Guest appearance in a religious video!
On our way to the shrine on a hill in the centre of Dassa Zoume, we came across a group of people with videoing equipment and men and women dressed in traditional clothes. We stopped to gawp at them and although they had finished filming their sequence, we were asked to join in. At first I thought it was only the dancers but then another woman also joined us and we found out that they were making a religious video. The group was called “Princess Toyissa” and we both joined in the dancing. The body movement which they do so well is alien to both of us so everybody patiently showed us what to do but nobody told us we were rubbish at it! Regardless of this, we were both filmed dancing with the group and singing with Princess Toyissa. So somewhere there will be people watching a religious video and suddenly these two foreigners will appear making fools of themselves.
Preparations for Arachid sauce:
On our way back down from visiting the Yaka shrine (Michael will tell you more bout the shrine in another blog entry soon), we had to go through a small community. There I was invited by a woman who was grinding pea-nuts on a rock which had a natural shape to allow women to use another smaller stone to grind whatever they need to prepare food. What was really good was that this was a communal grinding place for the community so women would take turns in grinding spices or pea-nuts for lunch or dinner. I was thanked for my help and asked if I liked Arachid sauce (spicy peanut sauce) and my response was I love it but my difficulty was not being able to eat it as usually people put fish or meat in the sauce.
Another interesting thing about the woman was that she was carrying a doll stuck in the waist band of her skirt. Twins are revered in many countries in West Africa and are said to have special powers. Twins never die their souls always stay within the families. The reason why this woman was carrying a doll was because her twin had passed away but she would dress the doll in the same clothes as herself every morning and get the twin to taste food before she took any and generally treat the twin as if s/he was still alive. Failure to take care of the twin would bring bad spirits into the family.
So not only was the shrine interesting but getting there and back was a great experience and we found out more about the beliefs of the community.
On our way to the shrine on a hill in the centre of Dassa Zoume, we came across a group of people with videoing equipment and men and women dressed in traditional clothes. We stopped to gawp at them and although they had finished filming their sequence, we were asked to join in. At first I thought it was only the dancers but then another woman also joined us and we found out that they were making a religious video. The group was called “Princess Toyissa” and we both joined in the dancing. The body movement which they do so well is alien to both of us so everybody patiently showed us what to do but nobody told us we were rubbish at it! Regardless of this, we were both filmed dancing with the group and singing with Princess Toyissa. So somewhere there will be people watching a religious video and suddenly these two foreigners will appear making fools of themselves.
Preparations for Arachid sauce:
On our way back down from visiting the Yaka shrine (Michael will tell you more bout the shrine in another blog entry soon), we had to go through a small community. There I was invited by a woman who was grinding pea-nuts on a rock which had a natural shape to allow women to use another smaller stone to grind whatever they need to prepare food. What was really good was that this was a communal grinding place for the community so women would take turns in grinding spices or pea-nuts for lunch or dinner. I was thanked for my help and asked if I liked Arachid sauce (spicy peanut sauce) and my response was I love it but my difficulty was not being able to eat it as usually people put fish or meat in the sauce.Another interesting thing about the woman was that she was carrying a doll stuck in the waist band of her skirt. Twins are revered in many countries in West Africa and are said to have special powers. Twins never die their souls always stay within the families. The reason why this woman was carrying a doll was because her twin had passed away but she would dress the doll in the same clothes as herself every morning and get the twin to taste food before she took any and generally treat the twin as if s/he was still alive. Failure to take care of the twin would bring bad spirits into the family.
So not only was the shrine interesting but getting there and back was a great experience and we found out more about the beliefs of the community.
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