“Ju-Ju” markets is a vernacular term for the many markets scattered across west Africa that trade in materials used in magico-medicinal practices still commonly practiced throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
I’m hoping that sometime in mid-late 2009 I’ll be able to travel to east Africa to have a closer look at these markets and the practices and cultures associated with them.
In the commercial markets of any one of the West African countries on the Atlantic coast between latitudes 5W and 15E you can encounter stalls displaying a profusion of animal skins and body parts. Strong smelling, swarming in flies but often arranged to create a macabre and compelling spectacle, the skins form part of magico-medicinal practices that are also current elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
And, while Mark is, like many of us, interested in the cultural uses of birds, he has some concerns about how those uses may, over time and with changing population demographics and urbanisation, impact on bird populations generally and some species and genera in particular:
These ancient indigenous traditions may be rooted in the very origins of agrarian society on the continent. Yet today, in order to supply this cultural demand, 1,000s, possibly hundreds of thousands, of birds of at least 80 species are being killed. The harvest may eventually have some bearing on the future conservation status of some species involved.
Mark also discusses the cultural xenophobia that, to ‘modern’ western minds at least, would treat the practice of taking the body parts of wild-caught birds and using them for magico-medicinal purposes is something that only ‘primitive’ societies would do, noting that:
“…before the urge to moralise overcomes any reader of European background we should first recall that the magico-medicinal use of animals was once a routine part of Western culture. Those traditions had very ancient roots and held currency among some of the region’s most distinguished intellectuals, even if some of the remedies now appear extraordinary, if not ludicrous.”
Mark then presents a few ancient Greek and late 17th century English examples and makes a couple of very important points that we need to remind ouselves of occasionally – the so-called ‘modern’ world, with all of its supposedly conclusive scientific method and reasoning, is only a few hundred years old and that many of the principles of sympathetic medicine have been (almost) universally applied:
“For modern ornithologists, liberated by the rational strictures of science, it is even more unnerving to discover that these (sympathetic medicine) medical recipes retained heir shelf life long into the modern era.
…
“The point needs repeating: the principles of sympathetic medicine, involving the use of birds and bird parts, have been applied the world over.”
There is a surprisingly small body of literature on the phenomenon of magico-medicinal bird use in general, and of the contemporary practices in western Africa in particular. In relation to what appears to be a widespread trade supporting magico-medicinal and religious practices in west Africa there are several issues that arise – firstly, what are the practices and beliefs and how widespread are they, and secondly, are there any general or particular issues that give rise to concerns about the impact on particular bird populations.
In September this year I was in Buenos Aires for the BirdLife International world meeting and spent some time talking about these markets with Mark Cocker and Phil Hall and Alede Adeleke from the A. P. Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (known as APLORI) based on Jos, Nigeria. The topics of discussion included why so little was known about this widespread trade and associated practices, how we might find more about it and who might do that work. We all agreed that this was a good area about which too little was known and that it warranted further research and that we should look to do something in the near future. Tentative plans were made to maintain contact and hopefully to meet up in Nigeria sometime during 2009.
I came home and got busy with the myriad other things that seem to infect even the simplest of lives these days and made some mental notes to plan a trip to Nigeria sometime in the next year and to keep in touch with this group of ffriends with a common interest. And to my pleasant surprise a couple of weeks ago I received an email a few weeks ago with a copy of a paper by Demo Shekinah Kesmen, entitled “Birds, Fetish Beliefs and Traditional Medicine in South-West Nigeria”.
Delmo’s work had been prompted by our discussions in Buenos Aires and her paper reports on her preliminary research on birds and other animals used in traditional medicinal practices from seven markets in and around Ibadan, Nigeria.
Delmo recorded 94 species of birds for sale in the market and a number of other animals, both live and as body parts were also recorded, including a live Gazelle and live Rabbits, and monkey’s heads, frogs, rats, snakes and body parts from elephant, horse, tiger, gorilla, leopard and cheetah.
Delmo’s research provides some important and useful baseline data for further research into these markets and the uses made of bird body parts, the species collected and whether there may be some adverse conservation outcomes as a result of this trade and these practices.
I’m looking forward to my planned trip with a mixture of excitement at exploring a trade and practice little-known in the ‘modern’ western world, but that may also have strong links to our own medical traditions. But that excitement is mixed with a little trepidation.
As Mark Cocker notes about these markets that for:
“…anyone unaccustomed to these places a fetish market can be unsettling. Each stall comprises an assembly of skulls and skins arranged in a powerful, if often rather disturbing, display that can include horse and hyena heads, crocodiles, dried snakes and monkey skulls. The presence of so much decomposing flesh, crudely preserved with only ash or salt, makes for a very unhealthy background odour and a super-abundance of flies.”
Personally, I can’t wait to get to Nigeria later this year…
*African birds in traditional magico-medicinal use-a preliminary survey. Bulletin of the African Bird Club, 7(1):60
