Supernatural

I can only imagine what happens during a Sande initiation ceremony. Drums keep time as initiates sway, twirl, and clap to the beat. Each movement is culturally symbolic and invokes ancestral spirits. Libations flow to Xala, the supreme deity of the cosmic universe, ancient prayers of prosperity are whispered, and elderly hands carve membership onto young supple flesh. The raised marks on the arm or neck identify the person and tribe. It is a mark of affiliation and affinity that binds them to their clan and culture. Young girls learn to be good women and wives. Social boundaries are clarified and reified for all to see. But, what happens when the social boundaries are transgressed whether real or imagined? How are deviance and the unwritten social sanctions imagined and experienced within the Kpelle society? I think that is best understood when things go wrong in the society. It is at the breach of normalcy that one can examine the perceived social norms of a society. At the fissure or rupture, one can examine normalcy and deviance. According to Emile Durkheim, deviance fulfills four unique functions for a society. It defines and reifies cultural norms and values. Deviance makes clear the demarcation between morality and immorality. Those who respond to deviance are unified in their struggle to denounce it. Yet, deviance can be bring about social change because it applies pressure to the existing boundaries. Kpelle society like all societies in the world is dynamic and subject to change. I am witnessing a society in flux. A young baby girl lies on her back in a crowded hospital room. She shares the room with two other infant patients. A sickly baby boy lies on a mattress with his mother who coos and whispers “I love you.” The next mattress over is a tiny premature baby girl. Her face is round with skin like brown velvet. She is without her mother, because she died in childbirth. Her family hasn’t sent for her, since they are probably still grieving. I try to think what it most be like to loose a daughter, wife, and mother of four. I wonder to myself as I softly murmur sweet nothings to the baby wrapped in the pink blanket, “Who will take care of the other children?” “Will the mother’s parents offer the available sister to the widower to perform a sororate marriage?” These may be some of the questions that the family must answer before they can pick up their little bundle of brown velvet. For right now, she lies next to a Kpelle surrogate grandmother. She’s taking her lunch right next to her—refusing to leave her side for just a few minutes. What the hospital lacks in modern medical technology the people make up for in love and devotion. However, not all the infants have an around the clock love support team. An infant was born hydrocephalic with only the hospital staff and the occasional curious spectator to provide for her. She lies behind a thin curtain. There is no modern prenatal care that would have diagnosed the condition. There are no neurosurgeons in Liberia and no medical evacuation plan for sick children. Although the staff immediately understood the constellation of medical conditions to be hydrocephalus, the family thought it was a supernatural curse. The body is not only physical here, but also metaphysical. Some conditions are understood to be the cause of abstract social transgressions. The parents thought she was a gena or supernatural monstrosity sent to warn and punish them for something. “Throw her away in the dark bush! Do it late at night so no one will see” are the instructions the parents gave to the hospital staff. They absconded with their guilt and shame to the bush to make peace with Xala. A gena could be understood as a culture- bound syndrome, because it takes a constellation of symptoms and reinterprets them according to cultural symbols and access to medical technology.
There’s a lot more I can say, but that will have to wait till graduate school.