My mom was one of a few volunteer curators for our local African American Museum. It was housed in a crumbling old romanesque former public library— a daunting massive space for a small volunteer-run museum. Nearly all the members of the board, directors and curators were professors from the area community and 4 year colleges— it was a labor of love.
When a college in Dakar said they would send artifacts from the time of door of no return— everyone was excited. 🧵 #threads
One Sunday we arrived to find a great wooden crate in the front hall under the circular skylight in the old library’s main hall. I was just a child maybe 8 years old and I remember it was so huge I couldn’t see over the lid— and it was covered in the stamps and stickers that told of its exotic migration, by air but along the same lines traveled by the ancestors whose secrets it contained. 2/
Dr.O was one of only a few among the museum leadership with a background in African American History and the Diaspora. (Most were STEM faculty like my mom, the dangers of tenure and appointment being a easier to navigate through objective achievement, and raw brain power (often by correspondence)than the kind of sensitive and confrontational work Dr.O took on in the humanities. There was no leader but everyone held him in highest regard. 3/
So no one expected anyone else to pick up the crowbar and with the sleeves rolled up on his button-down shirt he pried off the lid. Coconut fibers spilled on to the rotunda floor and with great care several smaller creates were extracted from the larger one. And these in turn opened to expose somber archival boxes— wherein were the artifacts. 4/
We wanted to know more about the cultures of the victims of the slave trade what was left behind at that “door of no return?” When Dr.O charmed some historians in Dakar with probably terrible French — they promised to send items of the correct age, though those years are a Dark Age in the history of west Africa and they could not tell us much at all about what the figures, now some 300 years old might represent. 5/
The statues were beautiful and they were terrifying. One was a little man of squat proportions and his whole skin was a mask of ship’s nails. The next was an antelope but with proportions stretched to the limit of what might make the animal intelligible.
But it’s the last statue that I will never forget for it was to be the source of and endless and enduring mystery. It was a human figure with the face drawn back in fear or pain. On the belly was a kind of ‘window’ made of mica— 6/
The third statue had an internal compartment and there was something sealed inside! of course the collection of to curious for their own good professors wanted to know one thing: what was inside? 7/7 (to be continued)
Time to complete this story!
After some deliberation (I won't say which of the professors suggested trying open it and reseal it, this was of course harshly dismissed) the conversation turned to if we really needed to know what was inside at all. I piped up at this moment "But, when the people come that's what they'll want to know!" It's a great thing to be a kid who gets to spend time with tolerant doting professors growing up, but it can make one precocious. Part Two 1/
One of the adults worked at the medical college and they were very proud of their new MRI scanner. Gradually a consensus formed to take the 300+ year old wooden statue to be scanned. Dr. O decided to clear the idea with the college in Dakar that night. I remember my mom getting a late night call and asking her if the college had given permission for the scan. They had! And we were also to radio carbon date anything we could manage. I begged to go to the hospital on the day of the scanning. 2/
Luckily it was summer and school was out so it seemed I got to go. My mom arrived early at the MRI department in the basement of Cleveland Clinic we sat in the hall and were surprised when the little statue arrived on a stretcher, like a patient. The medical professor had arranged to have it picked up by an ambulance, so it could be moved with minimal disturbance.
I watched the little dark wood figure with its unsettling grimace disappear into the scanning room. 3/
I didn't get to go into the control room to witness the scan. I had to wait in the hall. My mom told me to stay on the benches and I squirmed with boredom. It didn't seem very fair that she got to watch the scan and I didn't.
But as my mind wandered counting the gray and red tiles in the hospital hall something unexpected happened that I won't ever forget. 4/
There was a loud electrical "WOMP" a kind of ominous great hum and the lights in the hall and the lights in the rooms I could see from the bench all went off!
But it wasn't the whole hospital. Just the one section of hall. I could hear adults shouting and the bustle of footsteps.
Even if I was supposed to wait I decided that I needed to find my mom. I barged into the control room which wasn't locked.
5/
The control room was totally dark. I looked through the glass where you could see the MRI, a great white circular machine just barely visible in a haze of shadows. Strained my eyes tying to see where the statue was.
A hospital technician was flipping switches and said something about "more metal than we expected--" but then added "-- but we checked and it should have been fine." 6/
The lights came back on, and when the adults were satisfied that the MRI wasn't broken everyone agreed to go back to the museum. Adults were talking fast, leaving me out of it. But, what I was able to gather was that as soon as the machine got to the part of the stature with the window something went terribly wrong, and the whole circuit for the MRI section of the hospital went down.
Later I saw the scan. The grimacing face clear as ever. Below it right where the window began... nothing. 7/
Later that day I asked my mom what happened and she said that the statue probably wanted to keep those secrets and left it at that.
8/8
@futurebird was it an Nkisi Nkondi??
@debonairetoast I think so. Though it didn't have nails sticking out of it. I think two of the figures they sent were Nkisi Nkondi, one had nails the other had the mica window.
@futurebird it may have been a new one, in comparison?
they are the most interesting of spiritual items, to me. very fascinating.
please don't let me info dump "at" you, these are a 'special interest' i did study a bit.
if anybody wants a link or two, i would love (enthusiastically) to share.
@futurebird for the observers and anyone curious about Nkisi n'kondi figures, what they're made from, and what they mean or are used for...
Interesting they were used for medicine but also contracts. Creepy to think about what kind of contracts those might have been.
I've thought about making a fiction version of the story, but it's this little mystery from childhood and I knew that I'd need to do a ton of research for such a story. And I didn't want to unwrap the whole story.
I'd need to find out how the artifacts got to the university in Dakar. Bug my mom about it.
But now I have a good question to hunt on.
@futurebird @debonairetoast Wow, great story!
