TRADITIONAL BELIEFS, PRACTICES and TABOOS

Despite the strong Islamic and Christian (to a lesser extent) influences in Senegal today, people still retain certain practices originating from past animist beliefs. "Animism" can be defined as a religion based on the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and idols or fetishes (i.e. objects regarded as having magical power),contain special forces. Many Senegalese people still believe in the existence of supernatural forces and individuals with powers to protect against or utilise these forces. These individuals include witch doctors, herbalists, diviners, or marabouts. The latter are Muslim holy men who offer prayers and charms that have a variety of functions.

Many Senegalese people can be seen wearing amulets, commonly called "gris-gris" on their body around the waist, neck, arms, or legs. These are leather objects enclosing writings from the Koran which have been prescribed by a marabout. Senegalese people consult marabouts for a variety of reasons, but the following are the most common:

• To protect against evil sprits.
• To improve one's status (i.e. getting a job, seeking love or marriage, getting a promotion, receiving a bank loan)
  
• To remedy a situation (e.g. curing a mentally or physically ill person, curing headaches or chronic pains, curing impotence or sterility, resolving disputes between people etc).
  
• To curse (e.g. to rid oneself of a rival like a co-worker or co-wife through illness, disappearance or even death).
  

In West Africa when people get sick, insane or disappear, sometimes it is believed that they are possessed by devils. A ceremony called "ndëpp" is organized to exorcise the possessed which make it possible to cure the person "caught" by the spirits. The ndëpp is a means of joining ancestral alliance with the guardian spirits. The ritual of ndëpp lasts 4 or 8 days and consists of construction of furnace bridges for the spirits, sacrifice of animals, treatment of the patient using curdled milk, millet and blood of the sacrificed animals, and lengthy drumming and dance ceremonies.

During the workshop, you will have a unique opportunity to observe ceremonies that are part of an ndëpp, an experience usually off-limits to westerners.