Monkey See, Monkey Do

     "Foreigners" play an important role in the lives of many different groups of people. Such as the role the Portuguese played on the Africans. When the Portuguese arrived in Africa they had brought with them their beliefs and ideas. They where also perceived to the Beni as the living dead. This idea was probably reinforced by the fact that in Benin the color white is not only associated with death but also identified with Olokun the wealthy god of the sea. Olokun is sometimes worshipped in tandem with Mami Wata. In the article Mami Wata Shrines Henry John Drewal states, "Devotees of an African water spirit known as Mami Wata take exotic object, interpret them according to indigenous precepts, invest them with new meanings, and then re-present them in inventive ways to serve their own aesthetic, devotional, and social needs." The Beni also noticed that the Portuguese carried crosses with them which they took as the crossroads. Since the Beni thought these items were very similar they identified with the "foreigners" in this way.


     When the Portuguese arrived in the Kongo the Kongolese also connected them with the other world. The crosses that the Portuguese carried with them served as additional support for the idea that the strange white skinned, long haired Portuguese came from a nether world of spirits and the dead. After seeing the Portuguese these two groups of people took what they had seen and heard. Adapting them to their cultures the re-interpreted the different things and embraced them into their own way of life. Drewal said, "People intentionally or unintentionally use the objects of others to define themselves." We see this many times in the article Mami Wata. Her followers select fragments from their study of foreign cultures and invest them with new meanings to create sacred symbols that will appeal to their vain and potentially troublesome spirit. Everything is re-shaped, re-symbolized, and re-presented. 


The idea of taking objects or thoughts from others and re-presenting them to a culture isn't for certain people. We as Americans do it all the time from copying food from other countries that is changed to our version of that type of food to adapting the personality and looks of someone we know or admire, in other words pretending to be someone we're not, trends and such it's happening all the time. I think Bakhtin said it the best when he wrote, "We appraise ourselves from the point of view of others, we attempt to understand the transgredient moments of our very consciousness and to take them into account through the other . . . ; in a word, constantly and intensely, we oversee and apprehend the reflections of our life in the plan of consciousness of other men."




                                    Bethany <><