Magical Interpretations, Material Realities by Henrietta L. Moore Todd Sanders

Author:Henrietta L. Moore, Todd Sanders [Henrietta L. Moore, Todd Sanders]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415258678
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2001-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Tradition and Capital

In the eyes of the young marketeers seeking help from anti-witchcraft shrines, the distinguishing feature of western economies is the opportunity for a lot of people to make a lot of money. As one unemployed youth said to me, ‘In England everybody is rich’ (cf. Sanders 1999). They see themselves as possessing the ability to spot gaps in the market which their business acumen will fill and which will allow them to make vast amounts of money very quickly, the biggest scheme always being just around the next corner. The most ingenious of these money-making-schemes among some young marketeers involved an attempt to sell ‘fetish’ to Europeans and rich Africans and Americans in West Africa so that they may sample a bit of African traditional religion’ and protect their wealth from ‘their own evil spirits’, said one marketeer, William. William, aged 20, like many of his contemporaries, often boasted about the money he had earned by selling ‘ancient’ African talisman to wealthy Europeans, and of the contacts he had in Abidjan and other African cities. He knew, he said, how and where to cross the border to the Cote D’Ivoire quite easily and undetected. To this end, it was decided to combine a smuggling trip with the selling of talismans to tourists in the Cote D’Ivoire. Thus, William, together with three of his friends, set about buying talismans from a particular shrine at a price agreed with the okomfo which, incidentally, involved cutting him in on a share of the anticipated future profit.

William, together with Joseph, Bulie and Kofi, set off early one morning for the border where three friends were waiting with a car to take them to their compound in Abidjan. Resting after their journey, they spent the evening drinking at home before retiring to their quarters. The next day, they wandered aimlessly around the city. In the busiest sectors they stopped and watched other young men mingling among the few Europeans and Americans already on the tourist trail. Selling a variety of commodities from lighters and biros, cassettes of African music, they set up stall. The next day, William and Kofi marked out their pitch to hassle the few tourists around into buying an ‘authentic African fetish’. Their plastic shopping bags were stuffed to the brim with bits of herb, cattle tail onto which they had stuck beads and cloth in order ‘to make it look like African spirits’, and stickers bearing slogans such as ‘I am Afraid Of My Friends, Even You’ and ‘No Condition Is Permanent’. They came to sell not only ‘traditional fetish’, but also wooden airplanes painted with the Ghana airline logo. Many foreign visitors seemed somewhat wary of the youth and had obviously been warned to be careful of thieves and beggars, which these young men gave the impression of being. Gordon, from Ohio, was approached by Kofi outside a bar. He had flown to west Africa on business and had seen it all before:

Give them an inch … well, they are trying to make a living.

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