When One God Won't Cut It

If you go to the CIA factbook website and look up Mali, you will see that under the religious statistics, Mali has a roughly 90% Muslim population, 1% Christian, and 9% "indigenous beliefs." In my experience, if you ask the typical Malian about their religion, their answers tend to back up that statistic. However, if you ask questions that go into more depth, like which practices they observe or how much they really know about their religion, you'll wonder exactly how those numbers were arrived at. Much like in America, the number of people who strictly observe a religion is much smaller than the number of people who call themselves followers. However, unlike Americans, who as a trend move away from traditional religions and down new paths, Mali tends to have a mix of this, and also movement towards traditionalism at the same time. Peoples' religious observances mix both Islam, and the older, native Animist practices that predated the infiltration of Islam.
To be fair, I should say that I haven't really done any formal research on the issue, and what I am writing here is based on my own observations, mostly taking place in my village, which even by Malian standards is not a heavily Islamic area. During Ramadan, it seemed like the majority of people did not do any fasting, and on Tabaski, it seemed like only a third of the village showed up for the big morning prayer that "everyone" traditionally attends. If I were to count the number of religious, superstitious, or customary practices that I've witnessed, I would easily say that the majority of them were Animist, or if not specifically animist, they bore no resemblence to anything in Islam that I am aware of.
Imagine if most Americans were terrified at the sight of black cats crossing their paths, took detours to avoid walking under ladders, or fretted every time they stepped on a crack for fear of having broken their mother's back, and then thanking G-d with all their heart to learn that she has remained unscathed. This is how Malians tend to react to most of their superstitions and supernatural beliefs. In previous articles, I have mentioned the incontinence-inducing fear of frogs, the "no singing in the rain" rules, and the blame of many misfortunes on, not bad luck or irresponsibility, but evil spirits or malicious sorcerers.
One night, a few months back, I visited my friend's village down the road and when I arrived, I was greeted by my friend who looked at me with consternation in his face and asked me if I arrived OK. I told him I was fine, and he asked if I was sure that I hadn't seen any demons or witches on the road. I told him I was pretty sure I hadn't noticed anything unusual and he breathed a visible sigh of relief and thanked Allah. He informed me that there had been a lot of that kind of activity in the area lately. The previous night, a man riding on his motorcycle had been scared into a crash when he saw a ten foot tall, white "djini" – the Bambarification of the French word for "spirit" – and that a village-wide advisory had been announced to be careful during night travel for a little while. My friend also told me that there was witch activity going on in town and that I should not greet any old people unless I knew them. Later at night, when he asked me to guard his bike while he went on a quick errand, he reminded me to abolutely not tell anyone my name. When I asked him why, he replied nervously, "Just...don't." Another time, when he pulled into my property on his motorcycle that is less than a year old but looks well over five, I asked him why he and his brother do such a crummy job taking care of such a nice expensive bike, noting the broken lights, dials, exhaust pipe, the dents, and the engine which made more noise than a whole Harely Davidson Biker Rally. He insisted that it wasn't his fault, it was his brother who takes the bike on long trips into the bush and leaves them in dangerous places where djini activity is common, so the evil spirits come and mess with the bike out of simple maliciousness.
As superstitious as this kid is, he is also a devout Muslim who prays five times a day, refrains from alcohol, and does all the other things commanded by the Qur'an. He is a fairly typical example of various Animist/Islamic crossovers that occur in Malian culture. Many of the beliefs and practices I've witnessed, while clearly Animist in origin, are ascribed to Islamic ones. There is a leather sort of bracelet traditionally worn in Mali that often contains blessings or holy inscriptions from Animist priests, but often people go to the local Imam to have passages from the Qur'an written inside them. In other instances, people use traditional Animist statues to serve as intermediaries between themselves and Allah, essentially turning Islam into a idol-worshipping religion.
It is no surprise that Isam and Animism have become as intertwined as they are here. In the words of a villager friend of mine, "Malians do not ask questions, they only hear the answers and accept them." Having anything that resembles a religious conversation with many locals becomes an incredibly frustrating experience since rather than exchanging ideas, they simply mourn the fact that I am wrong, that I am simply too blind to accept the things they have been taught from birth, in spite of my Western Logic and rational reasoning. I remarked about this to an English teacher, Maiga who works in my village, but comes from a larger city in Mali and who tends to be one of the most educated, open minded people I've met here. I was telling him how peculiar Mali's particular brand of religious and superstitious acceptence was. Compared to Christianity and traditional Islam, which, while faith-based, have a heavy reliance on canons and records, and Judaism which has always impressed me with its philosophy of challenging its practicers to expand their knowledge and find flaws, all of which presumably can be accounted for, the Malian theological tradition is to simply do what your father tells you, since he is older and thereby wiser. I told Maiga how peculiar I thought it was that so much of the population believes in these magic traditions, powerful amulets, and incantations, and he replied, "Well, it is not that they believe these things, it is that they are true." I was shocked. And he went on to tell me about an elderly man in another village who has a ring of invisiblity, and a leather bracelet that some wear that literally turn bullets fired at you into harmless drops of water.
"Has anyone ever tested these magic powers?" I asked. "Have you ever seen it happen?" He had not in person, but the invisibility ring has quite a number of reliable witnesses, and powers like the bullets-into-water trick only works under certain (and rather infrequent) conditions, like an all-out war between two neighboring villages. I was stumped. I was not sure quite how to take this bit of lore from Maiga, the guy I could count on to be the most reasonable – at least to my standards – and sympathetic ear in town to exhasperated grumblings about what even other Malians will deride as "redneck country," the less-refined country folk of Mali's Wild West. He continued to tell me about Animist superstitions and secrets that some old people know that they might tell you if you kiss up to them and catch them off guard, but I was thinking to myself, This must be exactly how it happens. Here is Maiga, one of the smartest folks here, and I would believe anything that came out of his mouth. So if that's the case, why should I listen to him with regards to everything EXCEPT this? Logically, and reasonably speaking, he must be right!
And that's how it happens here. What need have they for scientists and professors and schools when the most trusted people they can think of live right there in the community. Sure, some of the people who are either old enough to be wiser or young enough to be more progressive will believe what they hear on the news and from whatever other information outlets they get a hold of, but most people don't have all that much access. The information, the politics and science and history that they hear is all so fragmented, that as far in the bush as I live, which isn't even all that far, even the best informed people are only so by a margin compared to their American or European equivalent.
Now the last thing I would want to do is imply that traditional religious practices are a sign of being uninformed or sheltered, and it is certainly not a bad thing to be . If anything, keeping the old rituals should be encouraged, so long as they don't hinder the progress and development of a nation that needs change for the bet. . . oops, now I'm breaking a cardinal rule of Peace Corps: making cultural judgement calls. What I am tempted to say is to keep around the music, the masks, the holidays where only devoted Animist practicers are allowed to even leave the house during the ceremonial parade so they don't witness the "heathenism." What such judgement calls inevitably lead to is the question of what to do with such equally valid customs and traditions as women being second-class citizens, legally subservient to men, or the Bomu people who live in the deepest parts of the Malian bush and still commit human sacrifices and cannibalism, at least according to many many very convincing rumours I've heard from PCVs and Malians alike. I think, as I write this, that I am quickly getting stuck in one of the oldest and most hopeless arguments in the history of my line of work: where do you draw the line between tradition and revision. And of course, I'm not even going to try to answer that now. I'll let you think about it and tell me how you feel.