Genies!

One afternoon in early May, I was sitting at Sini’s and I noticed that Pateh (who was napping on a mat) and Rugi (who was dancing and singing to stop Baby Musa from crying for his mom) both had pieces of red fabric tied around their left wrists.  A little later, after Musa has grown bored of Rugi’s entertainment and his mom, Fatou Bobo, has finished feeding him flavored margarine (and I imagine but cannot confirm that the flavor was chocolate because the tub says, “Coco” in large letters and the color of the margarine is pale brown) Fatou Bobo ties together some strips of red fabric, twists them and ties them around Baby Musa’s waiste.

I look out at the children playing in the street and notice that nearly every single one of them has a strip of red fabric tied around his or her wrist. One girl doesn’t have it around a wrist, but instead around one of her braids. Tijan is busily occupied with attempting to tie a faded and rather large scrap of red fabric around his own wrist. This was starting to seem like something more than a coincidence. So I asked Fatou Bobo. and Sini…

Me: Many children have this [I indicate the red fabric around Rugi’s wrist and then towards the children playing in the street].

Sini: Yes…

Me: They did this because…?

Sini: Because?

Me: For what?

[Silence. I wait.]

Sini, turning to Fatou Bobo: Binta wants to know why the children have this.

[More silence].

In Fatou Bobo’s subsequent explanation, she used a lot of words that I didn’t know, so here is her explanation as interpreted by me: “Because the big children said so. It is to prevent something from happening to their souls.”

When she finishes explaining, she pauses expectantly, but it is a hesitating sort of expectancy, if that makes sense.

Me: If the children have this [I gesture towards Rugi’s wrist] there will not be a problem?

Fatou Bobo, with relief, probably because I’m acting like red fabric scraps that ward off danger sound perfectly logical: Yes. You understand?

Me: Yes (although I didn’t completely).

Fatou Bobo: But it is not only the children. Me also, I will do this. And you? Would you like it too?

Me: Okay.

Sini: ??

So the fabric is fetched and cut and a strip tied around my wrist and another around one of Fatou Bobo’s braids.

Rugi: Tie it in Binta’s hair!

Fatou Bobo: No.

Me: My hair will not accept.

Then Fatou Bobo brings me along to one of the compounds with a grinder so she can grind a bowlful of recently shelled peanuts. Along the way I notice more people tied with red fabric and also notice that Fatou Bobo’s tied a piece of red fabric around her door. I’m reminded of that biblical story where all the Egyptian first-borns die. Will these scraps of red allow our souls to be bypassed by some malevolent spirit? And what do the big kids have to do with it?