Killing sheep with the Sultan
on Mischa in Cameroon (Cameroon), 04/Dec/2009 13:22, 34 days ago
The 28thNovember was the Islamic Fete du Mouton, or Eid Ul Adha, where Muslims kill and eat lots of meat, especially mutton, to celebrate the sheep that God put in place of Abraham’s son Isaac when he demanded that Abraham should sacrifice Isaac to prove his faith. My landlord, the seven foot tall Sultan of Pouss, whose second home I live in at Maga, had invited me to spend the festival at his palace in Pouss, 12km away. Whilst Maga is a relatively new village, built up inthe seventies around riziculture, Pouss is an ancient village right on the river Logone, which forms the border with Chad, and festivals there are taken extremely seriously.I decided that there are few times in a girl’s life when a Sultan will invite her to celebrate a major festival at his palace, so in spite of his threat that he would make me (a vegetarian of thirteen years) eat mutton prepared by his four wives, I took a motorbike to Pouss on the morning of the festival. Everyone there was very excited tosee me, as I’d brought my camera, and I was immediately pulled to the front of the crowd so I could take photos of the procession coming back from morning prayers. It was led by horsemen galloping up and down waving swords, followed by musicians with horns and tam-tams and the Sultan in his car, which was shaded by an absolutely massive orange umbrella.After the Sultan had entered the palace I was swept off to the women’s quarters where women started to make me eat vast quantities of biscuits very fast. These biscuits, which are called croquettes and are made of fried dough, formed a major feature of my two days at Pouss- the Sultan’s wives must have prepared several thousand and they were given out in massivequantities to the hundreds of visitors (all family, apparently- the current Sultan’s very prolific father had a lot of wives and more than eighty children) who came to the palace during the fete. Whenever I sat down someone would come up with a plateful and watch over me to make sure I was eatingthem.The Sultan then summoned me to watch animal sacrifice. A group of men slit the throats of two large sheep and a giant cow. They really wanted me to take lots of photos of this, while they posed smiling with big knives and pointing at the severed necks and gushing blood, none of which, extraordinarily, went onto their flowing white robes. I obliged for the two sheep, but drew a line at the cow, and went off to chat with the Sultan. As promised he spent a long time ordering me to eat mutton (it’s probably been years since anyone’s disobeyed him so much, although I finally placated him by nibbling a very, very small corner). He wanted to know, as does everyone here, when I’m going to get married, and didn’t think it was a problem I hadn’t found a man yet, as he could do this forme if I wanted. He thought my father could probably get twenty cattle for my dowry- the normal amount here is about ten to twelve, but I have added rarity value. When I pointed out I thought my father would struggle to get twenty cattle into my back garden in England, and wouldn’t mind if he didn’t get a dowry for me, the Sultan cheerfully offered to look after the cattle on my father’s behalf. The Sultan’s own wives, who were all incredibly kind to me, on the surface seem to be an excellent advert for polygamy. They each have their own very comfortable one room mud house in the women’s quarters; wives one and two even have a fuzzy television, and wife three, whose house I slept in, has a cassette player that was used to teach me to dance like an African (basically I should wiggle my bottom more). They share the cooking, which is no small task in the Sultan’s massive establishment, eat together, and seem to be good friends. They were laughing most of the time I was there, although that may have been because they were amused by my strange white girl behaviour (I ate no mutton, couldn’t cook, didn’t pray, and plaited my own hairevery day). On the other hand polygamy also has an incredibly dark side here; the sister of one of my friends has just run away from her husband because his first wife tried to poison her. Fortunately she has a tolerant father, who is willing to take her back into his home, but apparently this isn’t an isolated incident and wife-against-wife violence is common.The Sultan’s palace is beautiful- it’s a huge and very complex compound built from a pale sandy mud, with a painted exterior, a prison over the entrance, a reception hall and private quarters for the Sultan, men’s quarters (which I didn’t see), and women’s quarters, which are a compound within the compound and have kitchens, the wives’ houses, and lots of little interlinked walled courtyards spread with mats. There are complicated rules about where it’s permitted to wear shoes- simplified, the higher the rank of chieftain, the further away you have to take off your shoes. Because the Sultan is a top rank chieftain (also called a Lamido), most of the palace is a designated bare feet zone. I decided to end my visit when the Sultan started suggesting that if I moved into the palace he would give me a motorbike so I could commute to work in Maga, but have promised him and his wives to go back soon.