Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Entry #4 Bullet Proof
After spending the past two weeks outside of our villages and host families I was eager to return home. I, in a small way, missed my village. I missed my younger brother Siuba, I was eager to reconvene my training with language and technical sessions and I was ready to get back into the swing of writing. I returned home as the sun was setting, I made small talk with my parents and then took a shower just as the sun was disappearing and Venus was coming into sight. My dinner was satisfactorily disappointing and I was able to sleep without any problems.
The next day I went to class and my friend Diego relayed the message that there had been three strange deaths in our village since we had been gone. Death is not an uncommon thing in Burkina, but these three deaths were a little bizarre. A woman had an epileptic seizure and fell in a well, another man had fallen out of a tree and died, and the third case actually occurred on the night of our arrival:
A man had taken a medication he had believed would make him bullet-proof. He received this medicine from the local witch doctor that often provides such remedies. After taking the medicine his friend shot him in the head to ensure the medicine worked. Alas, in fact, the medicine did not work and the man subsequently died on account of, “defective medicine”, so said authorities. You and I probably find this level of ignorance to be staggering; not only because a man actually thought that he could have his friend shoot him in the head without any negative consequences, but also because the entire town is in agreement with him. It only gets worse when you realize how far this belief extends. Educated people will not write off this belief as patently false and the chief of police for the area of 35,000 people is actively pursuing the medicine maker. One of the highest government officials believes that the fault lies with the defective bulletproof medicine. There is no cultural relevance in this discussion, this is not simply another way of viewing the world, this is not just another religious practice, this is a way of thinking that defies science and even the most basic of common sense.
I should be clear that people in general do not take this medicine and believe they are invincible. It is more along the lines that they heard the medicine exists from a respected elder and out of deference to the village elder, they will not write it off completely. While it is possible to understand why they might have this perspective, I cant help but think of the real life consequences that are going to result on account of paying respect to a senile village elder who believes in superstitions and magic. The consequences are that a man is dead, the police are pursuing the medicine man who left out an ingredient, and peoples belief in the supernatural is only bolstered. In the vast majority of situations I find it is easy to reach reasonable consensus with my Burkinabe counterparts, but there are times like these that you just have to shake your head and laugh because it feels as though you have entered the Twilight Zone.
The next day I went to class and my friend Diego relayed the message that there had been three strange deaths in our village since we had been gone. Death is not an uncommon thing in Burkina, but these three deaths were a little bizarre. A woman had an epileptic seizure and fell in a well, another man had fallen out of a tree and died, and the third case actually occurred on the night of our arrival:
A man had taken a medication he had believed would make him bullet-proof. He received this medicine from the local witch doctor that often provides such remedies. After taking the medicine his friend shot him in the head to ensure the medicine worked. Alas, in fact, the medicine did not work and the man subsequently died on account of, “defective medicine”, so said authorities. You and I probably find this level of ignorance to be staggering; not only because a man actually thought that he could have his friend shoot him in the head without any negative consequences, but also because the entire town is in agreement with him. It only gets worse when you realize how far this belief extends. Educated people will not write off this belief as patently false and the chief of police for the area of 35,000 people is actively pursuing the medicine maker. One of the highest government officials believes that the fault lies with the defective bulletproof medicine. There is no cultural relevance in this discussion, this is not simply another way of viewing the world, this is not just another religious practice, this is a way of thinking that defies science and even the most basic of common sense.
I should be clear that people in general do not take this medicine and believe they are invincible. It is more along the lines that they heard the medicine exists from a respected elder and out of deference to the village elder, they will not write it off completely. While it is possible to understand why they might have this perspective, I cant help but think of the real life consequences that are going to result on account of paying respect to a senile village elder who believes in superstitions and magic. The consequences are that a man is dead, the police are pursuing the medicine man who left out an ingredient, and peoples belief in the supernatural is only bolstered. In the vast majority of situations I find it is easy to reach reasonable consensus with my Burkinabe counterparts, but there are times like these that you just have to shake your head and laugh because it feels as though you have entered the Twilight Zone.
