So it's Friday the 13th, a full moon, and a woman's body was found, dead, smack dab (almost) in the middle of the soccer field, early this morning.  The nurse was called to investigate.  The woman was old but the circumstances are odd quand-meme.  What was she doing, where was she going, to die right there in that spot, nowhere near her house?  Why was there blood coming from her eyes and her nose, saliva from her mouth, and marks made on her body?  What was the dark powder found in those cuts and in the empty cigarette pack next to her?  If her asthma killed her, why was she lying on her back?

 

I didn't see the blood nor the scars -- her body was covered when I got there hours later, lying in the middle of the field, between the two goals, a lean-to erected to shade her, covered in a pagne, with only her lower legs and bare feet showing, and her right hand looking as if it was slightly clutching the grass.  Her tapettes helter-skelter near her feet, the cigarette pack, open, with the powder and a piece of crumpled paper in it, people lining the outskirts of the field as if there was crime scene tape demarking the no-pass zone, a woman wailing.  I really wanted to look at her fully, investigate for myself, but how could I without seeming morbid to all the onlookers?  The catechiste talking to us near the body, saying it was her asthma despite the blood -- the fall could have caused that he said.  Though I protested that asthma usually slowly suffocates someone, not just suddenly like that.  And wouldn't she have been leaning forward slightly, or even on her knees, trying to get air?  Of course, maybe the nurse had turned her over. 

 

Her family knew of her illness, said the catechiste, and that she was seeking treatment, but the guerisseur (healer) would probably not show himself.  Not for fear that what he had given her had killed her (as I suggested), but because she had died despite his treatment.  Oh, people die in strange ways all the time, sometimes still standing, and I was told a story of a guy standing in the middle of the road, not even moving for oncoming cars.  Finally, a woman got out of her car, since he wasn't responding to her honking, and went over to check on him.  She touched him and he fell over.  He had just died like that, debout.

 

The nurse had made his conclusions but was waiting for the CB to get there (chef of the gendarmes) so they could investigate together.  Since there's no gendarme in our village, he had taken the forestry agent with him that morning -- the next best thing I guess.  He said he'd call for me when the CB came, so I could go look at her with them, but I saw a friend about half an hour later and he said "they took the body" and it wasn't the nurse or the CB.  The family got tired of waiting, I suppose, and you can't leave a dead body out all day in that heat.  The CB never did come.

 

Everybody knew who she was but nobody could tell me her name.  "She wasn't from here, she was from Wodagni (a village only 8 km away).  She moved here to marry."  How long ago was that?  "Oh, a long time ago, her kids are grown; she was the wife of Sobe's uncle" (Sobe being a middle school teacher here, and his uncle being long dead).

 

I think that's my first dead body, but it's weird that I'm not sure.  And is it weird that it didn't freak me out?  Or are both these things a result of years of tv and movies desensitizing me to the reality of death.  I've seen lots of dead beings, but I'm pretty sure that's my first dead human body.

 

------- The next morning, I spoke to the nurse for his conclusion, expecting him to say she had been accidentally poisoned by the medicine the healer had given her.  He's a down-to-earth guy, not from this village, educated, and Muslim.  But that was not what he said.  The cause was "sorcery" of course.  Because this woman had killed people, he explained (and as my landlord had explained more fully the day before), she was being bothered by ancestors that were making her sick.  She had been a sorcerer, and sorcerers are known to sometimes heal people -- they call them healers in those moments -- but more often they hurt or kill people.  So, whoever was trying to heal her had carved the marks in her body, applied the black powder to them, and off she went to the old cemetary behind the soccer field to "bar the passage" of those spirits trying to kill her.  If she had made it to the cemetary and back, it had worked.  If not.... well, evidently it hadn't worked.

 

There are five distinct religions in my small village (remember, they love God here)-- Catholic, Assembly of God, Muslim, Evangelical, and a hardcore Christian church evidently founded by an American guy named William Branham and often called the "Amen" church or Goshen church, because that's the quartier where the building is located --, plus the animist beliefs woven throughout, which I don't call a religion because there's no membership or proclamation of faith.  It's just the way things are.  The Catholic church is mostly headed up by the catechiste, because we don't have a resident priest in town.  Earlier that same week, the catechiste had asked me my religious affiliation.  Forgetting for a moment WHO was asking me the question, I answered truthfully that I don't have one.  I usually answer truthfully, though the cultural trainings had warned us to not admit to agnostic or atheistic leanings, that people will just not be able to comprehend that.  I have a hard time lying on the spot like that, and have yet to come up with a pat answer.  Most people accept that I wasn't raised with one, but when pressed I've said "pagan", since I hope they'll have never heard of it, or simply that my church doesn't exist in Togo.  I could also say Jewish -- most evidently have no idea what that is -- and probably Hindu or Buddhist, because they probably haven't heard of that either.  But, no, I told the truth, and the catechiste refused to accept that, and told me that I had to choose.  Trying to backpedal, I said it's enough for me to know that God exists.  No, no, if you don't choose, it means you worship the devil! (!)  Wow, so black and white for a guy who has fetiches hanging about his house.  Come on, that's a bit extreme.  How can I choose when there's so many religions out there, each claiming to be the best one, and some claiming to be the only right one?  He continued to accuse me of worshipping the devil, and I continued to explain how utterly nonsensical that is.  Finally, I fell on my old stand-by that my religion doesn't exist here, and then that it was "pagan".  When he asked what that was, I told him it pre-dates the Catholic church but that elements could be found in christianity and catholicism (though I don't really know much about paganism).  Didn't matter.  I had to choose one of my many options here, otherwise how could I communicate with god?  Jesus, buddy, leave me alone.  My closest friend and collaborator in village came up about then since he had heard I was looking for him.  He happens to be the catechist's nephew.  I mouthed for him to Aidez-moi, but he didn't step in to rescue me.  I finally got the religiously rigid yet I'm sure morally flexible catechiste to admit that if he went to a world where his church didn't exist, and the only one available was Muslim -- which he said he could never ever subscribe to --, that his refusal to enter that church did not then mean he would have no recourse but to worship the devil.  I had won.  Gads.