MUSA'S LONG JOURNEY

Musa was born in 1942 in Debe, a village in the southern Upper River, as the last of seven children – three sons and four daughters. His father, Ansumana Jakite, was a Jakhanke migrant from Dantila (a region in Eastern Senegal) who had come to the Upper River in the 1920s to look for work and land. At that time, Debe was an attractive destination for seasonal and permanent migrants hailing from the east. Founded only two to three decades earlier by Soninke nobles and Muslim clerics, together with the casted artisans affiliated to them, it was located on the burgeoning, southward-moving agricultural frontier of the Peanut Basin (Swindell and Jeng Reference Swindell and Jeng2006). Ansumana thus decided to take up residence in Debe and look for a wife. He was a free migrant, but since he came as a stranger with no ties to the village freeborn families, he could marry only a slave woman – a fate shared by numerous other settlers (see Gaibazzi Reference Gaibazzi2012). Dalla Balde, Musa's mother, was a slave girl brought up in a household of the Mangasi family, one of the largest descent groups in Debe. The family were members of the garanke or leatherworkers, one of the ‘artisanal castes’ among the nyaxamalo.Footnote ⁵ The Soninke were and are a patrilineal society divided into descent groups (xabilanu; singular: xabila), and especially into patrilocal households (kanu; singular: ka). By contrast, slave descent was and is matrilineal: the children of a slave woman belonged to her masters (Pollet and Winter Reference Pollet and Winter1971: 248; Meillassoux Reference Meillassoux and Meillassoux1975; Razy Reference Razy2007: 71ff.). Formally not a slave, Ansumana was able to form an autonomous household for him and his wife, and his children bore his patronymic (jamu), Jakite. Yet Musa and his siblings belonged to the Mangasi family.

However, Dalla's children would experience something rather different from what she did. Since the late nineteenth century, the arrival of labour migrants such as Ansumana had made the control of slave labour less fundamental to the rural economy, and emancipation was under way even before the British established a protectorate in the Upper River in 1901 (Weil Reference Weil1984). After a period of partial abolition and hesitant policy implementation, the colonial rulers abolished all forms of slavery in 1930, leaving slaves nevertheless to negotiate the terms of their social emancipation with their former masters (Bellagamba Reference Bellagamba2005). The speed and manner of emancipation varied, depending on the specific trajectory and conditions in which slaves found themselves. There was nonetheless a general move towards autonomy, with former slaves staying put more often than fleeing, and progressively being allowed to till their own land, rule over their households, pass on inheritance to their children, and arrange their own marriages (cf. Klein Reference Klein and Rossi2009). Since the area around Debe was still relatively forested, Ansumana cleared his own plots in the bush and thus gained rights to the land.

Despite emancipation, the memory of slavery remained. Regardless of their specific trajectories, all people descended from slaves, even those who had been formally manumitted, were lumped together in a status group still known as komo or slaves. Like other freeborn status groups, the komo have been endogamous. In addition, relationships with former masters were generally maintained, assuming the form of patron–client relations, or at least of ritual obligations and etiquettes of deference. Musa, who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s during the coda of slavery proper, recalls that his mother and sisters would occasionally go to the Mangasi household to pound millet and help the women with domestic chores. His elder brothers would instead work on the Mangasi fields on Saturday mornings (his father died when he was seven). For his family, work for former masters went on until the late 1950s, becoming increasingly sporadic. Thereafter, work for the Mangasi was carried out only during ceremonies, and then only against some form of payment (typically, kome men slaughter the sacrificial ram and fetch firewood; women pound grains, cook and haul water). Through this ritual work, former slaves acknowledge their servile origins and formal dependency on former masters.

However, Musa did not witness much of this transformation of slavery for, aged only fifteen, he ventured out of his village in search of fortune. Starting in the mid-1950s, a veritable ‘travel fever’ spread to the Upper River, enticing numerous young men away from their homes (Gaibazzi Reference Gaibazzi2015: 39–41). Many men in Debe were already involved in regional short- and long-distance trade networks, but new routes had been forged, especially in diamond mining and trade in West and Central Africa, and in the African art business, primarily on the Gold Coast (cf. Steiner Reference Steiner1994; Bredeloup Reference Bredeloup2007). Musa would join Soninke traders a few years later, however, for his recently formed small household had neither the financial means nor a large network of contacts to help him pay for his travel (Gaibazzi Reference Gaibazzi2012: 231). He left for the nearby Senegalese city of Tambacounda, where he worked as a porter for a few months, to then continue along the railway to Bamako. He stayed in Mali for the following seven years, working as a houseboy for some families of the Malian elite, including a minister of the first Republic of Mali (established in 1960). Around 1964, his employer was posted to the Malian diplomatic mission in Ghana, and Musa followed him to Accra. When, three years later, the official was sent to another country, Musa left his job and entered the trade in African art objects. Upper River migrants whom he had met in Ghana helped him to make the transition. He spent another four years in Ghana, more precisely in Kumasi, during which he managed to visit his family in Debe for the first time since he had left home.

Upon his return from the Gambia, in around 1971, he liaised with S.S., a prominent Soninke trader from a village near Debe, and soon afterwards Musa moved to Lagos to work in his textile import business. Musa worked to raise the money for bridewealth, while his brothers and sisters back home looked for a suitable bride for him. In 1974, he travelled home to marry Kumba, a kome girl from a nearby village. Before he left Nigeria, S.S. had entrusted Musa with the supervision of some of his construction work and business in Serekunda, the urban area along the Gambia's Atlantic coast. Thus, after getting married, Musa and Kumba moved to Serekunda and lodged in their patron's family compound for the following five years. Their first two sons were born in this period. In 1981, Musa broke off from S.S., and after relocating his wife and children to his brothers’ household in Debe, he left again for Nigeria. He stayed only the necessary time to make some money and leave for Spain, which was just beginning to become a popular migrant destination. Musa did odd jobs for various Spanish artisans and small firms. In 1985, he visited the Gambia, but he was then unable to return to Spain, which had just introduced an entry visa system.

With the route to Europe blocked, Nigeria became a suitable destination again. In 1986, Musa travelled to Ibadan and after a year he sent for his wife and newborn daughter, while his two sons stayed with his brothers. Over the following ten years, Musa and his wife lived alongside other traders from the Upper River. He dealt in African antiquities and aquamarine, while she took care of the family, which welcomed another three sons, two of whom were twins (one died at the age of two). In 1996, Musa and his family decided to go back to Debe, this time for good. In Debe, the family had two other boys and grieved the loss of the second twin in 2002.

Unfolding over a period of four decades, Musa's wide-ranging peregrinations defy any linear narrative of either emancipation or submission.Footnote ⁶ If his first years in Mali and Ghana seem to exemplify the trajectory of many West African slaves moving from slave labour to urban proletariat (cf. Rossi Reference Rossi2014a: 26–9), in the subsequent period reintegration in the village and ethnic networks prevailed. Nor did he simply proceed from slavery to dependency on patrons, although his temporary affiliation with S.S., a noble, was probably conditioned by the status difference between the two.Footnote ⁷ Not having conducted research in diasporic settings, I can only trust Musa when he says, echoing numerous other migrants, that abroad ‘o su ni fi baane’ (‘we are all one’): the shared condition of being strangers in a foreign land overrides differences for it is perceived as being bereft of honour and recognition (see also Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse2012b: 21).Footnote ⁸

What Musa had achieved (or not) as a traveller was arguably more important for his reputation. Unlike a number of his age mates, he did not become wealthy enough to sponsor the pilgrimage to Mecca either for himself, his parents or his senior kinsmen; nor did he marry several wives or bear many children to refill his lineage (cf. Manchuelle Reference Manchuelle1989). He did not build a mansion in his household, let alone buy landed property in Serekunda. Musa was not, however, a failed migrant. In the first place, he had accumulated much experience and knowledge. In addition, from the late 1960s, food and cash crop cultivation began to slowly decline as a consequence of the worsening climate and ecology, as well as of market and policy constraints (Sallah Reference Sallah1990; Baker Reference Baker1995). Like other village households, the Jakite had to rely more and more on the money sent by him and other migrant householders to supplement the dwindling harvests.Footnote ⁹ Finally, Musa had been a loyal traveller in several other respects, as shown by his siblings having arranged his marriage with Kumba, supervising her and rearing his sons in his absence, for example (Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse, Okome and Vaughan2012a). And, of course, this kept him linked to the village, where status positions apply. It was only after he returned home, however, that he began to fully participate in the sociality of status hierarchies.

‘I AM OLD NOW …’: RETURNING AND BECOMING AN ELDER

Musa framed his homecoming as a generational passage and an aspiration to settle down as an elder: ‘[In 1996] I said: if I go back to Gambia, I am staying. I'm tired of looking for money. I am old now. Let my children go [on a migration].’ At the age of fifty-five, not having found much luck abroad despite his untiring efforts, it was time to pass on the incumbency of providing for the larger family to his (classificatory) sons. His first son was then around twenty years of age and ready to travel, while two sons of one of his brothers had already managed to emigrate to the US; one of these had met Musa in Nigeria and was helped by him to raise the money for the visa and plane ticket. Musa thus returned to his family compound, farmed on his family fields, and hoped that his sons would enable him to live a humble but peaceful life in his own village.

Musa's expectations were reasonable. Intensified male emigration had not disrupted the dominant family structure in Debe (cf. Gunnarsson Reference Gunnarsson2011; Kea Reference Kea2013). In households, parents and senior kinsfolk featured as givers of life and nourishment, as well as moral custodians of family values; in contrast, juniors featured as debtors striving to feed and care for their seniors (Meillassoux Reference Meillassoux1981). Although many men like Musa had left and technically they no longer worked on the family farms managed by their household head, they continued, as hinted, to be under an obligation to send the latter money for food, and often for much more. Thus, senior men had remained at the helm of the household and of descent groups in Debe, playing a significant role in ritual transactions, family disputes and community affairs, and more generally as repositories of wisdom and knowledge.

Becoming an elder is not, however, an automatic passage. As Alice Bellagamba (Reference Bellagamba2013) has shown, performing as male elders in contemporary Gambia entails painstaking diplomatic work in accumulating recognition for wisdom and authority, and, above all, it implies being able to attract financial flows from dependants. Gambians are certainly right in praising the cohesion of Soninke families, but problems affect the latter frequently enough to make Debe men hesitate about their ascent to patriarchy (Gaibazzi Reference Gaibazzi2015: 134ff.). In particular, juniors strive for autonomy and various householders may compete over migrant resources, creating cleavages between household sections, and jeopardizing the material bases of male domestic authority, even when they uphold the dominant norms of masculinity and seniority. As we shall see, although Musa commanded respect as a family elder, both family problems and financial difficulties haunted his project of settling down as an elder.

In around 2000, Musa struck it lucky. An international charitable organization with a branch in the regional capital Basse Santa Su began to sound out the possibility of building an outstation in Debe in order to start small-scale development projects. The staff thus looked for an English-speaking villager who could teach them a little Soninke. In a village where education and knowledge of English were still very limited in those days,Footnote ¹⁰ Musa turned out to be a valuable resource. Thanks to his charming personality, he also earned the sympathy and trust of the foreigners. A year later, he leased out to them a plot of land he had inherited from his father on which the organization built residential and logistical facilities. At the end of the twenty-year lease, Musa would gain possession of the now developed property and until then he would earn a reasonable monthly rent. In addition, Musa remained an important trustee of the organization, charged with supervising some of their development projects.

While, on the one hand, this deal gave Musa a modest income and granted his children an auspicious inheritance, on the other it aggravated his situation. Musa's decision to lease out the plot of family land for his private interests displeased his brothers, and allegedly their wives, who reacted by excluding Musa from their resources. The descent group remained united, but Musa had to branch off and establish his own compound on a small parcel of land obtained from the village chief. Musa was now a full-blown household head, but by exiting his brothers’ household, he de facto forfeited any prospect of sharing in the remittances sent by his classificatory sons, and, even worse, his own children saw their chance to receive support from their migrant agnates evaporate. Over the following decade, none of his grown-up sons managed either to travel abroad or to secure stable sources of income besides farming. Although they went to Serekunda in the dry season to look for work, they rarely obtained jobs that paid well enough to take care of the whole family. The difference between Musa's and his brothers’ households thus became visually compelling. In 2012, Musa lived with his family in a small compound at the edge of the village fenced by millet stalks and punctuated by huts built cheaply from mud bricks and topped by thatch roofs. A few hundred metres away stood a large, colourful mansion with an iron roof constructed by his brothers’ expatriate sons.

If Musa struggled to live up to the image of the autonomous household provider, he still earned respectability as a senior man able to handle not only family but also community affairs. By the late 1990s, brokering development initiatives, as Musa had done with the charitable organization, had become a vital resource for villages such as Debe (cf. Bierschenk et al. Reference Bierschenk, Chauveau and Olivier de Sardan2000). On account of his skills, Musa was thus asked to join the local village development committee (VDC), an institution first introduced by the Gambian government in the 1970s as a linchpin for development organizations (Davis et al. Reference Davis, Hulme and Woodhouse1994) and revived in the early 2000s under the aegis of state decentralization reforms.Footnote ¹¹ The Debe VDC mainly organizes public works, promotes development and civil initiatives, and coordinates other interest groups (youth, women, football association, etc.). The internal organization of the VDC mirrors the socio-political structure of the village and is thus made up of only adult men and is chaired by a member of the chiefly lineage. Musa was in charge of administering the komonkaanu (slave ward), a neighbourhood in which many of the slave descendant compounds are located. This involved broadcasting decisions taken by the VDC, ensuring attendance at public works, collecting local taxes, and other similar tasks.

That returning to the village meant knowing one's standing (danbe) in the social order became apparent to Musa outside the VDC as well. Forty years after he had left Debe, his siblings still maintained a relationship with their Mangasi former masters. His eldest brother was ageing and his other brother died shortly after his return. The responsibility to honour such relations thus fell on Musa's shoulders. Members of his former master's family often employed Musa as their emissary in marriage transactions. He would travel to other villages in the region and bring kola nuts to the bride's family to formalize marriage proposals on behalf of a given Mangasi man. He would then follow up the process, and mediate when difficulties arose. At the ensuing wedding and naming ceremonies of his former masters, Musa would perform his ‘slave duties’, such as helping with the slaughtering of the sacrificial ram and delivering bowls of food to the guests.

It was in such situations that the demands and stigma of slave descent impinged most on Musa's homecoming. While, during ceremonies, he would normally join the cohort of male elders and act as a moral authority celebrating the importance of family and traditional values, at Mangasi-kunda he assumed instead the role of servant and performed menial tasks otherwise reserved to male juniors. Musa experienced his lower, junior standing on more mundane occasions outside the Mangasi homes. I happened to be at informal congregations together with Musa where he suddenly assumed a deferential posture towards people of higher status, such as leaving a chair vacant so that an incoming person of higher status could take a seat.

Of course, not all of Musa's village life was determined by his status. In many ways, Musa's life proceeded as that of an ordinary elder progressively dedicating himself to religion and family affairs.Footnote ¹² By 2011, he told the VDC chairman, ‘I am old now,’ and left his position. His elder brother died in the same year, leaving Musa with the responsibility of governing the Jakite xabila (descent group), by dispensing advice and settling disputes in the family. Also retired from farming and domestic work, Musa spent his afternoons at a kora, a seating platform, to socialize with other male elders and deliberate over current events. Placed at an intersection of various neighbourhoods, this kora hosted elders from different status groups. I often spent time on this platform, chatting with the elders, or simply writing up my notes. As in other age groups, sociality among elders is characterized by friendly, egalitarian relations. I never had the impression that Musa was addressed in a derogatory manner by the nobles, nor even in a different manner.

In sum, Musa's homecoming was not a straightforward trajectory of either re-socialization into status hierarchies or outright emancipation. Lack of economic success as a migrant and post-return poverty may have constituted reasons for him not to refuse kome tasks. These earned him some money and gifts and at least granted him the possibility of turning to his former masters in case of need. However, economic considerations are only one side of the story (Klein Reference Klein and Rossi2009: 35).Footnote ¹³ Musa's trajectory towards eldership highlights social ambits in which slave descent appears more or less relevant in mediating his standing in Debe society. This becomes even clearer, as well as more puzzling, when we heed Musa's reflections on being and becoming a kome elder in the light of his life experiences, aspirations and responsibilities. It is to such intersections of status dynamics with other social dimensions emerging from Musa's self-positioning that I now turn.

THE DOUBLE BIND OF DOUBLE DESCENT

The issue of descent is crucial for understanding Musa's position. As we saw, his aspiration to eldership rested on substantiating his entitlements as a man occupying a senior position in the Jakite patrilineage. He did not differ, in this respect, from other freeborn elders. At the same time, his identity and role as a kome depended on the slave genealogy traced through his mother's line, which distinguished him as an elder of lesser worth in some situations. Musa's narrative clearly highlights the frictions produced by the coexistence of these modes of reckoning social origins and hence respectability. However, far from solely attempting to remove the memory of his servile origins, Musa was also led to accept his kome status by the very act of consolidating, as an elder, patrilineal descent and upholding family honour.

‘My father was not a slave,’ Musa said plainly to me in early 2007 during our first semi-formal interview, when I asked him about the history of his family and before any reference to slavery had been made. He repeated this on several other occasions thereafter and furthermore added that he resented being called a slave because his father had been a noble person:

Once Musa's father arrived in Debe, nobody knew where he came from, either geographically or socially. Ansumana was thus lumped together with the komo. A very different fate awaited, for instance, another immigrant from Dantila who came to Debe around the same time as Ansumana. Being a knowledgeable Islamic scholar – back then, a distinctive marker of nobility – he was able to marry a noble woman while retaining his Jakhanke ethnicity; his presence and scholarly work eventually enabled other Jakhanke immigrants to settle down and even form a small enclave in Debe.

Although Musa might have been especially frank and critical with me – an outsider seeking knowledge of the past – his account of his father's free origins, which he mainly gathered from his siblings, had some social currency in the village. Based on a written family history (tarika),Footnote ¹⁴ the son of the Jakhanke scholar told Musa about his grandfather's families and villages. Musa preserved the piece of paper with the name of this grandfather's village written by the scholar in Arabic letters. Indeed, I once heard the scholar publicly stating at a ceremony taking place in Jakite-kunda that their two families came from the same place, although the scholar did not go as far as pleading that Jakites should be treated as nobles. Furthermore, some descendants of his former slave masters conceded that Ansumana might have been a free person. Apparently, this is even a topic openly discussed between Musa and his former masters. As he once related: ‘I used to say that, by [way of] joking: “You are my master, but if we go to Dantila, you will be my slave.” He laughed, I laughed. But he knows that it's true.’

Although it is plausible, Musa's story lacks authority and is essentially of no use in determining his status origin. Similar claims to free patrilineal ancestry are relatively common among the Upper River slave descendants, especially those whose forebears, like Ansumana, settled in Soninke villages as free migrants. But slave descendants rarely make these claims publicly, for they lack access to the means of historical production: that is, to the genealogists and oral narrators who maintain the memory of migration and settlement of freeborn descent groups and the myths attached to their patronymics.Footnote ¹⁵

What is actually remembered about the Jakites is their integration among the komo. Ansumana and other immigrants might have been freeborn, some Debe freeborn observe, but by marrying a woman of slave descent, their children inherited slave status from their mother. This irrevocable act of submission erased all previous memory of Ansumana's geo-social origins, and sanctioned that, from that moment onwards, the Jakites would be able to marry only other komo. Every marriage in Jakite-kunda implicitly evokes and reproduces this memory and categorization.

Musa was not only aware of this harsh reality; paying tribute to his father's line also involved, crucially, accepting it in the same way his father and his successor had done before him:

In this passage, Musa clearly acknowledges the impossibility, or at least his inability, to change the status quo in Debe. While long disconnected from it, Dantila represents, for him, a utopian homecoming to a place of dignified social origins, a heterotopia (Foucault Reference Foucault1984) in which his current position is reversed – a chief with many, many slaves. At the same time, his reasons for staying put in this geographical and social place are also couched in a discourse of family heritage. It is not only his mother's line that identifies him as a kome, but also the patrilineage and seniority that, through moral authority, weigh on him like an injunction.

Musa's self-image as an unwilling yet compliant slave descendant must be viewed against the backdrop of his attempt to achieve recognition as a family elder, and, later, as the leader of the Jakite xabila as a whole. It is in his capacity as a patriarchal authority that he had to lead by example and follow ‘our fathers’ path’ (o faabanun kille) – as Soninke speakers put it – walking in the footsteps of his father and elder brothers, and honouring the place in which they are buried.Footnote ¹⁶ Indeed, the growth in size and, at least for Musa's brothers, in wealth of Jakite-kunda is attributed, implicitly, to the sweat shed by its founders and the blessings (barake) that they bestowed on their descendants, which Musa in turn is expected to pass on to the next generation.Footnote ¹⁷

That cultivating a sense of descent, belonging and family responsibility involves accepting slave origins and relationships with former masters was also evidenced by Musa's reference to laada, ‘tradition’ or ‘custom’:

Both former masters and slave descendants sometimes speak of their bond as a laada in the same way that nobles and casted artisans do. This is a more neutral, less stigmatizing way of framing such unequal relationships while preserving hierarchies of status. As Musa makes clear, he accepts such customary relationships because he follows the arrangements made by his forebears, to which he is also bound. As Pelckmans has similarly observed among Fulbe slave descendants in Central Mali: ‘There is a discourse about respect for ancestors. People are supposed to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors and to respect “what is found”, i.e. to respect their ancestors’ example’ (Pelckmans Reference Pelckmans2011: 159).

Musa's reference to the onus of descent and tradition is not merely an excuse for accepting his kome identity despite his claims to free ancestry. As noted, not only had he remained loyal to his family and village when he was abroad, but he also married a woman of slave descent from his social milieu chosen with the help of his siblings. Marital indications of senior relatives, in particular the parents, are often binding, at least for the first bride; these usually recruit spouses from among relatives and familiar circles (Sommerfelt Reference Sommerfelt2013). Like some of his fellow travellers, he could have made a different choice and married a stranger. Some slave descendants deliberately use exogamy as a strategy to disperse the memory of their past and/or to seek upward mobility elsewhere. But Musa had witnessed some children born to their foreign mothers defecting from their fathers, and he wanted his children to follow in his footsteps instead.

Both as a father and as a xabila head, Musa has not prevented other Jakites from partially straying away from the ‘fathers’ path’ as far as marital choices are concerned. Musa received a great deal of respect from his agnates, not least for his progressive views (discussed in the next section). Some of his classificatory sons openly said that they were not komo and some eventually married stranger women.Footnote ¹⁸ His second son married a woman in Serekunda. Musa did not oppose the marriage, for he believed the bride to be a modest and well-educated girl. It must be said that, at least for Musa's own sons, slavery had become more nominal than for their father. Their mother came from a different village and only an old woman from her former masters’ family has lived in Debe. Although Kumba visited her on a very occasional basis, her children performed no ritual work for their former master, to my knowledge; nor did they entertain any customary exchange with her family. Whether Jakite men's marital choices will have a longer-term impact on their status is an open question. For now, none of Musa's agnates have deserted their families in search of new beginnings elsewhere, and they have generally paid their dues to their families in economic and other social terms.

AWARENESS AND COSMOPOLITAN SKILLS

Soninke speakers often say that ‘if a traveller does not find money abroad, he will at least bring back knowledge [tuwaaxu]’. Few other persons in Debe would exemplify this maxim better than Musa himself. Not only did he travel widely, he also made the most of his experiences abroad, and, once he returned home, he spared no opportunity to cultivate his image as a polyglot and an open-minded citizen of the world. I have already mentioned that his skills helped to broker development projects in Debe. In this section, I further reflect on how Musa's conduct as a cosmopolitan mediated his position as a wise, respectable family and community elder. In the process, I note the complex ways in which Musa's kome status appears or fades, further demonstrating the dynamism of subject positions in post-slavery contexts. As will be shown, his travel experience made him known in the village for qualities other than his servile origins; paradoxically, this was also because he was asked to deploy them in his capacity as a slave descendant.

It is common in the sub-region to associate travel with knowledge acquisition and cosmopolitan exploration (see, for example, Diouf Reference Diouf2000; Cassiman Reference Cassiman, Graw and Schielke2012). Among the Soninke, travelling is often compared to a form of schooling, through which the person has an opportunity to acquire knowledge, and more generally to become aware of how the world works and how things could be done differently. The traveller (especially men, but also women) is said to wulli, to awaken or open his eyes, in the sense of ‘seeing the world’ and ‘opening his mind’. Wulliye is thus a type of awareness that entails receptiveness to new experiences and visions that may serve to improve the home society. Therefore, while travellers are expected to respect the village tradition, they are also viewed as a potential source of change and innovation. Their wulliye might even lead them to question established practices.Footnote ¹⁹ In Musa's case, this is directly reflected in his views on slavery:

Slightly modernist in flavour, Musa's progressive vision of the future of slavery may have been influenced by his audience: an educated researcher from (modern) Europe. But it also drew on his direct experience of important West African cities, which from a rural perspective represent icons of development and modernity as well as places where status identities are less accentuated. This representation is also reinforced by the ideology of diasporic egalitarianism mentioned above.

While Musa did not preach his vision openly, his knowledge and awareness did have important effects on his actual social standing. In the first place, his cosmopolitan flair and knowledge lifted his reputation way above the stigma of unsophistication and ignorance which is often attributed to slave descendants. A Mangasi elder went as far as counting him among the most intelligent people in the village. His travel stories, which he willingly shared with the villagers, were replete with cross-cultural encounters, from Malian state officials, to Ghanaian chiefs, to Nigerian Islamic scholars, to various other travellers and autochthones. More than as a progressive ideology, in fact, Musa's wulliye was manifest as a practical experience of how to conduct oneself across socio-cultural boundaries, complete with a set of linguistic and interpersonal skills. As noted, I was not the only foreigner who was charmed by Musa's persona, his cordiality and persuasive manner of conversation, not to mention his joviality. His working knowledge of English, among the various languages he spoke, had been instrumental in his linking up with the staff of the international charity whose arrival and subsequent projects in Debe were partly attributed by the villagers to Musa's ability to connect with the wider world outside the community. The VDC, as a liaison between the village community, the Gambian government and international organizations, also recruited Musa on account of his knowledge and diplomatic qualities. As Musa recalls: ‘[The VDC chairman] called me and said: “Musa, you have not studied, but you have travelled. Wallahi, join the VDC.”’

The hybrid, ambivalent nature of Musa's VDC role hints at the fact that, in Debe as much as in the wider region, rural communities often preserve tradition by innovating it (Barber Reference Barber, Hallam and Ingold2007; Wooten Reference Wooten2009: 16–7; Kea Reference Kea2013). In more ways than one, Musa's knowledge and skills served not as a way for him to contest his role as a slave descendant, but to better interpret that role. Diplomatic and resourceful, Musa was held in high repute by his former masters. The Mangasi could entrust their marriage negotiations and other diplomatic missions to numerous komo other than Musa, but the latter was certainly among their preferred ambassadors. For instance, a Mangasi friend of mine once engaged Musa to mediate a stalled marriage process with the family of his future bride. I knew my friend had rather liberal views on the topic of slavery and asked him confidentially how he saw Musa's involvement. Although he admitted that, as a junior family member, he had to follow the convention of ‘custom’ and asked ‘our slaves’ to intercede on behalf of his family, he insisted that he needed somebody like Musa to accomplish the mission. Furthermore, he stressed that, in his view, Musa would not necessarily feel demoted by the assignment; to him, Musa seemed rather flattered because of being asked to do this favour. In fact, as far as diplomatic tasks in which he could make use of his resources were concerned, Musa had less negative feelings towards his former masters’ demands than with more degrading tasks such as slaughtering rams. As he once proudly remarked: ‘Diabugu Bataba, Baniko, Kumbija … in so many places I arranged for a garanke bride!’