My Facebook surfing and calm morning with Ben Harper was just interrupted by the lively sound of African drums outside my gate. Barefoot and still in my sleeping sarong I walked out my door and onto the mud and gravel road to see. (My guards were visibly concerned about the possible tenderness of my white female feet!) A group of students were dancing, playing the "Tam Tams" and singing along the road to celebrate the beginning of the school holidays .
Asked if I would like to take a photo, I said that really what I wanted to do was take a sound recording, a photo would not do this justice.
The conversation then turned to my night's sleep (seems in West Africa morning greetings either revolve around "have you eaten yet" or "how did you sleep"). There have been thunder storms and thumping rain every night for the past week. I find this calming and it helps me sleep (maybe due to my years spent in tropical Singapore / Malaysia) . Then I was told there are two types of lightning in Africa. Expecting the cloud to cloud; and cloud to earth explanation I was surprised when I was told the following:
My guard: "If your mobile phone is stolen you can go visit a fetishist and they will cast a spell, lightning will come down and strike the person who stole it on the head. We believe in lots of kind of fetish and magic in West Africa. But in other places, Mali, Burkina (me - and the Gambia? - yes yes) they believe in even more than in Cote d'Ivoire. So many weird things happen here. There was a helicopter accident, the pilot died straight away and the Togolese President escaped unhurt. Only in Africa."
Me: "So what is the second type of lightening?"
My guard (with a quizzical look): "The type that strikes the ground during a storm of course!"
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