Papaye n° 3
The Museum of Niamey, A Living Place
by JULIA FICATIER
Unique
in Africa , the museum of Niger opens its doors to artists and marginal people.
This institution whose “big brother” the museum of Louvre, speaks so highly
of its originality. Close to the Niger River, this little attractive museum is
located on the hillsides which were
considered in the past as sacred land by one of the eldest tribes of Niger, the
Gawe, the origin of the capital city, Niamey, can be traced back to this hill.
The museum of Niamey is composed of little scattered white houses built in the
typical house style of Niger- with roofs often crenellated, with multiple sky
blue drawings- is located in the middle of protected spaces and wild animals.
Every
day, the museum is the meeting place of all Niamey’s citizens, children with
their parents, students and staying tourists. All of them crowding around a
family of lions, the only “ great grand children” of a couple of lions
brought from Paris thirty-seven years ago. There had been in total 81
descendants. This lineage had been dispersed all around Africa and the world,
most of the time given as royal present to passing heads of state, or for
sacrifices or “trade”.
American
searchers stole a dinosaur
In
the coming days, a baby-lion is going to be exchanged with a baby elephant ! A
hippopotamus, crocodiles, are having rest in wide swimming pools, they were
recently living few meters away from that area in the Niger River which flows in
the middle of the capital city. But this “half museum- half zoo” is the
place of even more unexpected meetings.
Certainly,
like any respectable museum, it has its treasures which are sometime desired :
its young and very dynamic chief curator Neino Chaibou, 36 years old, has been
working for just a year. He graduated from the University of Alexandria. He
tells a story which is for the least amazing. “One day in 1991, American
searchers of one the most prestigious universities of New England came here to
study our rare item : a dinosaur, born one hundred million years ago in the
Tenere desert, its name was ouranosaurus nigeriensis, given by its discoverer a
French paleontologist Philippe Taguet. The dinosaur’s name was taken from
Ourane, a Tamachek name which means the brave, the reckless in the dialect of
Touaregs”
In
reality, these searchers were here to bring it with them : “at that time, the
curator carries on, our country was preoccupied by other things. We were at the
step of fighting for democracy. Nobody was interested in museum. Our American
friends took advantage of this situation, came back to two years later to take
the lower jaw they had seemingly forgotten ! But that time, they dealt with an
expert, a Nigerian scientist who did research and discovered the robbery. It is
indeed a case of pirating of cultural possession. Our American brothers were
summoned to bring back the dinosaur”. The present Ouranosaurus laying in sand
at the museum is nothing but a copy. The original is kept in secure place !
“you see, African can get back their possessions without making noise around
it”.
This
story, that the curator is proud to tell, is unique in black Africa. “It
reflects the image of our pilot-museum. Have you seen another museum in the
world( from Africa to the rest of the world), which is as lively as this one
?” he exclaimed, in a lyrical tone, before one of the gaos, these palaver
trees with green leaves and yellow fruits and endowed with magical and various
power. Animals can be fed with its fruits, it can produce humus with its rotten
leaves ; and its wood is used as beam or garden’s fence.
There
is a dance floor for weddings
In
the center of the compartments of archeology, ethnography- the one of ethnic
groups represented by models of rare beauty-there is a dance floor, for wedding
ceremonies. In better periods, Nigerians used to hire the place : “with two
coups, the killing of a chief, people don’t take more the risk to dance.
Things will get back to their normal course” Neino assured. On the upper side,
there is an education center in which young “striken by deflation” under
this term are grouped those excluded from and the unemployed. A second chance is
given to 70 young people to be trained again for the entrance exam in
first class of secondary school. Most them are around 13 years old and dream of
being plumber one day, considered as a “promising job”, “In France,
plumbers are rich. That’s why I want to be a plumber. I don’t want to a
beggar !” others are learning the job of welder and carpenter or how to create
Batiks, these paintings performed on canvas which are used as wall decoration or
clothes. The young disabled are not left behind. Them too, have their work place
next to the corridor in which craft men are working ; these latters create from
gold, silver, iron, leather, cotton, jewels, bags, canvas. Many families are
living there, and in this environment of laughter, songs and work, children are
mingling with everybody.
In
the beginning, The idea of a Nigerian “Andre Malraux”
One
could think that this concept of a “living museum” is a recent one. It is
not the case . This museum with various functions and disciplines is the result
of the original and generous idea of a political Nigerian man, the first
president of the National Assembly of Independent Niger, Boubou Hama who is also
a writer /story teller, and famous islamologist, “ a learned man, our own
Andre Malraux” the young curator proudly qualified him. This idea became
reality forty years ago ! A long time before, the little museum of Niamey, which
is so lively and removed of dust – has a “big brother”, the Louvre Museum
in Paris which can’t stop praising its charm. Don’t we have here the best
acknowledgement ?