The
Obeah-Man’s
house was a collection of cement walls. Some walls met to form corners, some didn’t. Sheets of corrugated metal spanned certain sections. The trees happily played the role of the roof wherever necessary.
Angelo thought that, as an American, I might be quick to
judge this humble abode or, better yet, post photos on social media so that
Western eyes could gawk at an impoverished scene.
“Please don’t take photos,” he kept reminding me on the ride
from the city.
My first impression of the
Obeah-Man’s house was steeped in envy not disgust. A house that
intruded gently into the jungle, with just enough protection from rain, and
just enough privacy to perform rituals in peace and quiet was a manifestation
of my wildest desires.
Angelo’s offer to take me to the
Obeah-Man was impromptu. He knew that if I was given time to ponder
the offer I would surely choose sleep over awakening. Angelo knew a lot about
me – all without knowing much about me. Ultimately, that’s why he took me to
see the
Obeah-Man. He
knew.
Angelo is a kickboxing trainer and a world-renowned one at
that. He makes his living equipping everyday people with the ability to find
their fighting spirit. He understands how
the fight so often occurs outside of the ring, on a multitude of planes,
in just as many realms.
Only a man reared in the magic of the extended Amazon
rainforest could, so confidently, acknowledge the invisibilities of
the fight without fearing intellectual
recourse. Maybe that’s why Angelo chooses to ply his trade in the tiny South
American/Caribbean nation of Suriname rather than compete with spiritless
streams of consciousness abroad. Angelo recognized the fight I was engaged in
well before I did.
“I normally don’t do this kind of thing with foreigners, but
I feel like you understand. I feel like you will benefit,” Angelo said while steering
his sedan through Paramaribo’s dusty streets on the way to see the
Obeah-Man.
Suriname is utopian. Sure there’s crime, but it's the kind you expect in a country with a struggling economy and corrupt government. It’s
the kind of crime that a little common sense can counter. No ATMs after dark.
No befriending international cocaine dealers.
Otherwise, Suriname presents itself as a colorful, cultural quilt that extends from the densely populated coast to the
rugged and remote rainforest interior. A synagogue, the oldest in this part of
the world, stands next to a mosque in Paramaribo’s city center as a testament
to Suriname’s knack for embracing cultural differences.
Suriname is a place untouched by excess commercialism and tourism; where the concept of
one love survives in its purest form.
The easygoing vibe purveyed by locals might be a byproduct
of their staunch belief in an ability to
perform good and bad in realms unseen. So much so, that the only thing left
to do in the physical realm is smile, laugh, and be cool. If
ever there was a fertile training ground for inviting good spirits and
thwarting evil ones, Suriname is that place.
These beliefs and powers are not
restricted to society’s whacky outliers lost in plumes of their own self-fulfilling,
pseudo-spiritual admixtures. The
Obeah-Man
I was about to encounter, and those like him, represented the fully engrossed
and embattled of Suriname’s spiritual crop. In Suriname, one quickly learns
that the butcher, the banker, the lawyer, and the maid (especially the maid)
are all in on it.
I walked to the back of Angelo’s gym one morning to fill up
my water bottle before another of his grueling training sessions. I found the
gym’s cleaning lady yelling at the wind off of the veranda.
“What’s she doing?” I asked Angelo upon re-entering the gym.
“She’s just telling the bad spirits to go away,” Angelo
replied.
If you stay in Suriname long enough, you begin to realize
that what seems like nothing, often, is something.
Due in large part to slavery and international experiments
in indentured servitude, Suriname is like a metaphysical United Nations.
Hindus, Africans, Javanese, Jews, Muslims, and the Indigenous are all casting
spells and sending up prayers from the bushy shadows; engaging in the
constant push and pull of light and darkness,
good vs. evil. Christians are not exempt, although they like to
think they are.
A few weeks into my second trip to Suriname, an elderly
Indian woman appeared on my doorstep under the cover of darkness. She was hell bent on convincing me to attend an
Obeah-like ceremony where participants summoned spirits and transformed into
their respective spirit animals. Part of her pitch was to tell me about her experience at such a ceremony.
“I’m a Christian. My belief in Christ was too strong for
their magic to get me. But they got my European husband. He transformed. My
belief in Christ is just too strong,” the frail woman attested. None of this
explained why she, as a Christian, attended the ceremony in the first
place. Nor do I have any idea why she sought me out as a prime target.
(Or do I?)
On a return flight from Suriname, I encountered a Surinamese
mother and daughter wearing large Coptic crosses around their necks. They were
traveling back to Boston after visiting family. The crosses covered most of
their bosom and almost reached the edges of their shoulders. They were ornate,
intricate, and looked like artifacts taken directly from Anthony the Great’s
tomb. The duo wore them like chest plates of armor.
“We have to wear these for protection against red-eye (evil-eye),
white magic, and black whenever we visit home,” the mother explained after I
inquired about their distinct religious jewelry.
As we drew closer to the
Obeah-Man’s
house, Angelo touched on the matter of black magic, but offered little
explanation.
“Some
Obeah-Men
turn to black magic; to evil. They dedicate their lives to doing harm. I can’t
tell you why. That’s just the way it is,” Angelo said with a cryptic air.
The
Obeah-Man was
in his mid-to-late 40s with a clean-shaven head and an athletic build. He was
dressed comfortably in loose pants and a dashiki – a sign of his African
connection. He emitted a strong, deep tone when he spoke English; emphasizing
syllables as though he were speaking Suriname’s unique Dutch dialect. The
passion in his voice trumped his awkward cadence.
Although he had been blinded in a car crash some years ago,
I could still feel his eyes on me through his dark sunglasses. I caught a
glimpse of his wayward, brown pupils and the scarred whites of his eyes
whenever his shades fell down the bridge of his nose.
The janky, four-legged table between us was a resting spot
for his sacred leaves, bottles of alcohol, tobacco, and the other instruments
of his profession. A woman, likely his wife or occasional lover, tended to
Angelo and me. Once she was assured of our comfort she disappeared.
The
Obeah-Man lit
a cigar and smoked it up-right like a Sadhu puffing on a chillum. He did this
to keep the ash from spilling. When the cigar was nearly finished, the ash
resembled a mini monument sitting in between his thumb and forefinger. He
flipped the pile of ash and the last bits of burning cigar into his mouth. He took a swig of alcohol to wash everything down.
“Send me a picture of your father so he can see me,” the
Obeah-Man requested. “You hear me? Send
me a picture, so
he can see
me.”
Where Angelo
knew, the
blind
Obeah-Man could
see.
“You have a coin?” The Obeah-Man asked holding out his palm.
I reached into my pocket and gave him what he wanted. He
wrapped the coin and a small charge of gunpowder in a leaf. The
Obeah-Man said a prayer for my prosperity and held a flame over the concoction on the table before him.
BANG!
I jumped out of my seat, taking the next few moments to pull
myself out of temporary shell shock. Angelo burst into schoolboy-ish laughter.
“What the fuck did you think was going to happen?” The
Obeah-Man asked shaking his head with a
sinister grin painted on his face. “My God, man. Even I could see that coming.”
The laughter waned and Angelo transitioned into playing a
drum that was lying next to him. He played rhythms that had been passed down to
him from his African ancestors. The
Obeah-Man
sang and prayed in time with Angelo’s cosmic flow.
When they finished, the
Obeah-Man
enriched my understanding of how so many of Suriname’s slaves emancipated
themselves and disappeared into the jungle to start communities of their own;
communities which still exist today.
“They sang to the spirits and they were given the ability to
fly. They did not run off of the plantations. They grew wings. They flew.”
Therianthropy is a
fancy, less-spiritually-rooted, word for a human’s ability to transform into
his/her animal equivalent or gain animate qualities. I prefer to use the term
shape-shifting. Shape-shifting is a
common, ritualistic thread amongst the many groups inhabiting Suriname’s rainforest,
which happens to be the densest in the world. If there’s one place where
spirits prefer to hide, frolic, and plot – it’s in the jungle.
In 2018, I traveled seven hours into Suriname’s western
rainforest to visit the Kwinti people (one of six Maroon groups in Suriname)
and their ancestral homeland, a village called Witagron. A young Kwinti man
named Jdjani gave me a tour of Witagron. Sensing that I was a judgmental, spiritually
backwards American, he quickly glanced over the ramshackle house at the back of
the village where they performed spiritual ceremonies.
“That’s where we turn into our spirits. The greatest spirits
are the jaguar-men,” Jdjani said with a look of coy embarrassment eclipsing his
face.
Fortunately, at this point in my life, I had been witness to
many spats of shape-shifting in the form of a jaguar-man leading Peruvian
healing ceremonies in Hawaii.
“Yes, I am very good friends with a jaguar-man in America,”
I said confidently. The embarrassment left Jdjani’s face and gave way to a look
of surprise, and finally, trust. It was the kind of trust I would have been
hard pressed to gain with a suitcase full of cash and bags of sugar from the
city.
From that point on, Jdjani introduced me to the other
villagers as
a man who was friends with a
jaguar-man.
The
Obeah-Man asked if I could stay the night, but Angelo had other plans for me. We had to
rush back to the city for a kickboxing session. The
Obeah-Man blessed me with these parting words.
“Remember, you are the shaman. You already know this, but
you are the shaman.”
