Article by Alex Kanyi
Photo by Eric Kayihura of Radio Izuba Rwanda
“Baye Fall! Baye Fall!” I heard them chant at the market. These youths with stuffed up tams, checked up apparels, matted hair, tight necked medallions of a strange, yet a face I had enticingly spotted around Dakar, some 12 hours since I had touched down. The first instance was a bumper sticker on a few taxis at the Leopold Senghor International Airport.
Their demeanor, the youths I mean, drew me to query their creed, but since I spoke English and them French and a local dialect, Wolof, we could only get to courteous greeting with a lot of unnecessary agreements, “wi” I said and “wi” they responded.
Despite this deadlock we seemed to have clicked and connected, an admirable brotherhood had begun to our less expectation. I can only speak for myself and say that when I met the marabouts or the Mourides of Senegal, conscious dreadlocked youths within my age-set, I was overwhelmed with zeal and asphyxia. Completely taken by the similarity in precepts of faith and complimentary in schism, this magnetically called for a wisdom seeking adventure that I was not going to pass out on.
One bright morning, after my excruciating eager probe upon a reliable guide and source, I think he must have submitted to take me along, to at least catch a snooze on the eve. So, we set forth to the market where we had the first encounter with the Muridiyya during Yengu a musical ritual ceremony. Me and the fellow comrade from S.A did our shopping and waited by a familiar corner by the chicken vendors. And about the same time we had previously met the marabouts, they reared in their usual formation, like medieval warriors draped in contrasting patched attires, donning knickknacks like shamans, that face was on each pendant, clutching their bowls, shingling coins intoning what I later learnt was a mantra translating “sugar for the marabouts”. This is how they have survived since the brotherhood started in 1800s, I thought to myself. They were a sight of wonderment and awe, even after I had witnessed it a day prior, revealed to me were a few more marvelous facts. I noticed that the alms bowl was a permanent fixture with their garments, at least this daara-working group did. Probably this was the wing that did this kind of fundraising. I could not conclude otherwise at the time anyway.
The market atmosphere had changed instantaneously, in every corner I saw vendors and buyers alike give alms to the marabouts without spite or mind, occasionally a gesture of hands crossing and kissing ensued with some publics and the marabouts. These alms were not counted around the market. So the marabouts invited us to their commune to at least share with us some coffee Touba or tea while we got answers to questions they must have guessed by now we had about their dogma. I was excited to at least continue with this discovery. This to me, meant I would see the organizational level the Mourides had, since the collected amount was quite a bundle.
Luckily, this time we had an interpreter and the Mouride band had, undoubtedly a devout French speaking brother. He later testified to us that he had had some technical skills training as a carpenter but was lured more to the movement of Baye Fall, and that’s why he could speak such formal French. His English was tourist bad but not entirely crooked.
The interviews were varied as school boys often have many questions haphazardly tossed at the Teacher, I confess to have been too “parroteey” with detailed inquisitiveness. And just as teachers or spiritual gurus go questions have answers, easily pulverized for the nourishment of the pious palate. My every inquest was met as if a comfortable challenge, this rather involuntarily sparked with me an accelerated barrage of investigation.
The kibbutz in downtown Dakar was simply a mat partitioned space, with a modest roof between two manors in an open-ended street. Inside, there was a miniature village setting, with children and women around a fire and the elderly men by the corner drinking tea and studying the Quran. Hitherto, the marabouts struck me pretty much as a band of rogues who were probably extorting the poor for extravagant indulgence. I couldn’t have been wrong as to think it. Like in Sherwood Forest, the Daara or merry men, no pan intended each in succession emptied their special trunks that had a Kangaroos-like pouch onto a common table and the money was honestly accounted. The tally was something incoherent to my ear, but money, lot of bills and coins were stacked up with some balance finality.
The money was then divided to different heads or group leaders till the money was all done. I asked where they took the money, the reply was that there are apparently many fellowships, due to choice of non-conformity with the system of things, do farming and are involved in the transport business. The brotherhood thus has welfares that each contributes to the upkeep of all its members. This is what the Baye Fall followers believe is part of acceding to God and submission to Mujaddid or spiritual leaders’ requirement of the devout. Giving alms to the poorer in society is the integral fabric that seems to make this spiritual consciousness to be widely embraced. Senegalese are predominately Moslem, professing the Holiness of the Quran and One God Allah, none to be worshipped but He.
The Baye Fall or Muridiyya brotherhood is a Sufi offshoot revivalist cult that practices Mouridism. Mouridism is a belief structure that doctrinal teachings are passed on ascetically from a spiritual guide to a disciple. This livelihood is common among the Berbers of Morocco and West African Sahara. A disciple or subject is taught matters concerning the faith and when the “renewer” can no longer muster strength to administer to the spiritual needs, he appoints his successor amongst his most disciplined, knowledgeable and pious followership. The successor must have been under the Mane or Grandfather’s fostered wing to receive such a position.
The founder Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Mbake sometimes referred as Cheikh of Tuoba, a spiritual city he also founded in his thirties and later came to be buried in at the age of 74, was a mystic religious sage from the dominant tribe of Wolof. He was born in the Kingdom of Bawaol, at the heart of Senegal; his father was from a brotherhood that was powerful in the Kingdom at the time. Raised up in an intensely religious background, Bamba must have inherently picked up traits that he later on came to start a brotherhood that commands an avalanche of support till today.
Notably, Bamba is known to have a single picture taken of him, where he’s in a white robe and a head scarf covering half of his face. Silhouetting also in the picture shows him with only one leg, some legend I was told yarned around Bamba cutting his own leg to observe prayers.
In I880s the French had taken Senegal as their colony, about the same time Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba’s brotherhood was a flock to reckon with. The French administrators were already fighting with other guerilla brotherhoods that had lesser numbers than Bamba’s camp. So the colonizers feared an uprising from the Muridiyya would culminate to a massive military campaign and so exiled him to a desolate dungeon in Gabon. While on transit Bamba being a fervent Muslim sought to pray but the French denied him this opportunity. That is when he unloosened his leg links that had cuffed him and leaped over board. The legend fantastically distorts here that one link didn’t barge so he cut his leg before casting himself over. This took me by surprise as I was fast connecting theories of my own. A few African Saints with missing legs or awkward limbs formation exists in folklores, like in the Ethiopian Orthodox faith, Tekle Haymanot is believed to have prayed standing for seven years till his leg rotted away and fell off. Bamba himself is said that when he first visited Touba he met people with horse hoofed limbs.
Miraculously, after he had jumped Bamba fell on a finely decorated prayer mat that appeared on the water, where he knelt and prayed to the agape of his French captors. News of various occasions that the sage had mysteriously survived death was met with renewed devotion among the Brothers. The French finally let him free after throwing him into a hot furnace, amongst hungry lions starved for six days and many fatal atrocities which left Bamba to be exulted by a multitude of new membership. The French must have freed him in fear of what his indestructible nature would translate to his followers.
However, Bamba himself was not bent towards aggressive resistance. A pacifist and a hard worker himself he taught emphatically the virtue of honest day living, insisting that labor sanctification was in accordance with the movement. In some text Ahmadou Bamba is believed to have met Muhammad, The prophet of Islam conferring him the title Khadimu ‘I-Rasul denoting “The Servant of the Messanger.”
Ahmadou Bamba is responsible for incorporating a spiritual school apart from the Quranic Madrasa which later became the Muridiyya’s congregation under Cheikh Ibrahim Fall, another significant figure in the Brotherhood. His picture is also ubiquitous in Dakar as well as St.Loius where he was sent by Bamba to establish the Brotherhood in 1898.
Ibrahim Fall has also a single photograph of him with a black robe, his face is visible and around him are some of his earlier recruits. Ibrahim Fall’s image can be found curved in Baobab trees around the capital and in some coffee businesses place his picture in their kiosks, maybe announcing that the money goes to the Brotherhood. Ibrahim Fall is the one responsible for turning Mouridism of Senegal from orthodoxy to a vibrant Africanized form of Islam.
Today, Baye Fall followers own large estates of groundnuts plantations around Touba, the second holiest pilgrimage site among Senegalese Mourides, the first being Mecca. Most coffee and peanuts vendors can be found with his face on their paraphernalia around Dakar and St.Loius. Most prominent members of the Brotherhood in Senegalese are renowned maestro Youssou N’dor and Hip hop artiste Daara J.
The exact number of Muridiyya Brotherhood members is unknown but it’s believed to be more than 2Million scattered in Senegal and neighboring Gambia.
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