Ties of the Pants, Ties of the Breast (Sereer)

TIES OF THE PANTS, TIES OF THE BREAST (Sereer)

The world is like a drop of dew evaporating at the first sunrays. --Sereer proverb

The Tree of Life

Sereer land during the rainy season displays a remarkably constructed landscape. Despite the high population density, a fine equilibrium is maintained between trees and fields. In contrast to neighboring regions, abandoned land is rare. The trees are limited in species, being of direct use in the domestic economy. At the beginning of the dry season, the landscape is still well-timbered with hedges framing cultivated spaces. The Sereer landscape has been described as a well-spaced park or an aerial meadow.

Of the various tree species, the Acacia albida dominates the Sereer landscape and is inseparable from the agrarian environment of the Sine region. The role of the Acacia albida is particularly meaningful to Sereer life as it occupies a central position in religious practices and is endowed with important functional and symbolic values. Its reverse vegetative cycle sheds its leaves with the first rains, exposing the fields to sunlight and providing humus. When other trees start losing their leaves, it begins to grow new ones. The link between the tree and the earth is mediated by the cattle herd, whose manure enriches the soil. The seeds germinate when dispersed on the ground via the animals' excretions.

Sereer farmers are well aware of the role of the Acacia albida in cultivation, crop rotation, and cattle raising. They know they would have to tend the plant to benefit from it. Thus, in Sereer one would say, “I raise a sas" [or an Acacia albida] (Yaram sas) very much the same way one says, “1 raise a child” (yaram o ndiay). The integrated presence of the Acacia albida and the cattle offers one of the most efficacious agrarian combinations.

The result can be measured not only in the productive capacity of the cultivated land and the fine quality of the crops it yields but also in the high population densities on Sereer territories (approximately 60 to 75 persons per square kilometer as compared to the 10 to 30 in the neighboring Wolof areas). Generating new lives while subsisting on its own, somehow independently from its environment, the Acacia albida is the very “tree of life” in Sudanese cosmogonies. It is related to a whole tradition of living and functions in Sereer customary practices as the tree of fecundity, of health, and of fortune. Central to numerous rites, it has healing properties, and every single part of it serves a purpose, depending on the context to which it is applied.

In funeral rites, sticks made of Acacia albida wood are deposited in the coffin as provisions for the journey to the hereafter. Those who participate in the burying procedure should wash their hands in a calabash containing water and Acacia albida branches. When a child is born, a branch of this tree is placed on top of the dwelling. A decoction obtained from the bark of the tree may help to heal diseases. The fruit of the tree and its roots have the potential to protect and bring about good fortune to a person. The trunk of the tree is the site of many rituals, such as that of wiping the blood of a wound on it so as to invoke its protection.

The rituals mentioned above are examples of practices that have become more rarefied among the younger generations but are said to reveal traces of a Sereer myth of origins. This myth tells of the Acacia albidas abuse of power and their subsequent dispossession of it for the benefit of human techniques, is strikingly similar to the story underlining the Bambara myth of the Balanza--a Bambara word for th^ same tree. The following excerpt of the Sereer myth displays all the qualities and properties of the “tree of life,”

Long ago the sus was a lively tree. Women who wanted to give birth came up to It because It Fertility, prosperity, and health. Newborns were presented to It. Similarly, animals which gave birth next to It or came near It lived a long life. It loved human beings and hung them from time to time on the prickly arms of its branches. He who was thus hung by its twigs imagined that the sas wished to spend the day with him and [therefore] did not move until sunset It healed bloody sores and w’ounds that were rubbed against its bark.The bond tying economically as well as symboli­ cally the tree, the cattle, the earth, and with them the moon, the rain, the sun, is also the link that connects human beings to Rog Sen, the Supreme Being, and to the Pangol, the spiritual beings. Whether natural or man-made, all elements of the universe are here, as in other African cultures, regulated by and related to one another through a system of mediation in which each is at once mediated and mediator.

If the tree constitutes the link between sky and earth, the cattle, which represent family wealth, the symbol as well as the guarantee of the owners material prosperity, can be understood as "the link between the living and the dead, the testimony to the continuity and loyalty of the successive generations, and lastly, the irreplaceable instrument of the ancestors’ cult."

The earth, personalized as a desirable fecund woman (Adna Kumba Ndiayc) who cannot, however, be subject to individual appropriation, is intimately related in its rate of productivity to the moon—symbol of the earths fertility. Both belong to the same cycle, and both are considered feminine. The moon’s waxing is supposed to be the cause for the growth of all things on earth However, without the rain—symbol of life and of purification—the earth would remain lifeless.

The custom of collecting the water of the first rain, of preserving it for future births, and of pouring it on the roof of a dwelling, above its entrance door, so as to reinforce the life of a newborn baby. Inseparable also from the rain is the sun—antique symbol of God (here, Rog Sen)—for one cannot exist without the other, just as the two original exogamous matriclans of the Sereer are said to be associated with the sun and the rain. The rain, semen of the sky, is produced as a result of the earth's need of and response to the heat of the sun, or the light that sustains all living creatures.

As invoked in a prayer secretly taught to young people before they embark on a long voyage, the sun has a radiant energy as well as an effectively protective power, and the faithful recitation of the following verses of praise at daw n and sunset should ensure the reciter’s safety from all harm: “You wake up in the light / You lie down tn the light / In your light, everything is upright." The earth, mediator mediated, is both receptor and giver of life. Populated (inside) with the departed spirits and (outside) with their living relatives, it is the site of departure and arrival, of separation, union, and reunion, of production, repose, and regeneration.

A mother in labor would crouch in the court at the back of the dwelling so that her child would come out touching the bare ground and be vivified by the contact with the cosmos. From this first contact at birth to the last moment at funeral time, the life of a man or a woman unfolds as a continuous conversation with the earth—a vital relationship that always remains deeply caring and mutually support­ ive. Before going to sleep, that is, before diving into the world of “Deaths little brother,” Sereer elders are also said to protect themselves by reciting this prayer: “I spread the earth / I wrap myself in God / And rest my head on the large stone. ”

The ancestral spirit comes with the fresh air —Sereer proverb

Megaliths and Sand Tumuli

Among the monuments featured in the protohistorical sites of Senegal today, two are of particular interest to Sereer civilization: the megaliths or upright stones, and the sand tumuli or burial mounds. Both are found within and beyond Sereer territories. The megalith sites are located in a belt about 100 kilometers wide, starting from the fossil valley of the Saloum to Nioro du Rip, and stretching east more than 200 kilometers along the territories north of the Gambia River. The tumuli are found concentrated in great numbers on Sereer land, although their sites are dispersed all over the western and northwestern territories of Senegal.

According to the late Senegalese historian and Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop, these megaliths encountered at about the same latitude from Ethiopia all the way to Sine Saloum, the heart of Sereer country are linked to an agrarian cult. “They symbolize the ritual union of Sky and Earth to give birth to their daughter, Vegetation. ” It is by the impregnating action ofthe rain sent down by the sky to the earth that agriculture is possible, and according to ancient beliefs, everything growing out of this union was a divine product, “whence the idea of a cosmic trinity. ”

Although little is known of the origin of these megaliths, Diop has advanced a theory that tentatively attributes their pres­ ence to the Sereer people, who, he w rote, “still practice the same cult of upright stones in Sine Saloum. . . . [They] arc yet the only makers of rain in northern Senegal. They are essentially farmers, and it is uniquely for agrarian purpose that they invoke the rain through traditional rites. ” In Senegal the megaliths arc mostly cylindrical in shape. They are erected in single and double circles, or disposed as frontal stones next to sand tumuli and other lithic graves. The age of these monuments is still subject to research, but the results obtained from a few megalith sites place them between a.d. 594 and 750, while that yielded by a tumulus provides a date of a.d. 793.

These dates correspond to the time of the empire of Ghana, which was prospering in the eighth century, but was later (c. a.d. 1050) overpow­ ered by the Sosso state, the most powerful nation in the western Sudan at the end of the twelfth century The Sosso themselves were in turn vanquished by the Mandinka empire of Mali in 1235. Thus, the Wolof and the Fulbe are said to readily attribute the origins of the tumuli to the Sereer, while the Sereer them­ selves consider the tumuli to be constructions of the “Soos” (a term borrowed from the Wolof meaning “to begin”; hence the popular appellation Soos waa

Kaabu, or men of the beginnings from Kaabu), who were the previous occupants of the area, before the arrival of the Screen Since very few of these tumuli can be found in Futa Toro region, whence the Sereer were supposed to have come before they emigrated south to their present territory, it is inferred that the Sereer have adopted the funeral custom ofthe Sosso, which consists of burying the dead in a hole, with the conical thatched roof of their own dwelling placed over them, and then covered with earth.

A life-size model of the inside of the mound recon­ structed according to local elderly sources can also be seen in Bandia today, not far from the tourist complex at Saly Portugal. The sand mound you encounter, if you don’t add sand to it, don’t disperse it. —Sereer proverb

Two Brothers and the Pact of Loyalty

Sereer in Egyptian would mean “he who traces the temple.Those who determined the limits of a construction—those who hewed these cylindrical menhirs and lyre stones and erected them with preci­ sion in single and double circles; those who also planted them specifically in front of an enclosure or to the east of a grave—those arc the people whose origins Diop has situated in the Lipper Nile. His working hypothesis, which has had a strong impact on young intellectuals in Dakar and from Sereer country, pro­ poses a path of Sereer migration from east to west.

Such a path would be justified, on the one hand, by the presence of megaliths from Ethiopia all the way to Sine Saloum, as mentioned earlier. It would be accounted for, on the other hand, by close relationships drawn between Sereer and ancient Egypt in city, family, and divinity names, as well as in a number of cultural practices they share. Linguistic affinity between an- Besides suggesting that the ancestors of the Tokolor were Sereer, this second story also corre­ sponds in its details to one of the two accounts by oral tradition on the origins of the Tokolor previously related in this book.

As the Tokolor account specifies, the Sereer, chased away by the Fulbe, who were them­ selves moving under the Moors’ pressure, fled to the Kayor and Baol territories. These are, in fact, two ofthe four territories the Sereer occupy today, the others being the Sine and the Saloum. The Moors’ oral tradi­ tion further agrees with that of the Tokolor as it also affirms the presence, on the Mauritanian side, of the Sereer among the ancient inhabitants of the middle valley ofthe Senegal River.20 (The Moors from present­ day Mauritania share the Senegal River with the Tokolor from Senegal.)

This may indicate that the Sereer came from further east than Futa Toro in their migration westward. Numerous ancient village sites have been located in the middle valley of the Senegal River. The middle valley is situated at the crossroad of nu­ merous cultures; its multi-ethnic grouping and inter­ mixing makes all theories of pure or unitary origin appear futile. The fact that the name Sereer is itself a Pulaar term may point to an ethnic identity that is culturally crossbred at its very roots. the cow, which is both their indis­ pensable partner in the fields and the symbol of their family wealth. A head of a homestead who has no cattle either is not a Sereer or is a very unfortunate man. Sereer oral traditions abound with tales in which the protagonists are usually animals but very rarely also men or women.

Cultural and linguistic inter­ action with the latter is indeed considerable, since the Sereer have long cohabited on Wolof territories in their southward exodus from Futa Toro. Far from being the production of a single people or a single civilization, the present Sereer culture, as we have seen, results from the continuous intermixing of several peoples over a long period of history. In other words, there has never really been any unity of origin. To further complicate the matter, organiza­ tion of the Sereer society was based until the time of French colonization on political institutions inherited for centuries from the Mandingo, whose influence appeared most evident in the central position that the Gelowar dynasty held in the formation of the Sereer aristocracy.

To discuss the Mandingo’s contributions, it is necessary to return briefly to the fusion around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the Sereer who migrated from Futa with the Sosso who had come to the area from “Kaabu” or from the east, and whom the Sereer and the Wolof refer to as “the men of the beginnings. Owing to this contact, the Sereer have also been said to be issued from the Sosso kingdom, whose capital was established then i n the region of Kulikoro, about eighty kilometers north of Bamako

A Triadic Distribution of Power

The historical encounter of the Sereer and the Sosso occurred in more than one place in the region, but oral traditions particularly remember the myth of San Folo. According to this myth, the primal contact took place during the night, north of the Siin and not far from Niakhar—the first Sereer village of the Siin. Not only is the priority of Sosso presence over Sereer presence confirmed; but the Sereer suspension upon their arrival, marked by the passage of nighttime to daytime, is also registered, as is the Sosso’s cordiality vis-à-vis the newcomers through the offering of water and the willingness to accommodate them in the community.

With this myth of San Folo, a number of details con­ cerning the circumstances in which the encounter took place are illuminated. Likewise, the Sosso (named after the capital city of Sosso) were a faction of the Malinke who rose up against the Muslims at the end of the twelfth century Their parting from the Malinke apparently resulted from their attachment to ancestral traditions and their growing hostility toward the new religion, Islam, favored by the Malinke and their kings. Worth noting in their political institutions is the matrilineal system of succession,which was said to be.

As most of these myths suggest, power among the Gelowar always began with a woman. The founding ancestor of the lineage was a princess, and all sons born from her were princes by blood, no matter who their father was. Characteristic of this system is the dymamic maintained through the triadic distribution of power. As has been noted, the political equilibrium ofthe kingdom was hereby based not on the exclusive power of the nobility, but on a situation ofmutual challenge in which the three orders competed to alternately govern sociopolitical life: the princes (Gelowar), the free peasants (Jambur), and the bondsmen.

Bilinear Ties and the Triangle of Growth

The Sereer people represent approximately 17 percent (around 500,000 in 1977) ofthe population in Senegal. Their territory, extending between the Atlantic coast and Wolof land, includes the Sine, the Baol, the western part of the Saloum, and the southwest of Cayor. Linguistically, the Sereer have been divided into two groups. Generally speaking, Sereer villages of the Njafaj province present two types of settlements. In the first type, a number of spatially autonomous family com­ pounds are informally gathered around an arbor that serves as the locus of interaction, or around a large space that is cultivated during the wet season.

In the second type, the villages have no center and are loosely constituted by a number of isolated compounds. If compounds were, for security reasons, previously clustered closer to one another, separate from their fields, more recently they also tend to be erected in the midst of the family’s own farming lot, creating thereby little islands within each village quarter. Each compound is composed of a number of dispersed thatched-roofed dwellings.

Access to its interior is gained through a passageway (atchaiin), the visitors view into the compound is hampered at the outset by the delimiting side fences, but also by the protective mil­ let-stalk screen that faces the entranceway. Erected in front of the dwelling of the compound head—the eldest male member of the joint family— the screen functions as both a marker and a cover of his presence. It protects him from exposure to the sight of passersby, while allowing him to supervise the incom­ ing and outgoing movements of the compound.

On each side of the senior man’s dwelling, a court space (omax) is formed, which gathers around it the individual dwellings of all adult members of the family. Two systems of kinship continue to prevail in Sereer society: the patrilineagc, or “ties of the pants,” and the matrilineage, or “ties of the breast.The nephew inherits communal properties (land, house, herd), while the son inherits individually acquired properties.

A Present of the Earth and the Sky

The dwelling of a mother is called andok ya, and by extension this term is used to designate all those who activities of all other women of the compound. One of the privi­ leges earned by the senior woman is control over the activities of all other women of the compound. From this unique vantage point, the senior woman can enjoy constant visual contact not only with the activities of the three main courts, but also with the comings and goings of the headman himself.

The dwellings belonging to the elderly women of the compound sometimes bear witness to an older tradition of building that is now in decline. In the province of Njafaj, for example, one does encounter round dwellings with conical thatched roofs called ndokkron (as differentiated from the more recent squar­ ish or rectangular andok) whose construction remains familiar to the villagers in the area, as it is still occasionally practiced across Sereer land. One of the noteworthy particularities of these dwellings is a three­ pronged post that stands next to a millet-stalk parti­ tion raised inside the room. Such a ritual, which is said to ward off evil spells, is effected while the follow­ ing words arc pronounced: “Take the child, give me the child. The dead is thus said to be united w’ith the earth and the sky, a concept that also underlies the following saying which people commonly use when they wish to erase the debts of a dead person: “I am making him (or her) a present of the earth and the sky.”