The Willows: April 2011

So today I missed 3 calls...then 3 more but on purpose. The last of the mistakenly missed calls I called back. I had missed it by only a few minutes and figured the caller would remember why they had called me. I am not usually in the habit of calling back misses and usually figure they will call back if it's important and eventually I'll get to speak to the wonderful person who has decided to harass me. Today is different though.

Ross is in Abidjan (or was and is on his way home) and I have gotten calls on the home phone (this rarely happens) from various people informing me he was on his way home. I wanted to make sure that if it was the embassy calling that I was not missing some sort of important news (where my mind went before I called back is not important).

So I call this person back and he is clearly not from the embassy. He tells me his name, which after several repetitions I still don't know, though it started with Muhammed as many names do here. He tells me that he is a Marabou (a sort of psychic - according to Juliette who is a Christian from Burkina Faso but has lived here several years...she equated it to tarot readers) calling from Touba (the holy city of the Mourides who are a brotherhood of Sufi Muslims who call themselves Marabou) and while reading today's passages in his Qur'an three numbers came up and one of them was my phone number.

Now I have to pause here for a moment as I find it incredible that the Qur'an has hidden numbers that correspond to today's cell phones. Did Allah actually give Jibril my phone number to give to Muhammed (not my caller but the writer of the Qur'an) to pass on to the people so that I could get this call? What about area codes and country codes? Does the reader, in this case the Marabou Muhammed that called me, know when one number starts and the other begins? Or what year to call that number in? I guess it doesn't really matter how he ended up calling me, just that he did.

Now normally I would have hung up on some religious guy cold calling me for whatever his reason (after all, we tell Jahovah's witnesses to F*&%^ off...or in Ross's case we toy with them) but in this case I was intrigued as to what he had to say. I came here to experience the culture and when he didn't say to me "sorry, wrong number" I was kind of curious.

So he goes on to tell me that there is evil in the air and that his Qur'an told him to call me because there was a hex on me. He said something about a light I couldn't get to because there was something in my way. At this point I was really intrigued, basically I was getting a cultural lesson on the phone and was very curious. So to make sure I was understanding correctly (his accent was very thick) I put Juliette on the phone with him. She listened and then told me he was freaking her out and asked if she could hang up. We did at this point so I have no more info other that there is a hex on me and something to do with light. Juliette confirmed the same info that I had and then went on to tell me that she had had a similar call last year.

Juliette's caller was from the same brotherhood and after explaining the hex to her he told her she had to come see him so that he could remove it. The removal of the hex involved buying a cow for sacrifice as well as paying the healer (the Marabou).

So I suppose the call would have went on to reveal how the hex could be removed. Travelling to Touba then buying a large animal. The slaughter of said animal, a cow or goat, depending on the severity of the hex or the size of the village where the Marabou lives as well as some dancing and singing and lets not forget a feast for all the village (in the form of my cow or goat) as well as a monetary sacrifice to the Marabou healer for all his work.

Needless to say I won't be purchasing any large farm animals in the near future but will be staying away from lights...you can never be too safe!

I stopped answering his calls after that but he did call back several times.