OF zouglou, God and boubou
Dieu vous parle?
Is God speaking to you? That’s what the African shopkeeper asked me when I asked him if he had English books in his shop. He led me to a corner covered with Dickens and Danielle Steele, while telling me that God had just whispered to him that I was going to have a healthy baby girl (which made me listen twice, for he was right on that one) and that I should join his church to hear more of God, loud and clear.
Oh boy, those Africans, they talk to me about God wherever I go: inside the taxi with its broken windows and loud blasting zouglou music, at the market stalls heaped with all kinds of colourful and exotic fruit, and even inside our own apartment, where in the evening joyous singing drifts up from a practising church choir downstairs.
Yesterday Niko’s babysitter, Marie, asked me to visit a neighbour who she said could help me sew a cot and curtains for the new baby because she had not spotted any such things in our place and thinks that I am – just like in the magazines and movies she watches - a Westerner who likes flowery baby curtains with ditto baby cot and little bambino bookshelves and dwarfy baby sofas etc. Poor thing, she doesn’t even know that I am set to buy the little colourful cotton padded basket I saw on the market – which to me looks like a perfect baby cot, even though the stall keeper insists that it’s originally designed for keeping luxurious puppies.
Anyway, Marie took us upstairs, unbeknownst to her that this was going to be my first real visit to an African family’s house. While climbing the stairs to their apartment I had visions of voodoo practices I might get to witness soon, and lo and behold!, I had only been in the neighbour’s place for less than half an hour – a very barren room crowded with what looked like hundreds of kids and aunties, maids and cousins – when one of them, a very skinny and tall woman, raised her arms in the air and started singing a gospel. “Jesus, c’est toi qu’on suive, Jesus, c’est toi toi toi,” she sang, and the whole crowd joined in at the chorus and while Niko watched in astonishment how Marie and the others started dancing, the lead singer led a young man inside the circle and made him sit on his knees and then she raised her voice a little louder and prayed the lord to save this man’s soul, and all others started touching his back and his head and whispered arduous prayers while he sat on his knees with his face looking very peaceful and his hands stretched open, ready to receive whatever the Lord or spirits were going to send his way.
Ivory Coast, it is quite an experience. Even if once one of the richest countries in Africa, since the civil war the only thing they can depend on, they claim, is Jesus. Most people now have a hard life, as I learnt when I visited the hospital for a check up and was asked to fill out a form with questions such as how many kids I’d already had, and how many of them were alive and how many dead. And if my house had a toilet in the garden or in the house, and if there was electricity.
The main thing that seems to keep people happy is singing and dancing, as well as looking gorgeous in their boubou of Holland wax, and getting their hair woven into intricate designs in one of the hundreds of beauty parlours that flower all over town.
I enjoy watching it all, and one of the things that has kept me happy on top of all this, is the yoga class I’d found. Class? Not really. A teacher, rather, who seemed to know all about the right postures to stretch my bulging body and its tired bones.
Alain, very black and tall, works as the sports manager in one of the grandest hotels here (grandest in Ivorian terms but rather old and in shambles when using Asian standards). When I asked to join his class, he suggested he rather teach me privately at my home.
A private class, how convenient!, I thought.
The first time he visited my place I saw the worried look on our cook’s face when I explained that this was my new yoga instructor. Alain later explained that yoga is not very well known over here and that people are a bit naïve and regard it as form of voodoo – as if I was joining a dangerous sect.
Alas! We’re only three sessions later and already I am starting to think that the cook and his worried looks might have been very right, after all. Not that I am practising voodoo and at risk of being led astray, though yes, in fact that is exactly what might be happening.
It started with Alain’s persistent questions about my daughter, was she fast asleep?
‘Yes, she rarely wakes during her noon nap.’
And my husband, he prodded, was he at work or might he drop home for lunch?
‘Well, he might but then again he might not.’
Alain looked as if he was making some serious deliberations in his mind, while the cook kept throwing furtive looks down the little corridor into the room where Alain and I were doing our practice. Looks that I was now starting to find rather reassuring because I’m starting to get a bit worried that after all it might be ME who is being a bit naïve here.
But then again, the classes so far have been very good, so I don’t want to be too suspicious but might have to keep my eyes wide open in the future, in case the cook isn’t looking for an instant and Alain starts acting funny, and Jesus isn’t there to help me out!
Big bisous from Abidjan,
Griet & co
Is God speaking to you? That’s what the African shopkeeper asked me when I asked him if he had English books in his shop. He led me to a corner covered with Dickens and Danielle Steele, while telling me that God had just whispered to him that I was going to have a healthy baby girl (which made me listen twice, for he was right on that one) and that I should join his church to hear more of God, loud and clear.
Oh boy, those Africans, they talk to me about God wherever I go: inside the taxi with its broken windows and loud blasting zouglou music, at the market stalls heaped with all kinds of colourful and exotic fruit, and even inside our own apartment, where in the evening joyous singing drifts up from a practising church choir downstairs.
Yesterday Niko’s babysitter, Marie, asked me to visit a neighbour who she said could help me sew a cot and curtains for the new baby because she had not spotted any such things in our place and thinks that I am – just like in the magazines and movies she watches - a Westerner who likes flowery baby curtains with ditto baby cot and little bambino bookshelves and dwarfy baby sofas etc. Poor thing, she doesn’t even know that I am set to buy the little colourful cotton padded basket I saw on the market – which to me looks like a perfect baby cot, even though the stall keeper insists that it’s originally designed for keeping luxurious puppies.
Anyway, Marie took us upstairs, unbeknownst to her that this was going to be my first real visit to an African family’s house. While climbing the stairs to their apartment I had visions of voodoo practices I might get to witness soon, and lo and behold!, I had only been in the neighbour’s place for less than half an hour – a very barren room crowded with what looked like hundreds of kids and aunties, maids and cousins – when one of them, a very skinny and tall woman, raised her arms in the air and started singing a gospel. “Jesus, c’est toi qu’on suive, Jesus, c’est toi toi toi,” she sang, and the whole crowd joined in at the chorus and while Niko watched in astonishment how Marie and the others started dancing, the lead singer led a young man inside the circle and made him sit on his knees and then she raised her voice a little louder and prayed the lord to save this man’s soul, and all others started touching his back and his head and whispered arduous prayers while he sat on his knees with his face looking very peaceful and his hands stretched open, ready to receive whatever the Lord or spirits were going to send his way.
Ivory Coast, it is quite an experience. Even if once one of the richest countries in Africa, since the civil war the only thing they can depend on, they claim, is Jesus. Most people now have a hard life, as I learnt when I visited the hospital for a check up and was asked to fill out a form with questions such as how many kids I’d already had, and how many of them were alive and how many dead. And if my house had a toilet in the garden or in the house, and if there was electricity.
The main thing that seems to keep people happy is singing and dancing, as well as looking gorgeous in their boubou of Holland wax, and getting their hair woven into intricate designs in one of the hundreds of beauty parlours that flower all over town.
I enjoy watching it all, and one of the things that has kept me happy on top of all this, is the yoga class I’d found. Class? Not really. A teacher, rather, who seemed to know all about the right postures to stretch my bulging body and its tired bones.
Alain, very black and tall, works as the sports manager in one of the grandest hotels here (grandest in Ivorian terms but rather old and in shambles when using Asian standards). When I asked to join his class, he suggested he rather teach me privately at my home.
A private class, how convenient!, I thought.
The first time he visited my place I saw the worried look on our cook’s face when I explained that this was my new yoga instructor. Alain later explained that yoga is not very well known over here and that people are a bit naïve and regard it as form of voodoo – as if I was joining a dangerous sect.
Alas! We’re only three sessions later and already I am starting to think that the cook and his worried looks might have been very right, after all. Not that I am practising voodoo and at risk of being led astray, though yes, in fact that is exactly what might be happening.
It started with Alain’s persistent questions about my daughter, was she fast asleep?
‘Yes, she rarely wakes during her noon nap.’
And my husband, he prodded, was he at work or might he drop home for lunch?
‘Well, he might but then again he might not.’
Alain looked as if he was making some serious deliberations in his mind, while the cook kept throwing furtive looks down the little corridor into the room where Alain and I were doing our practice. Looks that I was now starting to find rather reassuring because I’m starting to get a bit worried that after all it might be ME who is being a bit naïve here.
But then again, the classes so far have been very good, so I don’t want to be too suspicious but might have to keep my eyes wide open in the future, in case the cook isn’t looking for an instant and Alain starts acting funny, and Jesus isn’t there to help me out!
Big bisous from Abidjan,
Griet & co
posted by Griet at 3:02 PM
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