Usually it is quite difficult for me to write a blog. I am used to my everyday life here and village and often don’t realize what is important or interesting to the outside. Also by the time I get to a computer I forget what I was going to write. That is not the case this week as an event so large, bizarre, and interesting occurred that I can easily write from memory. This story is all from talking with other people so I will just tell my impression and skip the he said, she said.
There were two murders in Makak (my small village) on Monday the 21st. There is a father who is sick with some mystical disease, has been sick for four years and traditional approaches have not worked. The people I live with, the Baasa, believe very strongly in sorcery and its various powers. After someone has died I often hear explanations of sorcery, or random explanations of curses, or bad actions for why they died. The family believing that this was some type of sorcery called in a “Marabu” which is some sort of traditional healer, who fights against sorcery. He was called in from another city, also Baasa populated, about four hours away. He saw the father but said he couldn’t do the cure himself, because it was too difficult and dangerous. It would take someone else who was strong of body, and willing to take his powers and perform the healing themselves. This all happened late at night at the town Auberge, which is our equivalent of a motel, with all the kids of the father present. The daughter said she would take the powers to heal her father.
The powers were past with some sort of potion or medicine that were placed on her eyes. No one knows how she died. The obvious assumption is that this was a poison and killed her quickly. I’ve also heard that the Marabu’s powers were too much for her and that’s why she died. She died alone in the room with the Marabu, but the family outside could hear her scream and eventually die. This all happened at about four in the morning. When the Marabu leaves the room the other children start fighting with the Marabu, accusing him of being a fake. The children call the other members of the family including the mother and the uncle of the deceased woman. The fighting quickly becomes more intense. Marabu doesn’t know the town well so he wanders down the hill, away from the center, towards a water source. The uncle with a machete cuts the two tendons on the back of the marabu’s legs, so he cannot run away. The mother then comes with the machete and cuts him numerous times until he bleeds to death.
The incident was over at about five in the morning. When I left my house at eight, my blind neighbor was the first to tell me the whole story, and she had probably heard by seven. When I walked by the scene at 2:30 nothing had changed. There were mourners at the Auberge crying over the daughter and further down the road the Marabu was still lying face up in the road. The man killed was young, lying in the dirt road, with a pool of blood around him and only a loin cloth covering himself. People were freely walking by and some were getting water from the source as usual.
After this we walked further up into town where the cars leave from, to find a group of people crowded around with a policeman there. There was another dead body lying just on the cement on the side of the road. She had died in another town, or on route, and was being transported to another city. They were waiting for a car to transport here and the dead body was just on the side of the road without a cover.
A very bizarre day indeed. Many people I talk to will laugh at sorcery and don’t seem to put much stock in it. But I think with the people here the tradition of sorcery is so strong that people leave room for anything, and will never totally dismiss the powers of sorcery or the ways to fight it. At the same time people believe strongly in the Christian church, and most people attend church, and say a prayer before meals.
In other news I’m going to France next week to meet my parents. Very exciting. I can see how good my French actually is.
