Last Two Pics for Today

Here’s a picture of our friend Amelie and her new baby the morning after she gave birth at the hospital here in Tabligbo. Tiny little Natalie showed up five days before my brother’s baby, Layla, was born back home. I showed a picture of Layla to Amelie, and she was pretty happy to hear that the two new babies have the same middle name: Marie. Natalie’s big sister, my little friend Stella, is happy to have a little sister to take care of, and Amelie is doing well.

The other picture needs some explanation! Obviously, it’s a shot of our cat, Elliott von Tusky, but take a close look at the fancy necklace he’s sporting. Joe and I paid our friend I’m working on the health clinic with who does gris gris (that’s voodoo) to, as we say here in Franglais, faire some gris gris to proteger our cat, who has recently taken to jumping over the compound wall after dark and sneaking around doing whatever cats do at night. In order to protect him against getting stolen and eaten during his nightly promenades, we asked our buddy to make a charm to let people around the neighborhood know that Mr. von Tusky is protected by gris gris. After a ceremony that involved sacrificing a rooster, sprinkling some sodabe around, exploding some magical powder, and asking the god in charge for help, our friend made us two charms to help protect our cat from potential thieves. The first, he buried in a corner of our compound with instructions to sprinkle the occasional shot of sodabe over the spot, and the second, he made into a necklace (complete with chicken bone adornment) for our cat to wear to warn anyone who’s thinking about snatching him that he’s protected by gris gris and that if they are foolish enough to try it, something bad will happen to them (i.e. they will die a slow and painful death). After seeing several goats and sheep around the village sporting similar neckwear and asking about it, we learned that this is a common practice people use to protect their animals that wander freely around the village from would-be thieves. So, we thought, if it works for others, why not us? Indeed, why not?