Ladies’ night out at the Africa Centre in Cadier en Keer

Apart from being your faithful editor, I am also a member of the International Women’s Club of South Limburg (IWC). Our latest monthly meeting exceptionally took us to the Africa Centre (Afrikacentrum) in Cadier en Keer, just outside of Maastricht.

The Africa Centre was originally a Mission House which was established in Cadier en Keer in 1892 by the Society for African Missions (SMA). The Mission House included a cloister, a seminary, a training centre for missionaries (which still exits). The missionary fathers focused their work mainly in West Africa and acquired in the course of the first half of the 20th century a large collection of ancestors’ sculptures, masks, daily use objects, fertility statues and gold weights.

The Africa Centre itself was founded in 1959 with the aim to exhibit the missionaries’ collection of African artefacts and also to raise public interest for West African art and traditions.

Our IWC activity coordinator had organised a special evening visit for us at the Africa Centre and we had the entire museum just for ourselves. As usual, there was first some time for a chat and a cup of tea or coffee…

… and then we were split into two groups for a guided tour of the collection.

My first visit at the museum a few years ago had been without a guide, and I must admit that I had not understood much about the objects on display. The names of the various items and tribes had not meant much to me… But this time, our guide made everything come alive for us. The young Dutch woman quickly overcame her initial anxiety to be addressing us in English (”Oh I cannot pronounce this word in English, my tongue is going in all directions!”) and took us through a selection of ancestors’ statues and masks and explained in rich details about the many rituals and traditions that went with them. She was lively and very knowledgeable: it was obvious that she knew much more than she was telling us! It would have been easy to spend many hours listening to her.

I was nevertheless left slightly troubled by an observation she repeatedly made: she said that most of the artefacts we were admiring were actually very private objects in West African culture, that they were traditionally kept inside closets and only shown or worn during very special occasions. The ancestors’ statues for example were believed to house the spirits of the dead and were actually not meant to be exhibited publicly. I reflected to myself that there seemed to be an inherent contradiction in learning about African culture and traditions by looking at works of art which in fact should not have been accessible to us…

Our tour ended with some statuettes of the Baule people in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. These were among the most refined objects we had seen so far and our guide explained to us that this may have been due to the fact that the Baule people were originally formed by a mixture of various tribes, each one having brought some of their own culture into the new group. “They were a multicultural society,” she said, before candidly adding: “A bit like us in the Netherlands now…”

After giving her a warm applause, we went downstairs to the basement of the museum where we were going to learn to play the djembe drum with Nunu, “a drummer from Ghana and one of the kindest persons I’ve ever met” in our guide’s words.

But some of us could not help first taking a pause at the irresistible African Centre’s shop…

There were about twenty authentic djembe drums waiting for us in one of the basement rooms. Most of us had never touched a djembe drum before so we first felt a bit awkward and clumsy…

…but under Nunu’s warm and friendly guidance, before we knew it, we were all playing original djembe rhythms and even singing a Ghanaian song!

At the beginning of our visit, our young guide had told us: “There are people who come here with a negative view about Africa because they are influenced by the unfavourable reports they hear in the media. They say that they don’t like African art and that they even find it ugly. But it is wonderful to see the same people leaving the Africa Centre spontaneously admitting: “Oh now I understand African culture better… and I like it!”. This is when we feel that we have accomplished our mission.”

Mission accomplished indeed!

By Sueli Brodin
Crossroads editor