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The Place of Birth: Wodaabe Changing Histories of Origin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
Two children came out of the water and they made a grass house (suurel) and stayed at that place. Later, some cows came out of the water and stayed during the evening with the children. And then the children migrated (gurgiisi, a short migration movement). The cows followed the children every place they went because the children had made them fire (Loose translation: tape transcript 1997).
His voice is difficult to understand; he is an old man. Sitting on a mat placed on the sand beneath his chair, I listen carefully, even though I know that my tape recorder will later help me in reconstructing his speech. His narrative is not unfamiliar and in fact it is almost surprising to me the similarity to WoDaaBe origin narratives that I have seen on print.
My discussion here focuses on WoDaaBe origin stories from the perspective of histories as being socially meaningful, integrated into political contexts. Ethnographic research among the WoDaaBe has reflected rather similar stories of origin as the one presented here, focusing on the WoDaaBe as originating in a mythical way, along with their cattle. My own research in the Tchin-Tabaraden area in Niger in 1996-98 indicated, however, that even though the narratives documented earlier by travelers and anthropologists are known, people were generally more interested in reciting and discussing stories strongly grounded in time and space. In my approach, I follow Jan Vansina's comment that “all messages have some intent which has to do with the present, otherwise they would not be told in the present” (Vansina 1985:92). Similarly, Ellen Basso has pointed out in relation to narratives, that it is not enough to ask, “what is a story about;” why it was told must be questioned as well (Basso 1995:x). I also contribute from theorists that have emphasized history itself as a political phenomenon formulating relations between past and present (Popular Memory Group 1982:240), making how the past is understood relevant to the present political-cultural context, without reducing it to merely functional justification for the present (Werbner 1998:2). History and memory thus have a texture that is both social and historic (Bommes et al., 1982:256), intertwined with power and meaning.
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