Story on slavery « Sorosoro

Story on slavery

One of our filming sessions in Gabon in 2009 was led by linguist Jean-Marie Hombert who has been studying the country’s languages for over twenty years. Thanks to his excellent knowledge of the area, our crew was introduced and able to film in an Akele village of the lake region near Lambarene.

We met the most engaging people there, including when facing the camera and interviewed on either contemporary subjects or elements of their oral traditions. Those who follow our weekly video updates have already had the chance to meet Théodosie, Anaket, Jean Kédine or Papa Kédine who now seem so familiar, as if we actually got to know them through the time spent listening to what they had to say.

To tell the truth, they’re not really strangers anymore since we’ve met Hugues Awanet, who during the summer of 2009, courageously translated from Akele all the rushes we collected in this village. Paris-based anthropologist, Hugues had got in touch with Sorosoro through mutual acquaintances, and none of us at the time had expected to find out… that all these images had been filmed in Hugues’ native village, and that most of the people interviewed there were his family : his brother, mother, grandfather…

How could we have known, when Hugues’s family name is Awanet and his brother’s and grandfather’s is Kédine? It took a whole detailed explanation on the community’s name attribution system so we could understand…

Hugues had more to come when he was submitted the numerous documents we needed translated from Akele. He discovered how his grandfather Papa Kédine was an amazing storyteller, guardian of the history of the whole community. Some of you might remember this film with Papa Kédine telling the “tale of the downstream god and the upstream god”, which the ethnologist grandson has deciphered for us.

This time it is his brother Jean Kédine who brings us an apparently true story reaching back to his maternal ancestors, and handed down one generation after the other. Three brothers, one slave, a murder and the search for a vampire… we’ll say no more for the time being as the deep sense of this tale defies the Western mind: we’ll need Hugues to give us the keys to this one…