When in France there is talk of the overseas Department of Mayotte, located between Madagascar and Mozambique, it is often about problems. About poverty on the island. About the harrowing inequality: you see street children looking for food in waste mountains right next to heavily secured villas. About the pressure that masses the massive immigration from even poorer neighboring countries such as the Comoren and Madagascar on the public facilities. About the ruthless youth gangs that make the life of Mahores unsafe.
To keep Djinns satisfied, Mahores have special traditions. In holy places where Djinn’s houses – such as the ruin of an age -old mosque or at the bottom of a mountain – mainly older women come together to pray, to sing and make sacrifices, such as fragrant perfume bottles. There are also on Mayotte Mafundisays anthropologist Mathilde Heslon, who investigated the rituals and traditions on the island. “Sick people nowadays usually go to the hospital, but if that does not have the desired result, they can turn to Mafundi. Those are a kind of healers, they treat complaints with plants or Koran verses.” The Mafundi also do fortune telling and mediating with family conflicts.
But Mayotte is more than a battered part of France in the Indian Ocean. It is also a place with age -old customs and traditions, where is broadly believed in the existence of Djinns: spirits that can bring prosperity or cause serious social, physical and mental problems. The French photographer Bénédicte Kurzen (45) has tried to grasp the French photographer in Europe.
Photos Bénédicte Kurzen
The world of Djinns and Mafundi is not easy to photograph: outsiders are not welcome in the rituals and treatments, Mahores don’t like to talk about djinns and anyway it is “a world in which the invisible is an integral part of reality,” says Kurzen. That is why she opted for a poetic approach – for the same reason, no captions for the photos have been published for earlier exhibitions. “I didn’t want to try to explain this invisible world and push back into a European framework.” The images do not show concrete customs, but “people, bodies, connections that are made with the invisible and nature.”
The series was created thanks to La Grande Commande, a large photo project for which two hundred French photographers were asked to capture the ‘State of France’. Kurzen hopes that the series contributes to more understanding for local customs in Mayotte, which has been a French department since 2011. “Teachers from continental France who do not know Mahores culture often panic when a student is possessed by a jinn” – a state that can look like an epileptic attack.
Photos Bénédicte Kurzen
Heslon saw the same in the medical world. “Most doctors come from continental France and are only temporarily on Mayotte. They are often unknown with these practices or have a very exotic idea of it.” Problematic, because the existence of Djinns is a fact for the predominantly Islamic population of Mayotte. “Djinns are found in the Quran,” Heslon emphasizes. There is, however, discussion about the customs about the belief in Djinns “because they are aimed at negotiating with spirits, while the Koran prescribes that believers turn directly to Allah.”
The socio-economic problems on the island are also attributed to evil djinns by some Mahores, says Kurzen. “An older woman I met saw the violence among young people in Mayotte and the problems surrounding massive immigration as signs that she had to visit the holy places of the djinns more often. Everything is seen by a spiritual lens, people on the mainland realize that too little.”
Photos Bénédicte Kurzen
