by Nigel Barley
As another sign of special favour, the chief had assigned me two folding chairs such as I had seen on my first visit to the village. These proved to be the only chairs in the village and whenever a person of status visited the chief they would be hauled back to his hut. So they oscillated between us like a dinner jacket I had shared with three other undergraduates while at university.
My furniture was completed by a bed of beaten earth, quite the most uncomfortable bed I have ever encountered anywhere. I had bought, at huge expense, a thin mattress stuffed with cotton which the chief much coveted. Beds were all his ambition. He confided to me that he wished to die in an iron bed he could leave to his son. The termites will not be able to eat it,’ he chuckled gleefully. They will go crazy.’
For the first three weeks the rain poured down with relentless fury. The very air was saturated. Mould grew on any exposed surface and I feared greatly for the lenses of my camera. Time was spent trying to learn the basis of the language. Africans are normally bi- or tri-lingual to some degree but have no experience, for the most part, of learning a language in anything but social encounters. The idea of recording a verb in all its forms, tenses, moods, to see the overall system is totally alien. They learn their languages as children and can switch effortlessly from one to another.
The Dowayos never could appreciate the difficulties their language offered to a fieldworker from Europe. It is tonal, that is, the pitch in which a word is spoken totally affects its meaning. Many African languages have two tones; the Dowayos had four. There was no difficulty in telling a high tone from a low but in the middle, it seemed, anything could happen. The matter was complicated by the fact that Dowayos also combine tones to form glides and a tone may well be affected by the tones of neighbouring words. Added to this were dialect problems. Some areas collapse tones together as well as using different vocabulary and syntax. Since what counts is relative tone, I found it initially hard to switch from talking to a woman with a high-pitched voice to a man whose high tones might be about the same level as a woman’s low tones. What really depressed me was a routine that became standard. I would meet a Dowayo and greet him. There was no problem about this; I had made my assistant school me long and hard in ‘Is the sky clear for you?’ The sky is clear for me, is it clear for you?’ The sky is clear for me too’, which had to be gone through for each person you were greeting. The English tend to set little store by these rituals, regarding them as an empty waste of time, but the Dowayos are not hurried like ourselves and easily take offence if they are neglected. I would then make some remark of a fairly inane kind such as ‘How is your field?’ or ‘Have you come far?’ Their faces would drop and they would look puzzled. My assistant would step in and say – to my own ear – exactly what I had just said. Their faces would light up. ‘Aaagh. I understand’ (pause). ‘But how is it he does not speak our tongue? He has been among us for two weeks.’
The Dowayos have such a low view of their own tongue, their own chiefs refusing to use this crude, unsubtle instrument, little better than animal cries, that they cannot understand how anyone could fail to learn it. Consequently they make poor linguistic informants. The temptation to use the trade language, Fulani, was enormous. I had learnt a little of this in London where all manner of learning aids, dictionaries and manuals are available. There is a strong tradition, however, that information ‘doesn’t count’ unless gleaned in the native tongue and it was certainly true that I had found all sorts of distortions in the data collected in Fulani, which carves up the area of unclean occupations ‘blacksmith, undertaker, barber, circumciser, healer’ in a very different way from Dowayo. According to all the information I had received, these were all undertaken by the same person whereas ‘priests’ were set apart. In fact, in Dowayo, it is the blacksmith who is the most separate and the other tasks are distributed according to quite different criteria. There is also the consideration that Dowayos do not normally talk Fulani among themselves. There was, admittedly, one man in my village who refused to talk anything else even to his friends, but this was a standard joke of the kind Dowayos get themselves bogged down in. He would complain loudly when labouring with other Dowayos in the fields. How was it that he, a noble Fulani, was obliged to labour with savage pagans? He would elaborately recount the manifold faults of this race of dogs amid growing hysteria until there came a point at which people would begin to fall about with laughter and gasp for breath. It was considered highly amusing that I always insisted on talking to him in my own poor Fulani, and sometimes we would conduct a sort of double-act.
Extended use of the trade language would have had numerous disadvantages. I could certainly have conducted interviews in it, but never real conversations. Dowayos speak a bastardized form of Fulani with all the irregular forms ironed out. The sense of the words is often changed by accommodation to Dowayo concepts. Moreover, it is only by being capable of following their own tongue that it is possible to grasp those asides that may be intended for other ears.
On one occasion, I trekked up into the mountains to the outermost confines of Dowayoland. Many of the children had never seen a white man before and began to scream with terror until comforted by their elders who explained that this was the white chief from Kongle. We all laughed good-naturedly at their fright and smoked together. Normally I do not smoke, but found it useful to be able to do so to share tobacco and so create a social bond between us. As I left, one of the girls burst into tears and I heard her snivel, ‘I wanted to see him take his skin off.’ I made a mental note to ask about it later; normally, such expressions turned out to be the result of a misinterpreted tone or an unknown homonym. When asked about it, however, my assistant showed acute embarrassment. I went into a jollying-along routine I had had to develop for precisely this sort of situation and gave him all my attention; Dowayos are frequently mocked by surrounding tribes for their ‘savagery’ and will clam up at the least sign that they are not being taken seriously. Reluctantly, he confessed that Dowayos believed that all white men who lived for extended periods in Dowayoland were reincarnated spirits of Dowayo sorcerers. Underneath the white skins we had managed to cover ourselves with, we were black. When I went to bed at night, I had been seen to take off my white skin and hang it up. When I went to the mission with the other white men, we drew the curtains at night, locked the door and took our white skins off. Of course, he declared somewhat sniffily, he did not believe this, looking me up and down as if afraid that I would revert to my black colour on the spot. The belief explained Westerners’ obsession with privacy.
It also explained the annoyance sometimes manifested by Dowayos at my linguistic failings after months among them; they were regarded as pathetic attempts to disguise my essentially Dowayo nature. It was common knowledge that I was capable of understanding anything I really wanted to. Why did I insist on pretending the language was new to me? It was only after nearly a year in Dowayoland that I heard Dowayos refer to me as ‘our’ white man and felt a surge of pride. I felt sure that my attempts to master the language, incomplete and undervalued as they were, played a large role in my ‘being accepted’.
But all this is with the benefit of hindsight. In those first three weeks all I knew was that I had undertaken to learn an impossible language, that there were no Dowayos in the village, that it was pouring with rain, and that I felt weak and terribly lonely.
Like most anthropologists in this situation, I sought refuge in collecting facts. The prevalence of factual data in anthropological monographs stems, I am sure, not from the inherent value or interest of the facts but from an attitude of ‘when in doubt, collect facts’, This is, in a sense, an understandable approach. The fieldworker cannot know in advance what is going to prove important and what is not. Once one has recorded data in the notebook there is a strong disinclination to leave it out of the monograph; it is remembered in terms of miles walked in the sun, or hours spent trying to pin people down. Moreover, selection presupposes a coherent view of what one is trying to do and
most anthropological monographs are written by someone whose aims are limited to ‘writing an anthropological monograph’ and no more.
So off I went every day, armed with my tobacco and notebooks and paced out the fields, calculated the yields, counted the goats in a flurry of irrelevant activity. This at least had the virtue of making my weird and inexplicable ways familiar to the Dowayos and I began to know them by name.
Much nonsense has been written, by people who should know better, about the anthropologist ‘being accepted’. It is sometimes suggested that an alien people will somehow come to view the visitor of distinct race and culture as in every way similar to the locals. This is, alas, unlikely. The best one can probably hope for is to be viewed as a harmless idiot who brings certain advantages to this village. He is a source of money and creates employment. A turning-point in my own relations came after some three months, when the Chief intimated to me that he would like to regain possession of his hut. The matter was discussed at length and I agreed that the best solution was for me to have my own hut built. This cost me the princely sum of £14 and enabled me to employ the circumciser’s son who vouched for my bona fides with his father, the chief’s brother, who taught me about hunting, and the nephew of the local healer, who put me in touch with his uncle. My car served naturally as village ambulance and taxi. The women could always borrow salt or onions from me. The village dogs knew I was a soft touch and would congregate before my hut, much to the rage of my assistant. The potters and blacksmiths had never done so much business. My presence lent huge status to the Chief. He always made sure I knew about all the festivals so I could give him a lift to them. I acted as bank for those with no money but great expectations. I was expected to be a buying agency for those who needed parts for their bicycles or lamps. I was a source of medicine for the sick.
True, I had disadvantages. I attracted outsiders to the village, which was bad. I would fatigue my hosts with foolish questions and refuse to understand their answers. There was the danger that I would repeat things I had heard and seen. I was a constant source of social embarrassment. On one occasion, for example, I asked a man whether he had to refrain from sexual intercourse before going hunting. This was perfectly all right in itself, but his sister was within earshot. Both he and she shot off in opposite directions emitting loud wailing noises. Seconds before, I had been sitting in the hut chatting to three men. In a flash, the hut was empty except for my assistant who was groaning and holding his head in his hands. The huge indecency I had committed was the subject of horrified whispers for weeks afterwards.
My rather wobbly control of the language was also a grave danger. Obscenity is never very far away in Dowayo. A shift of tone changes the interrogative particle, attached to a sentence to convert it into a question, into the lewdest word in the language, something like ‘cunt’. I would, therefore, baffle and amuse Dowayos by greeting them, ‘Is the sky clear for you, cunt?’ But my problems were not exclusively with interrogative vaginas; similar problems haunted eating and copulation. One day I was summoned to the Chief’s hut to be introduced to a rainmaker. This was a most valuable contact that I had nagged the Chief about for weeks. We chatted politely, very much sounding each other out. I was not supposed to know he was the rainmaker; I was the one being interviewed. I think he was much impressed by my respectful demeanour. We agreed that I would visit him. I was anxious to leave since I had acquired some meat for the first time in a month and left it in my assistant’s care. I rose and shook hands politely, ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I am cooking some meat.’ At least that was what I had intended to say; owing to tonal error I declared to an astonished audience, ‘Excuse me. I am copulating with the blacksmith.’
The people in my village rapidly became versed in translating what I said into what I meant. How far my command of the language actually progressed and how far I managed to teach them my own particular pijin was difficult to say.
I remained convinced, however, that my chief value for the Dowayos was simply that of a curiosity. It is untrue that boredom is a complaint exclusively endemic to civilization. Village life in Africa is very dull indeed, not just to a Westerner accustomed to a wealth of daily-changing stimuli, but to villagers themselves. Every small event or scandal is lovingly rehashed and raked over, every novelty sought out, any change of routine greeted as a relief from monotony. I was liked because I had entertainment value. No one could ever be sure what I would do next. Perhaps I would go off to the city and bring back some new wonder or story. Perhaps someone would come and visit me. Perhaps I might go into Poli and find there was beer. Perhaps I would come up with some new foolishness. I was a constant source of conversation.
Having now invented all sorts of pointless activities in which to spend my time, I felt the need of a routine. It was essential to rise early. At this time of the year, most of the people slept in small shelters in the fields to guard against the ravages of cattle. In theory Dowayos are supposed to return their herds of cattle to the village corral at night, but they seldom bother. Traditionally, guarding and herding are done by small boys but nowadays these must be sent to school. The result is that cattle are allowed to wander about the fields and inflict great damage on the crops. A woman knows that if her field is ravaged this will be taken as proof of her adultery and her husband will beat her into the bargain; women are therefore especially vigilant guardians. With the risk to their food for the next year, few return to the village at all for weeks on end, and those that do are away very early.
I therefore tried to be afoot at first light to greet people before they left. ‘Greeting people’ is a great African tradition. It consists of being visited by people you do not know who then stay for hours and defeat all attempts at conversation. It is rude to make a hasty departure and so one goes over the same subjects again and again – the fields, the cattle, the weather. This has certain advantages for the neophyte: the vocabulary is small, the constructions simple and he is often able to surprise people with whole sentences he has learned off by heart.
Once ‘greeting’ had been accomplished to the satisfaction of all, I would start on breakfast. Food was a major problem in Dowayoland. I had a colleague who had worked in the southern jungle zone of Cameroon and told me great tales of the culinary delights that awaited me. Bananas would grow round my door, avocados fell from the trees as you walked along, meat was plentiful. Unfortunately, I was closer to the desert than the jungle. The Dowayos showered all their love upon millet. They could not eat anything else for fear of falling ill. They talked about millet; they paid debts in millet; they made beer from millet. Should one offer them rice or yams, they would eat them but regret bitterly that they were not as good as millet. With this, they ate a sour, glutinous vegetable sauce made from the leaves of wild plants. As an occasional diet this was all very well, but Dowayos ate it twice a day, morning and evening, every single day. Boiled millet is rather like polyfilla. They regretted that they could not sell me any.
Land is free in Dowayoland. A man may take as much as he likes and build his house wherever he chooses. This does not, however, lead to an agricultural surplus. A man cultivates as little as possible. Clearing the ground and harvesting are hard enough. Worst of all is the hoeing that is necessary half-way through the growing season. To relieve the tedium of this, great beer parties are given and the workers remain as long as there is beer to drink, then they wander off to another party taking their host with them. In this way, solitary work is punctuated by bouts of social drunkenness. Although millet fetches a good price in the cities, the Dowayos are not attracted to sell there. The market is controlled by Fulani traders who expect to make one or two hundred per cent profit on anything they touch. Since they also control transport, the remuneration a Dowayo cultivator would receive is very small indeed. Dowayos tend to grow enough for themselves and kinship obligations if there is a festival in the air. Otherwise margins are fairly tight and if the rains are less abundant than expected just before harvest, there may be fa
mine. Trying to buy anything in Dowayoland is very much swimming against the current; the French deliberately introduced taxation, although unprofitable, to compel the Dowayos to use money. Even now, however, they prefer to barter and build up debts that can all be discharged in the slaughter of cattle than to deal in money. Had they given me millet, I should have had to pay back in meat or millet bought in the city.
Although they have cattle, the Dowayos do not milk them or breed them for food. They are dwarf cattle, without humps, unlike the Fulani cattle, and give almost no milk. Dowayos also claim that they are ‘very fierce’ although I saw no evidence of this. Ideally they should be killed only for festivals. At the death of a rich man who has, say, forty cattle, ten or more should be killed and the meat given to kinsmen. Nowadays the central government tries to prevent what it regards as waste of resources, but the custom persists.
Other festivals involve killing cattle for the dead, and cattle must be paid to buy wives. Hence their wanton destruction for meat or money will be resisted by young men who have their eye on marriage prospects. Whenever I was given meat, especially by the Chief of Kongle, there was a rapid alternation between dearth and plenty. He would always insist on giving me a whole leg, which was far more than I could ever eat before it went rotten. So I would have a series of sub-letters of the Chief’s hospitality to whom I could make over meat in return for eggs. Not that eggs were much of a blessing. Dowayos do not normally eat eggs; they regard the idea as mildly disgusting. ‘Don’t you know where they come from?’ they would ask. Eggs are not something to be eaten but rather to be hatched into chickens. So it was that they would very kindly bring me eggs that they had kept for a couple of weeks in the hot sun, so I could indulge my sick fancy. Floating them like witches did not always suffice to screen out the bad ones; once eggs have got beyond a certain stage of putrescence they begin to sink in water like fresh ones. Many is the time that my hopes of eating eggs were dashed as I broke them, one by one, and smelt the thick stench rising from their bluish-green interiors.