A baboon! ...or a sorcerer?

Written Thursday, November 08, 2007

 

 

A few days ago I woke up at about 3 am to the sound of men running around and yelling.   Usually the village is pretty quiet around then (except for the usual racket of dogs fighting, and donkeys braying, and sheep baa'ing…), so I was pretty curious about what was going on.   But not curious enough to get out of bed.  The village can be kind of scary at night time. 

 

So I stayed in bed and got back to sleep eventually, and in the morning I asked about what all the racket had been about.   My sister told me that a baboon had come into the village, and was climbing around on the roofs of my host family's huts.  So the men had come out to try to kill it, but it had escaped.

 

Baboons are pretty big – about three feet tall when they're squatting, and probably weigh around 50 lbs.   So I was glad I had stayed in bed, and not gotten in the way of a scared baboon being attacked by men with slingshots.

 

Later in the day I asked again about the baboon, because I was wondering if it's really safe for me to be sleeping outside in my backyard.   Am I in danger of getting attacked by wild animals?  But this time I was told that it wasn't really a baboon that came into the village, it just looked like a baboon.   It was really a sorcerer who had turned himself (or herself) into a baboon to attack people in the village.  Much more dangerous than a baboon.  

 

The people I was talking to made sure to explain to me that most Muslim religious leaders in the area say that this sort of belief is false (clearly it is something left over from the traditional animist religion), but most people still believe in it anyway.

 

Whether it's a baboon or a sorcerer, I'm glad it's cool enough right now for me to sleep inside my hut with the door locked.