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guess I won’t be able to see an
ndeup
then, but even so this conversation has been so interesting and so helpful to me. And I’m a little sad about leaving here not actually getting to see one, but I thank you.”
    And she said, “Well, I’m glad that you could come. I’m glad it was helpful… but there is one other thing. I hope you don’t mind my saying this.”
    And I said, “No, what? What is it?”
    She said, “You don’t look that great yourself. Are you suffering from depression?”
    And I said, “Well, yes. It was very acute. It’s a little better now, but I still do actually suffer from depression.”
    She said, “Well, I’ve certainly never done this for a
toubab
before, but I could actually do an
ndeup
for you.”
    And I said, “Oh! What an interesting idea. Well, um, yes, sure. Yeah, absolutely, yes, let’s do that. I’ll have an
ndeup
.”
    “Oh, well, that’s great,” she said. And she gave us some fairly basic instructions, and then we left.
    And my translator, the aforementioned then-girlfriend, now ex-wife of my friend, turned to me, and she said, “Are you completely crazy? Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into? You’re crazy. You’re totally crazy, but I’ll help you if you want.”
    So we left. And the first thing we had was a shopping list. We had to buy seven yards of African fabric. We had to get a calabash, which was a large bowl fashioned from a gourd. We had to get three kilos of millet. We had to get sugar and kola beans. And then we had to get two live cockerels, two roosters, and a ram.
    So Helene and I went to the market with David and we got most of the things, and I said, “But what about the ram?”
    And Helene said, “We can’t buy the ram today. What are we going to do with it overnight?” I saw the sense of that.
    So we got into a taxi for the two-hour drive to the
ndeup
, and I said, “What about the ram?”
    And Helene said, “Oh, we’ll see a ram along the way.” So we were going along and going along, and there was a Senegalese shepherd by the side of the road with his flock. And we stopped the cab, and we got out, and we bought a ram for $7. And then we had a little bit of a struggle getting the live ram into the trunk of the taxicab. But the cabdriver seemed not at all worried, even by the fact that the ram kept relieving himself in the trunk.
    So then we got there, and I said, “Well, here I am. I’m ready for my close-up.”
    And the thing about the
ndeup
is that it varies enormously depending on a whole variety of signals and symbols that come from above. So we had to go through this whole shamanistic process. And I still didn’t know really very much of what was going to happen.
    First I had to change out of my jeans and my T-shirt and put on a loincloth. And then I sat down, and I had my chest and my arms rubbed with millet.
    And then someone said, “Oh, we really should have music for this.”
    I said, “Oh great.” And I thought, you know, drumming, some atmospheric thing.
    And Madame Diouf came out with her very prized possession, which was a battery-operated tape player, for which she had one tape, which was
Chariots of Fire
.
    So we started listening to
Chariots of Fire
. And in the meanwhile, I was given various shamanistic objects I had to hold with my hands and drop. I then had to hold them with my feet and drop them.
    And they would say, “Oh, this augurs well. This augurs badly.” There were five assistants to Madame Diouf who had all gathered around.
    And we spent the morning like this. We’d started at about eight o’clock, and at maybe about eleven, eleven-thirty, they said, “Well, now it’s actually time for the central part of the ritual.”
    And I said, “Oh, okay.” And the sound of drumming began—the drumming I had been hoping for. And so there was all of this drumming, and it was very exciting. And we went to thecentral square of the village, where there was a small makeshift wedding bed that I