Fetichism in West Africa

by Robert Hamill Nassau

Around the doctor and his power is always a cloak of mystery which I have not been able to solve entirely, and of which the natives themselves do not seem to have a clear understanding. The other factors in their fetich worship have to them a degree of clearness sufficient to make them able to give an intelligible explanation. It is plain, for instance, that the component parts of any fetich are looked upon by them as we look upon the drugs of our materia medica. It is plain, also, that these “drugs” are operative, not as ours, by certain inherent chemical qualities, but by the presence of a spirit to whom they are favorite media. And it is also clear that this spirit is induced to act by the pleasing enchantments of the magic doctor. But beyond this, what? Whence does the doctor get his influence? What is there in his prayer or incantation greater than the prayer or drum or song or magic mirror of any other person? For, admittedly, he himself is subject to the spirits, and may be thwarted by some other more powerful spirit which for the time being is operated by some other doctor; or he may be killed by the very spirit he is manipulating, if he should incur its displeasure.

Belief in the necessity of having the doctor is implicit, while the explanation of his modus operandi is vague, and he is feared lest he employ his utilized spirit for revenge or other harmful purpose. A patient and his relatives who call in the services of a doctor are therefore careful to obey him, and avoid offending him in any way.

The Yâkâ is appealed to in family emergencies. Suppose, for instance, that one member has secretly done something wrong, e. g., alone in the forest, he has met and killed a member of another family, devastated a neighbor’s plantation, or committed any other crime, and is unknown to the community as the offender. But the powerful Yâkâ of the injured family has brought disease or death, or some other affliction, on the offender’s family. They are dying or otherwise suffering, and they do not know the reason why. After the failure of ordinary medicines or personal fetiches to relieve or heal or prevent the continuance of the evil, the hidden Yâkâ is brought out by the chiefs of the offender’s family. A doctor is called in consultation; the Yâkâ, is to be opened, and its ancestral relic contents appealed to. At this point the fears of the offender overcome him, and he privately calls aside the doctor and the older members of the clan. He takes them to a quiet spot in the forest and confesses what he has done, taking them to the garden he had devastated, or to the spot where he had hidden the remains of the person he had killed. If this confession were made to the public, so that the injured family became aware of it, his own life would be at stake. But making it to his Yâkâ, and to only the doctor and chosen representatives of his family, they are bound to keep his secret; the doctor on professional grounds, and his relatives on the grounds of family solidarity. The problem, then, is for the doctor to make what seems like an expiation. The explanation of this, as made to me, is vague. I am uncertain whether the Yâkâ of the injured family is to be appeased or the offender’s own Yâkâ aroused from dormant inaction to efficient protection, or both. The Yâkâ bundle is solemnly opened by the doctor in the presence of the family; a little of the dust of its foul contents is rubbed on the foreheads of the members present; a goat or sheep is killed, and its blood sprinkled on them, the while they are praying audibly to the combined ancestor-power in the Yâkâ. These prayers are continued all the while the doctor, who makes his incantations long and varied, is acting. The sanctifying red-wood powder ointment is rubbed over their bodies, and the Yâkâ spirit having eaten the life essence of the sacrificed animal, its flesh is eaten by the doctor and the family. The Yâkâ bundle is tied up again, and again is hidden away in one of their huts, care being taken to add to it from the body of the member who next dies. The curse that had fallen on them is supposed to be wiped out, and the affliction under which they were lying is believed to be removed.

Recently (1901) a Mpongwe man had gone as a trader into the Batanga interior. He was sick at the time of his going, one of his legs being swollen with an edematous affection, so much so that people in the interior, natives of that part of the country, and fellow-traders, wondered that he should travel so far from his home in that condition. He said he was seeking among different tribes for the cure he had failed to obtain in his own tribe. Later on, he died. He happened to die alone, while others who lived with him, one of them a relative, were temporarily out of the house. The suddenness of the death aroused the superstitious beliefs of the relative, and he rushed to the conclusion that it had been caused by black art machinations of some enemy. But of the whereabouts or the personality of that enemy he had not even a suspicion. He cut from the dead man’s body the first joints of his fingers and all the toe-nails, put them in the hollow of a horn, and closed its opening, intending to add its contents to his family Yâkâ when he should return to Gabun. Then he waved the horn to and fro toward the spirits of the air, held it above his head, and struck it on the back of his own neck, uttering at the same time an imprecation that as his relative had died, so might die that very day, even as he had died, the unknown enemy who had caused his death.

There is another family “medicine,” still used in some tribes, that was formerly held in reverence by the Banâkâ and Bapuku tribes of the Batanga country of the German Kamerun colony. It was called “Malanda.” For description of it see Chapter XVI.

Another medicine similar to the Yâkâ in its family interest is called by the Balimba people living north of Batanga, “Ekongi.” The following statement is made to me by intelligent Batanga people who know the parties, and who believe that what they report actually occurred.

At Balimba, in the German Kamerun territory, lived a man, by name Elesa. He possessed a little bundle containing powerful fetich medicines, so compounded that they constituted the kind of charm known as Ekongi. Like Aladdin’s lamp, and almost as powerful, it warned him of danger, helped him in all his wishes, assisted him in his emergencies, and when he was away from it, as it was hidden in one of his chests in his house, caused him to be able to see and hear anything that was plotted against him. Only he could handle it aright; no one else would be able to manage it.

A brother-in-law of Elesa, husband of his sister, knew of this Ekongi, and asked Elesa to loan it to him in order that he also might be successful in some of his projects.

Now, the peculiarity of the Ekongi medicine is that it acts for and assists only the family of the person who owns it. Elesa refused his brother-in-law, telling him that as they did not belong to the same family, he would not know what to do with a strange Ekongi, nor would Ekongi be willing to answer a stranger.

The brother-in-law knew perfectly well that this was the manner of all Ekongi medicine; but he was so covetous and so foolishly determined that he hoped that in some way this Ekongi might be of use to him if only he could possess himself of it.