African Silences by Peter Matthiessen

roofs that are lifted onto the hut cylinder in a single piece; the chief’s house, in this village, at least, has a roof of tin. All houses are decorated with a broad white band of kaolin on which red drawings and designs have been inscribed. The designs are made by young initiates to the tribe, and mostly portray the hunting and fishing that is swiftly disappearing from their lives. In addition, thereare three fetish houses scattered wide apart in the big village, and readily distinguished by a half-circle of palmettos and a flat stone altar near the entrance. Outside one sits an old man whom everyone ignores; the silence all around is very strange. Indeed, he is like a sacred mask, for according to Jacob, nobody is supposed to see him enter or leave the fetish house; children playing anywhere near are called away. Nor is anyone permitted to take photographs. Explaining all this, Jacob keeps glancing at the fetish house, and before long he is accosted by a man who is offended by Gil Boese’s camera and demands to know why strangers lurk about; hurriedly we apologize and move away. It is the power of the fetish houses, Jacob says, that keeps these Dan from obeying official orders and moving over to New Biankouma, a treeless, muddy, and depressing litter of hard government housing that adjoins the village; such developments, built with customary bureaucratic disregard for the traditions of the people who must live in them, are all too reminiscent of the “efficient” government housing on Indian reservations in the United States. They are a common sight these days in Ivory Coast, and most of them—deservedly—are empty.
    At the next village south, a dancing march is under way, led by a figure in a headdress mask who is hoisting a high pole; a number of costumed figures follow, leading a crowd of stamping, singing villagers. Many of these Dan wear Muslim dress, and it is true that the Malinke have made converts among these people, as they have among the Senoufou, farther north. But Muslim dress is a fashion here, and no proof of religion; where fetish houses and masks occur, the people are still animists, including many who have formally adopted Islam or Christianity. Our Jacob Adjemon is “Christian” but his Beté tribe—of the Kru peoples, who came originally from the Windward Coast—remains in touch with the old ways, and Jacob himself believes that his own brother died by sorcery. Jacob kindly invitedus to visit his mother’s house on the way back to Abidjan; he says his room is still kept in waiting for his return. But Jacob has lost the family sense that is so powerful in Africa; by jitney bus, his village is not far from Abidjan, yet it has been eight years since he went home.
    Jacob is generous and intelligent, but he is also arrogant and angry. Being a guide to the white tourists gives him a feeling of superiority, and so he resents very much that both of us have been to Africa many times before and might even know more than he does about wildlife, which like many young urban Africans, he fears and despises. His solution is to dispense information in a very loud, abrasive voice whether we want it or not, as if to say, This is my duty, and I mean to do it. Two days ago, he took offense when we declined a side trip out of Boundiali to view some hippopotami in a distant lake; everyone else he had ever guided had been to see those hippos, and although he granted the possibility that we had seen hippos rather often, while they, perhaps, had not, he could not reconcile himself to our defection.
    Because his voucher entitles him to do so, and because he conceives of it as duty, Jacob insists on joining us for every meal. Having appeared, he slumps disconsolately in his chair, eats with his fingers village-style, and declaims against European food; almost invariably, an expensive dinner is left virtually untouched upon the table. In its place, he orders a Coca-Cola in which he marinates a large hard roll until it