Kwaio are also remarkably vague as concerns the exact nature of the
adalo,where ancestors actually live and so on. Keesing notes that peo-
ple are not even very precise about the process whereby a living per-
son becomes an ancestor. The few who bother to think about such
matters only do so as a result of being prompted by an anthropologist,
and they have wildly divergent representations of the process. Some
people consider that adaloare people's "shadows." A person stays alive
as long as their body, shadow and breath are held together; at death
the "breath that talks" goes to live with other dead people in a remote
village. The shadow remains around the village as an adalo that inter-
[140] acts with the living. Others maintain that there is probably no village
of the dead. The "breath that talks" just fades away while the shadow
remains with the living. Others think that the shadow does depart to
the village of the dead; but it soon comes back to its former village. As
Keesing notes, most general questions about the adaloreceive either
inconsistent answers or no answer at all: "How and why do ancestors
control events? What are 'wild spirits' [the dangerous ones]? Where
do they come from? There is no answer to these questions. [How-
ever,] in those realms where Kwaio need to deal with their ancestors,
their cultural tradition provides guidelines for action."^1
This is in fact a very general characteristic of religious notions,
beliefs and norms. This may seem surprising to those of us brought up
in modern Western contexts where religion is mostly encountered as a
doctrine that includes definite statements about the origin of things,
what happens to the souls of dead people, and other such theoretical
topics. In a later chapter I explain why religion in some historical con-
texts came to acquire this theoretical emphasis. For now, let me just
emphasize that doctrines are not necessarily the most essential or
important aspect of religious concepts. Indeed many people seem to
feel no need for a general, theoretically consistent expression of the
qualities and powers of supernatural agents. What all people do have
are precise descriptions of how these agents can influence their own
lives, and what to do about that.
Precisely because religion is a practical thing, we may be tempted
to think that the solution to our problem is quite simple: Some super-
natural concepts are important because people believe that the agents
in question have extraordinary powers. The adalo matter a lot to the
Kwaio because the Kwaio take it as obvious that these ancestors and
wild spirits can make them sick or give them good crops. But this is
not a solution to the problem, it is just another way of formulating it.
RELIGION EXPLAINED