My interest in Obeah in Guyana was sparked off when a lady
I knew went to visit ‘Uncle’ Leto because of a bout of painful “nara”; a
stomach ailment that is described as being the result of “twisted up
insides”. ‘Uncle’ Leto
took one end of a long string and held it against her belly button. He stretched the string out with his
other hand, until it reached her right nipple. Maintaining the string in this position, between his thumb
and index finger, he then arched over to her left breast and used this method
to establish if her nipples were at the same height from her belly button. As they were not, he confirmed a case
of “nara”. Disposing of the
string, he then picked up a pointer broom, pulled out a single ‘spine’ and
broke it in half. Taking one half
of the spine in each hand, he brushed an invisible track from the centre of her
chest downward, gently blowing air onto her skin, while praying under his
breath. Once done, he repeated
the ‘string’ test to make sure his prayers had worked. This time – and I was witness to this –
her nipples were equidistant from her bellybutton. Both patient and obeahman happily declared that the ‘nara’
had been cured.
Whether placebo or real, Leto English – a gentle elderly
man of African ancestry whose surname acts as an index to the history of
slavery in the Caribbean – was to my mind sincere and making good use of
obeah. This came as a
surprise to me. I had thought,
firstly, that obeah was generally used to carry out acts of mischief or evil,
and secondly, that it had been lost as an everyday practice to history. The British, afraid of the power
of obeah – it being introduced to the region by the rebellious enslaved
Africans of Koromantyn (Ghana) – had made its practice punishable by death
circa 1760 in Jamaica. Practitioners of obeah are known in Ghana
as Obayifo and one can only assume that the two words are etymological
cognates. I was not sure how I was
going to find out more about obeah in Guyana. But this I suppose is the beauty of chance conversations.
Date: Tues, 26th August 2014
The setting: Adel’s resort, the kitchen.
The cast: Juanita (washing up), Mardel (grating coconut) and Utilda (chopping vegetables).
Utilda begins to tell
me about an Amerindian Obeah woman, Patricia: a lady she had visited with an
ailment that the local hospital had been unable to cure. The obeah woman had blown on her, said a few prayers,
squeezed the sides of her stomach until a needle appeared: “duh the needle rust
up, it black black black an’ laang like so”. [Her pointed index fingers
produced a space of about 4 inches]. By the time “she reach home, duh sickness
gone”. Mardell, quickly
interjected that she too had been to Patricia. The first time because “sometin’ tryin to bruk up she
daughter’s neck” and the second time on account of a ‘mad’ aunt. In the case of the latter, Patricia allegedly
removed a mummified bee from the patient’s ear and numerous needles from her
foot. Both were cured. Mardell retorted to my “but I thought
obeah was a black people thing”, with a nod to the negative “nah-ah…black,
buck, puttegee, Indian, all we Guyanese does do it”.
Naturally fascinated, I asked them to explain what causes
these ‘spiritual’ sicknesses in the first place. Utilda: “cud be jumbie, baccoo, obeah buh mos’ of duh time,
is Kanaima!” How to explain
Kanaima? If you really want to
know then may I suggest you read a particularly good book by Neil Whitehead - Dark Shamans: Kanaima and the Poetics of
Violent Death. Failing that
I’ll let their stories speak for themselves.
Utilda’s story:
She was put in charge of taking care of her bedridden mother in-law,
Milly. One day, two days before
the latter was officially pronounced dead, Utilda found her lying on a bed,
completely stark naked. “She duster
an’ panties” had been completely removed.
She had rushed off to tell her husband that something was awry only to
be dismissed: “go laang yuh way”.
Nothing more was said on the matter as Milly, on Utilda’s arrival back
home, was found to be fully clothed again. That is until the following day when she was taken to
hospital. The nurses, on undressing Milly,
discovered that her inner thighs had been bruised black and blue, sign to
Ultida that Milly had been raped by Kanaima and had in fact been dead for at
least three days. Not
understanding quite what she meant, Utilda went on to explain that Kanaima sometimes
rape their female victims but not before killing them. The Kanaima had breathed ‘false’ life
back into her so that it would be assumed that Milly was still alive, thereby
providing him with enough time to make a getaway. “So is a Kanaima a man?” I asked.
“Eh-heh” she said. “Kanaima
is an evil spirit wearing duh body of a man”. “Anybody can be Kanaima”.
Mardell’s story: One of her aunties had gone “deep, deep”
into the interior and had left the members of her group to go to a “bush toilet
tuh do she business”. When
she failed to return after an inordinate amount of time, one of Mardell’s older
friends went to look for her. She
was found sitting on the latrine with her head bowed, “deader dan dead”. On attempting to move her body back to
the camp they discovered that a huge hole (the signature mark of the Kanaima),
had been carved out of “she bamsie”.
[Mardell indicates the size of the large O by holding thumb-to-thumb and
index finger-to-index finger.] “A
hole just so, [I too, indicate the size] in she bamsie?!” Ultida and Mardell curl up in laughter
as I start rummaging, frantically, through the kitchen cupboards for anything
flat, metal and large: anything large enough (chastity belt?) to protect my “bamsie” from
Kanaima.
The Guyanese have an extraordinary way of turning terror
into laughter.
Literary sources of
Obeah/Kanaima:
Mittelholzer’s Grantley Russell in The Life and Death of Sylvia is said to have been a victim of obeah
for no white man would have ordinarily have married a black/Ameridian
woman. Kanaima is referred to in My Bones and My Flute and (obliquely in Eltonsbrody – note that the central
theme is that of the ‘death mark’).
Both obeah and kanaima are referred to in the Kaywana Trilogy. There is of course also Wilson Harris’
short story Kanaima (1995) and a
chapter called Kanaima in Pauline
Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale
(1997)
Enjoyable
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