Remembering Amadou Hampâté Bâ

What do a university in Dakar, a university in Abidjan, a research programme at the University of Nantes, a national performing arts centre in Bamako, a middle school in Niger and a square in the 10th arrondissement of Paris have in common? Guess! The answer consists of three words: Amadou Hampâté Bâ. If the list above is far from complete, it must be recognised that Amadou Hampâté Bâ is one of these rare beings that Providence endowed with seven lives, endeavouring to pass on the legacies of the past. Woven into the works of great ancestral word- smiths, his oeuvre is the seismograph of human wisdoms and divine signs. Successively a writer, storyteller, poet, ethnologist, spiritual leader, numerologist and diplomat, Amadou Hampaté Bâ was in constant dialogue with young people from the continent.

Family Epic

Called Amkoullel, a nickname given to him by his relatives, Amadou was born in Mali (then French Sudan) at the beginning of the year 1900 in the city of Bandiagara, close to the cliffs of Dogon Country. His biography is an epic novel, as recounted in his posthumously published memoir.1

The two branches of his family belong to two important but opposing lines in the history of the former Peul Empire of Macina. Young Amadou’s childhood was marked by the echo of fratricidal wars, family dramas and the colonial conquest. After losing his father at the age of three, he found solace with his mother Kadidja and Tidiani Amadou Thiam, his mother’s second husband who raised him as his own son, and his relatives:

I have no memory of my father, because I had unfortunately only spent three years in this stormy world where, like a piece of calabash carried away by the river, I was to float along in step with the political or religious events brought about by the colonial presence.

Amkoullel’s eventful life is a leap in the great history that naturally occupies an important place in his memoirs. Yet beyond the milestones and adventures, what must be retained from his 850-page memoir are the very rich teachings, initiations and experiences that Amkoullel had the privilege of receiving and endeavoured to pass on to others throughout his life.

Any great man is the product of many confrontations and multiple influences, and the author of The Strange Fate of Wangrin2 is no exception to the rule. Because he stood up to an arbitrary administrative decision, his professional career did not get off to a smooth start. As punishment, the governor sent him to take up a post as a “temporary writer on an interim and special basis” in a most remote area of the Upper Volta. How- ever, what was an arbitrary and unfair sanction transformed itself into a wonderful opportunity. On a professional level, Amkoullel gained in-depth knowledge of the colonial system: after all, he was not only the interpreter, “the Commander’s mouth”, but also “his pen and pencil”. On a personal level, the young clerk discovered himself, established numerous contacts with elders, and opened his heart and wings far and wide. An autodidact, he was continuously alert and curious, learning everything from everybody. Later on, he would say of him- self, “I graduated from the great university of the spoken word taught in the shade of baobab trees”.

Spiritual Son of Tierno Bokar

If one element of the atypical journey of Amadou Hampâté Bâ must be remembered, it was his bond with another great man: Tierno Salif Bokar. Ahmadou Hampâté Bâ was the spiritual son of Tierno Bokar, his master and guide who would make him understand the true meaning of the mysteries on this earth. Having walked along the less travelled and the usual paths to access higher spheres of religious and spiritual knowledge, Ahmadou Hampâté Bâ was always open to dialogue, irrespective of the beliefs, knowledge, function or moral and spiritual influence of his interlocutors.

In 1939, devastated by the passing of Tierno Bokar, whose death he considered almost as his own, he was ready to devote himself full-time to the transmission of his legacy and gathering of oral knowledge. He would again be faced with difficulties: the colonial administration and traditional religious establishment condemned him for belonging to a branch of the Tidjaniya Islamic brotherhood, deemed to be anti- French. He narrowly escaped deportation. Professor Théodore Monod welcomed him to the French Institute for Black Africa (IFAN) in Dakar. The appointment was a promotion but also a way to protect him from harassment. In 1944, he presented Kaïdara, a prose text of the Peul initiation tale, which made the academic world recognise him for the first time.

The rest is a history known to all West African scholars: his training with Monod, his links with the major French Africanists (Marcel Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen, Louis Massignon), his election to the executive board of UNESCO, his friendship with the Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Posterity has especially retained his role as a tireless defender of African cultures.

His advocacy for the collection and conservation of African traditional knowledge remains a great event for all people of goodwill. In 1960, the native from Bandiagara sounded the alarm at UNESCO: “Since we have admitted that the humanity of each

people is the heritage of all mankind, if African traditions are not collected on time and written down on paper, they will be missing one day in the universal archives of humanity”.

His support for the cause of oral tradition was not rhetorical. Amadou Hampâté Bâ lived his entire life in humility and modesty, respecting the Peul code. He was known to be tolerant, respectful and generous. He was equally indifferent to praise as to criticism. Better still, he did not take anything seriously, poking fun at everything and himself first of all. When he was given the honorific “Hampâté Bâ the Wise”, he burst into laughter.

An autodidact, he was continuously alert and curious, learning everything from everybody. Later on, he would say of himself, “I graduated from the great university of the spoken word taught in the shade of baobab trees”.

I can assure you that reading his memoir will also leave you, the reader, affected, seduced and shaken by this great African thinker and universal humanist. And a happy man at that: “If you are looking for a man, come to me. I will dance with buffoons, I will speak with vagabonds”.

A Beacon for the Youth

At a time when the whole of Africa finds itself threatened by the terrorist hydra that proclaims Islam, and when some young people no longer hide their distress, it would not go amiss to cast a glance backwards to reconnect with the legacy of elders who were always willing to give advice and pro- vide other life lessons.

Six years prior to his death in 1991, the great Malian wrote an open letter addressed to “The Youth”3, which today touches us even more vigorously. It teaches us cardinal virtues such as open-mindedness, patience, tolerance and humility. The author of the letter is presented as a simple collector of light and not as a great man protected by his knowledge or his advanced age:

The one who is speaking to you is one of the first people to be born in the twentieth century. He has there- fore lived a long time and, as you can imagine, has heard and seen a great deal from across the world. However, he does not claim to be a master of anything. Above all, he wanted to be an eternal researcher, an eternal student, and still today his thirst for knowledge is as strong as it was in the early days.

After painting a broad picture of his long years of learning and numerous travels in Africa, Europe and the rest of the world, he shares his first lesson: Young people, always strive to understand people and seek mutual understanding by every means! Instead of our differences separating us from others, they will become sources of complementarity and mutual enrichment. Amadou Hampâté Bâ pulls out one of the vivid images he secretly had up his boubou’s sleeve: “Much as a carpet’s beauty depends on the variety of its colours, the diversity of humans, cultures and civilisations makes the world beautiful and rich. How boring and monotonous a uniform world would be.”

Amadou Hampâté Bâ pulls out one of the vivid images he secretly had up his boubou’s sleeve: “Much as a carpet’s beauty depends on the variety of its colours, the diversity of humans, cultures and civilisations makes the world beautiful and rich. How boring and monotonous a uniform world would be.”

From recognising interdependence and the spirit of tolerance and solidarity, the Malian savant then invites the youth to take only one step with enthusiasm:

Young people, as the last-born of the twentieth century, you live at a time that is frightening because of the threats weighing on humanity, and exciting because of the opportunities that are opened up in the field of knowledge and communication between people… Traditional civilisation was, after all, a civilisation of responsibility and solidarity at all levels… Never a woman, child, patient or old man would have been left to live on the margins of society, like a spare part.

Our peoples, he writes, worked out a fine human science where humans were not separated from the natural environment as is the case today everywhere in the world: Humans were also considered as responsible for the balance of the

natural world around them. They were forbidden from cutting a tree for no reason, or killing an animal without valid reason. Land did not belong to them but was entrusted to them by the Creator as a sacred trust to be managed.

The multifaceted crisis currently faced by our planet does not come out of the blue. It is a consequence of the divorce between humans and nature in which humans strive to dominate at any cost whatsoever. The Malian visionary invites us to question the dominant and destructive way of living: “The good gardener is not the one who uproots, but the one who, at the right time, knows to prune dead branches and, if necessary, to carefully make useful grafts.”

Now is the time for everyone, young and old alike, to read this valuable letter, and to continue to unravel the valuable lessons lavished by the sage of Bandiagara.4

* Translated from French by Nathalie Heynderickx

*The original article, “Amadou Hampâté Bâ, puits de sagesse pour la jeunesse africaine”, is available at http:// fr.allafrica.com/stories/201711020412.html.

. 1  Bâ, Amadou Hampâté (2012), Mémoires, Paris: Actes Sud.

. 2  L’Étrange Destin de Wangrin (1973): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89trange_Destin_de_Wangrin.

. 3  It can be read here: http://www.deslettres.fr/damadou-hampate-ba-jeunesse-soyez-au-service-vie/.

. 4  For a complete overview of the oeuvre of Amadou Hampâté Bâ in English, see: http://www.ascleiden.nl/content/ webdossiers/amadou-hampate-ba.

The article is part of a series of articles by This is Africa in partnership with Perspectives /Heinrich Böll Foundation, titled The (Un-)Making of Icons in Africa: