Celebration of the Dead, Yémasõ, Benin, 1998

One morning, I heard singing outside my kitchen window. Across the road sat a line of girls, singing, “Wen yé som ahn so.” The celebration for the dead had begun. Known as goo yiru [goh yeeru], this month-long Bariba celebration is devoted to remembering the dead as a means to appease them, for the dead are believed to be sporting among us, influencing all things from childbirth to harvest. Each morning, the girls called to fellow villagers to toss coins into the gourds poised on their ankles, and each night elder women sang and played giant overturned gourds like drums by lantern light. Like the girls, they were busking for money to pay for the great communal feast in honor of the dead at the end of the month. Tounkara, the village midwife, was among the elder women who sang and played each night. Before goo yiru even began, I asked her if there would be dancing, and she said, “It’s the dead who dance.”