Last May, I visited a doctoral student of mine, Dianna Bell, at her research site in Ouélessébougou, Mali, an hour south of Bamako. She was studying Bamanankan, Mali’s most widely spoken language and looking into how local people practice Christianity, Islam, and Bamana religion side by side with little fuss.

On the last day of my visit, a Sunday, Dianna invited my colleague from the University of Kankan, Sory Kourouma, who had accompanied me on the trip, and I to visit a church that she frequented in the nearby village of Tinkélé. Two of Dianna’s friends joined us: Momuso, a grandmother and the senior woman in the compound where Dianna was living, and Hamidou, Dianna’s Bamanankan teacher who exudes a contagious sense of peace.

Together we took a twenty-minute minibus ride to Tinkélé, arriving at about 8:45 a.m. We disembarked onto the shoulder of a two-lane highway and found ourselves looking at a mud-brick wall. Within the compound behind the wall stood a tall corrugated metal roof suspended over a podium and stage. The podium looked out over an expanse of wooden benches sheltered from the sun by grass mats suspended over wooden supports.

Interior of the church compound

By noon, over a thousand people had gathered in the enclosure, mostly Muslims. Dianna, Momuso, Hamidou, Sory, and I sat under the metal overhang behind the podium in plastic chairs where church attendants had seated us.

The choir sat just below the stage to our right. They sang and danced for about an hour and a half before the pastor, Michel Samaké, arrived. Pastor Michel is a charismatic and controversial figure who has been expelled from his church hierarchy in Bamako for his unorthodox methods: preaching mostly to Muslims and performing healings and exorcisms. His expulsion seems not to have diminished his following.

Pastor Michel preaching from the pulpit

After he preached tirelessly for two hours about sin and virtue, salvation and scripture, the healings began. Several people rose from their benches, claiming to walk for the first time in days, months, or years. Pains in people’s bodies reportedly disappeared. Others came forward to testify about healings that had occurred since their last visit to the church.

Then came the exorcisms. Pastor Michel performed at least ten. They unfolded with great drama. Most began with women—or in one case a young man—quivering, sighing, collapsing, then screaming and sobbing on the ground. Men and women lifted them up and brought them before the podium where Pastor Michel prayed over them until they recovered, freed from the power of spirits called jina, from the Arabic, djinn.

At noon, as the temperature rose, Dianna was not feeling well and decided to leave the church to get some air, having seen services like this several times before. I was starting to fade myself and wondered if I might be joining her soon. But when the exorcisms began, I left my seat onstage to take pictures from among the crowd as I had already done since the service began. Attendants had given me permission to take pictures.