Witchcraft Beliefs & Mora L Dualism in the Northern Atakora of Benin

I SEE K LIFE Witchcraft Beliefs & Mora l Dualism in the Northern Atakora of Benin Johann es Merz Leiden, November 1998 MA thesis in African Studies Faculty of Arts Leiden University, the Netherlands Supervisor: Dr. J.G. Platvoet, Faculty of Theology I SEEK LIFE Witchcraft Beliefs & Moral Dualism in the Northern Atakora of Benin Johannes Merz Leiden, November 1998 MA thesis in African Studies Faculty of Arts Leiden University, the Netherlands Supervisor: Dr. J.G. Platvoet, Faculty of Theology ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Linguistic Note vii Maps ix Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Anti-witchcraft shrines and Christianity in the northern Atakora 1 Research in Touga 2 Research methods 3 The limitations of ethnography 4 Translation and the biases of the assistant 6 On the ‘reality’ of witchcraft beliefs 7 Anthropologists on witchcraft beliefs 9 Chapter 2: The AÃaÃchaÃ 13 A survey of the AÃaÃchaÃ 13 AÃaÃchaÃ ethnic identity 15 Inter-ethnic relations 17 Historical aspects of the AÃaÃchaÃ 18 AÃaÃchaÃ religion 20 Religious influences from the outside 22 Chapter 3: Anti-witchcraft shrines 25 Anti-witchcraft shrines in Africa 25 Anti-witchcraft shrines among the AÃaÃchaÃ 26 Difoni , dikuntidi and anti-witchcraft shrines 29 Anti-witchcraft movements in Ghana, Togo and southern Benin 31 The shrines of Unkunde and Tigare 33 Activities at the shrines 35 Chapter 4: Christianity 39 Christianity in Africa 39 The Roman Catholic Church 40 Assemblées de Dieu 41 Église Pentecôte de la Foi 45 Ministère International de Jésus 46 Difoni , dikuntidi and the churches 48 The church in Touga 49 Chapter 5: Movements against Witchcraft 53 Anti-witchcraft shrines and Christianity 53 Anthropologists on anti-witchcraft shrines 55 Anthropologists on Christianity 57 Migration in the northern Atakora 58 Economic factors of the anti-witchcraft movements 60 Movements against witchcraft 62 iii Chapter 6: AÃaÃchaÃ witchcraft beliefs 65 Witchcraft beliefs in the northern Atakora 65 Witchcraft beliefs among the AÃaÃchaÃ 55 AÃaÃchaÃ witchcraft beliefs and modernisation 69 The diviner 70 Corpse-carrying 72 Clairvoyants 74 The belief in increased witchcraft 75 Chapter 7: Witchcraft beliefs and the concept of the evil 77 Witchcraft beliefs and the concept of evil 77 The morality of AÃaÃchaÃ religion and witchcraft beliefs 79 Anti-witchcraft shrines and changes in witchcraft beliefs 80 Chapter 8: The concept of the Devil and moral dualism 85 The concept of the Devil in Africa 85 The concept of the Devil among the AÃaÃchaÃ 86 Pentecostalism, the concept of the Devil and moral dualism 88 Disampode and the emergence of a moral dualism in Touga 90 Christianity and changes in witchcraft beliefs 93 Chapter 9: Conclusion 95 Summary 95 Circularity and dualism 97 Dualism and identity in the postcolonial state 99 Glossary of LaÃchlÃ words 101 Plates 103 Bibliography 111 iv Acknowledgements An MA thesis is never written without the help of other people. My thanks go to the Société Internationale de Linguistique (SIL) and the Centre Nationale de Linguistique Appliquée du Bénin (CENALA) of the Republic of Benin for offering me to do anthropological research within the LaÃchlÃ language project of SIL and giving me logistic and administrative assis- tance. Particularly, I thank Mr. Igué of the CENALA for his openness towards my research and Leon Hoover from SIL for introducing me to the AÃaÃchaÃ , gaining the interest of the people of Touga for my research and arranging my quarters in that village. I thank Nwèmou Moutouama, the délégué (chief) of the part of Touga I came to live in, and the people of that village who all accepted me as the first white man to stay with them and who willingly and patiently answered all my questions. Particular thanks go to Jonas and Margrit Gnammi for taking care of me in various aspects during my time in Touga. I also appreciated the openness and hospitality of the authorities in Cobly, the members of the churches of Ministère International de Jésus , the priests of the anti-witchcraft shrines of Tigare and Unkunde, and all other people who kindly offered me their support. Among them I want to mention Richard K. Sambiéni who translated some LaÃchlÃ texts for me and Dr. Austin Hale who offered suggestions on how to improve my English in some parts of my thesis. I thank Matt and Sarah Murdock from Ministère International de Jésus for their friendship and hospitality when staying in Tanguiéta, and Dr. Tilo Grätz for the anthropological discussions on the northern Atakora and Benin. I am thankful for the support and interest in my thesis I received at Leiden university. I feel especially indebted to my supervisor, Dr. J.G. Platvoet, for his thorough comments on the manuscript and his suggestions to improve it. I also want to thank Prof. Dr. Peter Geschiere for his encouraging remarks when I began work on my thesis. Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to my parents who supported me in different ways during the time of my study. Without them, this thesis would not have been the same. v vi Linguistic Note There have always been difficulties in representing the languages of the northern Atakora, especially because hardly any linguistic research has been done by now and official orthographic standards have not been defined. LaÃchlÃ , or, as it was called earlier on, Niendé or Nyende, is a good example for this situation. LaÃchlÃ is the language of the AÃaÃchaÃ , the ethic group at the centre of this thesis. It has only been mentioned in a short linguistic article by Manessy (1976) and some vocabulary was reproduced by Mercier (1949) and in Huber’s writings (especially see 1979: 52-53). More recently, as part of the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ (SIL) work on LaÃchlÃ , Hamilton & Hammond (1997) wrote a proposition for an orthography. Probably the most difficult aspect of LaÃchlÃ orthography, as well as some of its neighbouring languages, is that it uses one phoneme for the three phones [ l ], [ r ] and [ d ]. This has led to confusion not only in the literature on the northern Atakora, but also in the local usage of written LaÃchlÃ . The word ‘ AÃaÃchaÃ ’, the autoethnonym of the LaÃchlÃ speakers, for example, can also be written as AÃaÃkhaÃ , AÃaÃqhaÃ or AÃaÃqaÃ , or in the singular Ubiedo, Ubiero or Ubielo. In addition, / Ã / is often written as ‘è’ as the French orthography suggests. Accordingly, ‘ LaÃchlÃÊ can also be written, for example, as Mbèdimè or even Mbèrmè and ‘ AÃaÃchaÃ ’ as Bèbèdibè, Bèbèlibè or Bèbèrbè. In this spelling, / u / is sometimes written as ‘ou’ and / o / always as ‘ô’. Therefore, Ubiedo can be written as Ubielô, Ubierô, Ubiedô, or as Oubielô, Oubierô, Oubiedô. Manessy (1976: 862) already observed this problem of LaÃchlÃ , and more recently Hamilton & Hammond (1997: 10-11) treated it more systematically. According to them, the three allophones [ l ], [ r ] and [ d ] are articulated slightly retroflex, thus they should actually be represented as [ Ò ], [ } ] and [ Í ]. They are not at free variation, but dependent on the position within a word. Because it is possible to use [ Í ] in any context, whereas [ Ò ] and [ } ] are limited in their usage to certain contexts, Hamilton & Hammond (ibid.) argue that the allophones [ Ò ], [ } ] and [ Í ] should be represented by the phoneme / Í /, and in the LaÃchlÃ orthography as ‘d’ (ibid.: 18). This problem is also known from Ditammari, one of the neighbouring languages of LaÃchlÃ . There, however, the variation between [ l ] and [ d ] seems to be determined through different dialects. Blier (1987: xv, 235n.2) observed that in its Togolese dialect, Ditammari always uses [ l ] while the Beninese dialect would rather tend to use [ d ], as for example Mercier (1949, 1968) does. In this thesis, I generally follow the orthography proposed by Hamilton & Hammond (1997), which, apart from / Í / is a fairly direct phonetic representation of the language (IPA standard). In addition, I followed the orthographic suggestions of Richard K. Sambiéni from the SIL project and Sebastien Toumoudagou, the co-ordinator of the LaÃchlÃ literacy program, initiated by the government in 1975. Both of them do not substantially differ from Hamilton & Hammond’s (1997) proposal. I left names of persons and of villages in their usual French spelling. vii LaÃchlÃ is a tonal language with three tonal levels. Although Hamilton & Hammond (1997: 21) mentioned the necessity of writing the tones because they are distinctive, I do not represent them in this thesis, because for most words I use, the exact tones are not known to me. viii 0 25 50 km Niger Burkina Faso Malanville ATAKORA Kandi Kérou Matéri Tanguiéta BORGOU Cobly Kouandé NATITINGOU Boukoumbé Nikki Ndali Map 2 Djougou PARAKOU Bassila Tchaourou Togo ZOU Savè Savalou Dassa Nigeria Kétou ABOMEY MONO Bohicon OUÉMÉ Pobè Toffo LOKOSSA Allada PORTO NOVO COTONOU Ouidah Grand-Popo ATLANTIQUE Map 1: The Republic of Benin, its provinces with their capitals and major towns. ix Map 2: The sub-prefecture of Cobly and its adjacent regions. 1 1 Source: Institut Géographique National, Paris, 1992. x Matéri Siénou Nodi Kotari Tapoga Ndahonta Nouagou Bagapodi Yimpisseri Okommo Tanguiéta Cobly Nanakadé Touga Namounchaga Sini Oukoua- Datori touhoun Kountori Tabota Namatiénou Kayabouska Ouroukouaré Gando Kadiéni Manta Kouya Takotiéta Division between the area where Dipoli the initiation rites of difoni and dikuntidi are celebrated and where Korontière not. Bo ukoumbé Map 3: The sub-prefecture of Cobly and its most important villages, paths and roads. xi xii Chapter One INTRODUCTION Anti-witchcraft shrines and Christianity in the northern Atakora In the northern Atakora of the Republic of Benin, and more precisely in the sub-prefecture of Cobly, important changes have occurred on the religious scene during recent years. Those changes, which form the problem of this thesis, also happened among the AÃaÃchaÃ or Niendé, as they are called in the older literature (see chapter two).

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