Magic is Not a Game in Africa

Chief Titinga Frédéric Pacéré arrives with his entourage.

I've been an avid Dungeons & Dragons player since the sixth grade.  Even wrote my own grimoire in 9th that included age appropriate spells like Great Balls of Fire, which the caster could use to attack their opponent with twin fireballs that homed in on their opponent's...well, never mind. The point is I'm OG. One key world and character building component of D&D was the distinction between clerics who received their power from their deity, and wizards who achieved it through years of study in the mystical arts.  In Burkina Faso however, like much of Africa, that's a line so smudged and smeared as to be functionally nonexistent. A whole lot of multi-classing going on. Also, and more to the point, magic on The Continent is not a game.

I've come to Burkina Faso during the rainy season. Torrential storms sucker punch you all summer. Though everybody has smart phones,  the weather reports is similar in many respects to a bad joke, like Rush Limbaugh caught in a Florida hurricane flood; either they're laughed at, or ignored.  Yet, here we are forty minutes outside the capital-Ade, her father, the Big Monster, and I- and somehow not sitting under a tarp while we wait for Chief Titinga to start the ceremony  anointing a new village chieftain. 

Burkina Faso politics are a tangle very much worth unraveling. We'll tease apart one such knot to put this ceremony into context.  When West Africa was colonized, the Europeans-in this case the French-would often choose indirect rule over direct rule to cut down on the number of rebellions and the cost of occupation. To that end, they would choose (or more accurately, create) "strong men" within majority  ethnic groups to determine the workaday fates of the African colony.  Post independence, much of the indigenous, consolidated power structure remains intact, though changed by the inevitable post-occupation throne games.

So while there is a democratically elected president of the country, there is also a  king of the Mossi people who make up at least 51% of the population. Modern day Burkina Faso doesn't function without dealing with King Mogho Naba Baongo II. The king in turn chooses chiefs, similar to bishops,  responsible for administering large swaths of the country. They will often install village-level chiefs. We were there to witness the replacement of the deceased village chieftain of one of the most powerful villages in the area. 

"What kind of power?" you might ask.  

Theirs was the power to control the weather. 

More next week.    

via GIPHY