“We live to develop a gift”

Sobonfu Somé passed away on January 15, 2017. When I did this interview with her, in October 2013, her body was dragging the consequences of the malnutrition she experienced as a child in Burkina Faso, the African country where she was born. But she was convinced that she could not have grown up in a richer place, because the wisdom of his people nourishes and fills the soul of its members.

Without losing her characteristic sense of humor, Sobonfu Somé dedicated her life to teaching the traditions and rituals of her tribe, the Dagara, to contribute to heal relationships and improve well-being of people.

His name meant “keeper of rituals” and, as the sages of her tribe predicted when she was a child, she became one of the most heard voices in African spirituality, which implied for her the split of living between two worlds that interpreted life very differently.

She tried to build a bridge between these two worldviews, while supporting her people with an organization so that they could have drinking water, something very difficult to achieve in the south of the Sahara due to climate change.

Sobonfu Somé: “We are all one”

During his conference prior to his workshop “African Teachings on Love and Friendship”, organized by the Institut Gestalt de Barcelona, ​​the first thing he stated was that “we are all one”. That is the basis of the dagara culture, for which the power of the individual cannot be separated from his community, which protects him and allows him to develop the best of himself.

Sobonfu was a woman full of serenity and wisdom. Knowing her allowed me to feel the pulse of a town full of beauty.

–Tell me how the Dagara tribe lives in Burkina Faso.
–We live in a land where there is no water or rooms and where what is there is shared. Everything of yours belongs to the community, even the children. You grow up understanding that you have hundreds of fathers, hundreds of mothers, and countless siblings. When a couple gets married, all the couples in the community marry again, renewing their vows of love with the newlyweds. Every personal relationship has a spiritual dimension, no matter how it has been established or whether its spirituality is recognized. Neither are the problems private, but are resolved within the community.

– Even marital problems?
-Naturally. If I get up badly one day, someone will come right away to ask me what’s wrong. If I’m smart, I’ll tell you right away what happens to me; otherwise I will have to put up with a parade of people asking me the same thing over and over again.
And it is that when someone suffers a problem it is attributed to the fact that the fabric of the community is not well; that person is simply the voice in charge of making it clear. If someone gets sick, the disease is also found in the roots of the community.
Among the Dagara and other tribes in Burkina Faso, no one says: “I have a problem.” If you feel imprisoned by a problem, you cannot solve it, because you lack the necessary distance to understand its origin and find a solution. You have to leave it in the hands of the community. The first time I heard someone say “I have a problem” I got really scared.

–What would you say then to those who feel that they have a problem because they are facing a personal, economic, labor crisis, etc.?
–The problem is that when the crisis arrives our priority is to push it to go away. But to solve it, it is preferable to embrace it, then it is no longer an enemy that must be defeated. Only when she doesn’t scare you do you start to find a way to be with her.
It is important to embrace the pain that comes with the crisis to understand what is so upsetting to that person, family or community. It is often helpful to ask yourself: What is the blessing that comes from this challenge? What is the positive that can come from all this? What is opening before me that I still don’t know how to see?
When a couple crisis occurs, it is convenient to take into account that relationships constitute a path that allows the expression of our purpose in life. Intimate relationships are not designed to achieve personal happiness, but so that we can fulfill our mission in life. Seen in this way, personal relationships recover a sacred context. In Burkina Faso we say that when there is a problem, the ancestors stimulate the work of those people so that they can discover their gift.

“You have to share what you have, nothing can stay stagnant. A healthy relationship is reciprocal.”

–How should one act, then, in a couple crisis?
– Relationships are a blessing of the spirit. A couple unites because in this way each one strengthens their gift alongside the other and together they can better offer it to the community. That is why the community is so concerned when it perceives that you are not well with your partner. In their own way they try to keep that relationship alive. This is also why any relationship among the Dagara begins with the support of the community through a ritual that blesses it.
We believe that every couple needs a healthy community that can support them through difficulties, otherwise their world will shrink a little more each day, which may end up feeling oppressed and exploding.
My mother thought I was crazy when she found out that I was living alone in the United States with my husband. For her it was inconceivable because in that case no type of external energy supports and strengthens the relationship. We are alone to solve any difficulties that arise, which is very difficult. The community helps you see what you don’t understand about the other and mediates between the two.
On the other hand, couple crises serve so that you can renew the glasses with which you look at that person. In my tradition, conflict is good because it is a barometer to know if the relationship is still alive. We think we are in control of ourselves and our relationships, but in practice this is not the case. In the West I see many love relationships in which the desire for control and self-centeredness prevail. To restore health to these relationships, people must understand that the base is the spirit, and forget the control and attachment to the “I”.

– Could it be useful to resort more to humor in the face of a conflict?
-Of course. If there is a conflict, it is that you see the person with old glasses. Relationship is a journey and not a destination. You see, there are sixty tribes living peacefully in my country thanks to a certain custom. It consists of losing your fear of conflict by telling the other the opposite of what you want to say.
For example, when two people meet, they greet each other by saying: “How ugly I see you!” This is how tension is loosened and joy is fostered. Through this game, you maintain your decision-making capacity and learn to take conflict humorously and as something normal. That is why in Africa many jokes are played.

–Surely you have been asked this question more than once: What is the spirit?
It is a guiding light. It is the life force that is in everything. It is what allows you to wake up each day and know that you are alive. In people who do not feel love for life, the spirit may be damaged and then this situation is repaired with rituals.

How does the presence of the spirit reach you?
-Depends. Some spirits are smelled, others come to you in a dream, others in the form of an animal, through a child or a baby, through a beggar who asks you for alms… The spirit does not have a unique form. Children feel it very easily.
In my culture children belong totally to the spirit world until they are five years old, then they cross the threshold of the material world. Talking with them we know where the spirit is. For example, when a child tells you: “Mom, look”, we pay attention because they teach us to perceive it. The spirit heals you, it makes you sick, it can make you feel good or bad, but always with a purpose. When you die, the spirit returns home and is reunited with its ancestors.

–He assures that we all feel the need to embrace something bigger. What would you say to someone who does not believe in the spirit?
–Many people in the West try to cover that need through drugs or alcohol, because they are like doors of connection with the spirit. But the more you try without achieving the desired effect, the less you can achieve it and the more you need to try again to fill the void you feel.
The good way to feel the spirit is to connect with nature, with water, with your ancestors… Love and anger are also ways of connecting with the spirit. Many Westerners only see the material poverty of my people and do not see their spiritual wealth. But it is this spiritual unity and the simplicity of life that helps us lead healthy and happy lives.
My elders consider this collection of material objects to which the West dedicates itself as a way of getting away from the spirit. When that happens, the spirit could be knocking on our door, but we don’t open it because there’s barely room for it in that house.

Could you explain to us what the function of the ritual is?
–The ritual connects us with the spirit and also with the great mystery, with everything we do not know. Depending on the purpose of the ritual, the spirit can come in the form of support, welcome… It happens like this, even if you don’t believe in it. Faith is not necessary for it to have power and what the ritual does is mobilize your capacity to open yourself to what is going to happen. This is how it leads you to surrender, to allow something to happen without interfering in the process. It is about surrendering and acknowledging that you do not have the power to control what is happening at that moment.
You don’t do a ritual because you feel like it: there has to be a well-defined purpose. You do it for something to happen and that has to be very clear, otherwise the spirits get confused.

“Intimate relationships are not to achieve personal happiness, but to be able to fulfill our life mission.”

Do you think that in the West we have few rituals?
–I would say that the greatest rituals in the West take place today on a football field; there the people are very alive and expectant of what may happen. The only time you see a lot of people vibrate at once is when their team goes out to the stadium. There I see the spirit of the ritual. On the other hand, in a funeral, what many Westerners do is leave as soon as possible, because they do not want to know anything about death.
In my country, the entire community appears at a funeral and what each one does is tell the story they know about that person when they were alive. Each one places the piece that they know about that person. And you have to stage that story. You have to put it there, alive. When my grandmother died, when they did this part of staging what she had starred in throughout her life, I discovered a lot of things I didn’t know about her.
Someone as old as my grandmother pretended to fight with her. I couldn’t imagine that my grandmother had been very good at hand-to-hand fighting, I didn’t know until then. In this way you pay homage to the person who dies and everything they did in this life remains more alive.

-Is very pretty. But in his culture there seems to be no room for individual responsibility.
-Egocentrism is the illusion that you are the center of the universe and you do things, when in reality you just…