AdvenTour! Thiamassas comes from the Serer name “Thièm a saass”, the salted wavelets. It is also called “A mbel ala na muc ala”, the river of grace. This denomination also refers to the “Sund ke Jegem”, the warriors of Djigemus who took refuge there to prepare for battle. At that time, Nianing, Mbour, Sandiara and Thiadiaye were part of the kingdom of Djigème.
According to the accounts of the ancients, one should not stay in one place in this place because the earth moved, but whoever crossed it was saved.
We would have liked to tell you about the Thiamassas dating, but this one is controversial: it is estimated at the Neolithic period by some researchers, while others date from the Upper Paleolithic period. Flint weapons dating back around 100,000 years have been found there.
More recently, archaeological excavations have been carried out by students from Cheikh Anta Diop University, but we do not have sufficient information, the excavations have been stopped due to lack of resources. But the mere fact of mentioning them can draw attention to the importance of the site and the interest in upgrading it for tourism.
A STORY OF DJINN AND PANGOL
So we will tell you another story among many others, far from scientific gaze, based on the stories of the village elders.
According to them, the site of Thiamassas housed a jinn as well as a fangool, singular of pangool. Jinns are supernatural creatures living in the bush or near humans, usually in symbolic trees such as large baobabs and large tamarind trees. Usually they are invisible, but can be made visible by taking different human, animal or plant forms. It seems that they are able to influence men, whether it is mentally or physically.
The pangool when they are, in the Serer religion, considered as the saints and the spirits of the ancestors. They act as intermediaries between the living world and Roog, the serer god. We will come back to this in another article.
As with men, there are good guys and bad guys in the world of jinn and pangool. The village elders consider the djinn and the fangool of Thiamassas to be nice, but can still get angry when the inhabitants break the rules.
Their role was to watch over the village of Nianing so that it prospered. The harvests were often abundant, the women filled whole basins with fish and seafood which they dried for sale, the herds of cows were numerous, the hotels were filled with tourists, the arrivals followed one another. In short, farmers, fishermen, breeders, hoteliers, young workers, visitors … everyone found their account.
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MINDS THAT HOLD FOREIGNERS
He told himself that when a foreigner came to Nianing, he should not indicate when he should leave, because he will not leave that day. “Yal Saahle”, the spirit of the village, held him back, because he loved strangers so much that he made them stay longer than expected. Thus, some never left and took up residence in Nianing.
STORIES OF POSSESSION AND PROSPERITY
The common man cannot see these spirits, only “Yal Khohe”, people with powers, can see them. But it happened that a simple person saw them “accidentally”, that person would then go mad and lose their mind completely: it was necessary to act quickly by a very precise ritual done by healers to rid them of their visions.
From these visions, we know that the baobabs at the site sparkled with a thousand lights when the spirits moved for some, because they cooked for others. So it was no wonder to be in the middle of the bush and smell the kitchen when there are no houses around. It was also not surprising to walk past a baobab tree and hear drums beating and applause.
Witnesses have revealed that the jinn from Thiamassas could break into the kitchen of the Club Aldiana hotel and turn the dishes upside down when he was angry.
Women have told of being possessed by these spirits. They would fall into a trance during religious services as soon as someone uttered the spirit of Thiamassas and followed by exorcism sessions. It screams, it bangs its head, it squirms on the ground, the possessed woman speaks with an unrecognizable voice, in short you have to see it to believe it. Still according to witnesses, this phenomenon has grown to such an extent that the religious have requested the departure of spirits.
Some now say they are gone, taking Nianing’s prosperity with them. According to the elders, without the agreement of “Yal Saahlé”, the spirit of the village, any attempt to reopen the hotels will fail.
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