A Fulani Baby Naming Ceremony

In the Fulani (and many other African) cultures, the parents of newborn children will hold a baby-naming ceremony on the 7th or 8th day following the birth. Though some parents will name their child before the ceremony, the name is closely guarded until the ceremony. Following the ceremony, is a day of partying.

I had the privelege of attending my first Fulani baby-naming ceremony last week, at the home of my night guard Karim. His wife had twin boys!! This event has added to my Fulfulde vocabulary as I learned that they do not have a word for 'twins'; however, they have a word that means 'multiple children' and then you add the number (2, 3, etc...). So, twins is actually 'multiple children times 2' - funebe didi.

The other part I have learned of this culture is the expectation that goes into this event - for a people group that is among the poorest of the poor, they spend at least $200 for the party to feed all the guests who come and give food gifts (cola, dates, kola nuts, popcorn). Feeding the guests includes slaughtering at least 1-2 sheep or goats. This is done for every child born (not just the first) and these twins are the seventh children born to my guard (the first child died) and his wife is only 29 years old!

I headed to the village also prepared with some cultural cues from my language tutor. Under no circumstance was I to do any of the following actions:

touch a child on the head (this is not permitted even amongst their culture, but should I do this, the family will think that I want to eat their child!)

point at children or animals - any animal really, but especially cows (again, if I point at children while counting them, the villagers will think that I want to eat them!)

if I do not know people, do not ask how many children they have (same implication??!). This was a disappointing cue to learn as it is one of the few questions/topics I can converse in using Fulfulde.)

do not say the baby is big - our cultural norm. (Again, this gives the impression that I want to eat the baby.)

(hmm, sensing an overall theme to their fears regarding white people? - no wonder why the children ofttimes seem hesitant to approach us! and some run away crying?)

do not say that the baby is beautiful, cute (or generally anything nice). In their cultural superstition, the bad spirits are looking exchange a good baby for their own babies. Instead, I should say that the baby is ugly or a 'villain like his father'.

The naming ceremonies generally start at 7:30 am!! As my guard lives out of town, I left Niamey at 6:45! A huge sacrifice - those who know me well know that I am not a morning person - add to this the sacrifice of no coffee to aid my morning confuzzled brain! (As bathroom situations are sketchy in the villages, I decided not to compound the potential of needing a toilet with extra coffee!)

I headed off to the village with my friend Cecilia and three of my guard's friends. Once we arrived in the village, Cecilia and I were hustled off to the ladies hut and the guys went to hang out with all the village men. In the Fulani culture, the women and men are culturally separate for many activities - religious activities (at the mosque), parties, eating, etc...

As such, we were not expecting to actually view the naming ceremony per se; however, Karim ventured into the hut at one point to say that we would be expected at the mosque in five minutes. Cecilia and I were quite unsure what to do, yet followed the group of ladies when they headed out and seemed to signal for us to follow. Had he spoke to me in Fulfulde, despite my lack of vocabulary, it would have been more clear - for in Fulfulde there are two words for 'we' (the French nous). One which indicates 'me and this group, including you to whom I speak' and the other which indicates 'me and this group, excluding you to whom I speak'.

We show up at the mosque and are quite relieved to see that the women are leading us into a side room (read: wood walled enclosure) beside where the man are gathering. We realize that we are now sitting on the women's side and are still culturally appropriate.

A few minutes later, Karim walks over and asks me to take a few pictures for him. This involves walking back to the hut to gather my camera and when I entered, the ladies are praying; but quickly grab my bag and head back. In my quick entry and exit however, I notice that there is now sitting in the hut a chair with a bowl and a knife. Upon returning to the mosque, I inform Cecilia that I hope we are not going to be party to watching a circumcision!

I take a few photos of the men gathering outside the mosque, feeling very conspicuous that Karim motioned where to take the photos and promptly disappeared leaving me there along with all these guys watching every move I make!

As I made my way back into the ladies side of the mosque, the ladies hosting Cecilia and I indicated that I should sit just inside the men's entrance so I could take more photos . I could not have felt more awkward, but felt I needed to follow my hosts' instructions.

After the group leader spoke the name of the twin boys, we all headed back to the area in front of Karim's hut - Cecilia and I back into the hut and the men back to their party area. I was thankful to see that the chair, bowl and knife were being used for food preparation!! We did, though, get to witness another Fulani tradition at a naming ceremony - the shaving of the child's head. This is an essential component to the naming ceremony - be the child boy or girl - and given the cultural restrictions around touching the head of children, the family carefully selects a village 'granny' whom they trust to do this task and whom they trust to touch the head of their child.

We were happy to notice that they used a new (and therefore clean) blade for each of the twins; however, it was hard to keep a neutral face while watching them scrape the razor blades over their little heads. I noticed that the hair was being gathered in a dish to the side - all pieces that fell on the sand were gathered up. These were set aside for the family to dispose of, as this culture will hold to the supersitition that someone could use the hair to curse the baby. The following pictures are unfortunately the only ones of the twins - as the twins spent the day in the hut with the mother, the lighting was not the best to take pictures in.

After the shaving ceremony, the babies are bathed. This was interesting to see, as the soap was laid on the sand between use; and following the bath, the baby was again wrapped in the same cloth - that had been laying in the sand during the bathing!! Also following the bath, the women circled the baby over the tub of water and gently threw him in the air to catch over the water - repeating this action three times. While this is done, the mother (or bather) speaks a blessing to the baby.

Following all this, Cecilia and I again were passed the babies to hold. They were indeed so cute and we determined that they are fraternal twins. The babies are named:

Hassani Abdoulaye (Hassan for short)

Husseini Abdoulaye (Seini for short)

which are quite typical names for twins as they go well together. We chatted with a few of the women. Hassan peed on me (there are no diapers here!). One lady shook her breast at me (apparently to indicate that the woman who had just walked in was the mother of the Karim's wife). And we wandered outside thinking to leave. However, we discovered the meal was at noon(-ish) and not in the evening, so we stuck around for the feast.

At the time the food was ready to serve, Cecilia and I were brought a plate of food and two spoons. This one plate piled higher than we thought the two of us could eat. This plate was shortly joined by another plate, indicating that we each were expected to eat that much food! Then, before we could start eating (though we were waiting for the other ladies to join us, knowing it was impolite to eat infront of others) the ladies indicated that they would like for us to move into the chicken hut! We assured them that we were quite fine eating with them (this I could even say in fulfulde! - and I was quite careful to use the 'we' word that included the ladies with whom we were speaking); however, they were insistent . . . so we made to move and the ladies carried our plates into the hen hut.

We discovered within a few minutes that we had been moved into the hen hut (essentially out of sight) due to the cultural restraints of not eating in front of others. For as we looked out through the straw poles we could see that none of the other women were eating! As best we can determine, as guests, we were fed at the same time as the men and thus with no women eating at that time, it was not culturally appropriate that we sat with them to eat while they were not also eating.

Shortly after eating, we joined up with Karim's friends who came looking for us as they were ready to then leave. The day was full of informal cultual learning! I also discovered, after arriving home and reading my notes, that my day was also full of a few (at least 3 that I know of) language blunders - but, thankfully, not horrendous 'I-can-never-return-to-this-village' blunders!