42 african appropriations
while possessed; it serves as proof that the mediums are indeed possessed
and not just pretending (and as such it is comparable to similar proofs
with regard to other categories of bori spirits); and finally, it attests to the
“truth” of the spirits (which in the beginning were very much contested
among traditional bori priests; Echard 1992: 97). Shibo and her followers
were able to externalize their passiones, their painful experiences of French
colonial rule, in the gestalt of the Babule spirits. This was not so much a
conscious but rather an involuntary process, and as such nonpurposive.
However, the epistemological framework and moreover the practices as-
sociated with spirit possession provided them the means with which to
use the spirits for certain ends. In this way, the Babule became embodied
pastiches that could be used by their adepts as sources of power in their
resistance to colonial rule and their fight against its devastating effects on
the local societies.
FORWARD: GHANA 1950sAccording to Jean Rouch (1956: 78), the Gold Coast—that is, colonial
Ghana—became the “Mecca” of the Babule. From 1929 onward, young
male Zerma migrant laborers traveled to the Atlantic Coast, taking their
spirits with them. There, the expanding pantheon of the Hauka (as the
Babule spirits were called among the Zerma) accommodated the immi-
grants’ experiences with British colonial modernity. Unlike rural Niger,
where the cult had remained marginal in comparison to traditional reli-
gious practices and Islam, it transformed into a central religious institu-
tion among the immigrant communities of Ghana. The traditional spirits
of the Zerma, being mostly associated with rural subsistence activities,
were of little help in the urban environment of the Gold Coast, and since
their typical mediums were female, despite the vast male majority of
immigrants, they even lacked enough “horses” to make their presence
felt. Rouch (1956: 175) writes: “Unlike the classical spirits of Niger, the
Hauka have become inseparable from the Gold Coast: their mythology is
a transposition of the grand adventure of the immigrants; their gods have
come straight from a modern Africa; their rites are ‘brutal and gallant’
like the young immigrants themselves. This is a religion of the modern