Coming Together and Falling Apart Something about Brooms and Nigeria

portrait of the thief’s future life of abstraction. as a comb separates hairs from each other, so will a thief be separated from the broader community of useful, engaged human beings. af_42-51.indd 45 5/20/2009 7:39:56 PM 46 | african arts autumn 2009 in their legibility as signs. In contrast, medicinally empowered aale (aale oogun) like eleriko, are positioned within the interior confines of a domestic space, often hung above the lintels of entrance doors or passages between individual rooms, or set on or above window frames. Located in these liminal spaces, aale such as these (Fig. 2) are usually hidden from view. They may or may not be “witnessed” by an intruder, but the visual aspect of the object is not the efficacious element here. Rather, the protective capacity of such aale ile (‘aale of the house’) is drawn from the generative power (ase) of the words and the oogun implanted within the object. Testimonies to the power of these brooms are common throughout Yorubaland. It seemed that most adults with whom I spoke of such things had heard something about them or had read something about them or knew someone who knew someone else who had experienced their punitive powers. The stories were more or less consistent: A thief enters a household with the intention to steal. The instant the thief touches the object of his desire, he puts it back down, walks over to the broom (which he has not previously seen), and lifts it from its place. With this broom, the thief begins to sweep the house—compulsively, incessantly—until the owner of the household returns. And then, of course, the thief receives some sort of punishment. It’s a great story, a kind of weird slapstick vignette on a looping reel. Nigeria’s many tabloid journals occasionally print reports of unfortunate confrontations with such medicated brooms. Some of them are pretty amusing, too, if that’s the sort of thing you find funny.