I Put A Spell On You

Eating A Spirit

I have been thinking about spirituality lately: trying to understand fetishes and how and why a man, woman or child is labeled a witch in the Congolese worldview. It’s hard to wrap my mind around these concepts because they are so new to me, but the more I discuss witchcraft with the missionaries at SIL and read about sorcery in the book Brazzaville Charms, the more blaming an aunt or uncle for eating the the spirit of a dead relative flickers as a scene from a bad American horror film in my brain. Will I ever understand? Do I want to understand? Am I capable of understanding in a nonjudgmental fashion all the blame surrounding death in the Republic of Congo?

OBSERVATIONS

1. One of my friends who speaks incredible English and is destined to spend two years in America on an academic scholarship told me that his family believes his father was murdered. They believe that two of his co-workers put poison in his beer when they visited a bar for a drink after work. The family believes the motive for the murder was jealously.

2. Developmentally disabled people are sometimes viewed with suspicion here as if witchcraft could be the cause of their disability.

3. Congolese leave the caps on soda and beer bottles after they have been opened. When I asked why, one of my Congolese acquaintances told me it was to prevent evil spirits from entering the bottle. He explained that witches could exist in their human form but could also transition into a spirit form.

4. When I wanted to explore the monument and graves for the victims who died in an airline crash, my companion stopped me. She told me that I would be viewed suspiciously as eating souls and advised me not to venture too close to the actual graves. I think, but I am not 100 percent certain, that the memorial honors the victims of the UTA flight 772, which was flying from N'Djamena in Chad to Brazzaville when it crashed in 1989. I want to find the memorial again but this time with camera in hand.

5. Passage from Brazzaville Charms by Cassie Knight:

In Congo most illnesses are understood to be caused by sorcerers, and when a sorcerer kills someone he is said to have 'eaten' them. This belief in black magic causes fear and suspicion, even within family units (p. 86). The missionaries I discussed the matter with who live at the SIL compound in Brazzaville have seen families blame one member for the death of a child, grandparent, mother or father. In Kinshasa, many young boys are cast out of their homes and accused of being witches when a misfortune strikes their family.