• Every factor of our lives has a superstitious warning attached to it
Image: COURTESY
Growing up in Mombasa, a somewhat conservative society bordered on religious ideals, we were raised in a culture full of superstition. As children, superstitions are used to scare us or indoctrinate in us ideals that our parents (and their parents before them) deemed fit. Do not walk under trees at night. Do not play with the shadow. Do not sit on the door barrier, and so on and so forth.
Every factor of our lives has a superstitious warning attached to it. Even now, as adults who are far more educated than our ancestors before us, we somehow still cannot let go of these silly irrationalities.
Two weeks ago, when the bus plunged into the Indian Ocean and then followed by a truck the following day, I, like many Mombasa residents, found myself reacting superstitiously. What went through our minds as the second vehicle plunged into the water was, "Is the ocean claiming a debt?" I literally saw comments on Twitter with these exact same words.
By the third day, as an overladen pick up overturned on the exact same spot, our minds were made up! The ocean or the spirits of the ocean or whatever forces they are, were not happy. Just as a side note, as people who have inhabited the coastal towns for centuries, we somehow end up personifying the ocean in such matters. It is easy to say things like “the ocean is angry” or “the ocean is owed a debt”. I have no idea how the characterisation of the ocean as an emotional creature came to be. However, I can only deduce from our way of life that our ancestors used personification to explain the mystery surrounding the ocean.
You might wonder how I started this article by stating our society is quite religious yet superstitious. Seems almost ironical. In Islam, which is the predominant faith on the Coastline, the supernatural is acknowledged. The religion recognises that there are mystical forces beyond our understanding in this world and that the physical world and the spiritual world exist within the same dimension.
However, Islam warns that these two realms (the spiritual and the physical) should not be exposed to each other. That is, humans interacting with Djinns. We have, therefore, found it easier to explain unusual occurrences through mysticism rather than logic.
A day before the tourist bus plunged into the ocean at the Likoni ferry, I crossed the channel to go to Diani. In front of my vehicle, was a Canter and I watched in disbelief how the driver of the vehicle descended the slope to get into the ferry. The driver went off far left almost towards the end of the ferry door then made a sharp right cut as he climbed on the ferry. If you have ever driven up a high bump in a small car, afraid of scratching the bottom, you will understand what I am referring to.
I remember thinking this was not the time and place for such antics. All he had to do was descend the slope slowly and manoeuvre-ascend into the ferry with extreme caution. I think the driver of the tourist bus might have tried to do exactly the same thing. The bus had veered way left and missed the ferry entrance by quite a gap.
I watched the security footage of how the overladen pickup truck lost control, turned sharply and rolled over. The entire accident could be easily explained through logic. In fact, all the accidents can be demystified within reason. Nevertheless, whoever you spoke to in Mombasa would ominously tell you that the accidents are warning signs and that a sacrifice must be done on-site immediately to appease the angered spirits.
The born and raised Mombasan in me cannot help but believe such irrational thought processes that have been ingrained into every fibre of my being since childhood. However, the educated, rational side of me knows there are valid explanations to matters that we would normally consider mystical. As a future parent, I often wonder how much of this superstitious irrationality I would transfer into my own family, albeit subconsciously.
Edited by T Jalio