Africa: the breath of life

[Jacuma]

Nimrod Bena

In African tradition, the material and spiritual worlds are contiguous

At some time or other, every school-child in French-speaking Africa has recited this poem:

Listen more to Things than to people The voice of Fire can be heard, Listen to the Voice of Water Listen in the Wind To the sobbing bushes: It is the Breath of the Dead Ancestors, Who have not departed Who are not beneath the Earth Who are not dead.

The Senegalese poet Birago Diop (1906-1989) called this poem Breaths, to describe a person's space. All beings everywhere overflow the place where they are, surpass their specific location, have more to them than their body. Only a single side of a person is ever visible, while the other remains invisible. This division also explains the importance of the shadow that a person bears, a shadow or nether side of the body. Looked at in this way, the beyond is less a metaphysical notion than something rooted in tangible reality, its soul, energy and Breath.

Diop's poem, like a well-sung song, is an invitation to understand the "Breaths" that invigorate "things": fire, water, wind, grass, bushes, huts, a woman's breasts, forests. It is a list of everyday things, an inventory of the rural African's environment. One criticism that can be made of Diop is that his use of capital letters for Fire, Voice, Ancestors and Earth is inappropriate. It is perfectly natural for the spirit of the dead or the gods to find embodiment in these phenomena. In the African tradition, the gods are usually approachable.

At home with the gods

The gods are the breath of the universe. African religions could be described as an attempt to define nature in terms of vital force and harmony. This is why the word animism is often used to describe them. The poet invites us to listen to the "Voice of Fire", the "Voice of Water" or the "sobbing bushes" because they are the crucible of energy, the place where the world's harmony prevails.

Into the intangible content of "breath" comes a fragment of the cosmic force which underpins the natural equilibrium. In West, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa, human beings are regarded as an integral part of nature. The idea of dominating or using nature does not exist. Religion is about increasing the cosmic energy of which human beings are a constituent part. Lack of respect for nature is seen as an energy failure or breakdown. There is no such thing as sin or blame. Sacrifices are intended to repair the field of living forces.

Nobody is exempt from this system. In the voodoo religions of the Gulf of Benin, a priest-medium who can no longer attend to the replenishment of energy because of illness or old age is simply done away with, because his incapacity imperils nature and society. It is possible for the flame of the world to be extinguished, but this must not be allowed: the flame must burn for ever.

As we noted earlier, the "flame", "breath" or natural energy is not something "beyond" the world, but rather the "secret" of the world, its most intimate part. Elsewhere, Diop writes that "Those who are dead have never departed/They are in the Shadow which lights up/And in the shadow which deepens/They are in the tree that rustles.../They are in the Hut, they are in the Crowd/The dead are not dead". In a sense, the visible world seems only to connect with its invisible counterpart, so that the dividing line between life and death is erased. The "visible" must keep watch over the "invisible", and the "body" over "breath."

So there are only the living, visible or invisible. Life is so constituted that the visible owe gratitude and goodwill to the invisible. This is why prayers to the gods and the spirits, and the sacrifices owed to them, are made with great discretion; there is no need for altars or monumental temples. Ritual and other religious practices are performed at home, with everyday food - grain that has just been harvested and water that is sprinkled on the dry ground as a libation before people drink.

Worshipping the dead

Looking more closely at the poem "Breath", we can see that it contains intimations of the immortality of the soul. Or at least this is hinted at. We usually think of breath as being as inconsistent as the soul, which we imagine as something indeterminate, hardly even air, "virtual nothingness", as the French philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch called it. This "virtual nothingness" distinguishes the immaterial nature of the soul from absolute nothingness and denotes a soul which vegetates, thereby surviving the disturbances caused by the coming of death.

These moments when the soul "vegetates" outside life are not a form of purgatory. Exiled between heaven and earth, the soul cannot take refuge in God, who is not interested. The legends of the Dogon people of Mali tell how God went away after creating the world, never to return. The Xhosa of South Africa regard God as not only inaccessible but unconcerned about human beings, who have to fend for themselves from the moment of their creation. Hence the malicious urges of the souls exiled between heaven and earth. If they make a baby, a hunter or a confused rich man ill, it is because they are asking to come back to life. This happens when they become someone's "sponsor" or "ancestor" - in other words the surplus energy of the living.

This is how people tune in to the strength, the breath of the universe, which is "physically" speaking an "organ" wafting air that is cool, or at least damp. In many African languages, the same term is used to designate the spirit, the act of breathing and the faculty of thought. The dead too want to "breathe". Their transition from the other side of life is evidence of what they were: like efficient "functionaries" they have fulfilled their obligations to life. Thus, if they want to become living creatures again, in other words ancestors, altars and sacrifices must be made for them, followed by regular, permanent rituals.

Sacrifice renews the vital force of the dead, restoring balance to the world in general. "The dead are thirsty", say Dogon "initiates". The living are called upon to nourish the dead. In so doing, they prevent the dead from exhausting their energy, which in this instance is described as "thirst". This "thirst" disturbs families which have not yet built altars to honour their dead. Failure to do this puts the dead in a delicate position and the living do not fare much better. Uneasiness and tension build up in such families, which are destined to suffer illness or accidents.

At this point, a mediator appears in the shape of the village soothsayer or sorcerer. He tells them that ancestor worship is their way to salvation. The ancestors must be brought back to life by "breathing" into them the energy contained in the blood and food that are indispensable to the living. For as long as the dead remain unhonoured, they will always be troublemakers who disturb the peace of the living. In order for them to become acclimatized, they must be allowed to "leave death behind". There is a "no-man's-land" that is beyond life and just short of death. Removing them from this limbo is the only way to completely restore them to the status of the living.

As the French ethnographer Marcel Griaule noted, African religious thought is a hymn of praise to the restorative powers of water. Water is the breath and the rich soil in which something can take root and give birth to all aspects of life. Thinking about an afterlife is the act by which the living and the dead drink living water from the same gourd.

COPYRIGHT 1998 UNESCO
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