Friend

“A terrifying tropical hurricane was in progress. My father blew out the pale yellow light emanating from the burning shea oil lamp. The ensuing deep darkness forced my eyes closed. I didn’t want to sleep. I couldn’t. I was scared — scared of the darkness. More than that, I was scared of knowing that I would be awake in such darkness while everyone else slept.

My sister began to snore. She was sleeping next to me at the edge of the common bed. These primitive beds can be a torture to the body. They are hand built with thin pieces of wood from the yila tree, known for growing thin and straight branches. On top of the rectangular surface of wood strips and raw leather a straw mat is laid to diminish the roughness of the uneven wood. A bed like this is only good for those already won by sleep. You cannot stand being awake on it. Your whole attention turns to avoiding being pinched by your own bed.

It didn’t take long before I heard someone else snoring. It was my stepbrother. Behind me the regular breathing of my father told me that he too was somewhere in zanuteg, the land of sleep. I squeezed my eyes shut. One way or the other I had to get to sleep. The dark closed in with a hermetic seal. I remained waiting to be freed by sleep.

Outside, the hurricane was raging, hurling rain at our mud roof. Rather than focus on the possible destructiveness of this hard rain, my childlike mind chose to remember instead the singing rains. In our village there is nothing more peaceful than lying in bed while rainwater sings its song upon a mud roof. Even the grown-ups like it. There is only concern if the roof begins to leak. Then you have to climb up there in the dark to try and figure out how to seal the hole before the leak becomes like rain itself. Some part of me did not want to sleep unless I could take the singing rain into zanuteg with me.

Suddenly, my sister began to talk in her sleep. She was objecting to someone blowing smoke at her. It made no sense to me. I wanted to wake her up, but she was snoring too. Anybody who wakes up a snoring person will catch the snoring disease. I pushed her so she would turn around. Certain sleeping postures are particularly inviting to snoring. I did not want to wake her up, I just wanted to stop her from keeping me awake. Unlike other nights, she continued to talk and snore alternately. Normally she would wake up or at least stop talking for a while.

Her persistence intrigued me, so I opened my nearly three-year-old eyes as if to get a better look at what to do about this disease that was robbing me of my sleep. And then I saw it. Just above my sister’s head was a goat sniffing, with its nose moving frenetically as if collecting data. It was luminescent as if its fur were sprinkled with a moon dust as it glowed in the dark. Its horns were branchlike, the likes of which I had never seen before…”

"We are primarily spirit.  In order to exist as material beings we have to take a form.  We only bother to fit ourselves into this narrow part of the universe, because it serves the unavoidable and useful purpose of expanding the spirit within us. We need to understand the difference between the seen and the unseen.  You will only see what you expect to see, based on your internal programming.

What I saw in my initiation was the result of a struggle that resulted in the aligning of of my physical vision with my spiritual sight.  When we see with spiritual eyes, we remain in service to nature ; we see nature as the originator of tools and technology and know that they must be used in harmony with nature's design and purpose, which are to maintain and serve the individual and community.  My work responds to nature's expectation of me as a product of nature, rather than something I do in the interest of accumulating or consuming. At its core, the purpose of an individual is to bring beauty, harmony and communion to Earth."

~ Malidoma Patrice Some, Ritual: Power, Healing and Community
Malidoma Patrice Somé (born 1956) is a West African writer. He was born into the Dagara people in Dano, Burkina Faso. At age four, Somé was forcefully removed from the Dagara by his father, and taken to a Jesuit boarding school where he was provided with a Western education by priests who were determined to create another black priest. After enduring 16 years of physical and emotional abuse by the priests, he left this school when he was twenty, and returned to the village of his birth. Upon his return, integration into his traditional tribal religion and customs was difficult, due to his long absence from his culture and his apparent indoctrination into Christianity and a "white man's world". Elders from the village believed that Somé's ancestral spirit had withdrawn from his body and that he should undergo a dangerous, month-long initiation process called Baor, an initiation among Dagara males which is believed to reunite soul and body.

Somé says the Dagara believe that each person is born with a destiny, and he or she is given a name that reflects that destiny. Somé says his name, Malidoma, means "he who makes friends with the enemy/stranger." Somé believes it is his destiny to come to Western audiences and promote an understanding between Western and indiginenous cultures. Dr. Somé holds three Master’s degrees and two Doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. He is an initiated elder in his village in Dano, Burkina Faso, W. Africa. Somé writes books and teaches workshops on West African spirituality. He currently lives on the West Coast of the United States.