Myths, Legends, Books & Coffee Pots: The magical gris-gris - a journey in understanding by Laura Rahme

The magical gris-gris - a journey in understanding

By Laura Rahme

While I was growing up in Dakar, my grandparents hired domestic helpers from the region of Casamance, a province south of Senegal. One of them, I remember strongly. She was Marie-Hélène Sambou, a young Serer woman.

From infancy, Marie-Hélène helped to feed me, took care of me, dressed my hair into African braids, taught me Wolof phrases and dances, and walked me to school. She was among the Senegalese minority to adorn her neck with a Christian cross, yet Marie-Hélène also wore what looked like tiny pellets attached round her waist or pinned to the underside of her garments. When I asked her what these were, she warned me never to touch, and I sensed in her tone, a fear, and a dependence on these little objects. I learned that the little pellets were called, gris-gris and that they were given to her by a marabout – a religious guide with magic abilities – to protect her from any evil and to keep her safe. This confused me at the time because I believed Marie-Hélène to be a Christian like me.

I fondly remember the year when Marie-Hélène accompanied my family to France. The winter of 1984-1985 was exceptionally cold with record temperatures. For many nights, I tucked close to Marie-Hélène beneath the covers and begged her to tell me the stories she knew until way past my bedtime. Her tales had me enraptured. They were filled with sorcerers, marabouts, magic spells, writhing snakes, and other themes that were beyond any fairy tale I knew. What most captivated me was her gravity and the awe in her voice when she narrated these stories, asserting that they were all true. Marie-Hélène’s belief in the magic was absolute.

Marie-Hélène was not unique in her blending of Christian and animistic beliefs. Whether a Senegalese is a member of the Muslim Sufi majority or the Christian minority, animism will guide their behavior.

My novel, The Signare of Gorée, is set during the period before France invaded and colonized Senegal. At this time, local populations held strong beliefs in the existence of a soul or sentience in animals, rivers, and other geographical features. These beliefs existed alongside notions of Islam which locals had encountered through the Almoravids since the 11th century, but which did not influence them until the 17th century. For the Lebou, one of Senegal’s cultural groups, who inhabited coastal villages including the region known today as Dakar, Islamization came even later. Begun toward the second half of the 19th century, it gained ground in the Lebou villages in 1900.

As early as the 1820s, ecclesiastics including the Sisters of Cluny, the Brothers of Ploërmel originating from Brittany, and métis priests, had attempted to foster Christian values in the predominantly Wolof population of Saint-Louis and Gorée island.

David Boilat, who appears in The Signare of Gorée, was one of those métis priests. To his frustration, he was confronted with what, today, remains a syncretistic belief system, merging traditional elements of Islam with fetishist practices.

Among Boilat’s illustrations, is this 1843 portrait of a Tukulor marabout. It depicts the sort of man Boilat would have wished his congregation to avoid. Traditionally, a marabout is a learned Muslim scholar, but in 19th century Senegal, as in modern times, one can distinguish various shades of marabouts from the traditionalist Muslim scholar, the syncretistic animist well-versed in the occult, to the other extreme, the charlatan. Boilat was not fond of any of them.

Tukulor Marabout by David Boilat

One of the arts practiced by marabouts, even today, was to create charms or gris-gris. The creation of a gris-gris is a secret process transferred from one generation to the next. Often, they take the form of a tiny leather bag that encloses some kind of incantation or spell. The receiver of the gris-gris wears it to guard against evil spirits, or djinns.

Boilat was a determined evangelist and beneath one of his illustrations which depicts an unfolded gris-gris, he wrote, perhaps with a touch of annoyance, “I confiscated this gris-gris found in the boutique of a signare in Saint-Louis.”

Gris-gris by David Boilat

In this instance, the aim of the charm was to ensure that the signare’s boutique would prosper and that she would always sell without a loss.

Modern Senegal is a secular, majority Muslim country where 95 percent of adherents belong to a Sufi brotherhood, more than in any other Muslim population in the world. It is no coincidence, for this syncretistic culture at least, that Sufism teachings encourage tolerance over dogmatism.

The anthropologist David Maranz explains that while Wolof society seems to revolve around Islam, it practices this faith at two levels. There is the visible level with Muslim ritual prayers, fasts, and festivals, and there is the core "folk" level which blends Sufi Islam with African traditional religion. The result is that animistic practices persist even if in appearance, they are performed by Muslims.

In his book, Peace is Everything, David Maranz also highlights the Senegalese goal of transcendent peace. This desire for peace extends to relationships between people and spiritual forces, and between people and nature. A Senegalese will seek harmony with the forces that govern the world, including God and spiritual beings such as djinns and rabs. Just like Marie-Hélène, and the signare whom David Boilat apprehended back in the 19th century, they will use charms and amulets to gain protection from destructive cosmic forces.

My childhood encounter with Marie-Hélène left a deep mark in my psyche. Forty years later, still in awe of her stories, I wove Senegalese magical belief into The Signare of Gorée. I hope readers will enjoy Senegal’s nuanced culture as I much as I do.

The Signare of Gorée
By Laura Rahme

Publication Date: 9th September 2024

Publisher: Independently Published

Pages: 301 Pages

Genre: Historical Mystery / Historical Fiction

1846.

In the heat of West Africa, the French navy uncovers the corpses of two French soldiers. Inspector Maurice Leroux arrives at the island of Gorée. It seems death has come to this small colonial outpost off the Senegal coast, home to the prosperous mixed-blood women known as the signares.

The navy suspects that the Bambara people, emboldened by approaching emancipation, may be out for blood. While confronted by the locals’ strange magical beliefs, Maurice remains skeptical. Does malevolence play a part, or are these deaths accidental, brought upon by the brutality of nature in an island known as the white man's grave?

But when murder strikes, it becomes clear that a killer is stalking Gorée.

Swept by a mystery unlike any he has known, Maurice meets Signare Angélique Aussenac. The proud métis, deserted by her wealthy Bordeaux lover, casts her spell upon Maurice.

But beyond the throbbing sounds of the tam-tams and the glittering signare soirées, danger lurks. Someone is watching. And the deaths go on.

Could the killer be one of the rich Bordeaux merchants? Or are they hiding among the powerful signares?

A historical mystery spanning France and Senegal, THE SIGNARE OF GORÉE explores a world of magic, murder, and passion.

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Laura Rahme

Laura Rahme is the author of seven historical novels. Born in Dakar, Senegal where she spent her early childhood, she moved to Australia at the age of ten. A graduate of two Honors degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Psychology, she has worked over two decades as an IT professional. Her greatest joy comes from travel, researching history, and penning historical mysteries. She now lives in France with her screenwriting husband.

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