Kalalou: The Afro-Guianese Communities and Amazonian Biodiversity

PHOTOS BY KARL JOSEPH
TEXT BY MARC-ALEXANDRE TAREAU
TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT

In the context of this issue, we felt it was important to give special attention to the Businenge of Guyana and Suriname, where these Maroon communities have acquired Indigenous legal status. This project, by Martiniquean Creole anthropologist Marc-Alexandre Tareau and Guianese Creole photographer Karl Joseph, associates the Businenge relationship to Amazonian biodiversity with those of other communities of African descent in French Guiana (continental and archipelagic Caribbean Creoles). We present an excerpt of this project here.

With the Kalalou project, we decided to highlight the relationship of Afro-Guianese cultures to Amazonian biodiversity in an artistic and visual way. The Kalalou project focuses on the special relationship these populations have with the environment and how they make use of plant biodiversity through several focal points, including the gathering of medicinal plants (in urban and rural areas), cooking within these different communities, the liveliness of medical-magic rituals (Voodoo, Winti), and agriculture—both urban and rural. With this project we hope to emphasize the phenomena of cultural hybridization inherent in the intercultural context of Guianese society, the relationships between urban and rural—but also between wild and domestic. These phenomena highlight the dynamic characteristics of these practices and the close intertwining between these cultures, their territory, and the plant world.

Afro-Guianese are understood, in their broadest sense, to be the Businenge, Guianese Creole and Caribbean (Haitian, French Caribbean, and Saint Lucian) populations, which all form a significant part of the contemporary Guianese population. Since 2020, we have both been returning regularly to the sites of Marc-Alexandre’s thesis to reproduce the doctoral work in images.
Over time, relationships of trust built up between us, the researchers, and knowledge holders, helping to anchor the scientific community in the Guianese territories in a positive and lasting way. In each of our roles we travel through the same places, observe the same realities and transcribe them in the form of a continuous dialogue between texts and photographs.

Picking ///

Picking is the second method of sourcing medicinal plants on the coast of Guiana, and accounts for up to 60% of collection in the western parts of the country. Indeed, among Black Maroons, the daily necessity for women to take baths of decocted plants and the regular use of bita (mixtures of plants macerated in rum and consumed as bitter tonics) for men make plant collection activities preponderant. Further, the plants used in the Winti medical-magical rituals (an Afro-descendant religion)are generally collected in the wild to ensure they have a higher therapeutic-spiritual force (called kaakiti in Rengee Tongo). Indeed, the ampuku, spirits of the forest, live mainly in wild plants. These plants must therefore not be domesticated so as not to lose their sacred substance, or on the contrary, for fear of disrupting the domestic environment through the too-close presence of feared spirits.

In the Businenge villages, different gathering areas can be distinguished. A first domestic area, maintained mainly by women around the houses, preserves small herbaceous plants and a few shrubs that can be useful in everyday care. A second, intermediate and more mixed area consists of roadsides, wasteland and clearings. Plants for women’s baths are gathered there. Finally, the plants of the great forest (den uwii fu a mindi busi) are collected by hunters according to very specific ritual prescriptions.

Moreover, in developing cities such as Cayenne or Saint-Laurent du Maroni, gathering practices brought back by inhabitants of rural origin persist with a certain degree of vitality, as can be seen in the pedestrians walking with freshly picked plants or the numerous debarked trees seen at the side of roads.

Eating ///

Some words used in various Afro-American languages seem to indicate linguistic differences while, on the contrary, building bridges between the languages spoken by these numerous communities. Among them, the word Kalalou and its derivatives serve as a surprising example.

Among the Creoles of Guyana, the term kalou refers to okra, while among the Ndjuka the same word refers to corn and the ethnonym kalalu refers to a kind of wild spinach. For the Saamaka, lalo is also okra, while in Haiti the same word refers to Corchorus olitorius, a small cultivated herbaceous plant that is cooked as a side dish with rice. Elsewhere in the Americas, from Jamaica to Brazil via Colombia, the name callaloo sometimes refers to edible weeds of the genus Talinum, Phytolacca or Amaranthus or, at other times, to cultivated species such as Hibiscus sabdariffa or Xanthosoma brasiliense.

Even more surprisingly, the names kalalou, caruru, callaloo, and kalelu refer, both in certain regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Black Americas, to dishes containing numerous herbs. In Guiana, for example, kalalou is a popular dish in which smoked meat and fish are simmered together for a long time, along with various vegetables and leaves, giving it an unmistakably vegetable-based flavor and appearance.

It is in fact a Tupi term (ka’a lulu, meaning “thick leaf” in this language family) that was brought to Africa (in particular Angola) by Portuguese settlers and returned to the Americas with the deported slaves, whose descendants today use several derived names depending on the region, to refer to a variety of edible plant species or dishes made with edible leaves.

“Mi gaan mma leli mi taki a alisi ja, na wi gaansama fu afiican fika en gi wi. Den kon te dise anga en, pe den be kibii en aini den ede uwii, aini den baka finga anga den pito pito. Tide dei wi e tan paandi en ete, wi e towe njanjan anga en gi den gaandi te wi e du fano wdu sani.”

“My grandmother told me that this rice (Oryza glaberrima) is that of our African ancestors. They came here with it, hiding it in their mats and braids. Today we continue to plant it, and we use it in particular for offerings during ritual ceremonies at home.”

Healing ///

When it comes to plant-based healing, the most commonly used methods of preparation are those that involve immersing the plants in boiling water. These infusions and decoctions are methods of extracting active ingredients and aromas that are relatively simple to use and, above all, widely accessible. The possibility of preparing a wide variety of species of plants this way allows for a very broad therapeutic scope. Creole medicines most often recommend combining several species together in the same preparation in order to accumulate the “strength” of the plants used and to combine their effects and properties. It is therefore not uncommon, in an additive logic, for decocted mixtures to include a good ten different species.

Decoction, which consists of allowing the plants to soak in boiling water, is most often reserved for preparations involving roots, rhizomes, bark, or fruit. Infusion, on the other hand—i.e. immersing the plants in initially boiling water that is then left to cool—is generally reserved for fresh leaves to which other ingredients are often added to increase the therapeutic effect, such as salt, rum, or honey, the emollient action of which is also highly recommended for sore throats or coughs. All these “hot” ingredients contribute, in a humoral therapeutic logic, to a curative or preventive action targeted against “cold” pathologies.

Finally, it should be noted that while this method of treatment holds a particularly important place in Creole medicine, cultural particularities nevertheless emerge, with botanical preferences inherent to each of the groups surveyed. Thus, the species most cited by the Anti-Ilo-Guianese Creoles are lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) and lemon balm (Lippia alba), while the Haitian Creoles prefer to use the vines of the asosi (Momordi cacharantia) or the leaves of the langlichat (Chromolaena odorata).

Believing ///

Called mapou or pye mapou (probably an apocope of the Kongo common name mapouata) in Haitian Creole, the kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) is without doubt the most revered plant species in Haitian Voodoo. This tree serves as a residence, a “resting place” (repozwa in Haitian Creole or kay I wa) for several spirits (Iwa) of the Haitian Voodoo pantheon, notably those of the Guede, the Iwa of death.

According to several testimonies gathered from practitioners of this Afro-American religion, it also houses Iwa Agarou, god of wind and storm, Loko, god of trees and the forest, and Erzili, goddess of fertility. For this reason, its branches and trunk regularly receive offerings and libations, as well as scarves, candles, and images in the symbolic colors of the Iwa with which it is associated.

In addition, lucky baths (ben chans) are commonly taken near the tree by the faithful who hope to attract the favors of the spirits it shelters. Respected by all, its status as a sacred tree means that it is almost never cut down, for fear of divine retribution that could befall those who commit this act, unanimously considered a sacrilege. Finally, it should be noted that from Mexico to Brazil, among the Maroons, Creoles, and Indigenous people, this species does not leave one feeling indifferent: feared, adored, or considered as a spirit communicator. As soon as one casts an eye on a cheese tree, it is with deference. ■

The project’s partners are the LEEISA, the Centre d’Étude de la Biodiversité Amazonienne, and La tête dans les images.