The Kiskadee is a bird native to Guyana and often referred to in Edgar Mittelholzer's brilliant novel, The Life and Death of Sylvia (1953). The bird is so named because its cry seemed by French colonists to be enquiring: "Qu’ est ce qu’il dit?". So what did he say? This blog is about two key topics: EDGAR MITTELHOLZER (his life and his works) and ME (my encounter with Mittelholzer and tales of life in Guyana).

Friday, 29 August 2014

Pomeroon Chips: Obeah & Kanaima


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)

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