The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,83

all. For all their passion and energy, they were performers. They did it every Saturday. It was a livelihood for everyone concerned. All the troupe, the Frenchman said, were members of his wife’s family.

A little way in from the entrance a steep hillside led down to the sounds of the drums and the chanting. Steps had been cut into the hillside, and at the bottom there was to a clearing of flattened earth, lit by kerosene lanterns and rolled-up palm leaves. This was where the dancing would take place. Around this area was a half-ring of tables and stools, for visitors. It was hot, with the lanterns and the burning palm leaves, and there was much moisture in the air; but there were no mosquitoes.

The drumming went on and on, together with the chanting and the shrieks that made for a kind of wild rhythm.

A woman, apparently a servant of the house, asked whether we would like to drink something. I asked for a cola drink. It came in an opened bottle. Habib, the driver, swift as a hawk, objected to that. The woman said, “I have done nothing.”

When the Frenchman invited us to go to the initiation hut to see the artistes invoke their ancestors and the spirits, Nicole refused to go. She was a Christian and wanted no part of this spirit talk. The drumming and chanting might have been done only for tourists, but it agitated her. Working her lips, but not speaking loudly, she was saying “Hail Mary” again and again, speaking her Christian charm against whatever charms were in play here, and unwittingly paying tribute to the power of African spirits.

The initiation hut was a low structure of mud and dry palm leaves. Palm leaves burned on the earthen floor, and the initiates, splendid in costume and paint, sat in a semicircle around the fire. They were of various ages, from six to thirty. It was hot enough outside; the palm-leaf fire made the heat overpowering. The great heat, the drumming, the shouts and shrieks, the low roof, the feeling of an encroaching darkness, with an inability to see very clearly, made the scene hypnotic.

The initiates shouted (I believe), “Bukowa! Bukowa!” The Frenchman tried to instruct us in a response. But we needed a lot more time to learn, and we did the next best thing: we gave money. As so often on these occasions, it was enough.

The dancing, done sometimes with burning palm-leaf brands, was breathtaking. Energy seemed to come to the dancers from some external source, and we could imagine that it came from the eboga root. Habib, the driver, who took his bodyguard duty seriously, told me afterwards that there were times, during the dancing, and the waving about of brands, when he had become worried for me.

After the dancing there was to be dinner for those who wanted it. On a lower level (the hill was full of levels) we could see where tables had been laid with white tablecloths. There was, of course, a charge. And after the dinner there was to be, for a further fee, something connected with initiation. That sounded quite serious and I didn’t think I should stay for it. One can be an observer only up to a point. Beyond that point one was an intruder (and there was the further worry about Nicole’s Christian agitation).

We went back up the steep steps to the top of the hill. There the Frenchman met us and showed an eboga plant. Nicole paid him; it seemed to me in the darkness that she was paying him a fair sum.

The general who was Nicole’s superior telephoned her as we were going back to the hotel. The traffic was easier than it had been earlier in the evening; but the weak fluorescent light still teased the sight. General Ibaba wanted to know about the evening. Nicole gave him a summary, but the general wanted to know about it in minute detail. We were in good hands.

Near the end of my time in Gabon, when we were far inland, in a village in the Lope national park, I witnessed another piece of African dancing. This was outside a chief’s hall, which was a shed with traditional bark walls and an old corrugated-iron roof. Only the bark wall spoke of old forest ways. The shed was cleaned up in our presence, and a short stiff broom was applied to the uneven ground outside. The dancing came after a dinner carefully prepared and