RUM TALES OF JAMAICA
Curses, snake venom and a duppy lizard
SNAKE HEAD DELIVERANCE
A Jamaican dancehall artist and actress has overcome an alleged spell placed on her by a rival performer by wearing the head of a snake around her neck for spiritual protection. Safira Mono insists the reptile was instrumental in her deliverance after she became sick.
“Yow! Is a artiste weh mi look up to, enuh, but after the female come near mi, mi head just raise big suh, and is like mi go inna one different space.” [“She was an artiste I looked up to, but after she came near me, my head became swollen and I felt like I went into another realm.”] “Mi go on the stage, and mi couldn’t sing. It was like mi tongue get heavy,” she told reporters.
She said she became gravely ill, suffering from weight loss, dizziness and fever, and that doctors were unable to cure her. “Mi body feel hot, like it deh pon fire, and mi dizzy like crazy,” she recalled. “Fat, fat me get down mawga, mawga.” [“I went from fat to thin.”] “Mi faint and wake up inna hospital,” Safira continued, “and at a point in time, the doctor dem a wonder
if a lupus mi have, but the blood work never show that.”
But after Safira met her ancestors in a vision, they told her to drink snake venom. “Mi grow up in church and around positive people, so mi never believe in certain things, but my ancestors, in a dream, had to grab me up and teach mi some things and let mi know seh mi have to go find a rattlesnake to protect me,” she explained.
She then journeyed into the Californian desert to find rattlesnakes. Rolling up a sleeve, she showed the journalist a mark and swelling on her left arm, caused, she said, by a rattlesnake bite.
Experts say that it can be dangerous if one is bitten by a rattlesnake but that the snake’s bite is very rarely fatal. “Anyone who follows me knows that I am always focused on wildlife because I am a Maroon, which means that I am very strong on my African heritage,” Safira said. “I had to go on a spiritual journey before I went in the desert. The head that I have round mi neck belongs to the 13th one that I catch. I had to drink its venom inna mi juice with rum in order to save my life because the doctors couldn’t cure me because they didn’t know what was wrong with me.”
Now healthy again, and back in the studio recording more tunes, she is exploring the topic of witchcraft in her latest single, titled ‘Tun Back Blow’. jamaicastar.com, 6 Mar 2020.
DISFIGURED BY OBEAH
A Jamaican woman living in the USA is convinced she is the victim of an obeah curse set on her by an Hispanic woman jealous of her relationship with the woman’s estranged husband. ‘Mary Brown’, 35, says she has lost weight, her appearance has changed and she is unable to get a job: “Right now mi mawga [thin] and no matter how mi deh eat, mi can’t put on nuh weight. Mi get dark and ugly and mi look different,” she explained. “I have struggled to keep a job among other things. A part of me is sorry I met him, because I am a good person who don’t deserve this.”
Her problems began some months ago, she believes, when she met the man in question, who was in the process of divorcing his Hispanic wife. At first, their relationship was going well, but at the start of this year things started to go wrong. “One day we go in his car and in there was stink and smell like rotten flesh. We searched everywhere in it and couldn’t find anything… but it only leave the car and transferred to him.” She also described experiencing “awful dreams” and seeing a tall figure standing in her room, which later disappeared as she stared at it. She has seen several Spiritualists in efforts to free herself from the supposed curse, but they have all apparently told her that the spell is too powerful. When she sent a photo of the Hispanic woman to one of the Spiritualists during a Skype call, she heard them scream before the line went silent for a couple of minutes. Afterwards, the Spiritualist told her that the woman’s soul was black. Others have told her they are unable to assist, since her assailant is a Satanist and they are not powerful enough to combat the Devil. Jamaica Weekly Gleaner, 2 Sep 2020.
DUPPY LIZARD
Road-building work for a new Jamaican motorway was held up after a construction worker’s colleagues rescued him from a green lizard that had climbed inside his clothing. “Nobody nuh go ova deh suh,” one man was reported as saying. “One big ol’ green lizard deh pan di man pants a go up.”
Perhaps significantly, the unfortunate construction worker, an employee of the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), was in the process of cordoning off a graveyard located on the new highway’s route some days earlier. Local residents complained that several graves had been disturbed, with some suggesting that a duppy (spirit) of one of the deceased had returned in the form of the lizard to register its disapproval. “The lizard know a nuh the residents dem trouble dem place [the lizard knows it wasn’t the residents who disturbed the place],” said another.
After a thorough search of the worker’s clothes, the green lizard was located and killed. A CHEC spokesperson said no further work would be done on that particular stretch of the highway before a consultation with locals. Jamaica Weekly Gleaner, 19 Aug 2020.