise of a prosperous and happy life. He became a competent herder after spending several years of herding with his brothers. His mother, Ina, eventually decided it was unwise to send all three of her sons to work a herd that was easily managed by two. She heard that many wealthy cattle owners in Ségou, a sizeable city more than forty kilometers south of

139 Npièbougou, hired Fula boys to tend their herds. She decided to send one of her sons to

seek this type of work and promptly selected Amadou, her energetic, spry, and youngest

son, to work in Ségou on the family’s behalf.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

Ina arranged for Amadou to live with a newlywed female cousin at her in-law’s

compound upon his arrival in Ségou while he looked for permanent work herding cattle.

Amadou grew homesick immediately and tried to distract himself by taking long walks

around the town. Since his childhood Amadou had exclusively worn what he termed

“African clothing” (farafinna finiw) and everyday dressed in a shirt or flowing robe

(boubou) and pants sewn by neighborhood tailors from local loom-woven cotton, sandals

made from cowhide, and a large cone-shaped woven straw hat (dibiri) to shield his face

from the sun while herding (see Riesman 1992: 16; 1977: 64-65). In Ségou, Amadou was amazed to see African men wearing French fashions. He walked by teenage boys wearing neckties and collared dress shirts tucked into European-style trousers that were held up by wide leather belts. This avant-garde attire immediately appealed to Amadou.

He resolved to earn enough money to send some to his mother in Npièbougou while also replacing his homespun clothing with new clothes modeled after French fashions. For the first time in his life, Amadou seriously considered the prospect of escaping from poverty and rising to a position of affluence.

Amadou performed household tasks and errands for his host family to show gratitude for his accommodations while he searched for work in Ségou. One afternoon his cousin’s husband, Saliya Diaw, gave Amadou money to buy him a list of items from the market. But when Amadou arrived in Ségou’s marketplace he noticed that all of the

140 money had fallen through a hole in the seam of his pocket. Confronted with his bad

fortune, Amadou sat near the edge of the market to suppress his tears and ponder his

alternatives. Amadou’s family in Npièbougou had given him a small amount of cash

before he left for Ségou, but he had been carefully saving it in the hopes of buying a new,

European-style shirt in the coming weeks. He thought of two solutions. First of all, he

could tell Saliya that he had lost his money while traveling to the market and not offer to

replace the funds. No one in Ségou knew that Amadou had any cash, and Amadou could

keep his money hidden and buy himself clothes as soon as he moved out of Saliya’s

compound. Amadou knew that this choice cheated Saliya and was inherently sinful,

selfish, and at odds with Islam. Alternatively, he could replace Saliya’s money from his

own savings and buy the items Saliya had requested. This choice had the advantage of

earning baraji but left Amadou no money for new clothes.

Amadou ultimately chose to replace Saliya’s money with his own and bought the items Saliya had requested without anyone learning that he had lost the original money.

Several days later, while walking through the forest on the outskirts of Ségou, Amadou noticed several coins scattered beside a trail. Amadou looked around for a potential owner but quickly intuited that the money was intended for him.

“God always rewards with baraji, but sometimes God also rewards with money,”

Amadou said of his fate on that day, smiling.

This experience joined Amadou’s Muslim convictions with his immediate reality and prompted him to make a lifelong promise (layidu) to God that he would always favor baraji over material wealth.

141 Soon Amadou found a herding job working for a wealthy Ségou man named

Zoumana. Zoumana had earned a personal fortune over his lifetime by farming and selling peanuts for export to France, and had used a large portion of his wealth to purchase cattle and hired numerous Fula boys to maintain his herds. Historically, impoverished cattle owners across West Africa often sold their animals to urban investors like Zoumana during droughts and at other times of special financial hardship (see

Wagenaar et al. 1986: 50). Zoumana broke his herd into multiple, smaller, more manageable groups, which were scattered in villages away from town and similarly cared for by Fula boys. Wealthy men who owned large herds in West Africa commonly hired

Fula to manage them in order to tend to more lucrative endeavors and ensure that their wives had ample time for social pursuits and supervising domestic chores inside the residential compound (see Hopen 1958: 158). Zoumana hired Amadou to tend to cattle he kept in his compound in Ségou, and Amadou immediately moved into a small servant’s quarters in the compound to begin his new job.

Amadou eased into the job with natural confidence. His brothers had taught him how to recognize the needs of cattle and care for them. Yet Amadou’s qualifications extended beyond his actual experience. As a Fula boy descended from ancestors who may have tended cattle for centuries, Amadou felt inherently qualified to look after an entire herd on his own. During his first several weeks of working for Zoumana,

Amadou’s new boss showed little recognition of Amadou within the residential compound that they now shared while the two spoke little to each other.

Despite the relationship with Zoumana taking time to grow, Amadou felt an immediately strongly attachment to Zoumana’s herd and enjoyed tending to their needs.

142 On some mornings Amadou discovered that Zoumana secretly followed Amadou into the

forest to observe Amadou’s work ethic and monitor how he treated the cattle. Zoumana

never found Amadou sleeping, beating the cattle, or feeding the herd in dry fields with

coarse and wiry grass.45

Zoumana always announced himself to Amadou at the conclusion of these surprise assessments by shouting, “I watched you, Fula boy!”

Amadou broke into a broad smile whenever he heard these shouts of tacit support from his employer and recognized that Zoumana approved of the quality of his herding.

In addition to the benefit of a small salary and accommodations in Zoumana’s compound, Amadou approached his herding as an opportunity to earn God’s esteem and obtain baraji for himself and his father. He had learned to recognize work as a means of creating baraji at Abdoulaye’s medersa in Diafarabé, where Abdoulaye had instructed

Amadou that lazy people lose God’s favor. This possibility horrified Amadou as a child and continued to worry him in his later youth. He approached his work with ambition and determination, and he measured its value in both economic and ritual terms. Amadou and other Muslims in southern Mali explained that although their various occupations might barely produce enough income to support their families, that hard work always netted baraji and therefore held an indisputable worth. Cattle herding, like other vocations, accomplished both temporal and religious goals.

45 In 2011 I spent several days herding sheep with Amadou’s second son, Modibo Diallo. Amadou had taught his son how to herd animals, and Modibo labored with perceptible focus, ethics, and acumen. He fully credited Amadou for showing him how to tend to cattle and sheep and told me, “My father taught me that hard work makes a person noble. When I was young I used to cry because I wanted take a break and rest during the workday. My father told me that our clan, the Diallo, sleep when it’s dark, not during the light of day. He completely turned his focus to his animals and the forest when herding.” 143 With financial and Muslim incentives to herd to his fullest ability, Amadou

challenged himself to memorize the topography of the dense and unfamiliar forests

around Ségou because he realized that his lack of experience in Ségou’s forests could

potentially damage the quality of his herding. Everyday he ventured onto unexplored

paths with his herd and led them under the lacy shadows of baobab and acacia trees in

search of clean water and fresh grass. He always managed to find adequate pasturage but

often lost his way.

He remembered, “Cattle have a perfect sense of direction. I would shout ‘Let’s

go home!’ at the end of the day and they would lead me back to Ségou.”

During my fieldwork I passed several afternoons herding sheep with Amadou’s

youngest son, Modibo, and I similarly noted that his flock was endowed with a good

sense of direction and always led themselves home at the end of the day while we

followed behind on the confusing network of paths in Ouélessébougou’s forest.

Amadou could depend on his cattle to help him whenever he became lost, but the

forest presented other problems that he had to solve on his own.

“When God created the world,” he said dogmatically, “He placed people in

villages and spirits in the forests.”

While herding cattle deep in the forest, Fula men had to confront and deal with spirits, called jinn, whose existence and characteristics are described in the Qur’an.

Amadou explained that, like humans, jinn have a degree of choice as to whether they act

for good or evil. Though Amadou recognized the existence of good jinn, he, like many

Muslims in West Africa, understood jinn primarily to be spiritual beings whose malice

threatens the living (see Baba & Smith 1954: 155; Mommersteeg 2012: 97-116).

144 Muslims in West Africa commonly rely on amulets to protect themselves and ward off evil jinn who may cause severe illness and provoke bad behavior. Most amulets contain

Qur’anic verses (haya), Arabic characters, or cabalistic symbols written onto parchment and then sewn into leather cases, further contained in cloth pouches or wrapped in spun cotton and leaves (Bravmann 1974: 134; Mommersteeg 2012: 97-116, 1990: 67; Sanneh

1979: 209). As an alternative to material amulets, some West Africans wrote the first four verses of surah al-jinn from the Qur’an onto a slate with chalk or paper with fountain ink and then rinse the writing surfaces, collecting the liquid mixture to wash on themselves or others or to ingest for the purposes of healing or protecting from jinn

(Sanneh 1979: 210; Masquelier 2009: 89).

Figure 13: The various forms of West African amulets

Amadou relied on Islam to conceive and deal with the world he encountered while herding, and carried amulets while herding and periodically washed himself in or

145 ingested elixirs to protect him further from evil jinn in the forest. Despite these

measures, he still constantly noticed the presence of jinn while traveling through Ségou’s

forest with his cattle. Almost everyday, he passed through waves of especially hot and

stagnant air, which his brothers indicated that these places were haunted (jinɛmayɔrɔ) by

jinn. Amadou noted the location of each of the masses of warm air and strove to avoid

passing near them in the future. On one afternoon, Amadou noticed a man with his back

turned to him wearing bright white clothing standing across from him the forest.

Amadou shouted a greeting to the stranger. When the man did not turn to acknowledge

Amadou, Amadou realized he had encountered a jinn in human form. Amadou relied on

his Muslim beliefs to manage his fear and dropped to his knees, closed his eyes, and

began to recite portions of the Qur’an aloud. After several minutes of recitation, Amadou

stood and saw that the jinn had disappeared.

“It was a good jinn,” Amadou concluded, “It vanished once it realized I was frightened and did not harm me.”

As Amadou saw it, his success at banishing jinn by reciting the Qur’an offered evidence that the word of God was stronger than the spirits that populated the forest.

This experience prompted him habitually to recite the Qur’an while leading his cattle through the forest, thereby earning baraji for himself while protecting the cattle he tended. He took care to complete all five of Islam’s compulsory prayers at their proper times and often performed additional petitionary prayers in which he asked God for success in herding and to protect his family and himself from misfortune. Whenever the month of Ramadan arrived, Amadou tried his best to observe protocols for fasting. He remembered that his elder brothers had warned him that fasting for the entire month

146 would compromise his physical abilities in the face of his herding responsibilities, so

Amadou observed Ramadan while living in Ségou by fasting on alternate days.46 I found it laudable that Amadou fasted while herding. I fasted twice during Ramadan and found it difficult to accomplish my responsibilities making rope and writing fieldnotes while also behaving civilly toward my host family and friends.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

French settlements in Mali during the colonial phase were largely confined to towns, and it troubled Amadou to observe that many Malians in Ségou were subject to forced labor and taxation that left his family in Npièbougou and other rural masses

remained largely untouched (see Fanon 2004: 75). In 1960, while Amadou continued to

live as a cattle herder in Ségou, a Malian socialist politician named Modibo Keïta and his

political party, the Union Soudanaise-Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (US-RDA), successfully negotiated Mali’s political independence (yɛrɛmahɔrɔnya) from France

(Bingen 2000: 245).

Amadou had recently bought a new bicycle and celebrated the announcement of

Mali’s independence by putting on his finest clothes and riding through Ségou’s

countryside rejoicing, visiting, and talking with others about his country’s newfound

freedom. In the years leading up to Mali’s independence, Amadou had followed the US-

46 Amadou, like many other Muslims I spoke with in Mali, carefully counted the number of days he did not fast during Ramadan and made them up by fasting on discrete days throughout the year. Surah 2: 184-185 offers support for this decision to fast according to physical ability, “[Fasting for] a limited number of days. So whoever among you is ill or on a journey [during them]—then an equal number of days [are to be made up]. And upon those who are able [to fast, but with hardship]—a ransom [as substitute] of feeding a poor person [each day]. And whoever volunteers excess - it is better for him. But to fast is best for you, if you only knew. The month of Ramadan [is that] in which was revealed the Qur'an, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it; and whoever is ill or on a journey—then an equal number of other days. Allah intends for you ease and does not intend for you hardship and [wants] for you to complete the period and to glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you; and perhaps you will be grateful.” 147 RDA’s efforts at economic decolonization from French commercial monopolies by

listening to radio newscasts (see Clark 2000: 251-264). Amadou had considered the US-

RDA’s original leader, Mamadou Konaté, as Mali’s most competent political figure. But

when Konaté died of liver cancer in 1956, Amadou doubted that his successor, Modibo

Keïta, could win independence for Mali (see Imperato 1989: 54). But in 1960 Amadou

gladly stood corrected. He told me that the festivities marking Mali’s independence

lasted for days in Ségou, as singers gave impromptu performances, citizens danced and

sang in the streets, and women cooked elaborate meals for their families—naturally

earning baraji for their hard work preparing celebratory feasts.

Rumors of new economic opportunities in the nascent republic circulated throughout Ségou following independence. Amadou listened to these reports with interest. With his bicycle and new clothing—which he owed to his herding—Amadou had won for himself the outward appearance of prestige and wealth and hoped to earn more money by finding a more profitable job. As an old man, Amadou laughed and recalled that during his youth he enjoyed his gallant appearance as an opulent and libertine man (kamalenba).

“I liked being a kamalenba,” Amadou sentimentally recalled, “but internally I have always mistrusted money.”

Even as a teenager, Amadou saw moral harm in riches and associated money with greed and other damning qualities, but he eased these compunctions by resolving to attain wealth for the purpose of making his pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca. In the strength of his goal to visit Mecca and acquire the massive amounts of baraji that come from completing

148 the pilgrimage, Amadou’s moral and economic motivations translated into an ambition for finding new and lucrative job opportunities.

When he heard that work was available for young men in Mali’s capital city,

Bamako, he began to consider abandoning his work as a herder. The choice was not entirely grounded in financial incentives. Amadou had worried ever since Mali’s independence about his safety in the forest and now began to wonder whether Malians had romanticized pre-colonial Mali. He remembered that his father had credited the

French with making the forests safer for cattle herders. Cattle herding, his father had once explained to him, was dangerous work before colonization. Fula men were often raided by fellow Africans, captured, and sold as slaves.

“Now that the French had left Mali,” Amadou explained, “I panicked that the forests would return to the dangerous conditions of the past.”

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

Untrammeled and still a teenager, Amadou quit his job herding for Zoumana and used his modest savings to purchase passage south to Bamako.

“I carried little money and had no immediate kin in Bamako,” Amadou explained.

He felt fortunate to find work quickly as a domestic servant (baaraden) for a wealthy Fula family from Senegal after his arrival in Bamako. Amadou suspected that the compound chief (dutigi), Sidi Diallo, originally felt compelled to hire him because they both shared the same surname and were therefore considered themselves distant kin.

Sidi offered Amadou a monthly salary, meals, and rent-free lodging in the servants’ shelter located in his sizable residential compound. Amadou accepted Sidi’s offer and immediately moved into his compound. Every day Amadou washed clothes and dishes,

149 swept the compound’s courtyard, made trips to the market, and helped Sidi’s wife

prepare meals for her family.

Sidi let Amadou take breaks from his work at prayer times to pray in the nearby

neighborhood mosque. Amadou measured the worth of his choice to move to Bamako in

terms of both the extra money and baraji he earned as a result. The prayers Amadou performed privately in the forest while herding amassed one baraji each, but prayers carried out in the mosque earned 27 baraji per prayer. Amadou accumulated 130

additional baraji each day for both himself and his deceased father by performing all five

required prayers in the mosque. Amadou also encountered beggars (garibu) from

Qur’anic schools along the street on his way to the mosque and regularly offered alms

(jaka). These offerings reflected Amadou’s humility and integrity while earning him

additional baraji and reminding him of the times he spent begging in Diafarabé while

living at Abdoulaye’s medersa as a child.

Sidi also told Amadou to take evenings and Sundays off from work. On most

nights Amadou left Sidi’s compound to explore Bamako’s neighborhoods. A pleasurable

sense of independence filled Amadou as he walked the darkened roads lined by

nondescript shadows and makeshift stalls used for daytime petty commerce. Amadou

quickly made friends with a group of teenage boys who were similarly living away from

their families while working in Bamako. One acquaintance told Amadou that many

schools in Bamako had started offering free French courses to the public in the evenings.

Amadou carefully considered this opportunity. Since arriving in Bamako he had begun

to understand the intransience of the French language in Mali. Malian politicians had

retained French as the country’s official language, and Amadou noticed the language’s

150 popularity among Africans living in Bamako. As a child, he had grown up afraid that

learning French or studying in a French school would betray his Fula identity and damage

his soul by stunting his acquisition of baraji. But, as a teenager, Amadou decided that his fears had been irrational and that learning French would improve his economic and social opportunities.

For several months he regularly attended French classes in the evening at a school near Sidi’s compound. He was grateful to receive free lessons and that studying French was no longer the exclusive privilege of well-to-do Africans.

“I only knew ‘Bonjour! Ça va?’ when I began my French lessons,” Amadou said,

“so my teacher started by teaching me numbers.”

Motivated by a work ethic cultivated since early childhood, Amadou earnestly practiced writing, reading, and counting in French. After mastering French numbers, he began to study the French alphabet. Learning the alphabet was a more difficult and frustrating process for Amadou than studying numbers, and he often chose to skip his

French lessons in order to relax and socialize with friends.47 Amadou retained his knowledge of French numbers throughout his life although he stopped studying the

French language early on. When I met Amadou, his elderly friends esteemed his ability to read and write numbers and relied on Amadou to help them place phone calls and tell them the time.

In 2011 he smiled while recalling himself as a young man wandering Bamako with his new friends. As a favorite weekend and evening pastime, he and his friends

47 In 2011 Amadou said he did not regret stopping his French lessons, and he disliked that French remained Mali’s national language. Fulfulde remained his favorite language, but he enjoyed speaking Bamanankan too. “I love listening to Arabic and English, but French is the language of liars (kalabaanci). The French tricked and betrayed Africans time and again,” he said. 151 attended an open-air cinema managed at a soccer field in the city. Amadou loved

watching movies and paid the seventy-five franc entrance fee without a qualm.48 He cared little that all the films were in foreign languages incomprehensible to him and became engrossed in watching the types of people and situations about which that he had heard but had never been able to wholly visualize.

“I saw snow!” he excitedly told me while describing one particularly memorable film in which he watched snowflakes dust a European landscape.

Amadou and his friends watched American westerns, French romances, Chinese action films, Indian musicals, and many other kinds of films.

When I asked him to identify his favorite type of movie, he recalled, “I loved the way Indians sang and danced. Abdoulaye forbade dancing and singing at the medersa so

I never learned how to do either. I watched Indian films in amazement!”

Abdoulaye thought that dancing was indulgent and detracted Muslims from earning baraji. As an old man, Amadou opined that dancing was neither sinful nor meritorious, but did not dance during celebrations himself. He refused to dance on two grounds: first, he considered himself too old and, secondly, he said that he only liked Fula dance forms, which were characterized by slow, smooth movements of the arms and body alongside a rhythmic stamping of the feet. I attended a number of weddings during my fieldwork and, indeed, never saw a Fula dance using this style that Amadou preferred.

In 2011 the Fula and Bamana youth in Ouélessébougou, rather, danced primarily using contemporary movements they learned from watching pan-African, North American, and

European music videos on television.

48 About $0.15 USD. 152 It is against the background of Amadou’s various jobs, friendships, and pastimes that his religious sensitivities continued to develop. He worked as Sidi’s domestic servant for nearly six months before he found more gainful employment as a hired hand at a large garden on Bamako’s city limits. He graciously left his job with Sidi, moved into a friend’s home, and began his new responsibilities sowing, watering, and harvesting vegetables and herbs.

While working as a gardener, Amadou befriended a boy whose brother worked for a local electric company. Amadou then found a job as an errand boy for the company. This job became the most profitable one he found during the two years he spent in Bamako, earning him 1250 francs for a six-day workweek.49 Although Amadou had trouble finding steady and satisfying work and changed occupations frequently in

Bamako, he never went without work and held a job at all times. Through Amadou’s lifelong effort to earn the unspecified amount of baraji that God requires to enter paradise in the afterlife, he demonstrated a keen ability to merge his economic and religious goals.

“Work is an obligation for Muslims,” he said, “If you don’t have money it forces you to live against the standards of Islam. You’ll beguile others and live without dignity.

One must work hard to be a good Muslim.”

Amadou’s employment at the electric company during the 1960s enabled him to meet foreigners whom he would never have encountered had he continued to herd cattle in Ségou.

“My boss came from China,” he recalled, “and he introduced me to his family and other Chinese friends.”

49 About $2.50 USD per week. 153 In Bamako, Amadou formed his first prolonged relationships with non-Muslims.

At first he approached these relationships with distance and unease, but he eventually

realized that unbelievers (kafiri) could also acquire baraji by leading honorable lives.

Through these friendships Amadou developed a position that he continued to maintain when I met in him in 2010 that non-Muslims could even reach paradise after death.

While Amadou’s tolerance for religious plurality deepened, he also enhanced his personal commitment to Islam. Now approaching his twenties, he began to abstain completely from food and drink during daylight hours throughout the entire month of Ramadan in

Bamako. Fasting, to Amadou’s mind, was of inestimable value, and he decided he was now physically mature enough to participate fully in the 30-day fast to earn baraji. He had several friends in Bamako who also claimed to fast during Ramadan but who secretly drank water and ate throughout the day.

“Fasting is about what God sees, and God sees everything. If you cheat, you don’t earn any baraji for the day,” Amadou explained.

Even as his devotion to Islam intensified, he learned to accept Bamako’s diverse population and enjoyed socializing with the foreign and non-Muslim groups who surrounded him. Amadou’s tolerance was in keeping with official governmental policy in Mali during my fieldwork, as the country’s constitution explicitly banned religiously based political parties and provided for freedom of religion for all citizens (see American

Foreign Policy Council 2011; Lipton 2002: 93). Despite an overall history of religious tolerance and pluralism in southern Mali, during my fieldwork the thinly populated and federally governed northern deserts played host to Islamic group Ansar Dine and the al-

Qaeda affiliate, al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) which raised continual

154 concerns about the rise of extremism in Mali (see Cisse 2011; Cowell & Mekhennet

2009; Nossiter 2012; Polgreen 2012; Schmitt 2008; Schmitt & Mekhennet 2009; Simons

& Goodman 2012; Soares 2012; Vogol 2011). Amadou criticized the members of these groups and classified them as unbelievers (kafiri), saying that Islam does not condone the violent acts they perpetuated against civilians.

Amadou noted that Chinese and Soviet expatriates abounded in Bamako during the early 1960s. He appreciated the way their economic pursuits helped Malians to enhance their lives. Both China and the Soviet Union expanded their economic relations with Mali following the country’s independence from France (Legvold 1970: 151-152).

Russian and Chinese entrepreneurs moved to Mali for this purpose and China quickly became Mali’s most important socialist trading partner, while France remained the most important overall (Legvold 1970: 151-152, 216-217). China and the Soviet Union also advocated for the socialist transformation of Mali. During the 1960s the Soviet Union and China considered that political and economic conditions in Africa made the continent propitious for socialism (333, 338). Chinese and Russians thought that Mali, a country,

“hundreds of kilometers from the sea, deprived of significant mineral reserves, with a population nine tenths peasant . . . where at the moment of independence not a single capitalist enterprise existed,” would benefit from pursuing a non-capitalistic path

(Tarasov 1967: 5; see also Legvold 1970: 298).

In principle, Amadou looked back with nostalgia to socialist ideals and their potential to transform Mali into a country wrapped in equality for all citizens. Amadou explained that the socialist policies enacted during the 1960s improved access to education and medical care for Malians, but he condemned the ensuing over-taxation of

155 poor urban and rural households. He regretted that most of the money he sent home to his mother during the 1960s went toward paying her taxes and that Ina was not able to use the funds as a boon to her own way of life.

Although socialism had failed in Mali in Amadou’s opinion, as an old man he praised the Soviet Union and China for the aid they extended to West Africa in and after the 1960s.

Amadou especially exalted China: “The Chinese built us new radio stations and medical clinics and when we asked, ‘How much?’ they answered, ‘Zero! It’s a gift!’”

Although in recent years North American and European reporters have begun to carefully cover the dealings of Chinese entrepreneurs and government in West Africa

(see French and Polgreen 2007; Grammaticas 2012; Vourloumis 2009), Amadou insisted that the Chinese had continually invested in the region and worked to carefully fortify a good reputation for themselves in Mali since the country’s independence in 1960.

In 2011 Amadou continued to observe China’s generosity and credited Chinese for fully financing many beneficial projects. In the twenty-first century, for example,

Amadou said that Chinese engineers were using Chinese government funds to design and construct a two-lane bridge, named the China Mali Friendship Bridge (Pont de l'amitié sino-malienne), across the Niger River in Bamako. The bridge has been heralded as the

“greatest gift” China had offered a West African country, and had significantly reduced traffic jams on the city’s other two bridges upon its opening in late 2011 (Ahmed 2011).

Jeune Afrique reporter Baba Ahmed (2011) writes that although Chinese officials classified the bridge as unrequited assistance, “nobody is really fooled” (personne n’est

156 vraiment dupe). He alleges that the bridge will facilitate China’s attempts to exploit

uranium and phosphate mines in Mali in an unspoken quid pro quo.

Amadou likewise praised Russians during the 1960s for extending educational

opportunities to Malian civilians. For example, one afternoon Amadou heard a radio

announcement explaining that an annular solar eclipse would be visible to Bamako

residents the following week on July 31, 1962.50 The broadcaster announced the conditions that would lead to the eclipse, explaining that the moon would pass between the sun and the earth and would block most of the sun’s light. While Amadou listened, his mind returned to his enigmatic early childhood memory of Npièbougou where he watched the sun become blocked and transform into ring of fire. The announcer said that

Russian scientists would be visiting Bamako to study the eclipse and would make a telescope at their observation site available to the public. In the weeks before the eclipse, researchers from the Soviet Department of Radio Astronomy (a division of USSR’s

Scientific Council) arrived in Mali and positioned their equipment along the banks of the

Niger River (see Kaidanovskii 2012: 129-130).

On the morning of July 31, Amadou walked across Bamako’s Martyrs Bridge

(pɔn kɔrɔ) to the Badalabougou district where he found crowds of Malians surrounding

the Soviet observation site. He ignored the summer heat and his urge to eat and drink as

lunchtime came and went, and stood excitedly in line waiting for his chance to use a

telescope to view the eclipse. When his turn came, a Russian man guided him to the

telescope and helped him place his eye into the scope’s viewfinder. Amadou squinted

50 NASA records corroborate that an annular solar eclipse reached greatest visibility in Bamako on July 31, 1962 at 12:24:53.3 UT. Amadou described himself a “young man” (kamalen) when the eclipse happened. A 1946 birth year (as his medical identification card indicated) would have made him sixteen years old at the time. 157 and waited for his sight to adjust, and after several seconds, focused his eyes on a golden

ring of sunrays that shot out from behind the boarders of the moon’s obstruction.

He told me that he was immediately struck with awe for the power of God, “Only

God can organize such a moment. A person with black skin would fail; a person with

white skin would fail. Only God.”

Although Amadou left the observatory with a clear understanding of the empirical

conditions that led to the eclipse, he also remembered the profundity of his mother’s

initial explanation. As a child, Ina told Amadou that God was testing humans and

demonstrating his power when the eclipse passed over Npièbougou.

“I looked into the telescope to view the sun, but I saw God’s strength instead,”

Amadou eloquently said.51

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

Amadou spent two years in Bamako and said that, while there, he learned the advantage of using conventional joking relationships called senengu (denɗiraagu in

Fulfulde) to build the type of rapport that turned acquaintances into intimate friends.

West Africans (including Mande, Dogon, Fula, Wolof, Serer, and Songhai speakers)

participated in a wide range of joking behaviors between kin members, disparate

generations, and allied clans and other groups (see Conrad 1995: 105; Hopkins 1971:

101; Labouret 1929: 224-254; Leynaud & Cisse 1978: 99; McNaughton 1993: 10-11;

Riesman 1974: 77-79, 124-125; Whitehouse 2012: 236). Joking relationships in West

51 During my fieldwork various informants, including Amadou, emphasized that God exclusively influences eclipses and other cosmic events. Conversations on this topic often led to expressions of disdain for the new era of space exploration as an example of humans “testing God” (Ala kɔrɔbɔ). Interestingly, as discussed in further detail in chapter six, people attributed space exploration as one of the leading causes for harmful changes to their local environment, specifically listing the physical exploration of outer space as a primary reason for why the local forest had dried out and why there was little rain in the region. 158 Africa brought humor and a vivid tone to daily life, and were characterized by a stylized

and sanctioned insolence in behavior and speech between senengu (McNaughton 1993:

10). Such interactions strengthened my personal relationships as a researcher while

affirming my participation in time-honored alliances. Amadou first learned how to joke

during his early childhood with a range of friends and relatives who were allied as his

joking partners. Like other Fula, Amadou grew up classifying his cross-cousins of the

same or different sex as his senengu and they ridiculed each other with great familiarity

(Cissé 1970: 123; Dieterlen 1973: 473; Riesman 1977: 124). Amadou and his age-mates

also insulted each other as joking partners. Senengu in West Africa also extended

between generational lines, and accordingly elderly men and women habitually teased

Amadou and the other children in Npièbougou (see Riesman 1977: 124-125).

Amadou affectionately remembered, “My grandmother always yelled at me,

‘You’re lazy and ugly! You’re worthless and stupid!’ and I would laugh and respond,

‘Shut your mouth, grandma!’”

In 2011 Amadou loved joking with children in Ouélessébougou. Especially

during the onset of my fieldwork, my peculiar presence at Amadou’s workspace attracted

children who would stare at me while whispering with one another about my hair texture

and freckles. Amadou shooed these young gawkers with a fast string of insults that I

quickly memorized: “Go away, cursed child! Little short nose! Savage! Child of hell!

Fula slave!” (Bɔ yen, danga den! Nunkuruni! Sauwashi! Jahanama den! Fula jɔn!).

The children always ran away from us, squealing in delight. By the end of my research I sensed that children feigned interest in me in order to elicit the classic reaction from

Amadou that they had come to love.

159 West Africans recounted that ancestral pacts between people of different praise

names (jamu) led to stabilizing their interactions by entering into permanent senengu alliances (Hopkins 1971: 101).52 Senengu relationships typically reduced tension in stressful situations, and Amadou claimed that the institution especially benefitted the historically semi-nomadic Fula by ameliorating their otherwise precarious reputation among sedentary West African populations as drifting strangers. Amadou said that he could not fully list all his senengu because they were too numerous. But, as a Diallo, he noted that all people with a Tamaro, Ballo, Kanté, Sumaru, or Doumbia praise name were among his many joking partners.

I noticed that West Africans often said, “You eat beans” (i bɛ sho dun) as a classic opening move in a dialogue between two senengu, implying that one’s joking partners can neither afford the preferred diet of rice nor control their flatulence (see Roth 2008:

18). In fact, when Amadou Toumani Touré (who served as President of Mali from 2002 to 2012) visited Ouélessébougou for the inauguration of a solar panel field in the town in

2010, his senengu attended the ceremony with pots full of beans to playfully offer him.

Amadou was an exceptionally skilled joker with a sharp sense of humor, and I never heard him use hackneyed jokes about beans with his joking partners. Instead he regularly and jovially questioned one’s devotion to Islam, claimed Fula superiority over

Bamana people, and challenged a person’s age and kinship position in order to subordinate them to himself. Amadou’s closest and most special joking partner during the time I spent with him was Koniba Doumbia, the welder who worked next to Amadou and me. Koniba, as his Doumbia praise name indicates, belonged to the occupational

52 In Bamanankan, one’s jamu carries great significance and the word means both “family name” and “to praise (Innes 1974: 108). People in Ouélessébougou were often greeted and called by their family name. 160 status group of blacksmiths (numu) and, as a result, could joke with impunity with Fula people.53 A Malinke story recounts a pact between Fula and blacksmiths, claiming that their blood once mixed during a circumcision ceremony. The Fula and blacksmiths swore an oath of friendship afterward and vowed that they would never again quarrel

(Tengnæus 1952: 144).54 Amadou and Koniba enacted this alliance every day, talking and laughing with loyalty and confidence.

Amadou described his repartee with Koniba as the kind that he has used his entire life. I could fill volumes with the jokes Amadou and Koniba told in my presence. Here I will offer a glimpse into their constant banter to give a sense of its character. Nearly everyday Amadou alleged that Koniba was an impious Muslim and accused Koniba of committing an array of sins, especially dabbling in nighttime sorcery. Amadou accused

Koniba, as a blacksmith, of belonging to the occult kɔma association that uses wooden masks, drumming, and power objects (jow) to prognosticate and draw on spiritual forces

53 Mande have historically inherited their main occupation through their kin network, and Mande social organization categorizes members as freeborn nobles (hɔrɔnw), skilled artists (nyamakalaw), or captive slaves (jɔnw) (Keita 1998: 97; Zobel 1998: 35). Each occupational group is reputed for its secrets that define the parameters between members of the occupational groups and outsiders (Hoffman 1998: 93; see also McNaughton 1988). Despite measures used to reinforce group boundaries through endogamy, the system has shown itself to be dynamic, and history reveals many instances in which individuals and kin groups have been allowed to transfer identity (Keita 1998: 97-98). Scholars have further argued that there has never been a completely separate distinction between the hɔrɔnw and nyamakalaw, and the two groups have continuously oscillated between urban and rural occupations and identities (Zobel 1998: 39-41; see also Amselle 1985; Bazin 1995; Hoffman 1990). Despite moments of flexibility and malleability, the nyamakalaw are noticeably working-class citizens in comparison to the hɔrɔnw, and the term “nyamakalaw” has strong and offensive connotations in Mande languages (Conrad and Frank 1995:10-13; Bird et al. 1995: 28). 54 Germaine Dieterlen likewise recounts West African stories that tell of various Bambara, Bozo, Somono, and Dogon joking partners who periodically sealed their friendship by opening veins and smearing blood on one another’s wounds (Dieterlen 1951: 83; see also Tengnæus 1952: 144). 161 to combat sorcerers (see Charry 2000: 208; Hellweg 2001: 119; McNaughton 1993: 19,

194).

Koniba denied any involvement with kɔma, but Amadou facetiously maintained,

“Blacksmiths are a kɔma factory (izini),” and blamed Koniba for any illness or misfortune that befell Amadou.

Figure 14: (L –R) Koniba, Amadou and me during a typical workday in 2011

Amadou also mocked Koniba’s general appearance and intelligence, as he did to all of his senengu. Amadou often compared Koniba’s dark complexion and physical features to those of a baboon (gɔn). Koniba countered that Amadou, with his lighter

complexion, looked and acted like a patas monkey (warabilen), known in the region for

their white faces and reddish fur. Once, Koniba encouraged me to check Amadou’s

medical identification card, assuring me that it stated “patas monkey” in the name field.

162 Amadou ignored Koniba’s joke, but I watched the corners of Amadou’s mouth flutter as he valiantly fought the urge to smile. Amadou, in turn, regularly alleged that Koniba, like all Doumbias, was badly educated, ignorant, and stupid. One afternoon Amadou told me the following tale as though a wall separated us from Koniba, who sat within earshot, hearing every word:

A long time ago, a Doumbia man from a rural community traveled to Bamako to buy bread for people in his village. He bought loads and loads of bread and began to walk home. He came upon a river and crossed it by foot and lacked the sense to lift the bread above his head. He hauled the bread through the water, ruining it. This dumb man was a typical Doumbia.

In addition to insulting Koniba’s intelligence and looks, Amadou told tales that depicted Fula as superior in comparison to Bamana people. Amadou claimed that God created Fula people who, in turn, built the Doumbia clan from mud. Amadou also fabricated kinship schemes that placed Koniba in an inferior age and position in relation to Amadou. West Africans practice avoidance and show respect for certain categories of kin (ɲɛmɔgɔ), especially older siblings, parents, cousins, and in-laws, and Amadou regularly put Koniba into an avoidance relationship with him. The fun for Amadou came from merely trying to establish a position himself in terms of age and genealogy as superior to Koniba, and Amadou never actually followed through on these schemes by telling Koniba to move away from him or behave more deferentially. One day, for instance, I heard the following exchange:

“You’re my older brother’s child, Koniba!” Amadou shouted unprovoked one morning.

“I’m not his child. I’m old like you,” Koniba replied.

163 Amadou removed his brimless hat (kufi) and said, “You’re not old! Look at all my white hair.”

Koniba removed his cap and showed some light hairs, although he was not entirely gray like Amadou, and responded, “I also have white hair! It’s real hair too.

Your white hair comes from washing yourself with chalk!”55

“You’re my older brother’s child!” Amadou insisted in delight.

“You’re from a village that is behind Ségou and I’m from here. It’s too far!”

“You’re my older brother’s child!” Amadou cried again, scarcely controlling his laughter.

“My father was Bamana. You’re a Fula and a liar!” Koniba answered in an agitated tone and folded his arms in discouragement.

“Our fathers were friends,” Amadou said as a final effort, “And my father was older than your father. You’re my father’s younger friend’s child!”

“Our fathers never saw each other in their lives!” Koniba countered hotly and looked away.

Amadou gave a carefree laugh and stopped the exchange. During this particular installment of conversation Amadou used meaningful age tropes to achieve an explicit purpose. Growing old in West Africa is a rare and revered experience and people defer to age as a source of wisdom and dignity that calls for unwavering respect, and elders are accordingly among the most powerful and respected people in West African societies

(Doumbia & Doumbia 2004: 107-110). Although elders may play and joke with those

55 Here Koniba referred to the fact that some West African Muslims write verses from the Qur’an onto slates with chalk, rinse the surfaces, collect the liquid mixture, and wash themselves in it for the purposes of healing or protection (see Sanneh 1979: 210). Koniba often teased Amadou that his hair was white with chalk residue. 164 younger than they, as Amadou regularly did with the children who passed by his workspace, Amadou told me that children and youth should ultimately regard themselves as subject to the instruction of their seniors.

“Unfortunately, the world is changing,” Amadou said. “In the past, old people were the most revered members of a community. But our old practices (laada) are broken, and people live without shame (malo), fear (siran), or respect (bonya). Now young people think that no one is better than they.”

Amadou attributed the negative changes in how Malian elders were treated to the influence that youth-obsessed European and North American countries had in West

Africa. When Amadou said this, it immediately called to my mind Mudimbe (1988), who, citing Foucault, compares development efforts in former colonies to the painting of a portrait. Mudimbe argues that Africa has become a canvas that, in the end, will only celebrate and resemble the North American and European people who painted on it (2-6).

I shared Mudimbe’s concern with Amadou and asked him what he thought of it. Amadou told me that the argument reminded him of a story he had heard as a child:

A lion’s wife gave birth. The lion called for all the animals in the forest to come to a naming ceremony for his new child. All the animals came to the ceremony to meet the child, visit one another, and celebrate. The ostrich started dancing. The animals started to clap and watch the ostrich’s dance: it was the best dance they’d ever seen! All the animals felt happy to see the ostrich dance. Suddenly the hyena announced in the excitement: “This ostrich is my kin because my sister is an ostrich!” The dancing intensified and the ostrich accidently stomped on the newborn lion cub’s head, breaking its neck and killing it. The animals all became angry and started to chase after the ostrich. But the ostrich was too fast and they couldn’t catch it. So they turned to the hyena and said, “If we can’t catch the ostrich, we’ll punish you: its kin.” “Ridiculous! (Patisakana!)” yelled the hyena, “You can’t take me in place of the ostrich. How can something with wings and feathers be related to something with fur?”

165 For Amadou, this tale perfectly illustrated the danger in the amalgamation of

European and African practices. Amadou derided new conventions in Africa that often tried to take the good without the bad. Much like the hyena that claimed a kin relation with the ostrich because it found the ostrich’s dancing appealing, he explained, young

Africans aligned themselves with the European and North American practices that they found pleasing and rejected those that were not pleasing to them on account of their

African identity.

“Youth wear jeans and imitate other things they like about the French. Amadou said. But, if I tell the youth that I know that the French study hard and work after school and don’t wander around their villages with their friends, they’ll respond, ‘Oh! But I’m not French! Look at my black skin!’ because they don’t want to study.”

Similarly, Amadou claimed, each new generation in West Africa increasingly disrespected and ignored elders on the basis that the high level of regard that seniors received was an outdated African practice and, rather, placed young adults at the center of society.

Both Koniba and Amadou agreed that elders deserved respect, but they never reached a definite decision in their joking conversations on which of them was older than the other.56 Despite Amadou’s undeniable wish to decisively subordinate Koniba to himself by proving that he was older than Koniba, I learned from listening to Amadou tease Koniba for months that riling Koniba up was Amadou’s foremost aim; and he had a knack for it. Amadou had a gift for humor and said that he used this talent to acquire friends throughout his life.

56 In seriousness, Koniba admitted to me that Amadou was older than he by, he guessed, about ten years. 166 “Whenever I introduce myself to a new person, I hope that they will turn out to be

my joking partner,” Amadou told me.

Although Amadou loved joking, he was always mindful of the serious aspects of

senengu. Joking partners are also obliged to function as mediators if they notice their senengu engaged in a quarrel, and they should expect each other to provide economic

support when possible (Hopkins 1971: 101; McNaughton 1993: 10). Amadou accepted

these responsibilities and often gave his senengu small gifts as marks of respect,

counseled them on their difficulties, and trusted that God would compensate him with

baraji for his efforts.

When I asked Amadou for an example of acting as an intermediary he explained

that while living in Bamako in his youth, he temporarily lived with a short-tempered man

named Bakari Ballo who was Amadou’s senengu. Bakari and his wife frequently fought

with each other, and Amadou grew to feel uneasy about these disputes. As Bakari’s

senengu, Amadou felt obliged to bring calm to the situation. Amadou prepared his

counsel for his senengu and one day privately advised Bakari that one loses all sense of

decency during fights and that his constant quarrelling with his wife needed to stop.

Bakari became exasperated and responded defensively, telling Amadou with that he was

older than Amadou and that it was inappropriate for Amadou to counsel his elders.

According to Amadou, senengu are not obliged to unyieldingly observe ritual

avoidance between adjacent generations, “I reminded Bakari that I was a Diallo and that I

spoke to him as his senengu.”

167 With Amadou’s reference to their relationship as senengu, Bakari accepted

Amadou’s advice. “I never heard Bakari and his wife fight again for the remainder of my stay in their compound,” Amadou said.

It was in Bamako, Amadou remembered, that he recognized the full value of senengu friendships. From then on, Amadou relied with renewed confidence on the institution to smile, joke, and face the challenges that he encountered during his adult life.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

After Amadou had spent two years in Bamako and the preceding year in Ségou, these cities lost their initial appeal and Amadou longed again to spend time in the forest with his cattle and he decided to return home to his family in Npièbougou. He worked to pay for his return and in time had enough money to buy a bus ticket back north to

Npièbougou. Amadou’s mother, Ina, received Amadou’s unanticipated homecoming with delight and urged her youngest son to describe his experiences and achievements from the last several years to her. Amadou spent several days visiting with his family, friends, neighbors, and circulating around Npièbougou to observe what had changed and what had stayed the same since his departure. Since Amadou had left Npièbougou most of his childhood friends had lost their grandparents, married, and celebrated the births of their first children. Amadou noticed that many of the houses he remembered from his upbringing had fallen down from severe rainstorms and new mud dwellings had been built in their place.

But even with these changes, Amadou noted that “the smell of the air had stayed the same.”

Npièbougou remained his unmistakable home.

168 Amadou resumed rearing cattle in the forest with his brothers soon after his

return. He compared the autonomy he experienced while herding with the jobs he had

held in Bamako and felt that he had regained his freedom. “I had no boss and there was

no one to berate (kɔrɔfɔ) me in the forest. Cattle herding is truly the greatest

occupation,” Amadou said.

He noticed as he returned to herding that the number of Fula men who had started

smoking and chewing tobacco had vastly increased. One quiet, warm morning while

routing his cattle into the forest Amadou bought three cigarettes and several matches

from a street vendor.

“I was curious,” he explained.

He placed two cigarettes in his pocket and clenched the remaining cigarette in his

front teeth while gathering the nerve to light it. He said that he liked everything about

cigarettes from his first inhalation—their soothing effect, portability, the soft glow of the

cigarette’s tip, rich flavor, the way they occupied his hands—and he quickly developed a

smoking habit that lasted for decades. He estimated that smoking was neither sinful nor

meritorious, but the hold that nicotine had over Amadou made him feel an eventual loss

of self-control (yɛrɛminɛli), which he knew displeased God. The fact that Amadou adopted an ethos in adulthood that valued the principles of self-control and restraint is unsurprising in consideration of the broader emphasis that Fula and Mande groups place on practicing a code of behavior that requires people to have full command over the way they express their emotions and urges (see Amselle 1998: 43-49; Riesman 1977: 116-

141). In 2005 Amadou abruptly resolved to quit smoking and successfully ended his habit on his first try.

169 Amadou felt strong and healthy while living in Bamako and Ségou but said that

God balanced this fortune by supplying him with several sudden injuries shortly after his return to Npièbougou. One afternoon, while herding in the forest, Amadou’s older brother, Mamadou, attempted to tie a rope around the ankle of a bull when the animal became aggravated and the bull charged toward Amadou, who was standing across the pasture. Mamadou shouted a warning but Amadou did not have time to move out of the way. The bull’s horn hit the center of Amadou’s face and tore the skin from the bridge of

Amadou’s nose down to his right nostril in half. Afterward, Amadou sat motionless in shock while Mamadou removed his own shirt and carefully tied it around his younger brother’s nose. Amadou staggered back to Npièbougou alone and in pain while

Mamadou gathered the herd.

Amadou’s family unanimously decided that Amadou should rest from his herding duties and stay at home until he had recuperated from his injury. I met many people during my fieldwork who considered loneliness to be the most painful part of being sick or injured. In Ouélessébougou I observed that residents often moved their beds outside or rested on plastic mats in shady areas of their compounds when they were in poor health in order to maintain their involvement in daily matters. During his convalescence,

Amadou often left his compound at night to spend time with his friends in order to satisfy his craving for social interactions. One evening, while riding home in a donkey-pulled wagon, Amadou fell from the cart and a metal wheel rolled completely over the left side of his head.

Ina upbraided Amadou and finally forbade him from leaving their compound until he had fully recovered from both his nose and head injuries. Amadou agreed but

170 inwardly agonized over the loneliness his isolation would bring him. Meanwhile the

news spread that Amadou had survived two dangerous, consecutive accidents, and

Amadou found himself receiving a steady flow of guests. Visitors greeted him, sang him

songs, praised his bravery, and recited benedictions asking God to grant Amadou a quick

and full recovery.57 These visits lifted Amadou’s spirits and improved the visitors’

spiritual welfare as well.

“One earns baraji by visiting sick and elderly people,” Amadou explained.

Earning baraji for acts like visiting the sick made baraji a practice in which

motivation for social relations was reinforced by the promise of an eternal reward. In this

sense, baraji and reciting benedictions held social and religious utility for West Africans.

Riesman (1977) rightly explains that West Africans realize that God's wishes surpassed

their own and consequently people did not believe in the full efficacy of their

benedictions (189-190). But I noted that trying to achieve one’s will is not the entire

point of reciting benedictions. These benedictions earn baraji for both the speaker and

listener, and in that case they are quite efficacious.

Amadou said that he quickly recovered his health and energy after his injuries, but

as an old man a long scar stretched across his nose, and the left portion of his skull

continued to dent inward. Amadou nonetheless smiled and told me that his scars

positively guided his conduct, and every morning, he greeted at least two enfeebled

townspeople before he began to make rope.

⋲ ⋲ ⋲

57 In Bamanankan suitable blessings for an ill or injured person include “May God lessen the pain” (Ala ka tɔɔrɔ dɔgɔya), and, “May God offer relief” (Ala ka nɔgɔya kɛ). 171 Amadou estimated that he stayed in Npièbougou to herd cattle for three years

before deciding to move south to Ouélessébougou in 1969.58 In the 1960s Fula men in

Npièbougou grew increasingly worried that periods of drought and irregular rainfall threatened the future of pastoralism in the region. Many of Amadou’s friends reacted to these changes either by migrating south to Bamako in search of work or by finding low- paying jobs as laborers in nearby Markala. Such movements grew into a larger trend in postcolonial West Africa in the second half of the twentieth century wherein uneven economic development, deteriorating environmental conditions, and the penetration of a cash economy prompted Fula groups from the interior savannah region to migrate into southern forest zones and urban areas (de Bruijn & van Dijk 2003: 285-286, 289-290).

When I asked Amadou why the climate in Npièbougou had changed, he said that since the creation of the world, God had continually involved Himself in the affairs of people by periodically altering their environments and that people can earn baraji by peacefully responding and adapting to these changes. God provided ample rain in a good year, but in subsequent years, in order to balance out things, God might replace precipitation with a prolonged period of dry and cold weather. Amadou asserted that people should always anticipate such changes while remaining mindful that God never allows the world to stay for too long in one condition. I asked Amadou where he learned about the divine cause of environmental change. He replied that God’s role in designing and altering the world was self-evident—no one had taught him. Amadou then shook his head and asked a question in turn: how had I failed to notice God’s work? Without

58 Amadou, like most of my informants, did not give numerical dates when I asked him when certain events occurred. Rather, he indicated which presidential administration held power at the time of an experience. In 1969 junior military officers removed Mali’s first president, Modibo Keïta, from power in a bloodless coup d’état, and Amadou remembered that he moved south to Ouélessébougou during “the year that Modibo was captured” (san Modibo minɛ). 172 pausing for my response, he reminded me that during my fieldwork in 2010 the grass in

Ouélessébougou’s forests had been shorter than it was in 2011. Amadou confidently

attributed this change to God.

As a young man Amadou resolved to avoid feeling upset about the changes God

made to his local environment. He consequently described the climate change and the

desertification of the Sahel that he observed as “God’s work” (Ala ka baara). He added

that all cultures would become mindless and empty without the regular need to adapt to

new conditions. When West Africans faced warmer years, they looked for new ways to

care for their crops and animals on which they depended against the heat. Rather than

ruing the severe climate in Npièbougou in the late 1960s, Amadou understood the

challenge as an opportunity to improve himself and secure baraji by peacefully adapting to ecological changes. For example, Amadou and his brothers extended their knowledge of Npièbougou’s forests by searching in unfamiliar regions for new pastures and water sources.

It became apparent to Amadou and his family that climate change in the region could permanently impact their livelihood. Given that Amadou did not yet have a wife or children, his family encouraged him to seek financial security for himself in the south.

He considered cattle herding the most honorable occupation and had no desire to return to

Bamako or any other city where he could not live as a pastoralist. But when reports began to spread in Npièbougou that many young Fula men had found profitable work herding cattle for wealthy landowners in southern Mali, a southward migration suddenly seemed the most obvious and practical choice for Amadou. Accordingly, Amadou traveled more than three hundred kilometers south to the town of Ouélessébougou. He

173 decided to settle in Ouélessébougou when he discovered that he could easily find work

contracting himself out to cattle owners in both Ouélessébougou and neighboring

villages. Amadou quickly found Fula friends and Bamana joking partners and soon felt

welcome and at ease in the area. He did not foresee at the time that he would remain

there for the rest of his life.

Figure 15: Amadou picks berries from fruit tree he formerly frequented while herding in Ouélessébougou’s forest as a young man.

Amadou loved rearing cattle through Ouélessébougou’s forests and often found lucrative herding opportunities outside the region as well. His reputation as a responsible and talented herder spread throughout the area, and cattle owners in Ouélessébougou often arranged for him to transport herds of varying sizes to southern regions, both in and beyond Mali, where the animals sold for a higher price than they did in Ouélessébougou.

After Amadou had been busy for a year in Ouélessébougou, a cattle owner there asked

174 him to transport his herd to a market in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Amadou felt

apprehensive at first about crossing Mali’s border for the first time. He had heard stories

that depicted the people in Côte d’Ivoire as unprincipled non-Muslims (kafiri) whose

lives were characterized by perpetual violence.

Amadou finally accepted the job and traveled south to Côte d’Ivoire—with caution. Soon after his arrival, his entire herd began to grow listless and then became sick with severe diarrhea. Amadou was unsure as to how to treat the cattle in his care until a fellow Fula herder whom Amadou had met in the forest suggested that Amadou send the cattle’s owner a telegram from a nearby post office. Amadou ran urgently to the post office and dictated a long telegram explaining everything he knew about the cattle’s condition.

Then the, “postmaster laughed and said, ‘Slow down! You pay by the word!’”

Amadou sought advice from strangers at the post office on how to make the message more succinct and settled on the message, “cattle sick” (misiw man kɛnɛ).

Several hours later, he received a response from his boss instructing Amadou to stay with

the cattle and that help was on its way. While waiting for assistance, Amadou visited

with people around him and was surprised to meet many fellow Muslims in Côte d’Ivoire

with whom he shared many similarities. After two days an employee of the cattle owner

arrived with vaccinations and medicines and, to Amadou’s astonishment, all the cattle

survived their bout of illness. After selling the cattle and finishing his job in Côte

d’Ivoire, Amadou began the journey back north to Ouélessébougou. Amadou knew he

would easily find other herding opportunities upon his return and decided to stay in

Ouélessébougou as long as the work remained plentiful. Amadou was now ready to

175 contemplate the next stage of his life. Many of his friends teased him because he had not

yet married, but he always dismissed these remarks on the grounds that he moved too

much to have a wife and children. Having now found stable work in Ouélessébougou, he

stood on the edge of adulthood, considering, for the first time, the possibility of marriage,

purchasing property, and having a family.

Conclusion

This chapter has detailed how Amadou’s social and occupational practices, family relationships, and responsibilities changed as he reached full adulthood in postcolonial

West Africa. As Amadou strove to situate himself in a rapidly changing world, he recounted that during his adolescence he had ridden in cars, listened to radios, studied

French, befriended non-Muslim foreigners, watched films from around the world, and sent and received telegrams. Muslim practices and earning baraji retained an overriding

importance in this stage of his life while he also fostered an interest in accruing wealth.

But, as an adult, Amadou’s youthful daydreams of procuring a fortune for himself and

owing stylish clothing and other markers of modernity now seemed futile to him. He

decided that he was no longer interested in a life rooted in material pleasures as he

contemplated marriage and children.

Amadou’s childhood and adolescent experiences show that his approach to Islam

had changed drastically throughout his early life. His childhood recollections revealed

that Amadou depended primarily on his family to practice Islam and earn baraji, while

during his adolescence his endeavor to amass baraji became an individual enterprise.

Amadou’s narrative gives insight into how a West African Muslim’s approach to Islam

and baraji changed throughout his life. Scholars are right in their recognition of Islam in

176 West Africa as inherently dynamic and that social groups constantly adapt Islam to

reflect change. Amadou’s life story shows how individual Muslim practitioners

spearhead this dynamism. Although Amadou had changed as a Muslim, his submission

to Islam had remained a constant point of orientation for him while he experienced a

rapidly changing world. Amid relocations and career changes, Amadou consistently

devoted himself to Islam and his pursuit of supererogatory baraji to complement the

baraji he earned from observing principle acts of worship, such as prayer and fasting.

Meanwhile, his pursuit of baraji constantly changed as well.

As a young adult, Amadou considered saving for marriage and children and resolved that any money he might save would go toward his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Marriage offered the practical opportunity for mutual care and provision but would also ensure that Amadou had children to continue earning baraji on his behalf after he died.

The next chapter reveals how Amadou’s understanding of and techniques for pursuing baraji changed again during adulthood as he came to approach baraji as a joint effort between kin. The following chapter traces Amadou’s friendships, occupations, achievements, and travels alongside the challenges he surmounted, as Amadou became a husband and father.

177 CHAPTER FIVE

ADULTHOOD

Amadou’s childhood and adolescent experiences offer insight into the ways that he learned about and tried to earn baraji in his early life. As Amadou entered adulthood, he began to wonder who would earn baraji for him once he died and began to consider the prospect of marriage and children. As Amadou explained it, the baraji he amassed also benefitted his deceased relatives in the afterlife.

“God gives all the baraji I earn to my father, too,” he told me one morning while we casually visited at work making rope.

“And what about your mother?” I asked. “Does she also get some of that baraji?”

“Yes! Of course!”

“And your brothers and sisters?”

“Yes, all of them earn baraji through me too,” Amadou said with confidence.

I decided to probe further. “Can your grandparents earn baraji because of you as

well?”

“Yes!”

“What about your grandparents’ grandparents?”

Amadou quickly saw how endless my questions might become and presented me

with a larger and unforeseen point: “Every deceased Muslim gets baraji when a living

Muslim earns baraji.”

Baraji continued to hold value after death, according to Amadou, as the deceased

became dependent on the living to ensure their security by earning baraji. Although all

178 deceased Muslims benefited from the living’s pursuit of baraji, Amadou wanted his experience of amassing baraji in the afterlife to be personal. In order to ensure that someone continued to earn baraji with him specifically in mind, Amadou accepted that he needed to have a family. He viewed finding a wife and having children as moral duties that were necessary to ensure that he and other Muslims prospered and continued to earn baraji in the afterlife. But aside from the perceived benefit, Amadou said that he had no desire to marry.

This chapter addresses Amadou’s middle-aged, adult life and focuses on his eventual marriage and experience caring for and teaching his six children about Islam and the significance of baraji in their lives. The stories in this chapter show how Amadou found happiness and satisfaction in becoming a husband and father, which were both roles he at first feared would lead to the loss of his independence. I show in this chapter how his conception of baraji shifted once he was married with a family. Previously,

Amadou saw baraji as essentially a private endeavor that concerned him and his deceased father. But once he had children of his own he came to understand baraji as a form of shared substance—a kind of consanguinity—that joined him to his kin, friends, and neighbors through a value system that ranked various rituals and daily practices in terms of their desirability and potential to access baraji, especially when various jobs caused him to pass extended periods away from Ouélessébougou (see Mckinnon 1991:

212; Schneider 1968: 92; Weston 2001: 153). When Amadou was able to spend time at home in Ouélessébougou, this chapter explains, he refined his children’s understanding of Islam and baraji through the Muslim practices they performed and reflected upon.

179 Above all, this chapter expands understanding of baraji by emphasizing the role of baraji and Islam with respect to kinship and the way that notions of baraji shape local kinship ideology. I therefore explore Amadou’s personal experiences and understanding of kinship in order to understand the affective impact that principles of kinship have had in Amadou’s life and their connection to his Muslim thought and practice. To that end, I survey Amadou and his friends’ and family’s explanation of their personal kin relationships to consider the flexibility of local kinship principles. I observed kinship in

Mali to be far more flexible and negotiable than scholars of kinship in West Africa have classically observed (see Leynaud & Cisse 1978; Cissé 1970). This chapter presents examples that highlight the importance of understanding kinship in West Africa in terms of ritual, practices, Islam, and baraji and the meaningful social relationships that these practices and doctrines create. As such, this chapter contributes to growing efforts to show that kinship, through the rituals that create, structure, and extend it, is a creative, malleable, and active practice that people “do” rather than a passive state of belonging to a static “religious,” “ethnic,” or “genetic” group (see Bourdieu 1977; Riesman 1974; Şaul

1992; Thompson 2001).

I resume telling Amadou’s life story by recounting the jobs he held throughout

West Africa to earn a living to support his family. Amadou said that he used the economic pressures he faced as an opportunity to model the importance of perseverance and industriousness to his children by striving for baraji. This chapter includes memories and points of view that Amadou’s wife and children shared with me during interviews I conducted with them. Their anecdotes and opinions exemplify how Amadou aimed to

180 raise a family that lived in accordance with the tenets of Islam and who similarly

recognized and valued the pursuit of baraji in their lives.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

One day while Amadou was explaining his reluctance to find a wife as a young man he asked me, “Have I ever told you a story about me that included a female friend?”

I surveyed our many conversations for a moment and realized that he had not.

“No,” I replied. “Why is that?”

“Women used to bother me!”

“Bother you?” I repeated and laughed. “Why?”

“I used to refuse to even sit in the same place as women,” Amadou explained. “If they were here, I was there. Women mocked me and called me crazy. But listening to women talk made me feel sad.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. My mind must have been broken!”

Apart from his unwillingness to socialize with women, Amadou viewed himself as self-sufficient and felt that he did not need a wife to help him perform domestic chores. He had learned to cook, clean, and wash his own clothes while studying at

Abdoulaye’s medersa and working in Bamako as a youth.

“A lot of my friends could not do or refused to do chores, so they married,” he said.

But Amadou explained that having a wedding in order to have a maid was a wanton reason to marry. Indeed, I had a number of close female friends during my fieldwork in Mali who complained to me that their husbands treated them like servants.

181 They explained that their husbands led idle lives while they performed an exceptional amount of domestic work. Women I knew in Ouélessébougou woke up at sunrise every morning and worked until nearly midnight, filling their days with gathering and chopping wood for cooking fires, preparing meals, drawing and hauling water from wells, washing clothes and dishes, caring for animals, rearing children, and making trips to the market.

These women reminded one another of their worth by retelling a popular folktale that imagines how a village without women would operate. My friend Kadja Ballo particularly loved this story and allowed me to record her telling of the tale. She prefaced it by saying, “In Mali, the men see women as nothings. They say to us, ‘You’re nothing!

You have no role here!’ We don’t count.” The story went as follows:

A new bride disliked her husband and refused to have children with him. The husband felt frustrated with his disobliging wife and sought the counsel of the village chief. He explained his marital troubles to the chief, who told the man to bring his wife to him. The woman arrived at the chief’s house and the chief loudly scolded her and told her to obey her husband, saying, “In my village, women have no role! Your role is limited to the position of your two feet!” The woman decided that, given their meaninglessness, it should not matter if the women in the village gathered together and left. She organized all her female friends and convinced them to cross the river with her and leave their husbands and children for three days. Within hours of the women’s departure, children began to cry to their fathers, “I’m hungry!” The men called for their wives and soon realized that they had all left. So the men tried to prepare food themselves. They added too much salt to the sauce, they couldn’t crush the pepper, and they ruined the rice. The men asked the village chief to cook for them, but he couldn’t. The village chief asked his son to cook and he said, “My father! I don’t know how.” The village chief decided to cross the river and beg the women to come return. But the women would not agree. They told the men to kill a cow and sheep and organize a festival for the women. The men agreed and held a party for their wives. The men played the drums while the women ate and danced until they did not feel mad at their husbands anymore. So men might still say, “Women’s role is limited to the position of their two feet” (muso jɔyɔrɔ bɛ dan u sen jɔyɔrɔ ye), but we have seen that’s not true. Women hold a principle role in society, and that’s why men want to marry us.59

59 The 1997 film Taafe Fanga (Skirt Power), set in the Malian countryside, tells a similar story. 182

Some husbands were dramatically dismissive when they heard their wives repeat this story, but Amadou acknowledged the veracity of the tale and that women perform vital tasks for their families. But he reiterated that the moral of the story was not relevant to him as a young adult man because he did not mind cooking and cleaning for himself.

In fact, Amadou told me that his desire to have children preceded any want for a wife.60

Amadou worked for several years after settling in Ouélessébougou as a cattle herder in southern Mali and northern Côte d’Ivoire, occasionally taking temporary jobs as a laborer on the various cotton farms in the region. He saw herding and traveling as a way to assert his personal freedom as a single man (cɛganan) and resisted people’s criticisms of his unmarried state, arguing against the notion that all men should marry.

Amadou sensibly put aside money each month and after several years had saved enough to buy land and build a personal compound in Ouélessébougou. Amadou’s friends in

Ouélessébougou irreverently assailed him for not having a wife and in moments of seriousness advised him that it would be prudent to marry before he invested his savings in property.

“My friends told me how they enjoyed having a wife and assured me that my life would not be too different after marriage,” Amadou remembered.

Amadou eventually came to find his attitude toward marriage problematic. His parents had always stressed the moral value of marriage as a Muslim obligation and the basis of a household (see Leynaud & Cisse 1978: 185-189; Riesman 1977: 81-83).

60 Although the question crossed my mind, I never felt comfortable asking whether or not Amadou was celibate during this phase in his early adulthood. Our differences in age and gender made the question seem inappropriate in my view. 183 Amadou told me, “God insists on marriage. Men and women each earn big baraji

(barajiba) for marrying one another.”

As Amadou reflected more on the possibility of finding a wife, he decided to visit a holy man (mori) in Ouélessébougou to relieve his aversion to marriage. Upon hearing

Amadou’s concerns, the holy man offered to make an amulet inscribed with a passage from the Qur’an about marriage for Amadou to carry with him.61 Amadou felt his attitude toward marriage change within weeks of receiving the amulet.

“I realized that I, like many other Fula men, could continue to herd cattle and work in other countries even after taking a wife,” he explained.

Eventually Amadou grew to feel happy about the prospect of having a wife. He asked his friends if they knew any young women without husbands and one acquaintance offered to introduce him to a female neighbor named Nouhouba Bagayoko.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

Nouhouba was born to a Muslim Bamana family in a rural village, Kèmògòla, located in the northwestern portion of Mali’s Sikasso region. Her parents sent her as a young girl to live with her father’s sister (tɛnɛmuso) in Ouélessébougou.

The practice of allowing children to be raised (den lamɔ) by friends or relatives

pervaded in Ouélessébougou during my research in 2011. People explained that this

practice offered a solution for couples facing infertility problems. In contrast, informants

commonly considered the prospect of adopting a stranger’s child from an orphanage

unthinkable because they would have no information about the child’s parents or social

61 In 2011, Amadou no longer had this amulet and could not remember exactly which Qur’anic verses it contained. 184 background. Many overwhelmed young mothers also explained that they had asked a

sibling to send them one of their slightly older daughters in order to have someone to help

with their daily chores. I also heard of several instances in which relatives or a friend felt

an overpowering fondness toward an infant’s disposition and accordingly entreated the

child’s biological parents to allow them to raise the child once it was weaned.62

Numerous parents in Ouélessébougou stoically told me that they felt it an obligation

(wajibi) to accept such requests, and only one mother candidly admitted that she would turn down a friend or relative who asked to bring up one of her children. Muslim informants explained that they would not question a close friend or relative who wanted to raise their child on the condition that they knew that the person making the request was a good Muslim.

The chief of the compound where I lived during my fieldwork, Bourama, assured me when we discussed the topic that, “It would not be difficult for me to give my child away as long as I know that he or she will learn to pray, fast, and earn baraji, just as I would have taught my son or daughter.”

Such arrangements did not break kin bonds but rather extended them. Amadou,

like other residents of Ouélessébougou with whom I spoke, readily associated baraji with

kinship and residence. Residential compounds in Mali represented a social setting akin to

what anthropologists reference in the phrase, “house societies,” a concept first formulated

by Lévi-Strauss (1987) and subsequently developed by numerous other researchers in

order to characterize societies that use residence to determine kinship (see Carsten 2004a,

2004b; Carsten & Hugh-Jones 1995; Gillespie 2000). In a house society, kin may live

62 Mothers in Ouélessébougou typically weaned their children between the ages of two and three-years-old. 185 together as a corporate group devoid of any biological ties (Lévi-Strauss 1987: 174, 186).

Lévi-Strauss’s research demonstrates that residential groups in house societies act as moral entities while living in a shared estate, and individuals primarily define themselves by their roles and relationships to others in the house (Lévi-Strauss 1987: 174-186; see also Gillespie 2000: 29). People in house societies are not confined by rules of biological descent, and members share “material and immaterial wealth” as the house propagates itself through mutual cooperation—whether economic, social, or ritual—between members. Rights and obligations between house members may be modeled after “ties of blood,” but members need not share biological descent (Lévi Strauss 1987: 176, 187;

Gillespie 2000: 32). In Mali, membership in a compound effectively secured residence in a social system. Relations were perpetuated through shared participation in household life rather than through consanguinity alone, and people counted on one another to cooperate and participate in a range of pursuits, including (in Muslim compounds) performing Muslim rituals and other practices to obtain baraji together, for the living and the dead.

Following Lévi-Strauss’s approach to house societies, I noted that children in

Mali who lived away from their biological parents often called both their adoptive and biological parents by the terms “mother” and “father” and classified both the children living in their caretakers’ compound and their biological cognates as siblings (balimaw).

In other cases, I observed children who called their caretakers “aunt” (tɛnɛmuso for father’s sister, or bɛmamuso for mother’s sister) and “uncle” (fakɛ for father’s brother, or bɛnkɛ for mother’s brother) while allowing these persons to assume fully the roles and

186 responsibilities of parents.63 Amadou deemed that biological parents, adoptive parents,

and children cooperated in raising each other’s children and, as such, earned baraji

equally. Biological parents showed their selflessness and humility (majigin); adoptive

caretakers expressed kindness and generosity (bololabilalen); and children learned

obedience (sagokɛla)—all ideals that God rewards with baraji.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

Amadou’s future wife, Nouhouba, was party to such an agreement as a child. She

said that she permanently moved to Ouélessébougou at the age of eight in order to help

her father’s sister cook and take care of her younger children. Nouhouba lived with her

aunt for nearly ten years. When she was seventeen years old, Nouhouba’s aunt and uncle

told her that they had arranged for her to marry a man named Madou Doumbia.

Nouhouba soon after married Madou and moved into his family’s nearby compound.

I asked Nouhouba for more details about her first marriage and, after a long

silence, her eyes met mine with a steady gaze, and she told me with expressionless poise

about those tumultuous times: “Madou beat me everyday for ten years. I delivered four

children. Two of them died. He never beat our children, but he got me everyday. He’d

whack me around at night and then the next day people would talk about me and stare at

my injuries. Finally my paternal aunt (tɛnɛmuso) told me to seek a divorce.”

Nouhouba went to the mayor’s office in Ouélessébougou to inquire about divorce proceedings and learned that it cost a fee, regardless of the extreme violence that

Nouhouba said she was undergoing. Nouhouba would not consider asking anyone to

63 I recorded that children who were raised by a biologically unrelated friend of their biological family usually called their caretakers by the terms for “father’s sister” (tɛnɛmuso) and “father’s brother” (fakɛ). 187 loan her the money but felt determined to divorce her husband. She started gathering wood in the forest and sold bundles of firewood to her friends and neighbors. It took over a year to build her savings, but she eventually obtained a legal divorce from Madou, which Madou’s family accepted without contest owing to their understanding of Madou’s temper, and Nouhouba returned with her two children to her aunt’s compound where she became eligible to remarry.

Figure 16: Amadou’s wife, Nouhouba Bagayoko, in 2011

Nouhouba remembered that a neighbor brought Amadou to her compound and introduced them to each other the year after she had ended her marriage to Madou.

“We visited, and I thought he was nice,” she simply remembered of the first time she met Amadou.

Amadou immediately liked Nouhouba’s comportment (jogo) and decided of his own accord to ask her uncle for consent to marry Nouhouba. I asked Amadou if 188 marrying a Fula woman had been an initial priority for him. He shook his head and

responded that finding a woman devoted to Islam was his primary concern and that

Nouhouba came from a family with a reputation as devout Muslims. Finding a good

Muslim wife ensured that Amadou would raise Muslim children who could provide for

him and his ancestors by earning them baraji on their account.

Amadou formally met with Nouhouba’s uncle and agreed to present him with

25,000 francs and two cows in exchange for taking Nouhouba as his wife.64 The day set for their marriage quickly arrived, and Amadou remembered that he, Nouhouba, and all their guests earned an inestimable sum of baraji for participating in their wedding ceremony and the modest festivities that followed. Although Amadou had no family in the region to attend his wedding, his “people” (mɔgɔw) went to his marriage ceremonies at the mayor’s office and in the mosque.65 In the absence of formal kin ties, Amadou said

he had become incorporated into a kin group of Fula families living in Ouélessébougou.

He recalled that he had bonded quickly with these people primarily on the basis of their

shared language, commitment to Islam, and experience in cattle husbandry.

Nouhouba’s situation, wherein her paternal aunt (tɛnɛmuso) and uncle acted as

her parents, and Amadou’s support from Fula families in Ouélessébougou as his kin,

offer two instructive examples of how kinship in West Africa is a flexible convention.

Amselle applies the term “fundamentalism” to describe the rigid descriptions of cultural

64 About $50.00 USD. 65 Muslim couples in Mali performed a legal marriage at the local mayor’s office and a second Muslim rite in the mosque. Typically these two procedures were performed on the same day, and during my research most people married on either a Thursday or a Saturday. The bride and groom did not attend services held in the mosque, but rather their mothers and fathers stood proxy for them as the imam announced the marriage and pronounced blessings on the couple. Amadou asked an elderly Fula man living in Ouélessébougou to attend the marriage rite at the mosque on his behalf. 189 groups and their activities that anthropologists often perpetuate (Amselle 1998: 39). To avoid this misstep, Amselle reminds us that West Africans continually debate and negotiate their practices and identity (40). Encouraged by Amselle’s misgivings, I noted that Amadou and Nouhouba’s experiences revealed kin kinship relations as far more intricate and flexible than scholars tend to concede (see Leynaud & Cisse 1978; Cissé

1970). I learned during my fieldwork that Muslims consider Islam and baraji as forms of shared substance, or consanguinity, that join kin, friends, and neighbors. Studies in the anthropology of kinship demonstrate that people identify kin fundamentally through assessments of behavior and sentiments and use metaphors of blood and biology to express feelings of closeness (Hagen 1990: 187; see also Barnard & Good 1984;

Needham 1971; Schneider 1984). Thus Muslim residents in southern Mali commonly referred to each other as “brother,” “sister,” “grandparent,” and other kin terms, even when no clear biological ties existed between them, thereby acknowledging the power of their personal relationships and shared practice of Islam (see Wooten 2009: 46-47).

This correlation between Islam and kinship in Ouélessébougou is, in large part, unsurprising. Social anthropologists who study kinship have long grounded kin relations in a host of other cultural systems and practices, such as economics, gender, politics, social change, transnationalism, as well as ritual and cosmology (see Barnard and Good

1984: 15; Brokensha 1983; Peletz 1995; Schneider 1984; Schweitzer 2000; Whitehouse

2012; Wilson 1971). While some anthropologists observe that conversion to Islam or

Christianity may lead to the rupture of kinship ideologies, others suggest that people respond to such shifts by fitting new ideas into existing cultural categories (Robbins

2001: 902; see also Englund & Leach 2000). For instance, according to Riesman (1974),

190 the arrival of Islam led to tighter bonds between Fula kin. His research shows that

Muslim leaders emphasized the importance of group prayer, which led to a deeper

unification of kin groups and communities (96-98). During my fieldwork, I personally

noted in the compound I lived in how starting and breaking our fast during Ramadan and

walking to and from the mosque as a family enhanced the amount of time we spent with

one another while strengthening our awareness of and support for one another’s lives.

Returning to Amadou’s life, with a focus on his marriage and experiences as a father, the

impact of Muslim practice on kin relations becomes clear. The following section shows

how, according to Amadou, kin earned baraji on one another’s behalf, and how Amadou

moreover found the widespread practice of allowing others to raise one’s children

acceptable on the basis of a shared commitment to Islam.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

Shortly after Amadou’s wedding in the mid-1970s, Amadou purchased half an acre of land, on which he was still living when I met him, in the residential center of

Ouélessébougou. In 2011, his neighborhood was among the most densely populated and expensive in terms of land value in the town. But Amadou remembered that when he initially bought his property, the area was sparsely populated and had few residential dwellings and no small shops (butigi). He built a mud house and separate kitchen hearth for his new family and commissioned experts to dig a well. Then Amadou, Nouhouba, and her two children from her first marriage promptly moved into their new home.

Amadou earned a good reputation (tɔgɔ) for himself in his new neighborhood.

One day during lunch my host (jatigi) and chief of the compound I lived in, Bourama, told me about Amadou’s longstanding reputation in the area. Bourama said that Amadou

191 was regarded as one of the most pious Muslims in Ouélessébougou and added, “Everyone

knows that Amadou has more baraji than them.” I asked Bourama what Amadou had particularly done to deserve this good reputation. He said that Amadou’s participation in

Muslim practices was unmatched: Amadou was always at prayer in the mosque, attended every marriage ceremony, fasted outside of Ramadan, and acted with sincere kindness toward his neighbors.

Amadou likewise cared for Nouhouba’s children, but they moved between

Amadou and Nouhouba’s compound and their biological father’s home, often staying with Madou for months at a time. After two years, Nouhouba bore Amadou a daughter named Sira and soon after a son they named Mohamadou. Amadou and Nouhouba both earned baraji for having children and more for their resolve in raising them as Muslims.

When I asked Amadou whether or not he enjoyed becoming a father he teased me for asking such a naïve and axiomatic question.

“Everyone and everything loves children!” he declared. “It’s not only humans— notice the way donkeys and sheep care for and play with their brood.”

“Did you also play with your children?” I asked.

“Of course! I would hold their hands while they straddled my feet, bounce them, and sing nonsense ‘ne-ne-ne-ne-ne,’” he remembered with a grin. “But children really exhaust (sɛgɛn) their fathers because they’re so expensive.”

Amadou felt new pressure with a growing family to find the most profitable cattle

herding opportunities available in order to earn money to support Nouhouba and their

children. In the mid-1970s, Fula friends who similarly worked in animal husbandry told

Amadou that wealthy cattle owners would amply pay small groups of Fula herders to

192 walk their cattle to Liberia, where cattle sold in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, for a

considerably higher price. The one-way trip covered over 1,000 kilometers of rough

terrain and took a little over five months to complete. Given Amadou’s experience

herding cattle, and as a Fula man, he easily found a position leading herds of sixty to 100

head of cattle from Bamako to Monrovia. Since Nouhouba had not yet met Amadou’s

family, Amadou arranged for Nouhouba and their two children to travel to Npièbougou

for six months to pay a visit to his mother, Ina, before he left on his first expedition to

Liberia. Amadou explained, “I wanted my wife and children to see my hometown (faso) and know my mother and older siblings.”

Figure 17: The 1,127-kilometer one-way route Amadou routinely walked from Bamako to Monrovia (Map data ©2013 Google)

193 Once Nouhouba and his children were safely on the road to Npièbougou, Amadou set out for Liberia. He recalled that this was the first of what would become many trips to Monrovia with four to five other Fula herders. The most experienced herder always served as the leader and traveled slightly ahead of the convoy in order to arrange meals and buy provisions while the other men followed a short distance behind with the herd.

On his first trip, Amadou worked as a regular herder, but he said that he acted as the leader for all subsequent expeditions to Monrovia. The route he traveled cut across the rural corners of Mali and Côte d’Ivoire, along the boarder of Guinea, and through

Liberia’s central countryside. Amadou loved spending days on end in West African forests and insisted that the heat, which was relieved only with occasional downpours, did not bother him. Dusk and dawn were his favorite times of day as a fresh, tonic scent filled the countryside. Sunrays and travelers kicking up dust gradually burnt off the clear, aromatic mist, but Amadou called the smell as a “gift from God” (cadeau de Dieu) for those who slept in the African backwoods.

Amadou met, prayed, and earned baraji with fellow Muslims when passing through rural towns and urban areas and through these encounters developed an impression of Islam outside of Mali. As an old man, he told me that he acknowledged that Muslims submitted to the same religion as part of an international community with negligible differences among members. He said that the practices he observed, such as fasting and praying in conjunction with supererogatory efforts to gain baraji, did not differ among the Muslim populations of the world.

For Amadou, differences among Muslims rested not in practice but in the attitude they held toward one another. One afternoon in 2011 I sat working with Amadou when

194 an Algerian researcher studying vegetation in the region passed by us and struck up a conversation with me in French. Amadou understood and spoke some French and immediately comprehended when the loquacious Algerian stranger sweepingly described life in Mali as “horrible.” Amadou abruptly contradicted the man, saying, “La vie est bonne ici!” The man turned to Amadou, gave an affected smile, and continued his journey down the road.

After the stranger left I told Amadou that I thought the man had been incredibly rude.

“He is an Algerian Arab and thinks he’s better than black Africans,” Amadou said and waved his hand to dismiss the encounter.

“Why do Arabs think they’re better than Africans?” I asked.

“Many Arabs think they’re the only real Muslims in the world,” Amadou answered.

I immediately understood Amadou’s point and sympathized with him as we continued our conversation about foreign perceptions of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, remembering that both Western and Arab civilizations have long and complicated histories of dismissing Muslims in Africa as inferior practitioners of Islam (see Daniel

1960; Harrison 1988; Hunwick 2005). Amadou continued, explaining that Arab Muslims were mistaken in their religious chauvinism, as Islam was suited to any person, irrespective of nationality, language, or skin color. According to Amadou, God held all

Muslims in equal favor so long as they lived in agreement with the precepts of Islam. In

Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Liberia, Amadou met Muslims from an array of backgrounds but perceived no major differences between foreign Muslims and himself.

195 He concluded that their adherence to a shared relationship with God through Muslim

principles, practices, and the pursuit of baraji created unbreakable and meaningful bonds within an international Muslim community (umma). Amadou classified Muslims from around the world as brothers and sisters (balimaw). His perception of his kinship with fellow Muslims was unsurprising, as scholars have long argued that kinship everywhere is constituted by shared moral outlooks and obligations (see Durkheim & Mauss 1963;

Hagen 1999; Launay 2004; Schneider 1984). Thus, Amadou identified kin based on

assessments of behavior and sentiments, and deliberately used metaphors of blood and

biology to affiliate himself with those who lived according to his conception of Islam

when traveling outside of Mali (see Barnard & Good 1984; Hagen 1999; Needham 1971;

Schneider 1984).

Amadou said that he steadily earned baraji during his excursions to Monrovia

by performing obligatory prayers and through modest cash donations to the poor and

beggars he passed along the way. Participating in Muslim practices and amassing baraji

helped to connect Amadou to his friends and family in Mali who he trusted were

similarly gaining baraji through shared Muslim practice. Amadou also earned baraji

through the peaceful relationships he had with the people he met along the way. Many of

the Fula men Amadou worked with carried firearms and encouraged Amadou to do the

same. His partners were most afraid of passing men who had been initiated in hunter

associations (donsow). Such hunters, Amadou explained, had a mixed reputation in West

Africa. Although hunters had protected West African citizens from crime by guarding

forests and patrolling residential neighborhoods during moments of political and civil

196 unrest, some hunters had also abused their authority by assaulting civilians (see Hellweg

2011; Hagberg 1998).

“The hunters (donsow) wore shirts made of jaguar and lion skins and the Fula

men I worked with thought they would kill us if we didn’t give the hunters all of our

valuables and money,” Amadou said.

I asked Amadou if he felt scared or intimidated when he encountered hunters, and

he responded, “Death doesn’t scare me so a hunter certainly doesn’t either! When I was

young it bothered me that a man could make tea in the morning and be in his grave in the

evening. But if you’re afraid of death, you die. If you’re not afraid of death, you die.66

All things, except God, die and there’s a reason behind every death.”67

Amadou carried only a stick (bere) to protect himself from thieves, hunters, and wild animals while traveling to Liberia but reported that neither he nor his partners ever had a brush with bandits, hunters, or predatory animals during their travels, and Amadou only used his stick to lightly beat his cattle when their pace slowed.

Amadou never had any seriously dangerous encounters with hunters, bandits, or wild animals in the forest, and he always thanked God for his safely by reciting benedictions as he passed from rural towns to urban settlements. Amadou noticed that economic and living conditions steadily improved as he and his cattle neared the green, lush coast of Monrovia. As he approached his destination he also found it more difficult to converse with the people he met on the road. Along the way, he remembered that he had little problem meeting people who spoke either Fulfulde or a mutually intelligible

66 Here Amadou appealed to a popular Bamanankan proverb, “N’i siranna i bɛ sa, n’i ma siran i bɛ sa.” 67 Amadou’s remark and courageous attitude about death was altogether unsurprising to me. The topic of death is explored in further detail in chapter six, but I found that old men and women often spoke about their own death without any outward trace of fear. Such poise served as a sign of their commitment to Islam as well as their trust that they had likely earned enough baraji to obtain salvation in the afterlife. 197 dialect of a Mande language, such as Mandinka or Julakan. English is the official

language of Liberia, but Amadou said he managed to get by without speaking any. I

interviewed other Fula men in Mali who had similarly herded cattle to Monrovia during

the 1970s and 80s, although not in the same caravans as Amadou. Most of these men

also had no desire and made no serious attempt to learn English while traveling in

Liberia.

One elderly Fula man had memorized an eclectic group of phrases including, “No

visa. I go?” and “Hey you, give me a match,” which he still remembered during our

conversations about his time in Monrovia.

Whenever a person addressed Amadou in English he reacted by producing a set of

legal documents prepared in Bamako. Although Amadou could not read his papers, he

knew that they gave him permission to pass through Liberia with livestock. Some people

examined the documents while others realized he could not understand English and

walked away from him. Amadou said that knowing some English would have been a

great advantage to him in Monrovia and that such a pursuit would have pleased God and

been rewarded with baraji. He added that many of the questions he had about the city went unanswered because he could not communicate with residents.

“Liberia was very different from Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, but I liked the country because it was peaceful even through it was strange to me,” Amadou said.

The calm atmosphere in Monrovia especially surprised Amadou as he toured the city’s streets and found that firearms were widely available to civilians.

“The shopkeepers sold guns and the children on the streets sold bullets,” Amadou remembered.

198 I asked if Amadou ever saw someone in Monrovia use a weapon, and he laughed,

“No, I didn’t. All the men carried guns, but no one actually used them!”

Amadou generally only stayed in Monrovia for three or four days. Cattle owners

would fly or drive private cars from Mali down to Monrovia and meet Amadou, and

Amadou said that handing the cattle over to their owner was always a smooth transaction.

“I would meet the owner in the evening, he would inspect and sell the cattle that

night, and the next morning I would receive my pay and start looking for a bus to take me

back to Mali.” Amadou always made a point to view the briny coastline of Liberia

before returning home.

The ocean astounded him: “I was amazed by the way the waves crashed on the

shores and I could not believe that African children had the courage to splash and play in

them and dance near the water along the coast.”

Expeditions to Monrovia offered steady wages that Amadou used to support his

family. But after nearly three years and five consecutive trips to Liberia, Amadou’s feet

began to throb at the simple thought of making the trek again.68 In addition to his physical exhaustion, Amadou missed his children during these travels and wanted to rest in Ouélessébougou and build stronger bonds with his family. He suspected that his extensive time herding away from home also wore on his wife and children and compromised their ability to act as a kin group and earn baraji with one another in mind.

68 Amadou said the system of paying Fula men to herd cattle to Monrovia ended about five years after he stopped doing the job. In 1989 a civil war in Liberia destroyed the country’s economy and made its forests too dangerous to traverse. Amadou lamented that Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia who was convicted by International Criminal Court for abetting brutal rebel movements, had “broken” (tiɲɛ) the country he once admired (see Simons & Goodman 2012). In 2011 cattle trucks did most long-distance transportation of cattle herds in West Africa. 199 Amadou’s oldest son, Mohamadou, remembered during an interview, “I used to

cry that I missed my father when he made trips to Liberia. But once he returned I would

also cry because he was a stranger to me.”

Amadou earned baraji by taking an active role in raising his children to be steadfast Muslims. Each of his six children recalled that their father always taught them to take Islam seriously. For example, most Muslims in Ouélessébougou did not expect their children to observe the five formal prayers each day. Amadou, on the other hand, woke his children up from a young age at dawn to perform the first prayer of the day and encouraged them to complete each prayer thereafter.

In addition to the baraji they earned from rearing Muslim children, Nouhouba and

Amadou won baraji by satisfying their children’s physical needs. Amadou’s children remembered that although they grew up very poor, they always had enough food to eat at every meal. Amadou and Nouhouba eventually had six children altogether, three boys and three girls. Amadou particularly taught his children the importance of pursuing baraji and how baraji was intertwined with kin relations. Amadou emphasized the importance of acting peacefully in their relationships with each other. He instructed them not to shout or cry during arguments and that they would earn baraji for managing their

heated emotions. Amadou’s oldest daughter, Sira, told me that she knew from a young

age that crying “broke [her] father’s heart” and displeased God. Amadou moreover

taught his children ways to earn baraji daily by appropriately managing their

relationships with others in the community.

Amadou’s second son, Hamadi (named for Amadou’s father), remembered, “My

father taught me that I gained baraji by greeting and treating my adult neighbors with

200 respect. He also encouraged me to be the first to make amends when I fought with my

friends and explained that apologies reflect a person’s humility, which earns baraji.”

Amadou, like other civilians in Ouélessébougou, recognized that sharing

residence, participating in Muslim practices, and sharing in the pursuit of baraji acted to

build and consolidate kin ties among people. Thus, when a female family friend, in

Ouélessébougou, who was unable to have children asked Amadou and Nouhouba for

permission to raise their second daughter, Fatim, Amadou and Nouhouba agreed.69

Amadou felt confident that Fatim would be easily integrated into her new family, and that

their friend was a good Muslim woman and would raise Fatim according to the same

principles and practices that he and Nouhouba stressed in their home.

Although Fatim had no consanguinal or affinal ties to her caregivers, she grew up

with kin by virtue of the fact that in Ouélessébougou typically long-term members of a

shared compound are viewed as kin. In fact, the term that has been translated from

Bamanankan to French and English for family (somɔgɔw) is etymologically interpreted as

“house people” (so meaning house, mɔgɔw meaning people) (Bailleul 2006: 122; Bird et al. 1977: 294; Hellweg 2011: 56-61). Fatim also remained closely attached to Nouhouba,

Amadou, and her siblings and visited their compound nearly every day throughout her childhood and adult life.

I noted during my fieldwork that most compounds in southern Mali had at least one member living in the compound under circumstances that challenge the rigidity of patrilineal and patrilocal kinship organization (cf. Leynaud & Cisse 1978; Cissé 1970).

The ease with which kin groups incorporated outsiders into their household kinship

69 Amadou was vague in describing this woman’s fertility problems and did not know what her exact issues had been when I pressed for more information. In Mali, childlessness was a source of severe stress and anxiety for couples, and, typically, the woman was blamed (Hörbst 2008: 118-137). 201 networks showed that Malians understood kinship as fluid and based on more than shared genetic makeup. Muslim compound members easily integrated non-biological kin into their compounds, typically with no demands that they break ties with their previous kin networks to align with the new compound but with the anticipation that new members would earn baraji together through their shared commitment to Islam. The regularity of such arrangements offered evidence that Malians could concurrently identify with multiple, seemingly disparate kin groups with little disruption to their lives or to the groups with which they identified.

Compounds in Ouélessébougou, in keeping with Lévi-Strauss’s description of house societies, represented a central point of reference for kinship. As such, residents saw compounds as domains where people who “belonged” together could reside alongside each other. It has elsewhere been argued that outsiders enjoyed full assimilation into compounds, but their origin as “stranger” (dunan) was never entirely forgotten (Hopkins 1971:102). But my project does not substantiate this claim. During my fieldwork people in Ouélessébougou explained that residents counted on the people living in their compound to act as kin while perpetuating and upholding the moral values of the compound. In Muslim compounds in Ouélessébougou these expectations for residents’ social lives and obligations were primarily articulated through a shared submission to Islam in the form of pursuing baraji, and Muslim residents looked to kinship to create and find a social group through which they could articulate and sustain their beliefs and practices.

Amadou and Nouhouba viewed their compound as a key site in which to promote the practice of Islam. As parents, they strove to bequeath an understanding and

202 dedication to Islam to each of their children, especially through the group performance of

daily prayers and requisite fasting during Ramadan. Ultimately, however, they believed

that children should be allowed to make their own personal decisions on how to practice

Islam and earn baraji. For example, Amadou encouraged his daughters to style their natural hair without using extensions, weaves, or chemicals. In Mali, as throughout

Africa, women emulated European standards of beauty often associated with pale skin and straight hair. As such, skin bleaches, synthetic hair extensions and braids, and wigs were widely advertised and sold in Mali. Many parents and grandparents in

Ouélessébougou tried to dissuade their children from buying these products. One night

Yirigoi Konaté, the grandmother of the compound I lived in during my fieldwork, told her grandchildren the following tale to try to deter them from altering their appearance to look European:

One day a donkey went to visit a lion in the forest. The donkey said, “Oh lion! You’re so pretty and I want to look like you!” The lion replied, “You have long ears. You can’t look like me.” The donkey went home and cut his ears. The next day he went back to the lion and said, “Look! I cut my ears in order to look like you.” The lion sighed and told the donkey, “You still don’t look like me, and now you don’t look like you either.”

Even though many people in Mali found skin bleaches and hair extensions repellent, plenty of women chose to use them. Women who used synthetic hair products avoided getting their hair wet in order to preserve their hairstyles, and Amadou found this unacceptable because the full ablution required for prayer and participation in other

Muslim practices calls for Muslims to wash their head three times. On one occasion

Amadou’s youngest daughter, Tènè, went against her father’s counsel to avoid artificial hair and asked a friend to braid her short, natural hair with synthetic extensions.

203 “When my father saw me he didn’t act angry,” Tènè recalled. “But he reminded me that I could not properly do my ablutions if I had to avoid putting water over my head. It was my own choice, and I decided on my own to take the fake hair out.”

Amadou remembered this incident and recalled the event as an instructive moment in which he realized that as his children became adults they would uphold the

Muslim principles he had taught them and would successfully earn baraji for him after his death.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

Soon after Amadou stopped herding cattle to Monrovia he discovered that he could not earn enough income to support his family by herding for cattle owners in the

Ouélessébougou area, and he began to consider other occupations.

“At the time, rural villages in southern Mali and northern Guinea did not have shops (butigi) for residents to buy things like shoes, cigarettes, sugar, tea, cloth, and candy,” he said.

Given the familiarity Amadou had with the geography of the region, which he had cultivated through years of herding cattle, he decided in the mid-1980s to purchase a bicycle, strap it high and wide with as many sellable products as possible, and ride through villages selling otherwise inaccessible goods to the rural populace. Amadou would leave his family for several weeks at a time, which still made commerce better than herding in terms of time away from his family. The days came and went as Amadou pedaled his heavy, fixed-gear bicycle down unchartered trails and into small villages. He rode the same route on each of his trips, beginning in Ouélessébougou and ending in

204 Balandougouba in the northeast corner of Guinea by way of Dalabala, Sélingué, Kobada,

Samaya, and their surrounding hamlets.

Because his earnings depended on having those items that interested people on hand, Amadou remembered that he often fastened too many goods to his bike to be sure that he always had an inventory that attracted customers.

“I strapped everything I sold to my bicycle using long, rubber straps, but no matter how I tied them, things were always falling from my bike. I constantly had to stop, collect the items, and retie my haul!” he remembered.

Most days at lunchtime the families to whom Amadou sold items would invite him to eat lunch with them and relax in their compound during the heat of the day. In the evenings, Amadou could similarly expect that at least one of his customers would insist that he eat dinner and sleep in his or her compound. Bamanankan speakers have an expression, “The stranger is like the dew” (Dunan ye ngomi ye). Hosts recognized that the time they would spend with Amadou would be fleeting, but they nevertheless extended their hospitality and heartfelt kindness to him at their own personal cost, knowing they would ultimately be repaid for their generosity with baraji.

“Why did these unfamiliar hosts trust you?” I asked Amadou. “You could have been a thief! And why did you trust them not to mistreat you?”

“We are all children of Adam (hadamadenw),” Amadou responded.

“And what is the significance of that?” I asked.

“People are all siblings (balimaw),” he elaborated, “and we earn baraji by caring for each other.”

205 Amadou explained that strangers welcomed him into their homes on the premise

that they were distant kin and due to the sense of obligation this relationship evoked. I

learned from Amadou that the hospitality he relied on from strangers became an

expression of the state of social relationships in Mali, particularly the degree to which

West Africans agreed that all people should treat one another as siblings even though

time and distance had attenuated bonds of kinship. Amadou believed that the assumption

that all people were siblings had diminished in recent years. He said that ways of

thinking about and treating visitors had become “mixed up” (ɲagami) in twenty-first century Mali. Amadou regularly complained that people had become more suspicious and less trusting of each another and were, consequently, disinclined to treat each other with the same hospitality that they would extend to recognized kin. Although Amadou regretted these developments, he recognized that during his adult life he had also grown increasingly suspicious of acting too generously toward people he did not know.

Amadou had experiences while working as a salesman that led him to distrust many of the people he met, and he gradually began to approach most of his customers as distant strangers, rather than kin, in order to protect himself from those who might cheat him. For example, he recounted that one day a woman in Sélingué, a town sixty kilometers southwest of Bamako, asked him to lend her ten kilograms of sugar so she could make flavored ice to sell. She promised Amadou she would pay him back as soon as she had sold her product. Amadou trusted her and gave her his sugar. Several weeks passed without Amadou seeing his debtor when he rode through Sélingué on his bicycle and began to ask residents about her whereabouts. He learned that she had moved to

Mopti, a city more than 750 kilometers north of Sélingué. Amadou identified this type of

206 deceit—which he noted had become endemic in West Africa—as a cause for the

increasing reserve and lack of trust between people.70

In addition to becoming more suspicious of strangers while working as a traveling

merchant, Amadou also came to perceive the forest as being more dangerous than he had

in the past. Although years of herding had accustomed Amadou to working in forests, he

felt vulnerable and insecure about traveling alone and without the company of a herd of

cattle. He purchased a rifle and carried it slung over his shoulder to protect himself.

Amadou did not like having a gun, but as he had heard stories about the frequency of

robberies and wild animal attacks on humans in the backcountry, he came to see owning

a weapon as necessary.

Amadou drew his weapon on only one occasion. One morning, while riding his

bicycle down a narrow dirt path in the forest, he heard a rustling in the thicket. His

muscles tightened, and his mind snapped to attention when suddenly a large baboon (gɔn) appeared on the trail.

“It was the largest baboon I’d ever seen!” Amadou recalled. “I stopped my bike, and the baboon and I began to stare at each other. Suddenly the baboon started moving toward me and I realized that it wasn’t afraid of me. This wasn’t an ordinary

70 Although Amadou said that the inclination to treat strangers as kin had cooled in 2011 in comparison to the familiarity and confidence with which people had dealt with each other in the past, addressing groups and audiences as “my siblings” (n’ balimaw) remained a popular salutation in Mali, especially for public speakers. For example, newscasters for Mali’s national radio and television broadcasting service for ORTM (Office de radiodiffusion et de télévision du Mali), often greeted their viewers for their weekly newscast (dogokun kibaru) in the Bambara language as “my siblings.” Likewise during the March 2012 coup d’état in Mali political and resistance leaders both appealed to Mali’s populace in their speeches by addressing their audience as “my siblings.” For instance, Dr. Adama Traoré, the vice-president for Coordination of Mali's Patriotic Organizations (COPAM), a pro-coup d’état group, drew on ties of kinship as well as the pervasive tenet of baraji in his official declaration on the coup by beginning his speech with “my siblings,” and concluding by saying, “May baraji be with you all” (Aw ni baraji). The interim Prime Minister of Mali, Dr. Cheick Modibo Diarra, also addressed Malians as “siblings” in his appeal for peace following the coup. 207 baboon! I drew my rifle and pointed it at his face. Our eyes met for a moment and then

it turned quickly and moved off the trail. I was glad I had a gun that day!”

When off the road and out of the forest, Amadou had more time together with

his wife, children, and friends in Ouélessébougou. He recounted that one of the most

important decisions that Nouhouba and he had made during their children’s early lives

concerned whether or not to enroll them in school. During my fieldwork I regularly met

parents who choose not to send their children to school and instead educated them in the

family’s profession, such as herding or farming. This decision seemed sensible given

that the chances of finding employment after having gone through the public education

system were slim. When their children were young, Amadou and Nouhouba could

scarcely see the worth in sending their children to school. Amadou perceived that quality

education in Mali was reserved for the rich, who paid for private schools and then went

abroad for higher education.

Amadou and Nouhouba ultimately made different choices for each of their six

children regarding their education. All of Amadou’s children, except his youngest son,

Modibo, received at least one year of education from both the local public school and

medersa. Modibo was born mentally retarded, a condition that Amadou deemed came

from God. Amadou assessed that Modibo would not do well in school, and so Amadou

focused on teaching Modibo how to herd and practice Islam so that he could successfully

work and earn baraji. During my fieldwork, Modibo was in his thirties and continued to live with Amadou and Nouhouba. He contributed to the compound by caring for his family’s small flock of sheep, and he helped his mother by making occasional trips to the market. Like his father, Modibo preferred the open space and freedom of the forest to

208 crowded public places and detested when Nouhouba sent him to the market and

complained to me about it on several occasions. On one particular morning, when I

passed Modibo, he was fuming while on his way to the market. He uncharacteristically

greeted me by letting off an exaggerated sigh and quickening his pace. Despite these rare

moments of defiance toward his parents and chores, Modibo was the most pious of

Amadou’s children in Amadou’s eyes. Amadou told me, for instance, me that Modibo

had insisted on fasting during Ramadan since childhood, prayed in the mosque for every

prayer from a young age, and acted with notable kindness, obedience, industry, and

honesty in his daily life.

Although Modibo was largely self-disciplined from an early age, Amadou’s other

children required closer attention and occasional punishment. Amadou and Nouhouba

assumed responsibility for their children’s conduct and tried to instruct them on how to

live as honorable Muslims and earn adequate baraji. Amadou’s own father had beat

Amadou on one occasion during his childhood, and Amadou found it unsavory as a father to hit his children if and when severe offenses demanded it.

“It’s not a sin to beat a child. If you don’t hit your children, they won’t know much as adults,” he opined.

Yet Amadou had always abhorred violent behavior and conflict. Fortunately for him, he only found one instance in his experience that warranted beating one of his children. One afternoon Amadou’s neighbor told him that she had seen Amadou’s oldest son, Mohamadou, collecting mangoes with his friends in the forest when he should have been at school.

“I asked Mohamadou where he had been when he finally came home at the end of

209 the day,” Amadou recounted. “He told a lie and said he’d spent the day at school. I

grabbed him in anger and raised my arm to hit his back, but he stood up and tried to break

free at the same moment that my forearm came down on him. WHACK! I broke my arm

bone cleanly in half against his head.”

Amadou was in need of a healer. He told me that men from the Coulibaly clan

possessed a secret and specialized knowledge (dalilu) for healing broken bones. But, as with other forms of dalilu, people seeking to commercialize and profit from their occult

abilities had compromised their expertise. With his broken arm aching and hanging

limply from a homemade sling, Amadou asked friends in Ouélessébougou if they knew a

reputable Coulibaly man who could heal him. He learned that the nearest Coulibaly with

such aptitude lived in Mana, a town about four kilometers directly north of

Ouélessébougou. Amadou recalled that he broke his arm during Ramadan. He walked,

as a result, everyday for weeks on an empty stomach to this man’s home in Mana for

treatment. Each day the Coulibaly man massaged Amadou’s arm, washed it in specially

prepared elixirs, and recited incantations (kilisi) and benedictions (dubaw) for Amadou.

Amadou did not pay money for these treatments, but the man healed on the

understanding that the he would one day be repaid by God with baraji for helping injured

members of his community. Within weeks Amadou’s arm was rehabilitated, and he was

able to ride a bicycle again and return to work.

Life was good for Amadou, but his finances were difficult. He found that he had

just enough money to buy rice, sauce condiments (nasɔngɔ), medicine, and clothing for

his family during the years he worked as a traveling salesman. But it was difficult for

him to save money once he had met his family’s basic needs. Living hand-to-mouth

210 made Amadou feel increasingly nervous. He began to ask friends if they knew of any

lucrative job opportunities in the region and several people told him they had heard that

men could make significant money working in the gold mines in Guinea. Amadou

initially dismissed the prospect. He liked spending as much time as possible in

Ouélessébougou, where he could manage his responsibilities as compound chief (dutigi)

in his family residence and ensure that all members of his household upheld the behaviors

and Muslim practices that he valued. But without other appealing possibilities, he

weighed the prospect of financial security that mining gold might bring him against the

isolation of living far from his home and family and decided to travel to Guinea and seek

work in a gold mine.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

In the late 1980s Amadou left his family in Ouélessébougou and relocated to

Fatoya, a village known for its alluvial gold deposits in northwest Guinea, to begin work at an artisanal gold mine. Artisanal mining operations are considered especially dangerous, as miners are exposed to dangerous levels of mercury exposure though direct contact with the skin and the inhalation of mercury vapor (Hilson 2003: 164, 240).

Moreover, because panners are typically unregulated, self-employed, and paid according to the weight of how much gold they extract, they consequently overwork themselves and become victims of fatigue-related accidents (see Hilson 2003). Amadou dealt with poor health and exhaustion during the several years he lived and worked as a miner in Fatoya and classified mining as the most difficult job he had worked in his lifetime.

In addition to the physical stresses to his health, Amadou felt emotionally vexed and was often involved in fights with the other men who mined in the area. Wealthy

211 businessmen from Bamako, Amadou said, paid him and other miners according to the

gross weight of gold they extracted. These wealthy men then employed jewelers to

fashion expensive necklaces, earrings, beads, bracelets, and other gold-incised

accessories from the gold. On several occasions Amadou went weeks without earning

significant wages and felt compelled to confront his co-workers for their laziness

(salabaatɔya), an indulgence that Amadou found immoral.

“A single person cannot mine gold!” Amadou exclaimed. “I needed help, but every afternoon the other men would want to nap or play cards instead of working.”

If he worked consistently everyday, Amadou remembered that he and the other miners could typically collect enough gold to sell every three days. I wondered about the security of the gold that Amadou extracted during the days that passed between sales.

“Didn’t you worry that one of the men you worked with would steal the gold from the group before you sold it?” I asked.

“Gold is bad! Everyone knows that.” Amadou told me. “If a person steals gold, the gold will kill them and their entire family.”

Amadou recalled that he had heard stories throughout his life about compounds in which all residents had suddenly and mysteriously died after one member of the compound stole gold, a good example of how the moral decisions an individual makes can impact his or her entire family. He added that, in the past, all power objects (jɔ) were

comprised simply of small nuggets of gold or silver stored in cloth pouches. Owners

merely whispered their desires to the precious metals and their wishes were soon

actualized.

212 “Gold has too much power for a single person to handle it in large quantities,”

Amadou said. “All the miners knew that.”

Although regular conflicts developed between miners over one another’s’ work

ethic, Amadou said that the majority of the men he worked with were Muslim and that

they encouraged one another’s practice of Islam. They stopped their work whenever

possible for prayers, fasted together throughout Ramadan, and encouraged each other to

save a portion of their income to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Amadou had dreamed

of visiting Mecca as a child, but reality had a way of wiping out his childhood wishes,

and he knew he would likely never be able to save enough to visit Mecca and also

provide for his family. Amadou thought about his family constantly while in Guinea. He

missed them and grew especially melancholy spending the end of Ramadan and Tabaski

without his wife and children. He and the men he worked with took holidays off from

their work in order to feast, pray, and celebrate with one another, but he longed to see his

family and observe Muslim holidays with them in Ouélessébougou. Amadou explained

that practicing Islam and earning baraji while mining helped him to feel connected to his family.

After several years working in Guinea, Amadou decided it was time to return to

Ouélessébougou. He had built up a modest savings working as a miner, but he felt too tired and lonely to remain in Guinea. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he returned to Ouélessébougou determined to find permanent work in the area to provide for his household.

⟆ ⟆ ⟆

213 Amadou knew when he decided to return to Ouélessébougou from Guinea that he could not fully support his family by herding in the area. He realized that he needed to add further income to what herding would generate and knew that farming would give him the greatest prospect of extra income. Amadou was originally reluctant to farm.

Like many other Fula men, he approached farming with contempt and considered cattle husbandry a superior profession (see Hopen 1958: 29-30). In the end, he put his family’s welfare above his personal preferences and began to farm.

Upon returning to Ouélessébougou, Amadou contacted a landowner he knew through friends to inquire about using one of his fields to grow peanuts. The landowner gave Amadou permission to use the land without charge. For the rest of his adulthood,

Amadou owned and herded occasional cattle and sheep but farmed as his primary profession. Amadou had learned to farm in his childhood while working at Abdoulaye’s medersa, and his farming pursuits in Ouélessébougou prospered with the help of his children. Each of Amadou’s children remembered that their father woke them at sunrise every morning, and, after a modest porridge (seri) breakfast, they would walk out to

Amadou’s field together and begin their daily farming routine, which involved planting, tilling, and harvesting peanuts, on the dusty outskirts of town. Spending prolonged periods in the field fostered cohesion between Amadou and his children, which made

Amadou especially content given that his previous work in herding, trading, and mining had required him to pass extended periods of time away from home. Amadou passed the time in their field by telling his children stories from his varied life experiences and explaining the important role that Islam had played in his life. All of Amadou’s children said that Amadou’s dedication to Islam and strong work ethic were the attributes they

214 most admired most in their father. Like Amadou, they similarly valued work as a means to gain baraji.

Even while living happily as a husband and father, Amadou thought often of his mother, siblings, and memories from his childhood in Npièbougou. Every few years

Amadou would arrange for his aging mother, Ina, to travel from Npièbougou to

Ouélessébougou to visit him and his family.

“On her final visit to Ouélessébougou, I begged her to stay with me and not return to Npièbougou. She had become very old and I wanted us to be together. I promised her that I could take good care of her,” Amadou said sadly. But Ina interrupted Amadou’s invitation and immediately refused, “She told me that a mother should not live with her youngest child if her older children are alive to care for her.”

Shortly after Ina returned home to Npièbougou from Ouélessébougou, Amadou received news that his mother had died. Filled with grief, Amadou solemnly arranged to travel immediately to Npièbougou to attend a sacrifice held in Ina’s honor. As the years continued to pass, Amadou made six more trips to Npièbougou after the death of each of his siblings.

Amadou saw it as his duty as a Muslim to overcome the emotional distress that accompanied the death of each of his family members. He believed that he would see his mother and siblings after his own death and relied on the tenet of baraji to keep his connection to deceased kin active during the rest of his earthly life. Bonds of kinship in

West Africa did not rupture after death and continued to require effort and time to maintain. Amadou moved through his adult life and advancing years thinking often of his deceased family and feeling confident that the baraji he had earned pleased,

215 benefitted, and continually connected him to his grandparents, parents, and siblings. In

essence, kinship in West Africa encompassed Islam. In West Africa, Muslims

reconfigured their practice of Islam and understanding of baraji throughout their lives to adapt to new conditions and social dynamics, such as kin relations. Amadou, accordingly, grew to understand and evaluate his kin relationships through baraji. His deceased and living kin inspired him as he felt an expectation to earn baraji in all the intricate ways his kin group had taught him during his childhood and adolescence.

The dissolution and expansion of kin relationships was common in West Africa, and Amadou’s adult life demonstrates how his kin group changed and expanded through experiences with birth, maturity, frequent relocations, marriage, and death. To ensure the prosperity of his kin group, Amadou similarly instructed members of his household in practices he had adopted for earning baraji. Amadou, like other Muslims in West Africa, formalized, strengthened, and sustained his relationships with kin through his own efforts to earn baraji and by supporting his family’s practice of Islam.

Amadou worked alongside his family as a farmer and part-time herder for the remainder of his middle-aged adult life. As the seasons changed and years passed, the changes he noticed in himself and in his children compelled him to realize that he was becoming an old man (cɛkɔrɔba), and he began to contemplate the implications of

entering the final stage of his life. His children began to speak of marriage, moving away

from Ouélessébougou in search of work, and they openly mused about having children of

their own. Every time Amadou looked in the mirror he noticed more gray hairs, white

whiskers, and the lines in his face deepening. Amadou welcomed these changes and the

process of aging, knowing that old age was the most dignified time of one’s life and

216 feeling appreciative that God had permitted him to have the experience of leading his household and community as an elder.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have presented Amadou’s experiences as a middle-aged husband and father. I have argued that Islam and efforts to acquire baraji in West Africa must be understood in terms of residential affiliation and of the collaborative pursuit of baraji by kin groups, which benefits both living and deceased Muslims. As Amadou pursued his various occupations, which included cattle herding, commerce, gold mining, and farming, he was obliged to travel and live throughout West Africa. Yet he remained connected to his kin through his practice of Islam, which in turn enabled him to perceive the Muslims he met on his various journeys as distant kin and siblings (balimaw). As members of a vast, extended kin network, Muslims in West Africa worked to attain baraji in order to enter paradise and continue their familial relationships in the afterlife. They operated on the understanding that the baraji they earned stood to benefit both themselves and those who had died before them. Amadou’s experiences showed that Islam in West Africa serves as a key idiom by which people evaluated and organized kin relationships and membership in residential compounds and that kin actively evaluated the people with whom they shared a residence in terms of their mutual willingness to cooperate in the practice of Islam.

Throughout Amadou’s adulthood, he viewed his marriage with his wife and his relationships with his children and deceased relatives as responsibilities that motivated his practice of Islam and vice versa. In the next chapter, I show how aging allowed

Amadou to spend an unprecedented amount of time pursuing baraji by participating in

217 funeral rites and sacrifices, which I describe, and by serving as muezzin for

Ouélessébougou’s largest mosque. In his advancing years, Amadou also spent more time

reflecting on his life and the implications of changes he had endured since his early

childhood in Npièbougou. When I met Amadou as an old man, he often described

himself to me as a “sad” (dusukasi) and “troubled” (kɔnɔganko) man. Amadou had also noticed throughout his lifetime drastic and detrimental changes to Mali’s environment, which he directly attributed to God, and he worried about the security of future generations. Chapter six will examine how Amadou reconciled his preference and longing for the past with his present circumstances as an elderly man in early twenty- first-century Ouélessébougou.

218 CHAPTER SIX

GROWING OLD

Bamanankan speakers have a saying, “Good care of oneself leads to a good old age” (Jantoyɛrɛla, kɔrɔko ka ɲi). Amadou had enjoyed good health during his childhood and adult life, but he started to consider ways to better preserve his physical condition as he became keenly aware that he was aging. He wanted to honor the experience of looking, feeling, and growing older, as he had looked forward to the prospect of becoming an old man since childhood. He viewed the opportunity to grow old as a scarce and important opportunity that God only granted to select persons. Indeed, life expectancy at birth in early twenty-first century West Africa was only forty-six, and most people died before reaching their senior years from malnutrition, infectious and parasitic diseases, or injuries sustained in accidents (World Bank 2006: 13). Amadou revered elderhood as the most respectable phase that a person could reach in the course of one’s lifetime and looked forward to becoming a recognized elder in his community. In this chapter I show how elderhood, as the final stage in the life cycle, offered elderly West

African Muslims a special opportunity to earn baraji at an unprecedented rate by participating in rituals and serving their kin groups and communities. Amadou accepted these opportunities with solemnity and publically served his community as a town elder while also privately reflecting on the future of the world, especially given the poor state of its environment and corrupt political leadership.

Amadou first made changes to his outward appearance to mark his aging process.

During his years as a middle-aged adult, he typically wore used trousers and short-

219 sleeved shirts that had been sent to West Africa from European and North American countries, but this attire did not seem appropriate to him as an elder.

“An old man wearing second-hand clothing (yuguyugu)?” Amadou imagined.

“Everyone would laugh at him!”

Amadou gave his imported knit polo shirts and cotton pants to younger friends and began to dress in homespun, baggy trousers paired with matching, loose, flowing robes with long sleeves (boubou) and covered his head with a small cap (kufi). Most days he wore a grey t-shirt underneath his robe, explaining that old age caused him to feel cold easily and necessitated the extra layer. He grew a short beard that displayed his white whiskers as the wrinkles in Amadou’s face expanded, testifying to a lifetime of laughter, worry, and long days spent working under the sun. He slowly lost all but his top front teeth and one lower molar, which limited the foods he could enjoy. Amadou gave up eating meat because his remaining teeth were in too poor a condition to chew.

He relied on fish as a principle, but rare, source of protein. Like other elderly men and women in Mali, he stopped eating salt at night in a stated effort to regulate his blood pressure. Amadou, moreover, eventually changed his daily schedule and occupation to mark his status as an old man (cɛkɔrɔba). His slim frame became tired and frail, and he decided to stop farming in an effort to preserve his health and lead his life in accord with what he viewed as the responsibilities of a cɛkɔrɔba. Old men and women enjoyed high levels of social, political, religious, and familial power in West Africa, and elders used age and seniority to justify the power that they had over their communities and family

(see Riesman 177: 35). Amadou also regarded old age as a time reserved for intense devotion to Islam, the focused pursuit of baraji, and an intense involvement in his

220 community. Accordingly, he felt obliged to spend his days working within town limits

and in close proximity to Ouélessébougou’s central mosque.

This last chapter in Amadou’s life story brings my inquiry into his personal

history to a close. Amadou’s experiences and perspectives as an elder continue to reveal

the ways he practiced Islam and earned baraji while reflected his reputation as an asset to his community for his dignity, authority, and sagacity. In 1967 Margaret Clark classically observed that, judging from anthropological accounts, “the span of years between the achievement of adult status and one’s funerary rites is either an ethnographic vacuum or a vast monotonous plateau of invariable behavior” (55; see also Cohen 1994:

137). Shortly after Clark’s observation an abundance of ethnographic literature emerged, mostly with Euro-American focus on aging, to fill this void and create a subfield of gero- anthropology (see Amoss & Harrell 1981; Bernardi 1985; Fortes & Evans-Pritchard

1940; Fry 1980; Kaufman 1986; Kertzer & Keith 1984; Kugelmass 1986; Lock 1993;

Luborsky & Sankar 1993; Myerhoff 1978; Sokolovsky 1990). To extend these efforts by adding an account of an elder West African man, this chapter reveals that aging prompted striking changes in Amadou’s daily life. I argue that elderhood represented the most crucial and distinctive point of his lifetime. As such, this phase in Amadou’s life story contributes to anthropological understandings of old age, baraji, and the dynamic nature of Islam in Mali by paying systematic attention to the role Amadou played in his town as a recognized Muslim elder.

The chapter illuminates the main events and viewpoints that Amadou encountered during his time as a cɛkɔrɔba in Ouélessébougou. I show the essential role that elders

played in daily and ritual life in West Africa and how Amadou valued and used his

221 position as a cɛkɔrɔba to participate in Muslim practices that allowed him to earn baraji

at an unparalleled rate. In this way, I pay special attention to the ways in which Amadou

earned substantial amounts of baraji as an old man who was willing and available to attend and participate in newborn naming ceremonies, wedding celebrations, funerals, and sacrifices. I also detail how Amadou amassed baraji by serving as muezzin at the

town’s largest mosque and overseeing the mosque’s security and basic maintenance.

Amadou also viewed old age as a time for extended reflection on the changes a person

had experienced over his or her lifespan. He talked about his own life without a shadow

of disappointment but was critical of the world he lived in and that he would leave behind

for his descendants. Like other residents of Ouélessébougou, Amadou often spoke of the

way Mali’s climate had become increasingly inhospitable. This chapter, therefore,

concludes with ethnographic vignettes about the environmental changes that Amadou and

other people in Ouélessébougou have witnessed during their lifetimes. I also relate how

Amadou and other people in Ouélessébougou managed and assessed the causes of

climate change in Muslim terms.

☪ ☪ ☪

Amadou continued to farm on his small field on the outskirts of Ouélessébougou

until shortly after the turn of the new millennium. In 2001 he began to feel continually

winded and experienced sharp pains when he tried to catch his breath while farming.

Alongside his breathing problems, he developed a case of chronic coughing and fatigue

that eventually prompted him to seek treatment from the public clinic near his home in

Ouélessébougou. Amadou’s doctor diagnosed him with pneumonia and prescribed a

course of numerous medicines that Amadou described as “expensive” (gɛlɛn) and

222 “ineffective” (fu). Amadou ultimately gave up on medicinal treatments for his case of pneumonia and remembered that he spent nearly two years resting in bed in order to recover from his sickness. During this time Amadou deemed himself incapable of fasting and refrained from participating in Ramadan for the first time since his young adulthood.

He said that fasting was not compulsory if a Muslim was in poor health. Although skipping Ramadan did not weigh as a sin because of his sickness, Amadou regretfully forfeited the baraji that he would have otherwise earned.

After Amadou recovered from his two-year bout of pneumonia he began to consider returning to full-time work. Although I knew many old men in Ouélessébougou who farmed well into their senior years, Amadou thought farming was too physically intense for his old age and decided to earn his living by making and selling rope to

Ouélessébougou residents. Still he worried less about money the older he became knowing that he, like other elders in West Africa, could rely on his growing children to find jobs and begin contributing to his subsistence. For instance, by the time Amadou became an old man, Amadou’s oldest child, Mohamadou, had moved south in search of labor in Côte d’Ivoire’s towns, and Mohamadou sent money to his father whenever he could afford to do so. Having children offered parents invaluable experiences for earning baraji during and after their mortal lifetime, but West Africans also considered parenthood necessary to ensure that they be properly cared for during their senior years.

I celebrated my thirtieth birthday during my fieldwork in 2011, and my age prompted people in Ouélessébougou to ask me why I did not have any children. I explained that, as a student, I felt that I could not afford to raise a child. My response perplexed my friends, especially the grandmother of the compound where I lived, Yirigoi

223 Konaté. Yirigoi regularly asked me in both public and private how I could not afford to

have children and wondered who would care for me when I grew old. She was appalled

when I explained that most adult children in America did not invite their parents to live

with them. In West Africa, Yirigoi told me, siblings fight for the privilege of caring for

an aging parent, and middle-aged adults earned baraji by supporting the elderly and consequently displaying their selfless generosity to God.

Figure 18: The interior of Fousseyni’s eclectic shop

Although Amadou could depend on his children to give him extra money to support himself, Amadou liked to work. He made rope to earn extra income for him and his wife, Nouhouba. Amadou used the techniques that his father, Hamadi, had taught him during childhood to make rope needed for such daily matters as drawing water from the well, tying livestock, and securing cargo for transportation. Amadou wanted a reserved workspace for his new venture. He asked Fousseyni Soumaré, a shopkeeper who ran a boutique next to the spot where Amadou’s closest friend, Koniba Doumbia,

224 worked as a welder, if he could make rope on the cement platform in front of Fousseyni’s

shop. Fousseyni farmed in addition to retailing. He sold an array of goods, from farm

tools to wooden boards for writing the Qur’an (walan), but most weeks he only opened his shop on Friday for Ouélessébougou’s market day. Fousseyni welcomed Amadou to work in front of his boutique, and the two men agreed that Amadou would take Fridays off from his work so that Fousseyni would have the space he needed to open his shop on market days.

☪ ☪ ☪

Amadou enjoyed making rope, but he daydreamed in his old age about resuming his work as cattle herder. As a Fula man, Amadou considered cattle herding his natural occupation. When I met Amadou, he said he wanted to travel to the United States. His wish to visit the U.S. was not uncommon, and most people I met told me that they hoped to move to America, learn English, and earn a university degree. Always a free spirit,

Amadou had no interest in pursuing any such hackneyed schemes. He imagined America instead as a place where he could herd cattle again. Dreams came true in the serene lands of America, and, in Amadou’s mind, the country could reenergize and offer an elderly man the chance to return to an exhausting occupation.

Too tired in his old age to herd cattle in West Africa, Amadou made the best of his circumstances—as he always had. He used working in town and his status as a cɛkɔrɔba elder to immerse himself in Ouélessébougou’s public and ritual life. As an

elderly man, his presence at rites of passage such as naming ceremonies (den kun di),

weddings (furusiri), funerals (jɛnɛja), and posthumous sacrifices (saraka) was highly

recognized, sought after, and honored. During the time I spent working with Amadou,

225 almost everyday at least one townsperson stopped by his workspace to notify him of the

day, time, and place of an imminent ritual and to request his attendance along with other

cɛkɔrɔbaw who worked and socialized nearby.

Amadou earned an inestimable sum of baraji by attending these events and

enjoyed being the preferred guest at festivities that marked births and marriages in his

friends’ and neighbors’ compounds. He and the other old men and women

(musokɔrɔbaw) enjoyed special treatment and were offered coveted chairs and the first servings of highly anticipated refreshments. But his obligation to attend funerals and posthumous sacrifices always dampened Amadou’s otherwise joyful disposition.

“Learning how to feel sad and not cry is a necessary part of becoming an old man,” Amadou told me of his ability to always outwardly control, at least in public, his sorrow.

Amadou had ample opportunity to master his response to loss and sadness.

Living in Mali, he was already overly familiar with illness and death. When loved ones died, families assured that funerary and burial practices took place within one day of the death. Families normally preserved deceased old men and women until the morning following their passing so that word of the death could spread, and the townspeople could arrange to attend the funeral. Children, on the other hand, were typically buried within hours of their death and in less elaborate services.

I clearly remember the first funeral for a child that I attended in Mali. On

September 3, 2011, during the day's third prayer (fitiri), I sat in the stale afternoon heat making a rope by myself while Amadou prayed in the mosque. I looked up from my work and noticed my great-aunt (tɛnɛmuso), Djègèni, walking toward me carrying a child

226 on her back. Because old women in Mali rarely transported children, I immediately took alarm and stood up. As she came near I noticed that she had completely covered the child with a headscarf.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“My granddaughter is dead,” Djègèni responded and continued walking.

A man sitting nearby who overheard our brief conversation immediately climbed on his motorcycle and went after Djègèni to offer her a ride the rest of the way home. I followed on foot.

When I arrived at home I found a small group of women calmly laying down plastic mats in Djègèni’s house. They placed Djègèni’s dead granddaughter, named

Mouli, in the center of the largest mat and wrapped her loosely in two used headscarves while I stood uselessly in the doorway.

One woman noticed my overwhelmed eyes and approached me saying, “Silence yourself (i makun),” over and over again.

“I feel like I need to do something,” I replied.

The woman told me that Mouli’s mother had spent all her money on medicine.

“She needs soap to wash her daughter and a white cloth to bury her in. Give her money if you can.”

“Of course. How much?”

“500.”71

I pulled 1000 CFA from my wallet and went back into the house.

71 About $1.00 USD. 227 While Bourama, the chief of my compound, dug a hole for Mouli’s grave at the

public cemetery, Amadou arrived at my compound. He and another old man walked

rapidly across our courtyard and into Djègèni’s house and soon after walked back out

carrying Mouli’s body and headed directly toward our latrine area. Four other men

followed behind carrying buckets of hot water that Bourama’s wife, Kadja, had

purposefully heated over the fire. More than twenty minutes elapsed before the men

returned carrying a small bundle. Mouli had been washed, wrapped in white, and rolled

into a new, plastic mat. They laid Mouli’s body down near the compound's gate and put

a large rock in front of it to prevent it from rolling down the subtle slope. The men

quickly washed to prepare to pray.

Amadou led the prayer. The people in Ouélessébougou habitually look into one

another's compounds as they pass by their neighbors’ homes, and every man who walked

by during the prayer stopped and joined the prayer. Bourama’s wife, Kadja, and I sat

together at the side and watched. Kadja’s three-year-old daughter decided that this was

an opportune time to throw a loud tantrum over the night’s dinner menu of to, a starchy dish of finely compressed millet and sauce that we ate several times per week.

“Do you have a head? Shut your mouth (Kunkolo b’i la? I da bɔ na),” I sharply whispered to her to get her to quiet down.

The men left to perform the burial after the prayer. They returned thirty minutes later and sat in a circle while Amadou led a discussion about Islam and death that I could scarcely overhear. Amadou next walked over to address us women. He eloquently told us how God’s wishes often surpassed the wishes of humankind.

228 “Sometimes God gives us children and sometimes He takes them away. When we cry, we show God that we are ungrateful.”

Not yet an old woman capable of controlling my tears, I wept through Amadou’s entire address.

The mourners began to depart after Amadou’s speech. Then Kadja said she needed to start dinner and reminded me to make a trip to the pharmacy to buy her youngest an antibiotic for his ear infection. My family could not afford to stop their chores and responsibilities to grieve by sitting together for a prolonged period, and our lives resumed with a somber tone. I, like the other members of my compound, talked about Mouli often in the days following her death. We received a stream of guests who came to offer condolences and recite benedictions on young Mouli’s behalf.

Mouli’s death upset me, and Amadou privately assured me that, because she had died as a child, God guaranteed her a place in paradise. Amid the shredded grain sacks we used to make rope, Amadou also told me that Mouli would be resurrected (lakunun) someday.

“Look at us!” he said. “We know how to make rope and we know how to break rope. We start our work, end it, and resume it again. God makes people, kills people, and will resurrect people.”

Because of children’s guaranteed resurrection and salvation, Muslim parents in

Ouélessébougou typically only made modest sacrificial gestures in memory of a dead child. For example, mothers and fathers often offered dates to their deceased child’s friends but avoided organizing the kinds of extravagant posthumous sacrifices offered on behalf of deceased adults.

229 “Children can only earn baraji (emphasis mine),” Amadou explained. “Their sins don’t count against them.”

Adults who passed away, on the other hand, were in a far more precarious position. Facilitating their passage to paradise required more attention and effort.

Accordingly, after adults in Ouélessébougou died, surviving friends and family often discussed the quantity of baraji that the deceased possessed. In order to promote the deceased’s spiritual well-being, living kin organized sacrifices (saraka) that took place three, four, seven, and/or forty days after death, depending on the family’s schedule and ability to promptly design and finance the event. Such sacrifices were crucial and represented a concerted effort to earn baraji for departed kin so that the deceased would have the baraji needed to join their Muslim ancestors in paradise. Posthumous sacrifices in Mali required a lot of money, and some elderly people saved money during their lifetimes so that the funds for their sacrifice would be in place after their death. Other families required over a month to pool the cash and resources needed to pay for a posthumous sacrifice. Riesman (1977) rightly notes that ceremonies in West Africa, such as the posthumous sacrifices that I studied are, “a sort of compromise between the various notions of what a ceremony ought to be and between the consensus and the real availability of persons and things” (178). I similarly documented that although surviving family members cooperated to hold elaborate and well-attended sacrifices, they nearly always came up short in funds, and sacrifices often missed key kin from the deceased’s life who lived in regions from which it was too far to travel.

I attended many posthumous sacrifices during my fieldwork. Most memorably, I went to a sacrifice with Amadou’s wife, Nouhouba, following the death of her first

230 husband, Madou Doumbia. Madou had died in his seventies, and his long life warranted a massive affair. Nouhouba and I arrived at the sacrifice together, held in Madou’s compound, at nine o’clock on a rainy Sunday morning in September 2011. To accommodate the crowd of attendees, Madou’s family had rented hundreds of metal chairs, benches, and pavilion tents that filled the courtyard of the compound. Men and women had organized themselves into separate sections, and Nouhouba and I found two empty chairs and sat down among the woman attendees. As more and more people arrived, adherence to seating oneself according to gender began to loosen, and participants accepted seating wherever they could find it.

Figure 19: Amadou (center) sitting among town elders and Muslim leaders and studying the Qur’an during a posthumous sacrifice

231 A group of Muslim leaders and holy men (moriw), including Amadou, sat on a large and colorful mat centered in the midst of the chairs and benches. As seated friends and neighbors greeted, recited benedictions, and visited with one another, these men each read individually from the Qur’an, seemingly undistracted from the pockets of activity and conversation surrounding them. A griot (jeli) finally stood, microphone in hand, next to the group of men studying religious texts and began to preside over the affair. Male members of the crowd stood, expressed their condolences and, recited benedictions on

Madou’s behalf.72 The griot invited men and elderly women to stand and deliver short speeches and offer money on Madou’s behalf. The griot advanced these speeches in a louder voice and affirmed that the speaker was heard by steadily responding “Even so!”

(Hali!), “Amen!” (Amiina!), and “Yes!” (Naamu!) during each address and often amplified the speaker’s thoughts after they returned to their seat.

I never knew Madou, but I grew increasingly uncomfortable as the sacrifice progressed and the praises of his character intensified. I sat next to Nouhouba, Madou’s ex-wife and Amadou’s current spouse, who had told me in conversations about the violence and cruelty that typified her marriage to Madou.

I turned to Nouhouba and asked, “How are you feeling?”

Nouhouba whispered back, “Madou and I had children together, and now their father is dead. I’m sad for my children.”

Unable to think of a response that seemed appropriate, I turned my attention back to the sacrifice.

72 In Bamanankan suitable blessings for a posthumous sacrifice include, “May God have pity on the deceased” (Ala k’a hinɛ su), “May s/he become a deceased Muslim” (Ala k’a kɛ silame su ye), “May God accept their baraji” (Ala k’a baraji minɛ), and “May God cool their resting place” (Ala k’a dayɔrɔ sumaya). 232 The speeches and benedictions soon tapered off, and Madou’s female kin next

distributed beans, coffee, and bread to the guests. Madou’s male kin had killed a cow

earlier that morning, and the men handed out portions of raw meat to Madou’s close

friends and family. Madou’s young grandchildren had dressed in Madou’s clothing to

remind us that Madou lived on through his kin. They circulated throughout the crowd

while people ate, and attendees offered them pieces of candy and coins. Participants

deemed that the grouping of public benedictions, intent study of the Qur’an, and generous

distribution of food to a large crowd had earned much baraji on Madou’s behalf.

Participants left knowing that they had received a nominal amount of baraji for attending, but Amadou told me that most of the baraji earned that morning had gone to Madou.

I mentioned to Amadou that his participation in Madou’s posthumous sacrifice took my by surprise, telling him that in the United States first and second husbands typically do not get along with one another.

“And what do these men accomplish by fighting?” Amadou asked.

“Nothing,” I admitted. “I suppose it’s a matter of pride (yada).”

“Pride is a poor reason to hate someone,” Amadou opined.

Amadou dutifully attended services that marked the births, marriages, and deaths of Ouélessébougou’s ever changing population and, partly by doing so, established himself as an influential town elder and secured baraji for himself at an unmatched rate.

Most elderly people in Mali had scant idea how old they were in years, and Amadou understood that recognizing the arrival of elderhood involved self-awareness and physical changes in the body rather than reaching a certain age. By accepting these changes in himself and altering his role in town affairs, Amadou successfully refashioned himself in

233 Ouélessébougou as a cɛkɔrɔba and was accordingly recognized as such for his authority and knowledge.

☪ ☪ ☪

Amadou’s status as a well-known cɛkɔrɔba wove him anew into his community, and attending celebrations and ceremonies became a regular part of Amadou’s life. In addition to these engagements, carrying out calls to prayer gave structure to his days.

Amadou assumed his permanent responsibility as muezzin after the death of his close friend, Sidiki Kamara. Sidiki had served as muezzin at the large mosque next to

Amadou’s workspace for years and asked Amadou to substitute for him when he became debilitated with an unspecified illness in 2009. Amadou respectfully performed the call to prayer on Sidiki’s behalf for over two years before Sidiki died, and Amadou formally inherited the position.

Amadou set the alarm on his metal, digital wristwatch to wake him up every morning before dawn. He had no appetite at this early hour. He quickly dressed, quietly left his compound without any breakfast or drink, and rode down the dirt road that ran between his compound and the mosque on his bicycle. He said that the dark, empty streets made him feel nervous, but his fears always subsided once he arrived safely at the mosque. Before preparing himself for the call to prayer, he switched on the mosque’s outside lights, unlocked the separate edifices in which men and women respectively prayed, and turned on the microphone and loudspeaker used to broadcast the call to prayer. He then stepped outside and washed his hands, mouth, inner nose, face, arms, head, the inside and outside of his ears, and his feet as required for all Muslims before prayer. Amadou’s multiple calls began to float through the town at least thirty minutes

234 before the prayer was scheduled to begin. People slowly made their way to the mosque once Amadou’s calls began. Old men and women typically attended mosque prayers.

Aging was associated in Ouélessébougou with more intensive prayer and acquisition of baraji. Without formal jobs, domestic chores, or children of their own to rear, elderly people had the freedom they needed to travel back and forth to the mosque throughout the day. Because Amadou was always the first person to arrive for prayers and stayed after each prayer until everyone had left the mosque, I estimated that he devoted about six hours of his day to his responsibilities as muezzin.

Figure 20: Amadou demonstrates raising his hands to his ears for a call to prayer

In addition to performing the calls to prayer, Amadou oversaw the basic upkeep of the mosque. He monitored the water level in the mosque’s well and during the dry cold, and hot seasons, which, combined, lasted from November until May, he often broadcast that the mosque’s well had run dry and asked members of nearby compounds

235 to bring buckets of water to the mosque for people to use to wash before prayers. God

compensated the donors with baraji. Amadou also periodically made new rope for drawing water from the mosque’s well, as water was drawn so often that the ropes attached to metal handles of the soft, rubber pails quickly became ragged from use.

Amadou and I often had customers come to our workspace and request ropes of a specified length and thickness. We kept one another apprised of the assignments we were working on, and one afternoon Amadou smiled and told me the recipient for his latest rope.

“Do you know who this is for?” he asked, holding up one of his flawless, handmade ropes.

“Who?”

“God!” Amadou answered. “Do you know how God will pay me?”

“How?”

“Baraji!” Amadou told me, further clarifying that God rewarded all work put toward the mosque’s upkeep with baraji.

Although Amadou did not receive cash wages for any of the work he did for the mosque, he took his responsibilities seriously and found joy in the position all the same.

He told me that he assumed the role of muezzin because he loved God and Islam, wanted to help Ouélessébougou’s Muslims, and trusted that he earned baraji from such service.

Amadou’s age and position as muezzin in the town’s largest mosque placed him at the moral center of Ouélessébougou’s vast Muslim community. Muslims realized the time that Amadou devoted to keeping their prayers punctual and the mosque in order and often

236 found it appropriate to give Amadou gifts, such as rice, small cash donations, live chickens, and kola nuts to show their gratefulness.

Koniba once told me, “The muezzins at the other mosques start their calls to prayer only ten minutes before prayer time. It’s not enough notice! Whenever Amadou is sick [and someone else does the call] everyone in Ouélessébougou ends up late for prayer!”73

Many adults in town also deemed Amadou the ideal recipient of small, personal sacrifices. Muslims in Ouélessébougou commonly performed personal sacrifices in order to find solutions and overcome their private concerns and problems. Informants listed domesticated animals as preferred sacrificial objects, although income restraints prevented their use in most cases. Consequently, people typically bought either milk or beans to offer God in sacrifice. To consecrate sacrificial offerings, residents would pray privately with the object before dispensing it to individuals within their social and religious communities. Prayers were used to explain to God why the sacrifice was being offered and the outcome that the sacrificer would like to obtain from the offering. Some people reported that their sacrificial prayers expressed the impossibility of their request that could only come to fruition by the generosity of God. Following prayer, the person making the sacrifice would visit select friends and neighbors to distribute the sacrificed item. People understood that, in addition to serving as a potential means for resolving personal hardships, sacrifices necessitated reward from God, and both the sacrificer and beneficiary received baraji for their participation.

73 I had to take Koniba at his word that Amadou’s absence from the mosque led to frenzy around prayer time. Amadou only missed performing the call to pray on two occasions during the entire time I spent in Ouélessébougou: first, on the day we traveled to his hometown, Npièbougou, and, second, on the afternoon he spent keeping me company while I was treated for malaria at a medical clinic in Ouélessébougou. 237 I sat working with Amadou on numerous occasions when people came to him, at

various times of the day to give him sacrificial offerings and explain their troubles to him.

For example, late one afternoon, as Amadou and I organized our materials and prepared

to leave work for the day, a middle-aged Fula woman approached Amadou carrying two

liters of fresh milk, Amadou’s favorite food. She handed one liter of milk to Amadou

and said that she was offering it to him in sacrifice. She then gave Amadou the additional

liter and requested that Amadou give to it the town’s main imam (alimamiba), who led

prayer in the mosque where Amadou served.

“I have a son,” the Fula woman explained, “but he’s stupid and never did well in

school.74 This month I ended his studies and sent him to Senegal to find work. My family’s welfare depends on his success in Senegal, and I want God to bless him.”

As Amadou listened to the woman explain her situation, he signaled his interest in her problems by offering well-timed expressions of, “Ɔ hon” as she spoke. People in

Mali interpreted total silence during conversation as disinterest, and listeners were rarely

completely quiet when listening to a story. Several moments of silence eventually did set

in after the woman had finished telling Amadou about her affairs. Amadou broke the

pause and offered a long round of benedictions on the woman’s behalf, specifically

asking God to help her son find work (Ala k’a baara ɲini), ease her worries (Ala k’i hami

nɔgɔya), and strengthen her son’s health (Ala k’a kɛnɛya sabati).

74 Parents in Mali gave very frank evaluations of their children’s intelligence and abilities, even in front of the child in question. I knew many parents who never sent a particular child to school or who stopped a child’s studies early because they doubted he or she would ever succeed in academics. These parents prudently arranged for other opportunities for their child to learn and prepare for adulthood, like apprenticing at jobs involving manual labor. 238 Amadou next offered counsel to reassure the woman that her son would likely

enjoy safety and success in Senegal, and he affirmed that God was omnipotent and

capable of offering solutions to seemingly unmanageable problems. “You’re right to

offer a sacrifice,” he assured her. “Worshipping (bato) and begging (deli) God for compassion (hinɛ) are the only acts that will help you in this situation.”

Amadou then blessed the woman and her son one final time, saying, “God help

you all” (Ala k’aw dɛmɛ), and assured the woman that he would give the second liter of

milk to the imam and notify him of her troubles. The woman thanked Amadou and left.

As an old man, Amadou regularly found himself acting as a recipient for personal

sacrifices. People used sacrifices as an opportunity to manage their affairs and earn

baraji by showing their deference to God. Amadou also sought baraji for himself and relieved his neighbors’ concerns by giving them advice and reciting benedictions.

Amadou explained that, by receiving personal sacrifices, attending posthumous sacrifices and other life passage rites, serving as muezzin, and praying in the mosque, his daily life and role in his community significantly changed as a cɛkɔrɔba in comparison to his

earlier adulthood. Amadou’s responsibilities to his community took precedence over

personal and material pursuits, and on many days he was unable to work or earn money

from crafting rope because attending ceremonies and calling the community to prayer

filled his schedule.

On most nights, Amadou passed the hours at home with his family. Very few

homes or businesses in Ouélessébougou had access to electricity in 2011, and Amadou

was accustomed to lighting his home using lanterns and flashlights and entertaining his

family without electronics. Like most West Africans, Amadou enjoyed watching

239 professional soccer, and on some nights he came to my compound, which had electricity

and a large television, to watch championship matches. Otherwise Amadou reserved the

nighttime for long visits with his family and moments of private reflection on his life and

the world.

☪ ☪ ☪

Many mornings, when I asked Amadou how he had slept, he reported that he slept poorly the night before and that thoughts about the troubled state of the world had kept him awake late into the night. Amadou expressed special worry that the climate in West

Africa had become inhospitable in his lifetime and worried how environmental conditions would impact future generations. I kept a record of Amadou’s frequent complaints about the climate during the early months of my fieldwork in

Ouélessébougou, but I did not initially pursue the topic as a research interest.

Then one memorable evening when, while I was sitting in the courtyard of the compound I lived in, I listened as Djègèni, the great-aunt of the residence, and Yirigoi, the grandmother, loudly scheduled a fishing trip for the following afternoon. The two women agreed they would leave after the day’s third prayer, which would give them enough time to net their fish and return home before the fourth prayer. Adja, a twenty- year-old girl who also lived in the household, begged the two old women to forego their plans. Djègèni and Yirigoi deliberately ignored Adja’s pleas, and their preparations culminated as they brought their fishing nets outside for inspection. Upon seeing their equipment, Adja began to cry and continued to plead to them not to go fishing.

240 I finally asked Adja to explain her objection, and she told me, “People will see

them! Then they will tease me, saying my family is so poor that we send our old women

out to find food!”

Suddenly, Djègèni and Yirigoi began to laugh and assured Adja they had no real

plans to go fishing. Their preparations had been a joke to provoke her for having acted so

shallow about the importance of money in recent months.

As the women laughed together, I considered the inadequate protein intake in our

compound and decided that a fishing trip would, in fact, be beneficial to our diets.

I interrupted their amusement and asked, “Why don’t we go fishing? We haven’t

eaten fish for weeks, and we only eat beef in small portions. Let’s fish! I’ll go too!”

The joke turned, and Yirigoi and Djègèni now directed their laughter at me.

“Fish? Where?” they asked.

I thought about the geography of Ouélessébougou and realized that although we

were in the midst of the rainy season, no water flowed under any of the town’s bridges.

“We would love to fish,” the old women assured me and pointed at their unused

fishing gear as evidence of their desire, “but the river dried up more than ten years ago.”

At this point in the conversation, I thought about Amadou’s frequent concern

about the environment, and especially about the fact that the hot season had intensified in

temperature and duration while the rainy and cold seasons had progressively shortened.

Curiously, my desire to understand climate change in Mali led me back to my interest in

Islam and ritual practices. Amadou and other residents in Ouélessébougou pursued sedentary farming and nomadic pastoralism, which made them vulnerable to hostile environmental changes. Interestingly, they interpreted these changes, as well as how

241 people managed and assessed them, primarily through Islam. In southern Mali, residents’

Muslim beliefs and practices played a central role in shaping interpretations of what has caused climate change, and Muslims in Mali commonly used rituals to cope with climate problems. I also learned that climate change impacted how Amadou and other Muslims in Mali participated in politics and judged their leaders.

As Amadou explained climate problems in Mali, I also began to worry about the fate of the environment in West Africa and turned to ecological and anthropological studies of environment and resource management to better understand the issue. Hardin

(1968) has studied the fate of individuals , such as the residents of Ouélessébougou, who consume and depend finite resources held in common. The “commons” such as the forest where they grazed domesticated animals, gathered wood, hunted, picked fruit, and farmed. Hardin offers a dooming prediction for the “commons,” and forecasts that shared and ungoverned resources are destined for ruin, as people inevitably overuse them in pursuit of their interests (1968: 1243-1245; see also Ostrom 1990: 2-3). Hardin has called for increased, centralized governmental control over, or the privatization of, the commons in order to preserve and determine who, when, and how people can access shared resources (1968: 1245-1248; see also Ostrom 9-10). Hardin and other ecologists have prescribed increased control over environmental resources, and, as environmental consciousness has increased in the twentieth century, governments worldwide have taken ostensible initiatives to protect and control their resources. In Mali, the Ministry of the

Environment and Sanitation (Le ministre de l'Environnement et de l'Assainissement) has promoted the sustainable use of Mali’s resources. But I found that governmental

242 regulations pertaining to the forest were weakly enforced and largely dismissed, and most residents assigned authority over the commons to God.

This connection between Islam, the environment, and politics was anthropologically unsurprising. In the late twentieth century Rappaport (1979, 1984) spearheaded anthropological examinations of the power of ritual in conceiving and dealing with ecological issues. Anthropologists have since drawn on Rappaport to focus on ecology and ritual in understanding how civilians address and manage environmental changes in their community (see Fairhead & Leach 1996; Messer & Lambek 2001;

Moran & Brondizio 2001; Wooten 2009).

My fieldwork further refines understandings of environmental changes in Mali by explicating connections between Islam, politics, and the environment. Specifically,

Amadou said that communities could manage the conditions of the forest and the abundance of resources together through their moral behavior and the acquisition of baraji. As residents observed the tenets of Islam and earned baraji, God typically perpetuated their earthly prosperity. God may occasionally choose to send a drought (ja) or famine (kɔnɔgoba) in order to challenge and test the obedience of humans, but, overall, He awarded righteous behavior by sustaining, or even improving, living conditions in West Africa. Amadou lamented that, even if state authority had been able to enforce their control over the environment and resources, it would have made little difference and that depraved conduct had led God to negatively and permanently alter the local environment.

Amadou and other town residents claimed that their environment had changed drastically over their lifetime and detailed the disruptions these shifts had had on their

243 welfare. For example, Amadou’s best friend, Koniba, had grown up in Ouélessébougou

and sentimentally described what used to occur in the nearby river and on its shores. As

a child, Koniba and his friends took refreshing swims during the hot season. The river

was reliably full all year-round. Koniba recalled that he kept watch for freshwater

crocodiles while swimming, which were known to float in the slow-moving currents of

the river. The river was also full of large fish, which his parents caught for the family.

Similarly, as a young woman, Yirigoi Konaté, who was in her seventies during

my research, used to fish at the river by casting a net into the water from its banks. While

fishing, she would visit with her neighbors who were washing clothes, taking a restful dip

in the water, or similarly fishing by the river. She recalled that pulling up a net with a

fish led to merriment, and onlookers would cheerfully sing to the successful angler,

“Jɛgɛba filɛ! Jɛgɛba filɛ! I ye jɛgɛba minɛ koyi!” (“Look at the big fish! Look at the big fish! You really caught a big fish!”).

During the presidency of Modibo Keïta, Mali’s first president from 1960-1968, residents in Ouélessébougou reported that they began to notice lower amounts of precipitation causing the river’s level to recede. The river had entirely dried out by the turn of the century. People took the loss personally. My compound’s grandmother,

Yirigoi, anthropomorphized the event, recollecting that the river had “run away” (bolila) from the people of Ouélessébougou, as though it had stood up and relocated to a more deserving group. With the river’s disappearance, the population lost their principal source of protein: free fish. Residents’ diets were consequently filled with more carbohydrate staples and less animal protein. Women from outlying villages with rivers regularly traveled to Ouélessébougou’s market to sell their catch to residents. Fresh fish

244 were priced at between 2,000 and 2,500 francs CFA per kilogram—a cost well beyond the budgets of most residents, who typically earned less than 1,000 francs per day.75

Although Amadou loved fresh fish, he could scarcely afford to buy half a kilogram to eat with his family more than once per week.

The slow desiccation of Ouélessébougou’s environment has also had negative consequences beyond the dried riverbed. During interviews, elderly informants concluded that farming and herding had become more difficult and less dependable and profitable during their lifetimes. Farmers in the region, who normally harvested millet, corn, and peanuts, had long worked without sprinkler irrigation systems. Yielding a successful crop depended solely on ample rainfall, but in the twentieth and early twenty- first centuries, high heat and humidity alongside infrequent rainstorms damaged the quality and quantity of their harvests. The people in Ouélessébougou primarily ate locally produced food, so the problems farmers faced concerned the entire town, as

Koniba reminded me. He echoed the fears of other informants when he said that people in Ouélessébougou might die at any time from thirst or hunger. Anxieties about residents’ uncertain future and susceptibility to the environment arose in every interview

I conducted about local ecology in Ouélessébougou. People readily recalled deceased friends and family members whose deaths had been attributed to undernourishment or dehydration during famines. They especially noted that malnutrition made people more susceptible to developing fatal cases of malaria.

Many people in Ouélessébougou owned and herded domestic animals as their primary occupation, but many had abandoned or scaled back their work because the

75 About $2.00 USD per day. 245 drying pastures around Ouélessébougou made their income dangerously undependable.

Herders reported that less fresh grass was available and that their stock grazed in dry

pastures filled with coarse wild grass with low nutritional value. Finding water in

Ouélessébougou’s neighboring forest had also become difficult. On the days that I

accompanied Amadou’s son, Modibo, and his cattle into the forest, I learned that

typically neither animal nor owner had access to water until they returned home. Weary animals ran to drink at the first sight of water upon arriving in town. One day on our way back to town I helped Modibo pull his thirsty sheep away from a puddle of stale run-off water from a latrine that Modibo recognized as dangerous. It took our combined strength to move the obstinate rams.

Because of the changes in the environment, farmers and herders in Mali adjusted their techniques in order to continue their pursuits (see Wooten 2009). For example, fresh water for animals had once abounded in Mali’s forests but had now disappeared.

So, to supply fresh water, herders drew it by hand from wells for their stock. One Zebu cow (gonga), could drink more than 40 gallons of water per day. Those responsible for large herds regularly overused their wells, which temporarily dried out. When this happened, people first relied on their neighbors’ wells. As a second option, residents made use of freshwater hand pump wells installed by the municipal government in recent years throughout the town. But, depending on the location of one’s compound, the pumps could be more than two kilometers away. Using the pumps required time and preparation. Wives gathered all the buckets and water containers in their household that they could and rented a handcart before leaving. Then they waited for a turn at the pump once they arrived before pushing the heavy handcarts filled with water back home.

246 Herders reported that Mali’s desiccation had increased the number of livestock deaths, and animals that did survive grew less than cattle formerly did. Because of poor nourishment, the brindled cows in southern Mali produced less milk with lower nutritional quality, and butchered animals yielded meat that was tough and stringy

(International Livestock Centre for Africa 1979: 71-74).

Figure 21: A group of slender cattle enter a forest on the outskirts Ouélessébougou for grazing

Wooten (2009) has highlighted the ways that Malians reflected on and negotiated their livelihood and subsistence, and I observed that people in Ouélessébougou similarly made changes to their lives in response to the drying environment while reflecting on its causes (xiii-xiv). As residents in Ouélessébougou saw that their earnings dwindled from farming and herding, many either migrated to cities for work or found low-paying jobs as laborers in town. Meanwhile, the nights in Ouélessébougou were no cooler than the days. Amadou often had difficulty sleeping because of the sultry heat. So did his two-

247 year-old grandson, for whom Amadou and his wife had assumed the responsibility of

raising. He would often stay up late at night during hot spells and cry because he was too

uncomfortable to fall asleep. Amadou and Nouhouba took turns manually fanning their

grandson until he fell asleep. The young boy often woke up several times in a single

night calling to be cooled again. Exhausted by restless nights, Amadou often found rope-

making too tiring. Like many others who worked near him, Amadou regularly stopped

his work to take short naps and complained about the excessive heat and “broken world”

(diɲɛ tiɲɛ) that Malians now inhabited.

☪ ☪ ☪

If the world had been broken, as Amadou claimed, I wondered what, or who, was responsible for its ruin. I learned that many people in Mali believed that God had changed the climate. Amadou thought that since God created the world He also periodically altered it, and that humans had the chance to earn baraji by responding to its changes. He further said that degenerate locals had provoked these changes through their immorality. Amadou and other residents in Ouélessébougou also blamed international political conflicts, corrupt world leaders, and warfare.

Amadou resented Ouélessébougou’s difficult environment and described the changes as a consequence, inflicted by God, for immoral human behavior stemming from the pursuit of material gratification over Islam and baraji. Many residents claimed that their neighbors had committed sins that led to ecological changes, listing stealing and lying as the most prevalent and problematic sins (jurumuw) in their community. Without condoning the misdeeds of their neighbors, Amadou and other townspeople also told me that the conduct of high-ranking politicians had prompted God to change the earth’s

248 climate. One afternoon, while shopping in Ouélessébougou’s local market, I overheard two farmers commiserating with each other that the lack of rain had decimated their harvest. I looked up from choosing tomatoes and offered the men a sympathetic smile.

The farmers drew me into their conversation, and one exclaimed with frustration,

“George Bush and Barack Obama are breaking the world!” (“George Bush ani Barack

Obama bɛ diɲɛ tiɲɛ!”), while sweeping both arms across the front of his body like a referee signaling an unsuccessful goal.

From a Malian perspective, leaders in Europe and North America had unlimited money at their disposal but used it selfishly. Some residents testified that God saw the

United States government’s use of its power and wealth for wars against poorer countries as unforgivable, resulting in a change in the earth’s climate. Muslims in Ouélessébougou also accused militant Islamist organizations of threatening world security, placing the responsibility for climate change on these organizations’ attacks on civilians. During field research in 2009, I noticed that a t-shirt with images of George Bush and Osama bin

Laden and the ungrammatical English message, “World Need Peace,” had become popular attire for young men. It came as no surprise to me to learn that Muslims in

Ouélessébougou ascribed blame for climate change to any person or group who threatened world peace.

Most of the time, when discussing the impacts of foreign social, political, and military issues on the local environment, residents focused on the world’s major economies, but African countries were also occasionally criticized for their fighting. One morning while working with Amadou I listened to Fousseyni Soumaré, the shopkeeper and farmer who owned the boutique next to which Amadou and I worked, speak with the

249 director of a local Qur’anic school. Fousseyni singled out Libya and Sudan as the most

violent countries in Africa. The school director reminded Fousseyni in a measured voice

not to ignore Mali’s southern neighbor Côte d’Ivoire, saying that the country’s 2010 post-

election political crisis—in which President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition candidate

Alassane Ouattera both claimed victory—and the country’s subsequent civil war had

upset God. Fousseyni nodded and, after a long pause, noted the lingering violence in

Côte d’Ivoire, adding that these reflections gave him a clearer idea as to why his field

was so dry in 2010 and 2011.

Amadou, along with many other residents, associated politics with the greed,

deceit, and violence that led to negative environmental changes. Some responded to

desertification by paying attention to local politics and considering the merits of

candidates before casting their votes in each election, hoping that their candidate would

represent their morals and interests after the election. Other Malians lamented the actions

of national and provincial politicians, whom they said abandoned their supporters for

their own interests after winning the election. Numerous Malians told me that voting was

worthless and that they had vowed to no longer vote or otherwise participate in politics.

Amadou had voted in every election since independence in 1960 but said he would not

take part in the country’s upcoming presidential election.76 For Amadou, politicians had

contributed to the slow drying of Ouélessébougou and its surrounding villages and

jeopardized the spiritual security and baraji of Muslim voters. Amadou warned residents

against the danger of voting for politicians who acted unethically, saying that voters

could lose their baraji based on the conduct of the politicians for whom they voted.

76 A presidential election for April 2012 was scheduled during my fieldwork in 2011. On March 21, 2012, fifty-eight days after I left Mali, Malian soldiers overthrew the administration of Amadou Toumani Touré. The coup d’état led to an indefinite postponement of presidential elections. 250 Islam informed Amadou’s political viewpoints, and he paid close attention to the morals

of the politicians he supported. Amadou taught people in the town that God, in the

afterlife, would hold voters responsible for the innermost sins of the politicians they

supported. Such condemnation made political involvement too risky for Amadou, who

consequently curbed his interest in local and national politics.

Amadou and other Muslims in Ouélessébougou routinely blamed everyone from

sinful neighbors to corrupt politicians for environmental degradation. Only one

informant indicated that everyone in Ouélessébougou was responsible for local

environmental damage. Women in Mali prepared every meal over open fires, and one

woman I knew expressed concern that the wood and charcoal this practice required

damaged the ecosystem and caused savanna animals, such as elephants and lions, to

move south to the purportedly lush grasslands in Côte d’Ivoire. She also sensed that the

rate at which women cut and collected firewood on Ouélessébougou’s outskirts had made

the local forests less availing to herders and farmers in recent years. This woman’s

perceptions stood uniquely against the accounts of her neighbors, most of whom believed

that only God could generate significant changes to their climate. Accordingly, Muslims

in Ouélessébougou expressed concern for the climate by participating in religious

practices to earn baraji while appealing to God for a better environment.

☪ ☪ ☪

People participated in Muslim rituals to earn baraji and to plead to God to have mercy and deliver them from their hard climate. The summer months of June, July, and

August are typically the rainiest of the year in Ouélessébougou, with August ranking as the wettest, but August of 2011 brought terrible heat and humidity and little rain. As the

251 month ended, I listened as Amadou and other residents worried over the inadequate rainfall. On the evening of Sunday, September 2, the town imams from the eleven mosques in Ouélessébougou and holy men (moriw), including Amadou, organized a special prayer meeting for the next day in which they would appeal to God for rain as a group. The men assembled in the mosque on Monday morning, earning baraji together by praying, reciting benedictions, and listening while the town’s imam read from the

Qur’an. The assembly lasted for over an hour. Although women were not invited, the meeting was broadcast over the mosque’s sound system so that everyone near the mosque could hear it.

Monday and Tuesday went by with the same blue skies, sunshine, and sultry air that had tormented residents during earlier summer months. Muslim leaders scheduled a second prayer meeting for Wednesday morning. This time they invited the women to come. The meeting concluded at eleven o’clock, and by one o’clock storm clouds began to gather over Ouélessébougou. It rained lightly all afternoon and at dusk the storm intensified. Rather than visiting with friends and neighbors, families passed the night at home listening as the rain rattled against their tin roofs. It was one of the biggest storms of the wet season. The following morning the skies cleared, and women left their compounds to walk about town and greet each other. They were overjoyed, taking public credit for the sudden rainfall; after all, God had only supplied rain once women had been included in the prayers. On Thursday morning, they returned to the mosque, deliberately coordinated in white dresses and headscarves, to offer formal thanks to God through prayer.

252

Figure 22: Muslim women in Ouélessébougou participate in a special prayer meeting at the mosque to pray for rain.

Some men in Ouélessébougou resented that the women attributed the storm to their prayers. The chief of the compound I lived in, Bourama, told me that religious rituals had not brought rain in this particular case. In 2011 the Malian government subsidized cloud seeding operations to create rain, and Bourama pointed out that a cloud seeding aircraft had flown over Ouélessébougou two days before the storm. The rain created a momentary feeling that the local climate was fixed, but the rejoicing subsided shortly thereafter. Residents agreed that a single storm could not end the drought.

Meanwhile, elderly informants said that droughts had become less fatal than in the past, largely because imported food and water are now more readily available. As the sixth poorest country in the world, Mali received myriad international aid and food donations.

Some Malians welcomed the assistance, but others had misgivings about consuming food from overseas. Amadou personally preferred only to eat food grown in Ouélessébougou and was suspicious about international products. He told me that malaria had become

253 more deadly in his lifetime and theorized that the Maggi bouillon cubes that women in

Ouélessébougou used daily to flavor the sauces they served with rice were to blame.

One day Amadou asked several friends where Maggi products were produced.

“Hong Kong? Germany?” he asked rhetorically. “How can we eat something that we

know nothing about? It is making us sick!”

Amadou was among the many Ouélessébougou residents who preferred food

grown in their home region, making the drying climate a particularly frustrating and

complicated problem. Those who preferred eating local food or who depended on local

food production for their livelihood often turned to making personal sacrifices (saraka) to

seek rain, cooler temperatures, and baraji. Numerous farmers and herders in

Ouélessébougou reported that they had used personal sacrifices before and during the rainy season to try to ensure good harvests and to petition God for better weather. Many residents reported the efforts as ineffective, but they also stated that unsuccessful prayers and sacrifices did not lessen their commitment to Islam. They said that God’s refusal to provide them with a better environment deepened their understanding of the impiety that had caused local climate change.

Amadou and other Ouélessébougou Muslims used Islam as a key source for theorizing about the causes of climate change. Although they appealed for a better climate, many people, including Amadou, ultimately accepted that they lived in a harder environment than their ancestors. As an old man, Amadou understood his current circumstances in relation to a relatively distant past. He sentimentally and idealistically remembered that food and water resources had abounded in Mali during his childhood,

254 and he worried about the world his adult children and grandchildren would live in and

their chances for prosperity.

Conclusion

The transition from adulthood to elderhood involved substantial changes to

Amadou’s pursuits and routine. This chapter has shown that concern for making money

slowed as Amadou aged and was replaced with an interest in religious activity and

pursuing baraji, which reinforced his role as a valued elder in his community. Amadou regularly attended rites to mark the births, marriages, and deaths of his neighbors, which shaped his daily schedule between making calls to prayer in the mosque. Amadou savored his position as an elder and reminded me that growing old had been his earliest aspiration. Amadou had survived the difficult physical, environmental, and economic conditions that racked twentieth and twenty-first century West Africa, and his age, knowledge, and experience testified that he had finally become a cɛkɔrɔba.

My examination of Amadou’s senior years highlights how his life’s practices

changed over time, revealing a man deeply committed to Islam, baraji, and his

community. By focusing on Muslim practices and town affairs, Amadou achieved a high

public profile. Nonetheless, Amadou constantly worried about the state of the world and

the value that others placed on earning baraji and acting honorably in their daily lives.

Amadou’s fondness for the past intensified as his concerns over the future grew.

He told me countless times, “I’m a person of the past” (n ye fɔlɔfɔlɔ mɔgɔ ye),

preferring to spend his free time with fellow elders and sharing memories and reminisces

with them.

255 Elders in Ouélessébougou came from an array of regions, occupations, and languages, but their age and mutual esteem for the past gave them common ground.

Unsettled by the present, Amadou spoke about his own death with ease. I often told him how much the thought upset me. He always replied that he would happily live for as many more years as God allowed but assured me that he had completed his life. He had studied, traveled, married, worked, raised children, lived to see himself as a cɛkɔrɔba, and placed his pursuit of baraji at the center of each of these experiences. People in

Ouélessébougou often commented on one another’s baraji, but Amadou dismissed their comments about his plentiful stock. Only God could determine whether Amadou had done enough on earth to enter paradise. He hoped that he had but unassumingly continued to approach each day as a fresh chance to acquire more baraji. In doing so, he became an exemplar of integrity, devotion, wisdom, and dignity, standing as an example for his children, friends, neighbors, and me.

256

Figure 23: Amadou in 2011

257 CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSION

What is the significance of Amadou’s life history?

Amadou was not a caliph, Sufi saint, sheik, or imam. He did not have a television

show and never spoke on the radio. Like most Malians, Amadou spent the bulk of his

life living in and passing through the rural expanses of West Africa and never kept

company with the elite members of African society. Nor did he aspire for money or

power. Amadou quietly lived his roles as a son, friend, husband, neighbor, and father far

from the limelight. Yet this study has a contribution to make to understanding life in sub-

Saharan Africa, as it documents aspects of culture, history, and Islam in West Africa in a

personal context. Amadou’s life story, especially the expression of his Muslim beliefs,

features the full voice of a Muslim practitioner, and his unique life advances

understandings of Islam in both colonial and postcolonial West Africa. His narrative

offers insight into how Muslims in twentieth and twenty-first century Mali expressed

their devotion to Islam in their daily lives through the pursuit of baraji.

I was struck throughout my fieldwork by how frequently the topic of baraji arose in conversations that I had with Amadou and other residents of Ouélessébougou. People used various phrases that contained the word baraji in order to thank one another, recognize each other’s merits, and to acknowledge their blessings. Those who have spent significant time in West Africa have undoubtedly heard and used the word “baraji” themselves, likely without realizing the full cultural and religious significance of the term. When I questioned Muslims about their religious lives, informants again invoked

258 the idiom of baraji in order to explain how they discerned among and applied value to the different ritual practices and daily choices that they employed. People explained that they trusted that God would repay them for both their meritorious dealings and ritual commitment to Islam with baraji upon their final judgment and that baraji would help them in attaining salvation in the afterlife.

This work proposes understanding baraji in West Africa as a system of value through which Muslims appraise the religious rituals and other practices associated with

Islam. I have used the term “value” in this study to connote how people in West Africa ranked various practices in terms of their potential to generate baraji. As an inclusive value system, baraji influenced not only ritual behavior but also inspired specific conduct in Muslims’ personal lives and social interactions. People evaluated their behavior and relationships in terms of their potential to earn the needed amount of baraji that would ensure their salvation and admission to paradise in the afterlife. As such, baraji represented a form of value that governed Muslim behavior in a range of cultural domains. This study of baraji reveals the intricate ways that West Africans connected their Muslim practices to everyday life by evaluating practical actions in terms of their potential to generate baraji.

In turning to anthropological efforts to understand Islam across West Africa, a noticeable discrepancy emerges between how often I documented Muslims in Mali mentioning baraji as an instructive component in their daily practice of Islam and how seldom scholars have referenced baraji in their attempts to understand Islam in West

Africa. Owing to the dearth of literature on the subject of baraji, I found life history as the most productive way to comprehensively explore the topic of baraji as a value system

259 that informs daily life and pursuits. Bringing forth Amadou’s life history seemed an

appropriate first step in making baraji a prominent part of the discussions on Islam in

West Africa. Amadou’s narrative clearly displays the doctrinal context of the tenet of baraji, the subtle ways that Muslims acquire baraji, and how a person’s understanding of baraji and actions for attaining it change as their life progresses. Amadou’s life history presents more than a snapshot of his Muslim identity and practice at the time when I met him. By juxtaposing vignettes from his lifespan, I trace how his personal cultural and ritual sensibilities changed according to his development and life experiences.

Amadou’s childhood shows that he grew up understanding and accepting that

God required humans to earn baraji in order to gain salvation, and from an early age earning baraji became a crucial component of his life. The unfamiliar natural world and people that surrounded Amadou’s small village of Npièbougou originally intimidated

Amadou, and his parents calmed his fears and prepared him to encounter and manage difference by teaching him the importance of his Muslim identity in relation to non-

Muslims. When Amadou’s father unexpectedly died while Amadou was still a child,

Amadou’s mother ensured that Amadou would maintain his relationship with his father by tasking him with the duty to earn baraji on his deceased father’s behalf. While

studying in a medersa in Diafarabé, Amadou’s teacher bestowed in him a more explicit

understanding of the precepts of Islam by teaching Amadou multiple of ways of earning

baraji through positive relationships and attitudes in his daily activities.

With an enhanced understanding of baraji, Amadou entered his adolescence. At

his mother’s insistence, Amadou ended his studies and returned to Npièbougou in order

to learn how to heard cattle from his brothers. Amadou originally felt uneasy that full-

260 time and exhaustive work in the forest prevented him from praying in the mosque and

perfectly observing the rules for fasting during Ramadan. Yet Amadou’s anxiety was

soothed as he learned unexpected methods for earning supererogatory baraji from his brothers and fellow herders by protecting his cattle and the environment and observing

Islam together while working in the forest. When Amadou moved away from his family to Ségou for work and later to Bamako, his efforts to earn baraji evolved as something he approached as a personal effort that primarily concerned only himself and his late father.

On the verge of entering adulthood and while herding cattle in southern Mali and northern Côte d’Ivoire, Amadou reassessed this understanding and concluded that he needed a wife and children to ensure that someone continually earned baraji on his behalf after his death.

Once he became a husband and a father, Amadou began to appreciate Islam and the acquisition of baraji as a collaborative effort that bound all kin and Muslims to one

another. This tightly entwined connection between kin who concerned themselves with

earning baraji for one another became especially meaningful to Amadou as he spent long

stretches of time away from his home and family in Ouélessébougou while laboring as a

cattle herder in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Liberia; a gold miner in Guinea; and a

traveling trader and salesman in Mali and Guinea. His practice and understanding of

Islam as an adult nicely illuminates how Islam in West Africa serves as a key site on

which people evaluated and organized kin relationships based on one another’s

willingness to cooperate in the mutual pursuit of Islam.

I had the good fortune to meet Amadou during his elderhood. As an elder,

Amadou reverently reserved the majority of his time for serving his community and a

261 devoutly practicing Islam. Amadou had admired his elders since childhood. Aging

brought him satisfaction and he felt fortunate that God had permitted him to pass through

this final and treasured phase in life. He served as muezzin at the largest mosque in

Ouélessébougou and attended as many naming ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and

posthumous sacrifices as his schedule allowed. As he mindfully served his community

and strove to set an example for his children to follow, he worried about the state of the

world that he would leave behind. Amadou and his friends spoke often about the

worsening climate and political conditions in Mali, and he saw the environmental

problems that Malians faced as punishment inflicted by God for depraved human

behavior upon the world, especially in response to terrorist groups and corrupt world

leaders. In spite of the serious problems that Malians faced, Amadou smiled, laughed,

and enjoyed practicing Islam and spending his time surrounded by his family and friends.

Even so, he made regular, open, and relaxed references to his unavoidable death. But he

trusted that Muslims from around the world would continue to practice Islam and earn

baraji on his behalf once he had passed into the next life.

Throughout this work I have emphasized the importance of baraji in Amadou’s life span. In addition to recounting his life and the role of baraji in it, I have worked to convey the depth and dynamic agency freedom that Muslims in West Africa have in understanding and practicing their religion and demonstrates how Amadou understood and bridged the various ways that Muslims observed Islam—all in terms of baraji.

Amadou continually evaluated which practices were profitable in terms of earning baraji and which were futile or detrimental to his salvation. He propagated his particular understanding of Islam by instructing his family and friends on the actions and qualities

262 that he believed could further one’s quantity of baraji. But, naturally, everyone in

Amadou’s kin and social network had their own opinions and experiences that contributed to their different understandings of Islam and the pursuit of baraji. Every life story varies and carries the potential to add to a growing understanding of social and ritual life in West Africa. An effort to document these life histories would paint a more complete portrait, of which Amadou’s narrative is only a single brushstroke, that would, together, reflect the complex and textured patterns of daily life, history, culture, and

Islam in West Africa.

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280 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Dianna Bell

Education

Brigham Young University Anthropology B.A. 2003

University of Idaho Anthropology M.A. 2008

Florida State University Religious Studies Ph.D. 2013

Positions Held

2009- 2013 Instructor in Religious Studies (Anthropology and Religion; Islamic Traditions; Religion in Africa) Florida State University

2012- 2013 Instructor for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (Introduction to Islam) Florida State University

2009- 2011 Teaching Assistant in Anthropology (Introduction to Cultural Anthropology) Florida State University

2009- 2010 Tutor in Anthropology and Religious Studies, Athletic Academic Support Florida State University

2009 Research Assistant to Dr. Joseph Hellweg, Religious Studies Florida State University

2008- 2010 Teaching Assistant in Religious Studies (Introduction to World Religions; Islam in the Modern World) Florida State University

2008 Instructor in Anthropology (Introduction to Anthropology) University of Idaho

2007 Research Assistant to Dr. Fenella Cannell, Anthropology London School of Economics

2006 Research Assistant to Dr. John Mihelich, Anthropology University of Idaho

281 Grants and Awards

2011 International Dissertation Semester Research Fellow Florida State University

2010 Research Grant (for preliminary dissertation fieldwork in Mali) Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, Florida State University

2008- 2012 Travel grants for conference travel Florida State University

2007 Research Grant (for thesis fieldwork in Mali) Student Grant Program, University of Idaho

2007 Travel grants for conference travel University of Idaho

2002- 2003 Dean’s List, Brigham Young University

Publications

2013 Review of Harri Englund (ed.), Christianity and Public Culture in Africa. H- Net.

2011 "The Formation of the Sokoto Caliphate.” In ABC-CLIO Encyclopedia of World History, edited by Alfred J. Andrea. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO.

2010 Review of Daphne Lamothe, Inventing the New Negro: Narrative, Culture, and Ethnography. Western Folklore.

2007 Review of Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson (eds.), Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity. Journal of Folklore Research.

Conference Papers and Research Presentations

2013 “May God Repay Us: Islam and Baraji in West Africa,” Florida State University Center for the Humanities and Society Series on Culture, Politics, and Society in Contemporary Africa, Tallahassee, January 31.

2012 “Understanding a ‘Broken World’: Islam and Climate Change in Mali, West Africa,” American Academy of Religion, Chicago, Illinois, November 20.

2012 “Islam and Climate Change in Mali, West Africa,” Florida State University Religion Graduate Symposium, Tallahassee, February 18.

282 2010 “Creating Communitas: Understanding Muslim Participation in Christian Services in Mali, West Africa,” American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, Georgia, October 30.

2010 “Employing Ethnography in Religious Studies,” Florida State University Dialogues Conference, Tallahassee, March 22.

2010 “Albert B. Lord’s Oral Formulaic Theory and Qur’anic Recitation,” Florida State University Religion Graduate Symposium, Tallahassee, February 21.

2009 “Prayer, Social Order, and Communitas,” Across the Threshold: Creativity, Being and Healing Conference, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, March 20.

2009 “Disregarding Kin and Other Complications in Converting from Islam to Christianity in Mali, West Africa,” Florida State University Religion Graduate Symposium, Tallahassee, Florida, February 22.

2008 “Beyond Baptism: Complications in Converting to Christianity in Ouélessébougou, Mali,” Northwest Anthropology Conference, Victoria B.C., April 24.

2007 “Examining Muslim and Christian Relations in Mali, West Africa,” Poster presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference, Washington, D.C, November 29.

Service

2012- Secretary-Treasurer, Mande Studies Association (MANSA)

2012- Steering Committee, The African Association for the Study of Religions, American Academy of Religion

2010-2011 Grievance Committee, Graduate Students United, Florida State University

2010-2011 Florida State University Union Steward for Religion Department, Graduate Students United

2009 Tutor for K-12 foster children, Children’s Home Society of Florida

2007 Senate Speaker, University of Idaho Graduate and Professional Student Association

2007 Graduate Student Representative, University of Idaho Student Fees Committee

283 2006 Bylaws and Constitution Committee, University of Idaho Graduate and Professional Student Association

2002 Museum Volunteer, BYU Museum of Peoples and Cultures, Brigham Young University

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