Peace Corps Flashback

With Bradley: then

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with my Peace Corps sitemate from my second year in Koundara. It was lovely to find out that even though it had been 11 years (!?!) since we had seen each other the experiences we had shared were enough to make that gap seem much smaller. Being back together, even for a few brief hours, made me think of some of the more unusual experiences I had while in Guinea. So I thought I'd dig back into the letters I wrote home and my journal to share some of the more memorable moments dealing with devils.

and now

15 March 2002

So lately I’ve had more exposure to devils and sorcery than I had expected. It’s been kind of interesting to see what they believe. The first experience was at school. A girl in 8eme went into convulsion fits and started screaming (thank goodness she wasn’t in my class!). Anyways, whenever this happens everything stops at school (yes it’s happened more than once!) because everyone wants to see what is happening. Then somewhere between four and six boys will pick up the girl (it always seems to be a girl) so she’s horizontal and hold her tight enough she can’t really move and carry her away. When I asked about it I was told they take her home because the devils had gotten into her. But apparently there is some special type of liquid you can bathe in and then the devils can’t get in anymore. That part is more than a little unclear to me.

           

There was also an incident with two of the boys who lodge next door to me, which they attribute to sorcery. A couple of nights back I woke up to the boys screaming and pounding on a door – sounding like something serious was after them (my first thought was a snake because they really don’t like snakes here). So Mr. Camara, after much talking back and forth between a closed door (I guess he didn’t want to let in whatever it was) went to look in their room. Where of course he didn’t find anything. The one boy swears something was trying to hold him down, and they’re both quite freaked out now. So they refuse to go back into the room that night, and Mr. Camara finally lets them stay in the house. And now none of the boys will sleep there, so they’ve all found friends houses to stay at. I have to admit that once I figured out what was going on listening in afforded me quite a bit of amusement. One persons saying “mais, il n’y a rien…” the other “mais, il y a eu quelqu’un je ne rentre pas.” Over and over again. However it does give me a better idea of how things could get out of control with something like the witch hunts in Mass. It seems to be one person’s set of beliefs against another’s and some unexplainable, somewhat frightening behavior. Who knew I’d get to have an experience like that here?

12 November 2002

Today school was closed because of the diables (it sounds like a snow day or something). We had not one, not two, but at least 4 girls possessed (I don’t really know what word to use for it) by devils, all within about a 30 minute period. It got to be so much pagaille (craziness) that they finally just sent the kids home at 10:20. Later at the market I heard that it was actually seven girls who “fell” which just seems unreal (I don’t get why its only ever girls). So there has also been talk of them closing school for a day or two because of the devils (would that make them go away?) and also of making a sacrifice to appease the devils. I’m not really sure how all it would work. Apparently that is what they did last year when we had a rash of devil problems. I don’t know if it helped or not as I didn’t even know they did it. There’s just so much I don’t understand about the whole thing. Like who, or what, the diables are exactly, how they enter a person, what effect they have (besides falling down and screaming), how taking the girls to the hospital helps, what a hospital can do about devils anyways. I just don’t get it.

11 February 2003

It’s amazing what Africa leads me to do sometimes. Two nights ago – the night before our [AIDS/HIV peer educator] training started – we were talking about the devils at school again. Well I remembered Brad’s mom had sent him chrism oil (holy oil) and that we had talked about blessing the classrooms with it to keep out the devils. Of course I didn’t remember this until midnight, but since I had freaked out McKenzie with stories about the devils and really didn’t want any girls falling during the formation I decided to go see if Brad wanted to go bless the school with me. He was okay with it so we took off for the school at about 0:15 in the middle of the night – trying not to call attention to ourselves so that we didn’t have to answer any questions. After stopping to protect/bless each other with the oil, arrive we did. And despite feelings of nervousness we started to bless the school. Above each and every classroom door we made a cross with the oil and read psalms. Switching back and forth as we went down the wings. Then since oil was left we also blessed the three trees in the middle of the courtyard and poured the remaining oil at the entrance of the school (the sand pit) saying our own prayers of protection. It seemed kind of funny to be doing this in secret – but even today if you look for it you can see the slight mark of the cross above each door. It seems as if something might be working about our many blessings as no girls fell yesterday or today. But then I guess the only logical way to combat devils is with God (wait did I just say logical? Is there anything logical about any of this?).