9 - Miracles in traditional religions

Summary

On his first fieldwork trip to the Dowayo of Northern Cameroon in West Africa, Nigel Barley took great trouble to cultivate his relationship with the Old Man of Kpan, a renowned rainmaker. Through assiduous questioning and observation, Barley had confirmed his hunch that for the Dowayo, skulls, pots and stones are related in a single complex: the rainchiefs’ skulls cause rain, and can be replaced with water jars for festivals. The mountain on which the all-important rain stones were kept was known as ‘the crown of the boy’s head’, and the rainchiefs were the cross-over point between these conceptual domains. Before leaving Cameroon, Barley was keen to see the most powerful and sacred spot on the mountain for himself, a large white rock below the summit, ‘the ultimate defence of the Dowayos’ which, if removed by the rainmaker, would flood the whole world destroying all its inhabitants. At the end of his stay Barley was rewarded with a trip to the mountain to see the rain stones, but asked for one final thing – he had not actually seen the Old Man make rain, so would he grant him that wish? The Old Man pointed out that Barley had already seen him splash the rain stones so the party should hurry down the mountain before dark as it would rain on the way home. Barley continues the story:

The storm hit us at the very worst point of the descent where we

were executing goat-like leaps across the fissures. Granite becomes

very slippery when wet. At one point I was reduced to crawling on all

fours. The Old Man was sniggering and pointing to the sky. Had

I now seen? We were shouting above the storm to be heard. ‘That’s

enough’, I cried, ‘you can make it stop’. He looked at me with a

twinkle in his eye. ‘A man does not take a wife to divorce her the

same day’, he replied.