Belief in ***-mad demon tests nerves
Reuters
By William Maclean
Mon May 16,10:42 AM ET
Mohammed Juma starts to sweat and fidget as he recalls his
rape by Popo Bawa, the most feared spirit-monster of the
Zanzibar spice islands.
"We believe reading the Koran is our only defense, nothing
else," says the 41-year-old driver and father of four. "But
Popo Bawa is real, and well prepared."
Vacationers on the Indian Ocean islands tend to smile
dismissively at accounts in guidebooks of the bat-like ogre
said to prey on men, women and children. But for
superstitious Zanzibaris a visit from the sodomizing gremlin
is no joke.
Although no one ever has seen it, belief in the monster and
his unnatural lust is so strong that entire villages will
sleep out of doors for protection: Popo Bawa (Swahili for
Bat's Wing) prefers to attack behind closed doors at night.
In huts set amid rustling groves of jackfruit and mangoes on
Zanzibar's Pemba island, victims told Reuters in interviews
that they detected a bad smell, became cold and went into a
trance in the moments before they felt the creature's
inhuman strength.
Some attacks were heralded by the sound of giant wings and
claws rattling and scraping on huts' tin roofs. Others
cringed in terror at what sounded like a car engine ticking
over.
"We heard a rustling on the roof," recalls Asha Saleh, in
her late 50s, in Machomanne village near Pemba's main town
of Chake Chake. "I felt someone fondling me. I felt very
cold. I felt weak," she said, recalling the attack some 35
years ago.
LEGENDS
"I couldn't call out for help to my husband who was lying
asleep beside me. Popo Bawa is strong: He really presses
down on you. And it took such a long time: One hour!
Eventually I lost consciousness. And I was one of many who
were attacked."
Successive waves of colonizers and traders -- Arabs,
****tuguese, Hindus, Chinese, Britons, Persians and Africans
-- left behind a multinational array of legends on Zanzibar.
Accordingly, many dismiss Popo Bawa as another of the
satanic stories swapped over the centuries by migratory
Indian Ocean peoples as they moved back and forth on the
tides from Indonesia to the Comoros, from Madagascar to the
Maldives.
Zanzibar's distinctive past as an Arab-run slave market
prompted some academics to speculate that the story of Popo
Bawa emerged from a collective race memory of the horrors of
slavery.
But Popo Bawa is unlike the many goblins believed by the
islanders to populate the tall grasses that ring their huts.
Many on the islands are adept at exorcisms, placing charms
at the base of fig trees or sacrificing goats to avert evil
or draw favor from the spirit world.
So experienced are the isles' traditional healers that they
draw visitors from the Gulf and east Africa, with the
successful amassing riches and prestige.
But no placatory offering or witch doctor can deflect Popo
Bawa when he has made his mind up to strike, islanders say.
The monster favors Pemba, the poorer and more backward of
the archipelago's twin islands despite being home to the
clove plantations that provide the mainstay of Zanzibar's
economy.
He also becomes active at election time: a habit that is
testing nerves ahead of polls due in October.
His last major visitation was during elections in 1995, when
Juma says he endured his terrifying ordeal, although some
re****ted his presence again in 2000 and in 2001.
"APOLITICAL"
Pemba's population are staunch opposition sup****ters. Many
accuse the ruling party of Tanzanian President Benjamin
Mkapa of neglecting the island since 1964, when Zanzibar
merged with mainland Tanganyika to form the United Republic
of Tanzania.
But Juma says Popo Bawa is apolitical even though electoral
emotions seem to summon him from the beyond. "He can strike
even if the opposition wins the elections," he said.
The driver vows to do his utmost to avoid what happened to
him back in 1995 as he sat alone late one evening.
"Many were afraid and were sleeping outside. But I was
confident and was alone in my room. I was reading the Koran
for protection. After about 20 minutes I started feeling
sleepy. I heard something falling on the roof. I continued
reciting. I started feeling something in the room.
"I felt my mouth becoming bigger and bigger. I started
losing my ability to form words. My feeling was that my
lower lip had stretched to my lap. I felt weak in my body. I
became very sweaty. My experience was like that of a
neighbor of mine who said his head seemed to grow to an
enormous size."
Popo Bawa gets annoyed if villagers deny his existence -- a
fact to which Khamis Juma Hamad says he can testify.
Hamad, a retired village chief now aged 75, said that in
1971 Popo Bawa spoke to terrified villagers on Pemba through
a girl possessed by the monster.
"I am Popo Bawa," said the girl, called Fatuma, speaking in
the unnaturally deep voice of a man. "You have challenged my
existence so I have come to prove I am here."
Seconds later, he says, the villagers heard the sound of a
car revving and a rustle on a nearby roof -- signs of Popo
Bawa. "The people felt cold, almost paralyzed. They were
terrified."
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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