Witchcraft

The hike I did on Wednesday was as difficult as expected, but mercifully there were some clouds so it wasn’t as hot as the previous few days. I started from Morogoro at 7am with an enthusiastic trainee guide, Grayson, and his qualified supervisor, Evans (who inaccurately and pleasantly referred to me as Dr Jon, especially after I “cured” his aching feet with some ibuprofen), and we gradually ascended up uluguru mountain towards the rainforest. The higher we got the cooler it was and by the time we had reached the highest point at 1pm, Bondwe peak (2008m), my guides had got out their fleeces. It was especially steep in parts where landslides had obliterated the path and we were forced to take shortcuts directly upwards through the forest. The lower slopes of the mountains are densely populated with villages and farms of the Luguru tribe but there is an abrupt change at the treeline where pristine rainforest begins; I was lucky enough to spot an enchanting troop of black and white colobus monkeys, which I’m told are usually very shy and rarely seen. I ran out of water fairly early on but followed my guides in refilling my bottle from a beautiful but perhaps less than sterile stream, an infection risk that seemed necessary to combat dehydration as the afternoon sun came out fighting.

A black and white colobus (Colobus guereza)

Nearer the bottom of the mountain we were alerted to a woman’s blood curdling screams. My mind raced as I tried to think what could be the cause (in order: childbirth, trauma, grief, assault, epileptic seizure, psychiatric illness) and the guides quickly brought me to the source of the commotion. I had a very basic first aid kit with me and very basic medical student knowledge in my head but I concluded that if there was a medical problem there was a slim chance I could help. It turned out that I could not. We rushed to the scene, where a violently writhing woman was held down by four others, screaming a mix of incomprehensible gibberish, Kiswahili and her local language. There was no obvious physical injury and it didn’t look much like a typical seizure to me so I asked my guide to translate what was happening, I was surprised when he replied “evil spirits”.

The woman and her sister had been communicating with their ancestors and had inadvertently become possessed by malicious spirits (this is apparently very common and such communication with the ancestors is therefore discouraged). The priest had been called and he began to exorcise this woman’s sister who was being similarly restrained in a nearby house. The exorcism involved two men, at least one of which was a priest, shouting (I picked up some of the words from the daily church services at Machame e.g. “mungu” = God, “yesu” = Jesus) and frantically gesticulating over the distressed woman. This went on for some time and was watched by quite an audience of other villagers alongside me and the guides. Eventually the woman abruptly came round (no post-ictal state; further evidence against epilepsy) with apparently no memory of the previous commotion. The situation was completely new for me but I was just glad that I hadn’t had to do anything.

My guides explained that belief in witchcraft, evil spirits, warlocks and witch-doctors is very common here, alongside simultaneous belief in Christianity or, more commonly around Morogoro, Islam. Further, local people are much more likely to first attempt traditional medicine for most problems than consulting modern, western, medical help. I learnt that the beliefs permeate all aspects of life; a person is as likely to visit a witch doctor to bring them good fortune in work or love as they are for medical problems. I was surprised that my university-educated guide explained to me, in perfect English, how we keeps his money in a bible to prevent it being taken by evil spells, as that had happened to his less-cautious friend. He also warned me not to give money to warlocks lest they use my gift to magically extract the rest of my money from me.

There are many many traditional beliefs and superstitions that persist in Tanzania. People here are quick to confirm the existence of some of these practices – for example in parts of Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa twins are considered unlucky and are killed on birth, and albino people have been killed to create good luck spells and remedies – but quickly deny that they believe in these extreme examples themselves. As might be expected with the existence beliefs like this to continue, health awareness in the general population is mostly quite poor. For example my guide was amazed at my ability to remove pain with ibuprofen, he’d never heard of simple painkillers before. The dangers of smoking, alcohol or diet don’t seem to be widely known. “Blood pressure” is an extremely vague concept for most Tanzanians and many have bizarre ideas as to what causes and prevents it. Alarmingly given the prevalence of HIV, knowledge of condom use (still a taboo topic in Tanzania) is poor too; Laura and Rhi recounted how 20-40yr old taxi drivers in Moshi watched intently as a condom was demonstrated and explained to them using a coke bottle. Tanzania has a reasonable education and literacy rate for Africa (69%, ranked 19/52 countries, and improving), I suggest that increasing basic health education in parallel would be beneficial.