Africa is roots.
Approaching the spiritual reality of a people is very difficult, because it is like asking to be able to look inside something intimate, reserved for those who, that creed, live and feel it every day. Animism is a Western term, coined to try to give a kind of container to a whole range of spiritual realities, rituals, traditions and especially very multifaceted ways of living. This occurs in the gestures and habits that have made the reality of daily living intoxicated with an immaterial veil, which seems to permeate everything.
Africa is different.
In Togo, where this narrative is set, it is not-as one might think at first glance-the extreme poverty and backwardness of the welfare state that causes certain beliefs to persist that are still so strongly held today. Despite the strong influence of European colonialism – first German and then French – that led Christianity to spread throughout the country, and, further north, the increasing spread of Islam, traditional beliefs retain the most significant number of followers among the population, where 51% of Togolese find spiritual completeness in ancient African religious realities.
African magical realism
My approach to such a complex and multifaceted reality has not been that of a scholar, but that of a genuinely curious person.
In the two trips to Togo that led me to learn about Vodu, literally sign of the deep-or Voodoo, a better-known term of Anglo-Saxon derivation- , I was surprised not to find magic hidden behind hidden ritual secrets, as one might imagine when thinking of Voodoo, which is often linked to black magic. To be able to observe well, to get carried away and involved, this magic pervades every simple gesture of everyday life, whether conscious or unconscious. I started calling it African magic realism as I could not help but think of those strange atmospheres, capable of producing a mystical displacement, so dear to Gabriel García Marquez, where the verismo of the everyday suddenly and abruptly mixes with the mystical, the supernatural.
Moments of mystical displacement precisely, fascinating enchanted (or bewitched) conjunctures, kept repeating themselves involving me more and more while increasing my deep respect – and awe – for this ancestral spiritual world.
Like when I was ascending the forest to reach a waterfall sacred to Ayda-Weddo – loa of fertility and fresh waters – a child of about ten years old flanked us without a word and, as soon as he reached the water spring located at the base of the waterfall, stood in the center of it where, prompted by a reason obscure to me, he assumed an ascetic posture. Just enough time to take a couple of shots and he was gone, back down the forest, without uttering a word. It was one of the most exciting moments of my African journeys.
And again, when wandering in solitude through the narrow streets of little Atakpamé during a festival in honor ofyam, a very popular food in Togo, also with strong symbolic content related to the fact that the tuber’s ripening period under the ground is nine months as in human gestation, looking out into an alleyway I saw this mask-spirit engaged in a solitary dance to the rhythm of resonating drums in the distance, perhaps on the other side of town, with no audience but me. And just as I found him, he continued to dance even when I moved away. I have often found myself in such situations, and each time I experienced this feeling of mystical displacement.
This is how Africa enters you, sometimes slowly penetrating your skin, other times with a punch to the stomach.
Places and people create a unique combination, as if they were roots that cling to the soul, abducting it and changing it forever.
