by Peter Boehm
Three knives hung from the bag. One “for killing”, the second “for working – for slaughtering sacrificial animals”, and the third “is simply part of the bag”.
In addition, there were also a few clothes hanging on the wall, a bag for clothes, with the slogan “Chicago Bulls”, his shoes, a belt and his talismans in a plastic bag.
He didn’t hesitate to take them out for us. One he used himself. Others he’d manufactured as supplies for his clients.
When Sana travels, he wears five belts. They looked to me like twisted leather cords, but they had powers because Sana had prayed over them. The first protected him against accidents. “Even in an aeroplane, you’ll be turned into wind and you’ll come out unscathed.” The second was for war. The third for peace. “No-one can provoke you with it.” Number four helped against meddling security staff. “No-one can ask you for your ID, even if they wanted to, because they can’t see you.” And finally the fifth was for health. “No-one can poison your food, because you won’t eat it.”
He then took a “Sirikou” from the plastic bag. It looked like a sausage, made of leather, with a couple of feathers at one end. “The Sirikou is something for officials”, Sana explained, “the big bosses in the capital city who’ve eaten heaps of money”.
“To eat money”, or sometimes simply just “to eat” is a common Africanism which everyone there knows. “To eat money” means helping yourself from external resources – usually the public purse. “The big bosses say their names to the Sirikou, and so fix them to it. This means their names can’t come up and no-one can link them to a case of corruption.”
Next, Sana showed us a small jute bag with a strip of animal fur on it. This was simply for general protection on a journey. “There are too many wars, too many evil spirits.”
As arranged, we visited Sana at 8am on the day after our first meeting. He was still asleep on the floor of his room. He told us that, the previous night, customers had kept coming until 3am.
As agreed, we also brought two bottles of Malian red wine with us. Sana immediately poured himself a large plastic cup of it and drank it in large gulps, as though dying of thirst.
Immediately the first client appeared. A man of about 40 had an infected wound on his swollen index finger, and wanted medicine for it. He wouldn’t go to the hospital, he told us, because treatment there was too expensive – it cost about five or six times more – and because Sana’s medicines were also much stronger.
Sana rummaged among the heap of old plastic bags and bottles on the floor, where he kept his medicines, and gave the man a powder to rub on the wound, and two small sticks which he had to dissolve in water and drink.
The first medicine was against “the old blood which has collected in the finger”, the second was a painkiller.
The man had already come a couple of days earlier about his finger. He paid the equivalent of about £6 for the treatment.
Before I’d even had the chance to properly note down the names of the medicinal plants, what they were used for, and the fact that Sana all collects them himself in Dogon territory, and then only at specific times and after specific ritualised preparations, the next customer had already arrived.
The elderly lady had ornamental scars on her face. She was Yoruba, from the south-west of Nigeria. But she was married to a native man, and had a stall at the large market in Mopti.
She was just popping by briefly today, in order to give Sana some money for cigarettes. “So that he’ll take good care of my problem”, she said.
Sana carelessly shoved the money under the raffia mat, exchanged a few words with the woman, and gave her a rather enraptured smile. As we questioned the woman, he sat there with an expression which suggested that the low points of life could never touch him.
Her problem was that she still hadn’t had a child, and in Africa, women who don’t or can’t have children are like apple trees without apples. They’ve failed to fulfil their purpose.
But treatment for childlessness wasn’t exactly cheap. It cost almost £40. But the woman didn’t want to say how old she was. I’d guess she was over fifty. But she defended herself, saying that a friend had also visited Sana, and he’d been able to help her. She’d just recently had twins.
The old woman had already been treated by Sana before, because she’d had so few customers at her market stall. Then, Sana explained, he’d given her medication which she had to rub onto her face each morning. When people saw her face, they’d be forced to buy from her whether they wanted to or not. And she also hid a fetish among her wares.
I looked at her market stall. She sold toiletries, batteries and all kinds of plastic junk. And the medication worked on me. I bought a toothbrush. But nothing else, admittedly, because the goods were poor quality.
While the Yoruba stallholder was there, two children also came in. Sana said they’d come to look around and see whether the coast was clear. Their parents wanted to come, but they didn’t want anyone to see them there.
By now, it was 9.30. The first bottle of red wine was empty, and Sana tottered out to go to the toilet.
When he returned, he said, “God knows I drink. I have to drink. You’d never be able to find a single healer who doesn’t. My work means that I’m constantly dealing with evil spirits. I have to protect myself against them, so my mouth has to be full of alcohol.”
Besides that, Sana smoked dark cigarettes almost constantly, and in between he popped pieces of kola nut into his mouth. The white, or sometimes pink, fruit is common in West Africa. It makes you slightly more awake, and represses your appetite.
Next came a young man with a brown turban and boubou. He also said, completely openly, that he was Muslim. Today was his first visit to Sana. A friend had recommended the healer to him. He didn’t object to our staying either.
Sana listened to the man’s problem, and began to consult his oracle. To do this, he used a dozen cowrie shells, flattened on one side. Their position in relation to each other could show him the exact nature of the man’s problem. He took them in one hand, moved them quickly across the raffia mat, and then set the small molluscs free.
I’d seen traditional healers once before, in Tanzania, who’d also consulted oracles. Besides cowrie shells, they used screws, marbles and small wooden blocks. And they’d observe these just once before interpreting the all-important relation of the individual objects to one another.
Without any fuss, after throwing each shell, Sana would take every mollusc in his hand again four or five times, as though he weren’t happy with the outcome of the throw, and he’d throw it again.
The young man in the boubou was worried about his wife. He worked in Mopti, and had left her and their child in the Dogons’ territory. He’d now heard, from acquaintances there, that another man was trying to entice her away from him. He said the other man had been to a Muslim sage, a marabout, in order to cast a spell on the wife.
The Dogons’ territory isn’t far from Mopti – just a couple of hours by bus. The young man now wanted the Sana to tell him whether the story was true.
Once Sana had consulted his cowrie shells he said, “Yes, it’s true. And you need to be careful, as it seems that your wife loves the other man more than you.”
Sana instructed the young man to sacrifice a pure white chicken and three kola nuts, and to think some more about his problem. If he believed what Sana said, and decided to pursue treatment, he should return the following week. He didn’t have to pay anything today. He only had to do that when the treatment started. But he was given some medicine anyway – a powder that he had to dissolve in water and drink.
In the meantime, another of Sana’s old friends had turned up. He was a builder, and explained that he had been cheated by two of his employees. They’d eaten money from a customer, instead of passing it on to him.
He was Bozo – a member of an ethnic group which traditionally lived from fishing – but the employees were Dogon, like Sana.
The builder asked
Sana to warn the employees that he would no longer accept their behaviour, and the healer promised to deal with it.
The builder had left, the young man was still sitting there, and Sana was still throwing the cowrie shells, when he suddenly turned to the translator, completely out of the blue.
Sana first spoke to him calmly, as though telling him the latest gossip. But you could see from the translator’s face that he hadn’t heard gossip, but had just been given some very bad news. He gulped, his eyes opened wide, and his jaw kept dropping.
He was spellbound. He couldn’t turn away. He sat there, like a rabbit being eyed by a snake. And the deeper the shock sank into him, the more sure of himself Sana seemed to become.
Although the healer’s face betrayed nothing, he spoke more and more intensely to his victim.
I didn’t say anything, but once we’d left I asked the translator what had been going on.
He was very reluctant to talk about it. Sana had told him that one of his colleagues was tricking him. Sana didn’t give any names, in fact he gave no hint as to the colleague’s identity. But the translator had already been suspicious of one of his colleagues anyway. He now felt he was justified. He decided to take the colleague to task about the matter.
By now it was midday, the second bottle of red wine was half empty, and we had a short break. I was pleased to escape from Sana’s stuffy, smoke-filled room.
When we returned at 3pm, there was already another woman with Sana. She was in her mid-twenties, and was wearing a fashionable blue suit. She often visited him. She was almost an acquaintance, she said.
This time, she’d come because she needed medicine for her menstrual problems. She could only pay 500 CFA Francs. Business wasn’t good at the moment, she apologised. She fried biscuits at the roadside. But Sana said that it didn’t matter. Everyone should just pay what they could.
And then two more women came, also in their mid-twenties, and also very smartly dressed. They were wearing suits of the same fabric as a boubou, but cut like a European costume.
The first was a kindergarten teacher – a Bambara woman, one of the native Mali people from the south of the country. The second was a clothes trader and was Songhai, from the north-east of the country.
They were both Muslim, and had already been to Sana a couple of times, always on account of the same problem. Neither had yet found a husband.
“But with God’s help”, the first explained, with a coquettish glance in Sana’s direction, “we’ve now both got engaged.” And the second said that Sana was very nice. He took them seriously. He was the only one who could help them.
The first one had come today to now “finally get her fiancé’s hand for good”. The second wanted Sana to throw the cowrie shells for her. She wanted to know whether the problem with her fiancé was a significant one, or whether it would go away.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him”, she said. “Whether he’s chasing other women, or what? I’ve heard rumours about that. He goes out in the evenings and doesn’t come back until very late.”
Sana couldn’t help her. It was Tuesday afternoon, after 2 o’clock. The oracle couldn’t tell anything until Wednesday afternoon. But he gave them both another powder. I don’t know what it was for or against. I got the impression that it was more the case that he gave the women something because they expected him to.
And the translator felt the same way. He was utterly astonished. When the two women had left, he said, “The men leave the house every day, and don’t suspect anything. And when they get back in the evening, their wives have a surprise waiting for them.” Sana just smiled.
After that we had to go. A man came in. He was the chauffeur of a woman who had travelled the 300 miles from the capital, Bamako, and she didn’t want us to hear what she wanted from Sana.
She was a Muslim. So Sana hid the bottle with the remains of the red wine. As we left, we saw that the woman was very elegantly dressed. She was wearing an expensive, western costume, her hair was pinned up, and her finger nails were painted dark red.
Without exception, all the traditional healers I’d seen in Tanzania I’d assessed after just a few moments as charlatans. All they were interested in was making their fortunes, and quickly.
But I could see that, as well as healing minor ailments, Sana also had an important social function. Wasn’t he a GP, best friend, psychotherapist, nurse and lawyer all in one? And weren’t his services adapted exactly to the needs of an African society?
I, too, would have liked protection from greedy policemen, and I’m sure that an awful lot of Africans would have wanted protection against accusations of corruption.
Sana openly admitted that there were two diseases he couldn’t cure – drug addiction and AIDS. That was new. I’d never before heard this admission from any traditional healer in Africa.
But Sana had never been to school. “The plants were my school”, he said. And of course his father, who had also been a healer, and had passed on his knowledge to him.
And Sana knew all about the hopeless situation. He didn’t send his eldest son to school. He would be his successor. “There are so many people in Mali who have studied at university but still can’t find work”, he said. But his eldest daughter was now in Class 2.
I’ve spent nearly four years in Africa, and during that time I’ve listened to dozens of social scientists, politicians and journalists. Only very few could make do without some conspiracy theory or other. What they said was virtually unrelated to what I saw and experienced. I often had the feeling that they and I weren’t living on the same continent – perhaps not even on the same planet.
That was why I was so astonished by what Sana had to say about his society. He stayed within his limits, but at least he made sense there.
Without any prompting he said, for instance, “Really, my work is very often all the same. Women knock on my door at three in the morning, not knowing a way out of their situation. They always have problems with their husbands or their families.”
Or, “In Africa, there are a lot of people who don’t want you to succeed. They try to make you ill, to make you crazy. If you’ve got a job and I haven’t, I’ll try to harm you. There’s so much malice in Africa, and you have to protect yourself against it.”
That corresponded with my experiences. There wasn’t much to add, apart from the fact that I would have used different terminology – what Sana called “malice”, I called “dishonesty”.
So the African in me found Sana’s explanation entirely plausible and completely satisfactory. But the remnant of European still in me of course rebelled against it. So I said that you can surely change that. It certainly didn’t have to stay that way forever and always. After all, things had changed in Europe.
“But Europe is very different”, Sana replied. “They are two completely different things. People have to be the same deep down in order to get along with one another. You haven’t drunk any wine or smoked any cigarettes. So how can we be the same deep down?”
That was what Sana said – or at least, what the translator made of it. I couldn’t understand what Sana meant by it. And I don’t think he’d understood what I’d wanted to say to him. It often wasn’t easy to talk to Africans about the fact that something could change, had already changed, or perhaps would change at some point. Historical thinking isn’t an African concept. This was where African-European communication broke down.
48°C (Mopti – Timbuktu)
I didn’t travel to Timbuktu down the Niger River. It hadn’t rained for ages, and the river didn’t have enough water. So the passenger boats were stuck in the harbour in Mopti. I’d have had to get a motorised pinnace – a long boat, shaped like a dugout canoe – and the tourists with whom I’d have been happy to share the costs didn’t want me with them.
I would then have been able to travel back in the pinnace. But the journey would have taken a week, and I no longer had the patience for that.
The journey by SUV from Mopt
i to Timbuktu was the usual slog. At first, the driver shot off again at 60-odd miles an hour across the steppe. Until we broke down again. His assistant again extorted money from me for my bag on the roof rack. And came up to me, smiling happily, whenever we stopped, so that I’d buy him a yogurt or something else. He believed he was giving me great pleasure by doing this.
But for all that, Timbuktu wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Rather like Marrakesh and Zanzibar, simply the name “Timbuktu” makes many people imagine the “Thousand and One Nights”, and a lively bazaar.
Timbuktu enjoyed its glory days in the 14th century, when it was briefly a centre for culture and trade in the Kingdom of Mali. The city did well from caravan trade with ivory, gold, salt and slaves, and was known for its Islamic scholars. In those days, it had 100,000 inhabitants. Today there are just 15,000.
So whenever you read recent reports of Timbuktu by visitors they’re always disappointed by the place. Their expectations were simply too high, and their experiences there too wretched. I had only very low expectations, and so was pleasantly surprised.
The main attractions are the red-brown clay mosques and mausoleums. Some, with their walls crowned with crenellations, looked like huge castles. Characteristic wooden poles, built into the walls for reinforcement, protrude out of them all, like the spines on a porcupine.
The houses in the old part of Timbuktu are almost all built from cleanly cut, matt white stones. The town is really in the Sahara and, over time, the façades take on a beige tone due to all the sand swirling around in the corners of Timbuktu. The houses are almost all two-storey, with a large pointed archway on the ground floor, and a flat roof.
It was on these roofs that I spent my nights. There were no mosquitoes. But as soon as the sun rose in the mornings, I had to immediately seek the shade of a house, or I’d have a headache all day.