Steve Vito and the Adventure of the Maribou's Curse

This is the most bizarre thing I think that has ever happened to me so far during my stay in Africa. It’s kind of a long story, but here goes. I received a call late last night from another volunteer (Jocelyn) who sounded very nervous and told me to come meet her down at the soccer field in our neighborhood because of a “special request”. Confused, I headed out and waited under a light. Then she came up with a Senegalese man (Lamine) whom I knew well from working at the summer school in town. He appeared very upset. He was on the verge of tears, and Jocelyn told me his brother was very sick. Then things got a little strange. She said that one of the local holy men (which are called Maribou) said he could heal his brother if he was brought the hair of a white man and woman. Jocelyn surrendered one of her locks to the cause, and asked if I would donate some of mine. I was quite skeptical that my hair possessed any real healing power, but when I saw how upset Lamine was, I decided I could part with some. I knew Lamine was studying to be a doctor and was a believer in modern medicine, so I trusted that he first took his brother to a hospital and they could either do nothing for him, or could find nothing wrong. Jocelyn made a little pony tail somewhere in my hair and snipped some out and put in a bag and the two hopped in a cab. I went back to bed a little confused, because I didn’t really have any real facts about the situation, but figured no harm could really come. All I did was remove some hair and give it to someone I thought was a respected religious leader. The next day I was eating lunch with my host family and asked if the Maribou had the power to heal sick people. I told them about the previous night and their eyes got very wide and told me I had made a huge mistake. This confused me because I was under the impression that Maribou were respected religious leaders. They told that there were good and bad Maribou. Their functions varied widely from being advisors of the religious texts, to political figureheads, and shaman. Then they described some of things that “bad Maribou” do and what they described was what we would call a (gulp) witchdoctor. Making potions, voodoo dolls, curses, talismans etc... While I am no believer in black magic, voodoo and the like, I still try my best to avoid involvement, which I think is a safe practice for everyone. I called Jocelyn and said something like, “Hey…um…my hair…you didn’t give it to witchdoctor did you?” First time in my life that sentence had ever come up. Then I got the whole story. Apparently, Lamine’s brother is really good soccer player, and a big game was coming up. One of the players on the opposing team contacted a bad Maribou and put a hex of insanity on Lamine’s brother so he would be unable to play. Jocelyn said she went and saw him and said he was really acting crazy, not completely off the wall, but not being himself, sleeping in strange places, just weird behavior (this is where my mind began to demur and suggest that if one were to grow up believing in things like hexes/curses, and believed that someone else had put one on him, then maybe there could be some strange behaviors as a result of some sort of supernatural placebo effect. This is my theory). She said that a good Maribou was going to extract the oil from our hair, and make some sort of potion thing that Lamine’s brother was going to bathe with 3 times a day, which would remove the hex. It seemed so straight forward. She said that bad Maribou were afraid of white people, so our hair has the ability to ward off evil on someone who has been cursed by them. After this conversation I was strangely fine with everything. I found it all reminiscent of a Scooby Doo adventure. Lamine told us that the hair oil is already working, and the curse is going away. Maybe in the future I could embrace the healing power of my hair. I thought about the content of the oil that was extracted, and decided it was mostly my Pantene-ProV 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner that Lamine’s brother is going to be bathing with. In addition to lifting his curse, my hair oil should give his hair nice shine and bounce. Lesson learned. Be careful who you give your hair to in Africa.

Here are some pictures from the school renovation last week.