Prayers, Tanzanian style

 A friend who is hoping to get out of hospital soon suggested that people's prayers might help.  That made me think of the tree I drove past every day in Dar es Salaam.

People put all sorts of items up on this Baobab to get their message through to the spirits that were in the tree.  I added to the collection as a friend back in Australia was having some health problems.  As I was putting my message up an old chap appeared explaining that he looked after the tree and would appreciate a little "chakula" - Kiswahili for food, but he was actually after shillings which were duly provided.  

A nice illustration of religion in Tanzania.  40% are Christian; 40 % Islamic; and 100% believe in witchcraft.  Here is another snap of the site, with a witchcraft ceremony in progress.
The red cloaks are the traditional attire of witches.  We went to a performance of Macbeth at an amateur dramatic society.  Half the performance was in Kiswahili and there were roars of laughter when the witches came on wearing red cloaks.

This was not in the rural backblocks but one of the poshest areas in Dar es Salaam.  The house across the road was the residence of the British High Commissioner and the Finnish and German Embassies were next door.

My friend got over their problem so it must have worked!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More in the vicinity of 505

Image
 This is pretty much our morning on 8 August.  It begins looking out the windows towards the CBD, with some light clouds well below the tops of the high rises.  My guess would be the 60th floor. On our walk we saw some signs of Spring! And a very nice display of orchids in a front yard near South Yarra Primary. On the other side of the Park the Tonka trucks were still at play.  There is much scope for further photos as they knock down this building.  (I don't know how the punters work in the white building while this is going on,) I have activated Google Lens on my phone, and it identified Clivia miniata for me! We have watched the demolition as it has proceeded.  By 11 September (a month later) the high stuff has all gone and only cleaning up the ground is needed.  (Frances took this image from St Kilda Rd - the opposite end of the site to my earlier photos.)
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more