Stories of Magic: Windmills

Or just stories of a complete lack of understanding of how the world works, which may amount to the same thing.  At any rate, a volunteer told me that one Tanzanian village completely rejected a wind farm on the grounds that such a thing would destroy the modesty of women by blowing their clothes off.  Insert here witticisms making reference to Don Quixote.

Stories of Magic: Enchickening the Spirits and Turning Loose the Mermaids

Back story here and here.  I have not received any burnt notes addressed to me.   This may, however, merely establish that, while dead, I am not a deity.  Or even an ancestor.  This is a hypothesis supported by my failure to control the weather by thinking about it and making weird faces.  After more consultation, however, it was established that "I drink, therefore I exist" is true, and if I am metabolically capable of inebriation, I must be alive.  QED.

Then to the lip of this poor earthen Urn

I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn: 

And Lip to Lip it murmur'd--"While you live 

Drink!--for, once dead, you never shall return." 

~Omar Khayyam, still solving our existential crises

In other news, not only are mermaids real, we can eat them.  A foodie friend recommends mermaid a la Meuniere, but with a mayonnaise sauce rather than browned butter.  I don't actually know what that means.

Stories of Magic: Enchickening the Spirits. Part Two!

I have some very smart and logical friends.   I was telling one such about my experience with the Icelandic gentleman who believes in the efficacy of chicken sacrifice.  This friend explained to me that burning things is afterlife mail, so those who burn chickens in sacrifice are giving spirits spirit chickens.  It is, however, a one way mail, meaning that if I start seeing random chickens either spirits can reverse entropy or I am dead.

I see random chickens all the time.  I do not believe that spirits or anything else can reverse entropy.

I have watched a great deal of horror anime.  I am well aware that it is possible for someone to be dead for many episodes (whole seasons, even!) without realizing that they are dead, during which time of revenancy they cause many inexplicable catastrophes to people and infrastructure.  If indeed I am dead, then Tanzania may be my fault.  I would hope that my friends would, you know, tell me if I was dead (and then salt and burn my bones) but I have this fear that they would just point and laugh at the stupid dead thing that thinks it's alive.  A lot of people point and laugh at me in this country.  I was assuming this was just because I am white, but I could be dead.

I asked another dear friend, with whom I have watched more anime than can be healthy, and she said since I haven't been moved to engage in haunting solo musical numbers recently I might actually be still alive, but just to check, she is going to start writing me notes and burning them.  If afterlife mail works as well as advertised, if I don't start seeing notes addressed to me appearing, I am probably alive.  Stay tuned.

Stories of Magic: Enchickening the Spirits

A long-haired Icelandic gentleman in tight plaid pants was telling me about his travels, and what he's seen of various local practices for curing illness by sacrificing chickens, and how he believes that witch doctors and shamans are right in buying off evil disease-causing spirits with chicken deaths.  While chickens are a reasonable enough currency being, as they are, ubiquitous, affordable, and easy to kill, it does beg the question of what the spirits do with dead chickens.  I'm assuming a nice spiritual cordon bleu is out of the question here.

Stories of Magic: Infidelity and the Witch Doctor

A man in Tanga told me that a woman in Dar was cheating on her husband.  The wronged husband went to the witch doctor and complained.  As a result, the cheating woman and her lover became locked together in an inseparable copulatory embrace and supposedly this has lasted for five days now.  One wonders how and if they are drinking fluids, since in the climate of Dar terminal dehydration should have set in by now.

As a side note, given how silly and uncritical Americans tend to be about accepting any sort of healthcare provided it is of foreign or ancient or "natural" origin,* I am considering getting rich quick setting up a videoconferencing service to allow Americans to talk to an Authentic Witch Doctor (authentic except for speaking English, so maybe just someone with a feathered hat who looks African) about their problems, health, situational, and otherwise.  Just imagine the advice:  "You don't like your president?  Leave a well-cooked crocodile tongue and some chicken blood in a cave with incense burning and call me after two full moons."  

*healthcare itself is unnatural.  What could be more natural than dying from disease?

Stories of Magic: Fire on the Mountain

In Morogoro region, as the dry season drags on and we start rationing water and power, people start setting forest fires on the Uluguru mountains because they believe that setting the mountain on fire will bring the rain.  This isn't completely unreasonable due to the rising of the hot air into the colder air of the mountains, but that is not part of the justification for starting fires.

Stories of Magic: How Can you Tell She is a Witch?

A volunteer in the Mbeya region informed me that at her school there is an increase of demon possession around exam time (funny how that works) and the students are accusing the school's matron of being a witch.  The headmaster actually allowed a forum (not to say witch trial) in which students were allowed to present their evidence for the matron being a witch.  Evidence provided included:

• special village medicines which allow some students to see evil spirits
• the matron prefers one of the toilets above any of the other
• if approaching two people talking to one another, the matron walks around rather than between these people

For her own safety (some of the students would chase her with knives) the matron is switching schools.

Stories of Magic: Witches! Burning Schools! Part 4: the Aftermath

2 girls believed to be the arsonists have been apprehended. They claim that someone either on the school staff or in the village (the story keeps changing) told them to do it. The official response has been to transfer the entire school staff minus the headmaster, to other schools. On the off chance that the girls were truthful when they said someone on the staff told them to do it, it is now some other school's problem Of course, if it was someone in the village, oh well, because the village cannot be relocated in its entirety. Also, if the girls were lying, or, you know , not actually the arsonists, oh well.

This is why society needs some sort of marginally effective police force. Also fire departments.

Stories of Magic: Witches and Burning Schools Part 3: Binarily Searching for the Culprit

Another building housing the girls just burned down, this one at a slightly earlier time because they have guards hanging out during the times the previous buildings burn.  Still no fire extinguisher.  However, due to a growing shortage of housing, forms 1 and 3 (the forms that don't take national exams) have been sent home.  If they keep splitting the number of girls in half like this and housing the halves in different dorms, they will be able to isolate the arsonist in O log n time. 

Stories of Magic: Witches and Burning schools, part 2: the exorcism.

The secondary school that had two buildings burn down and concluded witches called in a pastor to pray over everything for a while.  The school has yet to purchase a fire extinguisher.

Stories of Magic: Witches! Burning Schools!

A volunteer in Manyara told me that one of the girls' dorms at a school burned down.  The school blamed an electrical short and moved all the displaced students into an empty classroom, which has also now burned down.  At the same time of night, almost exactly, that the dorm burned down.  This classroom has no electricity.  Candles and lanterns are banned, which means obviously that no one has them, QED witchcraft.

Stories of Magic: Sacrificing Virgins

A volunteer at Mbeya recounts stories of the beliefs revolving around virgin, by which we mean virgin women*.  First, the idea that sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS, which is not that unheard of despite the somewhat inescapable problem that if sex cured anything, there would be a lot less disease in the world.

Second, some people are sacrificing virgins to bring good outcomes in business.  I need one of my favorite fictional characters, Dean Winchester from Supernatural, to declare in all his good-looking and well-muscled hero-ness that no one will be sacrificing any virgins.

* because we don't police men's sexuality; men are acknowledged to be more than the sum of what they do between their legs.  Bloody patriarchy.

Stories of Magic: Brands of Disease Aversion

There is a tribe in Tanzania, possibly the Manyati, but I forget exactly, which will treat sickly children by burning a circular mark into their foreheads in order to ward off disease.

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Stories of Magic: Bananas of Mythological Realism

It sometimes happens that two bananas embryos become conjoined and inside one banana peel there will be twin bananas stuck together.  According to a beautiful lady of the Chagga tribe, people used to believe that such bananas should only be eaten by men and women just about to give birth, because women who habitually ate them would twin.  When twins were born one should be thrown away into the bush, or else the twins would have a curse.  For example, a twin might steal someone's wife and cause a war that destroys Troy after 10 years.  True story.

Stories of Magic: Alabama Edition

A volunteer told me that in her home state of Alabama, people say that the devil is beating his wife when the sun shines during rainstorms.

Stories of Magic: The Burns of Affection

A volunteer stationed in a village close to Same relates that a girl who was trying to get him to marry her (in Kiswahili, men marry, women are married) burned his name into her arm.  His hypothesis is that this is supposed to somehow bind him to her, but he doesn't know for sure.

On a related note, I have been reading War and Peace and one of the characters decides to prove her love for another by heating a ruler in a stove and then burning herself with it.  Is burning oneself for love a thing?  Did I miss something that would make this make sense?

Stories of Magic: Sacrifices

An Mpwapwa volunteer has heard of man who either agreed or volunteered to be sacrificed to the gods for rain.

Stories of Magic: Popo Baa the One-Eyed One-Winged Batman

I've heard several versions of this story, all of which are short on details but all agree that it's a raping batman.

There is a man with one bat wing and one eye, and his name is Popo Baa, which means Disastrous/Calamitous Bat.  He is a rapist.   He only (or usually only?) rapes small boys.  If Popo Baa comes to rape you he may move into your house.  The only way to protect yourself or get rid of Popo Baa is to tell everyone you know about Popo Baa and possibly to invite everyone you know over to your house while Popo Baa is there, and eventually Popo Baa will move on to his next victim, which (I think) is usually either someone you've told or someone you invited to your house.

Stories of Magic Continued: Demon Possession

It is not uncommon for girls at secondary schools, particularly all-girl schools, to be afflicted with what is euphemistically dubbed the falling down sickness.  In this sickness, a girl will become possessed by a demon, and fall down dramatically, which prompts a flurry of hysterical praying and similar possession from other girls around.  Sometimes boys, who do not seem to have the falling down sickness, are called upon to forcibly remove the possessed girls.

On a lighter note, a 19-year-old girl told me that at her all-girls school they had a laughing sickness in which sometimes girls who hadn't seen men for a long time would start laughing uncontrollably at the sight of the male teachers and be unable to learn anything.  In order to prevent this, the school headmaster allows the girls to have a disco with the nearby all-boys school once a month.

Stories of Magic I Have Heard

Officially from everything I've heard Tanzania is 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Muslim, and 1/3 traditional beliefs.  The last 1/3 won't admit to it, and the Tanzanians I've asked have insisted the country is only Christian and Muslim, however, the topic of witches and witch doctors is there, and I recently had a student I don't know ask me how Europeans view witch doctors (they all think I'm from Europe).  Some things I've hear about witches are as follows. 

Things that are fairly well-known:

Loliondo--some healerman there has a magic cup that cures all sorts of things if you drink from it, which is all well and good until you stop taking your medication after the magic cup.  Trust but verify, yo.

Albino bits--getting a witch doctor to prepare you some special meal from some organ of an albino (the liver, I think?) will give you power.  Predictably enough, this has led sometimes to albinos being gruesomely murdered.  The government told the media to stop reporting dramatically on this phenomenon, which spawns all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Things I've personally heard and mostly second-hand, quoted as well as I can remember:

From a VSO couple:

There was an old woman found naked in a rice basket in the street of Dar-es-Salaam.   A crowd beat her to death because they assumed she must have been flying through the air in the rice basket, because how else would she have gotten there? 

From a PCV stationed in Lufinga:

Wizards have these magic beanstalks, you know, like F***ing Jack, and plant them in the ground beside a church and climb up to the roof.   In the morning, people see them on the church roof and know they are wizards.  People also say women with red eyes are witches and not, you know the result of bending over the jiko [stove] too long.

By the way, Kiswahili doesn't make a gender distinction between witch and wizard, the word you will hear translated both ways is mchawi.

From my brother in my homestay family, when I saw a man being beaten to death on tv and asked why, because this was a wee itty bit disturbing, and the explanation made it worse:

Because that man is a witch.  That's what we have to do to witches.  Witches can make a giant leap over a building.  They can come through walls and into your home.  Sometimes they sit on you while you are asleep.  If they sit on your head you wake up with headache, because they are doing this to your head all night [demonstrates mauling a pillow].  Sometimes, while you are sleeping they take your body and force you to dig on their farm all night, even though you are asleep, and then you wake up and you slept but you are so tired!  Can you imagine?  [Me: if they are so powerful, how can people hurt them?] Witches have rules.  They only have power between midnight and 4am.  If they are jumping over buildings and stay out too late, people can see them and know they are witches.  Also, there are people, witch doctors, and they know about witches.  They point to the people who are witches and then the witches are killed.   [Me: what if the witch doctors are wrong?]   The witch-doctors know how to find witches, I heard one witch doctor entered a man's house and told people to dig one part of the floor.  The people dug up the floor and found bones and knew the man was a witch.  Can you imagine?  Look there on the tv [where the image of the man being dragged bloody across the ground is being repeated], that man did not make a sound while they were beating him, can you imagine?   I can see by your eyes you are scared, you scientists, you think magic doesn't exist, but how do you explain this?  Once, with my own eyes, I saw magic.  I was at a graduation for a friend, it was outside and there was a storm coming.  An old man there in the audience stood up, faced the rain, and held out his hand.  The rain stopped, like it had hit a wall, and there was a clear line between the wet ground and the dry ground.  How do you explain that?