The Outsiders

"When a lizard mocks a turkey, he makes sure there is a tree nearby."

So speaks one of the characters in Ousmane Sembene's film Ceddo. Sembene, one of Senegal's most well-known film-makers, had good reason to follow the advice of his own character. He mocks not only Islam, but also Christianity, as well as slave traders. These three groups are lumped into one, referred to as "ceddo," or outsiders. This is a bold move for someone whose culture is steeped in Islam. In "mocking the turkey," Sembene's tree may have been nearby, but his film did not escape censure - Senghor, the first president of an independent Senegal, banned the film.

The word "Islam" means the peace that comes from submitting yourself to God. Regardless of what I read in the news, I prefer to take my direct, personal experience of Islam to inform my views on the religion. In Diakhaba, the villagers show me a humble and gentle approach to God. They do their five daily prayers and ask me how I pray. They take care of family, each in their own way, and with a larger concept of family than we seem to have in the States - every person's welfare belongs to the village. This includes the crazy man who showed up seemingly out of nowhere; my family gets a kick out of listening to him rant to himself, yet always feeds him when he comes around at supper time. (He is a Danfakha, after all.) And when tragedy strikes, they remind me that God is big. This, to me, is Islam.

In Ceddo, the daughter of the king is kidnapped by the ceddo - the outsiders or, in other words, the animists that existed before Islam came. The ceddo want to send a message to the king that their tradition is strong and they will not be converted. A war ensues. The imam - the Islamic spiritual leader - usurps power from the king and eventually assassinates him. The first attempt to rescue the princess (held captive by a ceddo with bow and arrow) by a Muslim (with a gun) ends in the Muslim getting killed. The symbolism is clear - in this scenario, tradition wins. Later, when the guns come back, the guns win and the princess is rescued. Tradition grows weak and each villager converts to Islam and begins attending mosque.

I have only been to my village's mosque once during Tabaski. Normally I am not allowed to attend, given my age and reproductive status. Mosques the world over are all vastly different, depending mostly on the wealth of the community. Even in Senegal, you find everything from the mosque in Touba - the burial site of Cheikh Amadou Bamba - to the tiny mosque built out of sticks in the village of 100 people next to Diakhaba. What unites these vastly different types of architecture is the crescent moon and star symbol of Islam that adorns the top, much like a cross on a church. A mosque, however, unlike a church, is simply a place to pray. It is this simple type of prayer that I reflect on at night, sitting under the moon and stars, eating dinner with my grandmothers. Is this, then, my form of prayer?

The Great Mosque of Touba

At the end of the film, the princess confronts the imam and kills him with his own gun. Did she, then, not convert to Islam? Is she, herself, a ceddo? These answers remain hazy. We do know, however, that Senegal succumbed fairly easily to conversion to a Sufi form of Islam. If you ask anyone in my village if they are Muslim, the answer is a resounding yes (despite the presence of a missionary in Diakhaba during the last seven years). Yet if you ask if they are Sufi, no one will have heard of that word. Perhaps it's a designation that we, as outsiders ourselves, have placed on them. And it makes sense. Sufis seem more willing to accept the magical components of an animist tradition, such as gris-gris and fetishes. Also, the Sufis are interested in having a more direct spiritual experience of God, more so than experiencing God through texts such as the Quran or the hadiths (sayings of the Prophet). This would clearly appeal to a society that's largely illiterate. However, as Bocande, my host dad's best friend, is quick to assure me, all forms of Islam are the same.

Coumba, my friend's baby, wears gris-gris around her neck to protect her.

It occurs to me that Sembene is being intentionally oblique in the designation of "ceddo." In the film, the group referred to as such are the people resisting conversion. And yet Sembene's critiques of these foreign meddlers is so apparent, we can only assume he considers them to be the outsiders. By the end of the film, the village is homogenized when everyone is baptized with a Quranic name, such as happened to me when I moved to Diakhaba. I was named Fatoumata - after my host mom and also the Prophet Muhammad's daughter - and I took the family name Danfakha (women keep their last name in marriage but children take their father's last name). This was not a forced conversion. I was happy to take a Quranic name and a local last name. It gave me a family to fit into and rendered me no longer an outsider. As the kids in my house are quick to point out, when they put their arm up to mine - "A be kilin." We are the same.

A be kilin.

By the way, Sembene is a great film maker, and watching any of his films would provide for a delightful viewing experience.