Why, pray, why is Uswaz so obsessed with voodoo?
Welcome to this third-rate column passing off as professional piece of writing when indeed, my editor thinks that it is stuff scribbled by a lower kindergarten baby.
I am reliably informed that it has been a constant source of boredom to some readers with some claiming that they could end up in comatose as a result. Anyway, although she has threatened as much, I am reliably told that some of my readers have also threatened to take to the streets in protest – they love its boredom.
Well, the ball is theirs. Let us see how stupid people can collectively become – the Uswahilinites.
This sprawling rat and roach -infested Uswaz is a mad place to live in – it’s indeed a prototype of Mirembe Hospital or any other madhouse because of what goes on here - are forever doomed by our lack of understanding of things – we are no doubt numbskulls needing divine intervention to understand that witchdoctors are simply conmen.
This includes even the most educated of us. Dr Winchinslauss Rwegoshora (BA, MA Dip UDSM), the man said to have ‘eaten’ more books at the hallowed institution of higher learning than any Uswahilinite is no different from the likes of Mama Mwakilambo who has never seen the inside of a classroom when it comes to matters of the supernatural. His wonderful academic credentials notwithstanding, Winch lives in perpetual fear of witchcraft and all what it entails.
That is why his teacher wife Kemirembe has been making endless journeys to the Uswaz witchdoctor Dr. Mzee Kaniki Kombo, the man from Tanga. Indeed, she has taken a permanent abode at this eerie man’s ‘residence’.
I have also noticed with a lot concern that her children have suddenly become mobile talismans, charms and amulets ostensibly to ward off evil spirits.
They wear them around their arms, waists and other unmentionable parts of their bodies.
Their mother Kemi also bears tiny cuts somewhere between her breasts, her belly and her you-know-where (don’t ask me how I got know about it for you’d be handing me a death sentence).
Mzee Kaniki Kombo lives in a hovel that even Uswaz dogs won’t be tempted to live in yet, people, some driving posh money-guzzling four-wheelers go in hordes to be ‘anointed’ by this man of the devil to become wealthy.
What beats my understanding is why the bloke opts for a shack and pauperish life yet he purports to enrich others. Why not start with enriching himself?
Failure to comprehend happenings around relegates fear-laden Uswahilini hearts to seek ways of explaining them, albeit in stupidity.
I am referring here to misconceived belief that anything that is inexplicable especially if negative precipitates from the power of darkness or rather, there has to be mkono wa mtu (evil hand) in it. Whether it is in Tandika, Kigogo, Temeke, Ilala, Magomeni or even in the mother of all Uswaz called Mbagala, the belief is the same. There is nothing like witchcraft.
