Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:24:55.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Things that Don't Come by the Road: Folktales, Fosterage, and Memories of Slavery in the Cameroon Grassfields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Nicolas Argenti
Nicolas Argenti*
Affiliation:
Brunel University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Oku adults have a straightforward rationalization for the existence of folktales: the frightening cautionary tales of the child-eating monster K∂ηgaaηgu serve to warn children not to go to the fields or to stray too far from the house without their parents. But this rationalization is belied by the fact that adults in this chiefdom of the Cameroon Grassfields do not tell folktales to children. Rather, folktales are most often told by children amongst each other, with no adult involvement, and they are consequently learned by younger children from older ones. This is an unusual situation in West Africa, where the norm is for adults to tell folktales to children. For all we know, adult-to-child storytelling may have been the normal practice in the Grassfields in the past, but if it ever was, this practice has now passed into desuetude, and today adults look with mild scorn on folktales (f∂ngaanen, ∂mgaanen pl.) and generally remain aloof during storytelling sessions. Storytelling in the Grassfields is therefore a child-structured form of play in Schwartzman's (1978) sense: it is an activity mediated by children without adult input. Prior to the introduction of schooling in the Grassfields, children used to be made to guard the crops against birds and monkeys, an activity that left them to their own devices in the fields for long periods of the day (Argenti 2001; see also Fortes 1938; Raum 1940). In some cases, children actually slept in small shelters that they built in the fields, and they would consequently stay away from their homes and adult supervision for days at a time. It was in this context, away from the censorious gaze of adults, that children's illicit masking activities developed (Argenti 2001). It may also be in this context that children were able to indulge in prolonged bouts of storytelling without fear of reproof by adults, in whose eyes children should be seen but not heard. Today, children no longer guard the fields, and they have therefore taken to telling their folktales at home.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 224 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alber, Erdmute. 2004. Grandparents as Foster Parents: Transformations in Foster Relations between Grandparents and Grandchildren in Northern Benin. Africa 74, 1: 28–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allman, Jean. 1997. Fathering, Mothering and Making Sense of Ntamoba: Reflections on the Economy of Child-Rearing in Colonial Asante. Africa 67, 2: 296–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Argenti, Nicolas. 2001. Kesum-Body and the Places of the Gods: The Politics of Children's Masking and Second-World Realities in Oku (Cameroon). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, 1: 67–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Argenti, Nicolas. 2005. Dancing in the Borderlands: The Forbidden Masquerades of Oku Youth and Women (Cameroon). In De Boeck, F. and Honwana, A., eds., Makers and Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey, and Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 121–49.Google Scholar
Argenti, Nicolas. 2007. The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auerbach, Eric. 1968 [1946]. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trask, Willard, trans. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Austen, Ralph. 1995. The Elusive Epic: The Narrative of Jeki la Njambe in the Historical Culture of the Cameroon Coast. Atlanta: African Studies Association.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984 [1963]. Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics. Emerson, Caryl, trans. Manchester and Minneapolis: Manchester University Press and University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, Karin. 1997. Preliminary Notes on Audiences in Africa. Africa 67, 3: 347–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellagamba, Alice. 2002. Ethnographie, histoire et colonialisme en Gambie. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Bellagamba, Alice. 2004. Entrustment and Its Changing Political Meanings in Fuladu, the Gambia. Africa 74, 3: 383–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1976. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. London: Penguin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. 1990. “No Success without Struggle”: Social Mobility and Hardship for Foster Children in Sierra Leone. Man (NS) 25, 1: 70–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonhomme, Julien. N.d. Masque Chirac et danse de Gaulle: Images rituelles du Blanc au Gabon, Gradhiva (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Buea Archives. 1927. Political Department, Provincial Office, Cameroons. File 41/1927. “Bamenda criminal case No. 4/27, Rex vs. 1. Mbui of Banso, 2. Mfawme of Benshua. Charge: slave dealing,” 11 Dec.Google Scholar
Buea Archives. 1929. Political Department, Provincial Office, Cameroons. File 110/1929. “Bamenda Criminal Case No. 36/1929, Rex vs. Dodo of Metaso. Charge: Slave dealing,” 12 July.Google Scholar
Buell, Raymond Leslie. 1928. The Native Problem in Africa. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Chëm-Langhëë, Bongfen. 1995. Slavery and Slave-Marketing in Nso' in the Nineteenth Century. Paideuma 41: 177–90.Google Scholar
Chëm-Langhëë, Bongfen and Fomin, E.S.D.. 1995. Slavery and Slave-Trade among the Banyang in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Paideuma 41: 191–206.Google Scholar
Chilver, Elizabeth. 1961. Nineteenth-Century Trade in the Bamenda Grassfieds. Afrika und Übersee 45, 4: 233–58.Google Scholar
Chilver, Elizabeth. 1964. The Bali-Chamba of Bamenda: Settlement and Composition. Report No. 2 to the Bali History Committee. MS.Google Scholar
Démé, Victor. 2008. “Djabila” (song). From the album Victor Démé. Chapa Blues.Google Scholar
Drewal, Henry John. 1988. Performing the Other: Mammi Wata Worship in West Africa. Drama Review 32, 2: 160–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drewal, Henry John, ed. 2008. Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Dundes, Alan. 2007. Structuralism and Folklore. In Bronner, S., ed., The Meaning of Folklore: The Analytical Essays of Alan Dundes. Logan: Utah State University Press, 126–44.Google Scholar
Fagunwa, D. O. 1982. Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga. Translation from Soyinka, Yoruba Wole. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin and Adebayo, Akanmu. 2000. Culture, Politics and Money among the Yoruba. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin and Lovejoy, Paul E., eds. 1994. Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Fortes, Meyer. 1938. Social and Psychological Aspects of Education in Taleland. Supplement to Africa 11, 4.Google Scholar
Fortes, Meyer. 1949. The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, Barbara. 1995. Permitted and Prohibited Wealth: Commodity-Possessing Spirits, Economic Morals, and the Goddess Mami Wata in West Africa. Ethnology 34, 4: 331–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959 [1908]. Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming. In Strachey, James et al. , eds., Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition. Vol. 9. London: Hogarth, 143–53.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max. 1963. Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. In Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa. London: Cohen and West, 110–36.Google Scholar
Goody, Esther. 1982. Parenthood and Social Reproduction: Fostering and Occupational Roles in West Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gore, C. and Nevadomsky, J.. 1997. Practice and Agency in Mammy Wata Worship in Southern Nigeria. African Arts 30, 2: 60–69.Google Scholar
Gow, Peter. 2001. An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grier, B. 1992. Pawns, Porters and Petty Traders: Women in the Transition to Cashcrop Agriculture in Colonial Ghana. Signs 17, 2: 304–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogendorn, Jan, and Johnson, Marion. 1986. The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koité, Habib. 1998. “Wassiyé” (song). From Ma Ya. Putumayo Artists.Google Scholar
Kuper, Adam. 1987. Cannibals, Beast and Twins. In South Africa and the Anthropologist. London: Routledge, 167–96.Google Scholar
Lallemand, Suzanne. 1994. Adoption et mariage: Les Kotokoli du centre du Togo. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul and Falola, Toyin. 2003. Pawnship, Slavery and Colonialism in Africa. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul and Hogendorn, Jan. 1993. Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masquelier, Adeline. 1992. Encounter with a Road Siren: Machines, Bodies and Commodities in the Imagination of a Mawri Healer. Visual Anthropology Review 8, 1: 56–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masquelier, B. M. 1978. Structure and Process of Political Identity: Ide, a Polity of the Mentshum Valley (Cameroon). PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Mbarga, Prince Nico. 1976. “Sweet Mother” (song). From the album Aki Special. First released by Rogers All Stars (Nigeria) Ltd. Released in 1987 on Rounder Records, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Mbunwe-Samba, Patrick. 1998. Shadows in the Firelight: A Selection of Cameroon Folktales. Bamenda, Cameroon: ACT Office, P.O. box 510.Google Scholar
McCarthy Brown, Karen. 2001 [1991]. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Miers, Suzanne, and Roberts, Richard. 1988. The End of Slavery in Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Laura. 2007. Into the Bush of Ghosts: Specters of the Slave Trade in West African Fiction. Research in African Literatures 38, 4: 141–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, Stephanie. 1997. Making Up Their Own Minds: Readers' Interpretations and the Difference of View in Ghanaian Popular Narratives. Africa 67, 3: 389–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Notermans, Catrien. 2004. Fosterage and the Politics of Marriage and Kinship in East Cameroon. In Bowie, F., ed., Cross-Cultural Approaches to Adoption. London: Routledge, 48–63.Google Scholar
Notermans, Catrien. 2008. The Emotional World of Kinship: Children's Experiences of Fosterage in East Cameroon. Childhood 15, 3: 355–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nwokeji, G. Ugo and Eltis, David. 2002. Characteristics of Captives Leaving the Cameroons for the Americas, 1822–1837. Journal of African History 43: 191–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogrizek, M. 1981–1982. La Mammy Wata: Les envoûtées de la sirène, Cahiers de l'O.R.S.T.O.M., Série Sciences Humaines, Médicines et santé 19, 4: 433–43.Google Scholar
Paulme, Denise. 1976. La mère dévorante: Essai sur la morphologie des contes Africains. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Piaget, Jean. 1951. Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. Gattegno, C. and Hodgson, F. M., trans. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1930. Akan and Ashanti Folk-Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raum, O. 1940. Chaga Childhood. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Renne, Elisha P. 2005. Childhood Memories and Contemporary Parenting in Ekiti, Nigeria. Africa 75, 1: 63–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodet, Marie. 2009. The End of Slavery and the Circulation of Juvenile and Female Workforce in the Region of Kayes, French Sudan (1890–1955). Paper presented to the 11th Stanford-University of California Law and Colonialism Symposium, “Trafficking in Women and Children after the End of Slavery: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives from Africa and Beyond,” 19–21 Mar.Google Scholar
Rudin, Harry. 1938. Germans in the Cameroons 1884–1914: A Case Study in Modern Imperialism. London: Johnathan Cape.Google Scholar
Ruel, Malcolm, 1969. Leopards and Leaders: Constitutional Politics among a Cross-River People. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Salmons, Jill. 1977. Mammy Wata. African Arts 10, 3: 8–15, 87.Google Scholar
Scheub, Harold. 2002. The Poem in the Story: Music, Poetry, and Narrative. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Helen B. 1978. Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play. New York and London: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, Rosalind. 2008. Mami Wata and the Sierra Leone Diamonds: Wealth and Enslavement in Men's Dreams and the State Economy. In Drewal, Henry John, ed., Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19–25.Google Scholar
Todd, Loreto. 1979. Some Day Been Dey: West African Pidgin Folktales. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Tutuola, Amos. 1978 [1954]. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Tutuola, Amos. 1986. Yoruba Folktales. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press.Google Scholar
Tutuola, Amos. 2004 [1952]. The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town. Ibadan: Spectrum.Google Scholar
Utas, Mats. N.d. Abject Heroes: Marginalised Youth, Modernity and Violent Pathways of the Liberian Civil War. In Hart, Jason, ed., Years of Conflict: Political Violence and Displacement. Oxford: Berghahn Books (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Vail, Leroy, and White, Landeg. 1991. Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.Google Scholar
van der Geest, Sjaak. 2004. Orphans in Highlife: An Anthropological Interpretation. History in Africa 31: 425–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhoef, Heidi. 2005. A Child Has Many Mothers: Views of Fostering in Northwestern Cameroon. Childhood 12, 3: 369–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1985. Echange, Développements et Hiérarchie dans le Bamenda Pré-colonial (Cameroun). Studien Zur Kulturkunde 76. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1995. Slave-Trading without Slave-Raiding in Cameroon. Paideuma 41: 251–72.Google Scholar
Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 2007. The Pot-King: The Body and Technologies of Power. Leiden and Boston: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson-Gegeo, Karen Ann and Boggs, Stephen. 1977. From Verbal Play to Talk Story: The Role of Routines in Speech Events among Hawaiian Children. InErvin-Tripp, Susan and Kernan, Claudia Mitchell, eds., Child Discourse. New York: Academic Press, 67–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wehrs, Donald. 2008. Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives: From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911–1958. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate.Google Scholar