By Johnny Commansingh
This article begins with a joke that was told to me in Trini dialect a few years ago. There was dis fella who complained dat there was ah jumbie under he bed. He explained that he eh know wuh type of jumbie it was, whe dat jumbie come from or why dat jumbie sought tuh reside under he bed. Someone suggested dat it was possible dat he was going aoff his rockers and just imaging things about dis ghost under he bed. He tried everything tuh get the evil jumbie from under he bed. His nights were sleepless.
Eventually, he visited ah psychiatrist and told him dat the jumbie under he bed tormented him and he life became ah living horror. ”I eh have no peace…no peace!” he cried. The psychiatrist charge him $400 and told him tuh return every two weeks. One Sunday morning while shopping fuh callaloo bush and ochro in the market he bounce up with one ah he friends. Ol’ talk started and he explained tuh he pardner his predicament. He pardner questioned him with concern: “Wuh yuh saying? Yuh mean dat yuh gih dat psychiatrist $400? Yuh mad O wuh!” He replied: “Yeah boi, dat man take mih whole week pay from mih jus so!” He pardner laughed at him and couldn’t wait tuh advise him: “Boi, follow mih advice, jus cut off the bed posts and leh the bed come dong tuh the grong. Dat jumbie bong tuh duss it because it eh have no space fuh he tuh hide.”
What is a jumbie? Tony Deyal provided an explanation in his article ‘Voodoo, Juju and Screw You,’ about what is a jumbie: “Ghosts, jumbies or duppies are invisible objects usually seen at night. Except in Trinidad, a land where increasingly anything can happen and usually does, and where revelations of all sorts are so much at hand that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse cannot be far behind.”
During the last general elections on April 28, 2025, certain high-ranking members and candidates of the People’s National Movement (PNM) were seen sweeping the stage and sweeping the road with red cocoyea brooms. The brooms were either painted or dyed red. The operant slogan of the PNM was: ‘We Red and We Ready.’ What did this ‘cocoyea broom sweeping’ suggest? That form of activity signaled one thing, simmi-dimmi, an elaborate or meaningless ritual, superstition and/or mumbo-jumbo. In view of the PNM’s use of the reddened cocoyea broom, the simmi-dimmi exhibited was the belief that there was some spiritual power in the broom that could sweep away the jumbies and any other malevolent spirits/demons that threatened their success.
The cocoyea broom simmi-dimmi was used to generate a modicum of confidence in the supporters of the PNM to stimulate the assurance of a win in the general elections. Sad to say, the cocoyea broom ‘fix’ did not deliver the results the PNM expected. The PNM had hoped for a clean sweep at the polls. The PNM only managed to win 13 seats, and mind you, in the ‘Play Whe’ lotto in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), the number 13 represents crapaud (frog). Note well that the crapaud is not too well accepted by many people in T&T, especially if you wake up and find a toad in front of your door.
On Facebook, Patricia Bissessarsingh pointed out that the cocoyea broom, according to village elders, was used as a powerful weapon against evil spirits. The cocoyea broom was used in the process of jharaying a person possessed of an evil spirit or came under the ‘curse’ of bad eye or malyeux. It was used by village obeahmen to beat off evil spirits. To Isaiah the prophet, the broom was an ominous thing in the hands of an angry God, a token of divine wrath and retribution. Perhaps that explains, in part, the more portentous bits of folk belief attached to it.
The cocoyea broom was used to chase jumbie and beat chirren…oh, and to sweep the yard too with “a clean sweep” as was desired by the PNM at the polls. Patricia’s mother did not go to the hardware store to buy a broom; she made her own cocoyea broom made from shaft of the coconut leaves. The elderly still believe nothing could sweep the floor and yard like a cocoyea broom since it can remove debris and dust from hard-to-reach corners, even under beds. Maybe our good friend could have tried sweeping under his bed to get rid of the jumbie instead of paying his hard-earned money to the psychiatrist.
Nevertheless, Tony Deyal, in his humorous way, indicated that Trinidad is not singular when it comes to the appreciation of jumbies and nasty spirits:
“Guyanese have their own jumbies to contend with. These include ‘bacoos’ which have insatiable appetites for bananas and milk. In return, if they are properly fed, they bring good fortune and gold for you. Then there is the ‘buck’ which you keep until you are very rich and then give it to someone else. In other words, “you’re passing the buck.” There are also, ‘Bush Dai Dai’ a jungle spirit and ‘Wattermooma,’ a giant who stares at the moon and if you pass under her legs, that’s it for you. The Guyanese ‘creolees’ have a spirit called ‘Ning-ning’ which has a loud shrill which precedes death. It is why the people there say, ‘Ah seeing Ning-Ning.’ One person did see it, got help from an exorcist because he had a jumbie in his house, refused to pay the man and his house was “re-possessed.” Jamaica also has its share. According to Anthony Winkler in his hilarious book, “The Duppy,” the common pastime of the Jamaican ghost or “duppy” was to romp on the naked bellies of sleeping church sisters.
As a boy growing up in Trinidad, I saw quite a few quirks that people practice daily. Tapping a newly opened bottle of rum at its base to allow some drops of rum to spill was one of the quirks that I could not understand. The argument was that you need to share the rum with the spirits. Were these so-called spirits spirituous or spiritual? A beloved and devout sister of the church I once attended explained to me that her husband, a professed winebibber, could not leave the bottle alone. In his inebriated state, he calmly said to her: “You are spiritual and I am spirituous.” It’s like half-a-dozen and six-of-the-other because both statements seem to carry a taste of the spirit.
My godmother, as I stated some time ago on CNG was a quasi-Obeah woman. She did not practice real obeah but her belief in obeah was strong, and apparently, advised people how to wuk obeah. She was one to accumulate all kinds of ‘obearistic’ stuff and was indeed afraid of the soucouyant, a character in the folklore of T&T. I am still baffled, in this day and age of science, AI, and ever-increasing technology, that some Trinbagonians still dabble in obeah and simmi-dimmi.
I have no idea what some people do behind closed doors to summon the ‘spirits,’ whether good or bad. I have heard it said that some people in their quest to get promoted even bathe in blood; some seek out, as the Bible says, ‘wizards that peep and mutter.’ Look at this text in Isaiah 8:19, “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?” Of course, I am sure somewhere in the room where such wizards practice can be found a cocoyea broom.
King Saul of Israel in the first book of Samuel Chapter 28, secretly sought the advice of a ‘medium,’ ‘The Witch of Endor’ to get some answers for his fear and failures.
Indeed the witch did what Saul had commanded: “Bring up for me Samuel” and “Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” The witch, true to form, invoked the dead, and Samuel gave to Saul some answers that were foreboding, one of which was: “…Tomorrow both you and your sons will be with me.”
According to the WWW, it is well-known that witchdoctors, or as they are known in Trinidad, Obeah men, are said to abound. It is said that you can visit one to have any manner of spell performed to grant your desires. It is thought that curses are powerful and can be cast by anyone. Even your neighbour may put the evil eye (maljo) on you. Any discomfort, hardship or illness may be attributed to this. It can supposedly be warded off by placing blue bottles around your property and by wearing bracelets or anklets made of jumbie beads (little black and red beads found growing on certain bushes). Many would advise the sufferer to go down to the seaside village of Moruga to take a ‘bush bath.’ It is said that Moruga provides the best experience in bush baths.
There was a time in Trinidad when Moruga was famous for the element and practice of obeah. To talk or write about the practice of obeah, the village of Moruga must be mentioned, and one of its former residents, Papa Neezer. Neezer was an offspring of the ‘Merikans’ who came to reside there.
Yvonne Webb, in her article ‘Moruga’s dark secrets in the spotlight’ published in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian (12/11/2010), said: “Merikins” refer to the former African-American slaves and soldiers who fought on the side of the British during the United States War of Independence. They were brought to Trinidad by the British in 1815 and 1816 and settled in areas known as companies, in Moruga. The Mighty Sparrow (Dr. Francisco Slinger) in his calypso ‘Obeah Wedding’ mentioned that Papa Neezer, an Obeah man, was his grandfather:
You don’t seem to understand
Obeah can’t upset my plan
For Papa Neezer
Is meh grandfather.
So whether it’s a green, brown, red or blue cocoyea broom, a Milk of Magnesia blue bottle, a collection of dried chicken bones, the inner lining of chicken gizzards, mud from a cemetery, the tongue of a crapaud, two mountain doves or a bottle of white rum, the summoning of the ‘spirits’ is a practice of humankind from since time immemorial. In his jocular fashion, “Tony Deyal found out that some of these creatures (jumbies) are terrible. For instance, ghosts are terrible liars because you can see right through them. Voodoo dolls are even worse. One lost its head, and it was beside itself.”
