Embodying Colonial Memories by Paul Stoller

Author:Paul Stoller [Stoller, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781136652660
Google: dO_FBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-02T05:55:29+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Birth of the Hauka Movement

They came from Malia, the Red Sea, these Hauka, these "sons and daughters" of Bilali. Muhammed's black African confidant, Bilali was a man, who, as the mystical alter-ego of Dongo (the deity of thunder), possessed the power to burn villages and kill villagers without remorse. The Hauka, the descendants of Dongo-Bilali, captured some of their father's power.

They came to Niger in July of 1925, a scant three years after Niger had formally been transformed from a military territory to a French colony. They came on the wings of the Harmattan, the wings of the desert wind.

When they landed in Niger, they found a country occupied by whites, who, like Dongo, had burned villages and killed villagers without remorse. They found a land in which the whites had "requisitioned" food and animals, imposed taxes, forced young men to work, squelched armed revolts and punished any form of insubordination with steep fines and imprisonment. For many people in Niger, the whites must have seemed to possess incomprehensible power.

And so they came from the east, from Malia and took the bodies of their first mediums in the village of Tondigandia in the Kurfey of south central Niger. Nicole Echard describes the earliest gusts of what she calls the "Babule Movement" (which later became known as the Hauka Movement):

The Babule begins during the 1925 harvest following the return to the village of a woman called Shibbo who had lived in a neighboring region. There, she had been "attacked" by the "Europeanne," a female spirit of the brand new Babule family, and she returned along with a few mediums of these new spirits as well as with musicians-griots who knew their melodies and their demands. In one month the movement was organized under the guidance of Shibbo-the-Europeanne. About 100 people, considered as soldiers, formed a collectivity under the authority of general staff that copied the French military hierarchy. The Europeanne ordered the manufacture of rifles: the blacksmiths were capable only of reproducing the form and only the bayonet was usable. During the day, men and women, who had abandoned the harvest after Shibbo's return, went to the bush to train for guerilla war. Guard duty was organized, and lookouts were assigned positions in the village. Every evening there was a spirit possession dance during which the Babule came to hunt witches.1

Hauka spirit possession in Tillaberu, Niger (1977).

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