By Johnny Coomansingh
In Trinidad, probably as in every other island in the Caribbean region, the practice of Obeah exists. Lindsay Haines of The New York Times (Sept. 10, 1972) referred to Obeah as “the black magic of the Caribbean.”
Haines maintains: “It is too secret, too mercurial for statistical study, but it is found everywhere in the West Indies, and believers consider it effective both in matters of life and death and in day‐to‐day affairs. A person might turn to obeah if he yearns to see his competitor’s business fold, or if he wants to clinch a promotion, or if he needs a spell that will make him irresistible to the opposite sex.”
“Obeah, also spelled Obiya or Obia, is a broad term for African diasporic religious, spell-casting, and healing traditions found primarily in the former British and French colonies of the Caribbean” (Wikipedia).
This is a true story about Granty, a 60-year-old man who was attracted to a much younger woman than himself. She was about 35 years old. Although he was married, he sought, through the process of Obeah, to engage this woman; this brown-skinned gyul (girl). He almost went crazy trying to capture the woman. He wanted her badly. As a man who laid out and dug the best drains for cocoa-growing estates in the area, he worked tirelessly to upkeep himself and his wife. (Fictitious names are used in the story). Boywah, the boy who knew about Granty and his woman-hunting activities, relates:
Residents in the tiny neighborhood referred to him as Granty, the best “drainer man” in the agrarian village of Sangre Chiquito. Although Granty was apparently comfortable with his dutiful wife Luna, he became somewhat restless and uncomfortable because of a younger brown-skinned pretty woman he had espied; she was, as some Trinis would exclaim, “ah thick red ‘Oman!” This woman resided in Jamesmart village, the village situated a little higher up the road to where Granty lived in Sangre Chiquito.
To ‘capture’ this woman, Shunrita, Boywah’s godmother, suggested to Granty that there was an obeahman who could help him. In the broken French (patois) in which the two conversed, Boywah heard them mention a man named mister Joseph. Mister Joseph, otherwise known as ‘Papa Bois Jean’ was the obeahman whom Shunrita said could help Granty with his problem. Granty was really desperate to win the affections of the young woman. He told Shunrita that there were nights when he couldn’t sleep. He became enthused with the idea of seeking the help of Papa Bois Jean. Without hesitation, Granty decided to meet with Papa Bois Jean.
Papa Bois Jean was a lean, lanky, sunburnt individual who carried a gaunt facial expression. His facial skin was drawn tight on his bony face; he looked like a living skeleton. His jawbone looked sharp as a flint. Fixed above his straight and narrow nose was a very dark pair of lenses enclosed by a bronze-coloured frame which he wore all day and all night; no one saw his eyes. Sitting loosely on his head was a weather-beaten straw hat, frazzled at the brim. Looking as though handmade, the pair of well-worn, almost sole-less leather sandals that showed off his long bony toes and hardened toenails complemented his washed-out blue denim “Farmer Brown” coveralls.
A multi-coloured striped shirt was the only saving grace to his attire. Papa Bois Jean actually looked the part of a back-in-time hippie that remained static; frozen in time. Boywah had serious difficulty in understanding the circumstances of this man. Papa Bois Jean’s almost astute silence while sitting at the table and listening to Shunrita as she spoke of Granty and his request was ‘deafening.’
Papa Bois Jean did not display the trappings of an obeahman at all; definitely not what Boywah envisaged an obeahman to look like. In fact, he looked like a longtime saga boy (one who seeks attention and pleasure mainly from women). The only things missing on his person to make of him a complete saga boy were the dried squirrel’s tail stuck to the side of his straw hat, and a handkerchief hanging out of his right side back pocket.
One night, Sonah, Shunrita’s husband, drove Shunrita and Boywah to pay a visit to Papa Bois Jean who lived somewhere on a little track off the Valencia Old Road. It was dark and Boywah could not remember exactly where the house was located. When they arrived, Shunrita walked up to the rickety wooden steps of Papa Bois Jean’s house. His small house, fitted with jalousied windows and doors was probably about 100 years old.
Shunrita knocked and the door opened. There wasn’t much light in the interior but she went in anyway. About five minutes later, Shunrita returned to the car and invited Boywah to come see the crystal ball in Papa Bois Jean’s house. She said that it was amazing for her to see parts of the world and other things in the ball that she never even heard about. Shunrita tried to court Boywah into going in but Sonah said: “Doh go inside dey boi. Dat eh fuh yuh tuh see. Dem wukking obeah.”
Despite being a rough, arrogant ‘cuss bud’ (one who use expletives) at times, Sonah, in a very firm manner, told Boywah, “Stay inside di car boi. Doh follow she!” Sonah brought Shunrita to Papa Bois Jean’s place but was not involved in her obeah-oriented activities; he avoided obeah as the plague. This could have been the reason why Sonah was so callous and behaved the way he did with Shunrita, cussing her out at the drop of a hat.
Having read the book Secrets of the Spirit World, Boywah also knew that the practice of obeah, necromancy, the Ouija Board and the occult was not for him. Shunrita tried to influence Boywah in many ways. Most of all she wanted him to be comfortable with stealing, but Boywah resisted, he was not budging from the training he adopted at home, at school, and at church; the right thing was the right thing, and a wrong thing could never become a right thing.
Shunrita did not stop there. Surreptitiously she made attempts for him to become engaged with objects and events that surrounded the practice of obeah, for example, she solicited his help in writing letters to certain organizations to request the lists of books that were known to harbor bad spiritual elements. In Trinidad, such books were known as ‘bad books.’
Because Boywah could write and spell, Shunrita requested a series of labels for the vials of potions, solutions, oils, objects, and powders that she believed possessed magical powers. Who knows if she employed such potions and objects to control people. Boywah remembers that one of the vials contained the dried tough yellow epithelial tissue taken from the inside of chickens’ gizzards. What did she want with this stuff? Who knows? The list of oils, potions and powders included among others ‘Come-back-man oil,’ ‘Money oil,’ ‘Confusion powder,’ ‘Compelling powder,’ Red lavender, Asafetida otherwise known as ‘Caca-jab,’ and Guinea pepper powder.
Granty decided to meet with Papa Bois Jean because he was dead serious about winning this woman. Whatever it took, Granty was willing to go the full nine yards. Papa Bois Jean requested that when next he visited he should bring with him a pair of mountain doves (Zotolan doves) for the ceremony. These doves are pretty smart birds and are difficult to catch but Granty persevered.
He was tenacious in his attempts to capture a pair of these doves. Night and day he contemplated what he could do to catch them. Eventually he came up with an idea to drop a cocoa basket over them while they were feeding. Granty scattered some dried corn grains under the branch of a tree where he saw the birds feeding. The birds came and started feeding. Keeping his distance for fear he might scare the birds, Granty nervously dropped the cocoa basket trap that hung over the bait. The basket fell, but one of the birds escaped.
With one bird in hand, he went to Papa Bois Jean. Papa Bois Jean was not too happy with Granty and scolded him for his awkwardness. He told Granty to go catch the partner to this bird because one bird would not do. Papa Bois Jean was sure to remind him that the two doves represented both of them. Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, but Granty was unsuccessful in catching the other bird. The captive bird was released.
Bereft and broken, Granty lost his chance at capturing the young woman. All this time, Luna kept wondering about Granty’s weird behaviour and his temporary insanity. Whether Luna found out about Granty’s tryst, and his deep yearning for the young woman, no one knows. Not long after, Luna died peacefully in her sleep, and for the first time, Boywah heard the sounds of the bongo drums in that little cocoa-growing village.
The monotonous drumming, shouting, heaving, and chanting among the mourners echoed through the village for several nights. What happened to Granty after Luna died is a mystery. Granty disappeared from the village. No one knew where he went or where he ended up. Without a murmur or a whimper, Granty just disappeared.
