LAS UNIVERSIDADES DEL CONOCIMIENTO Y LAS DISCIPLINAS

2.2.5. Constituting the ‘Court’ or X-ray Sessions.

The court process takes place in one of the rooms (See room V, pg 53) designated in the larger ritual area space constructed by the healer. This room is referred to as the

‘courtroom’ and the court sitting is with few exceptions always conducted in the afternoon.

The only exception is for private clients whose sessions were conducted either at night or very early in the morning before the rest of the clients come to the healer. The courtroom or X-ray ritual is organised into four different sessions usually conducted on different days.

Just like the term courtroom, the four different sittings are referred to by judicial terms i.e

‘Mention’, ‘Hearing’, ‘Judgement’ and ‘Outcome’. Importantly, these sessions are referred to by their English terminologies.

The ‘X-ray’ session starts when the healer emerges from his main house and invites the congregation into the ‘courtroom’. The congregation sits on benches facing one direction and unlike in the church where women sat on one side and men on the other, clients sat wherever there was space. The healer stood on one corner of the room near the window.

This window was directly opposite the door. The healer explained to me that it was important that the window and the door remain open and on the same line during the X-ray session as this was the ‘trajectory path of the spirits’³². The secretary took her position and sat on a stool next to the healer. She always brought with her, the New Testament bible, a notebook, several pens, and a match box in sessions where witches and murders would be burnt. On such occasions, the secretary would also bring a bottle or more of kerosene that he used to set the bible on fire and thereby exterminating the witches. (I explain these procedures in detail in the subsequent pages). As the clients took their positions on the

31 In the next pages, I describe the divination process and the ‘voices from the bible’ (VFB) phenomenon

32 In the divination session the spirits of the people accused of afflicting the clients come through the window and after making their confession, exit through the door.

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benches, the healer engaged them in light banter about almost anything. In the middle of this seemingly unimportant banter, the healer picks the New Testament bible from the secretary, rips off the top covers and casually throws them out through the window. He then forms the bible into a cylindrical shape by separating the pages of the bible in a process that he refers to as ‘searching the network’. As he performed this procedure, he continuously engaged the congregation in light banter almost as if his actions were irrelevant to the proceedings. On several occasions, he caused laughter by stating that he knew of clients who had tried to replicate this procedure in their homes. He mimicked the clients, ‘I know some of you go home and say, we normally see Mtumishi do like this, let us also try to do the same’.

Eventually he places the bible vertically on the floor. The point on the floor over which he placed the bible was configured in a variety of ways for the different sessions. On some occasions, there would be an iron slab measuring about 45x45 cms on which he placed the bible. On other occasions, a white piece of cloth was placed either on the floor or on top of this iron slab. On yet other occasions, only a white piece of cloth was placed on the ground without the metallic slab. Another variation and this was usually when the bible was eventually set on fire, the bible is placed on top of pieces of firewood. The different configurations as I explain later relate to the different stages in the divination and reconstruction process.

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After placing the bible on the ground the healer asks the congregation to repeat the following prayer after him. The prayer is always said in the Kiswahili Language:

Eeh bwana, tunakuomba utubariki. Watenda mabaya wawasili hapa, mbio mbio. Bwana na utubariki. Eeh bwana, watenda mazuri wawasili hapa, mbio mbio. Bwana na Utubariki.

Tunaomba hayo katika jina la yesu, Amen.

(Oh God our Father, we pray to you to bless us. Bring to us all the wrongdoers immediately.

God bless us. Bring to us all those who have done well to us at high speed. Oh God bless us all. We pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.)

MB and the congregation say every sentence in this prayer twice. In other sessions, he altered the words of the prayer especially in the session referred to as the ‘judgement’. At this stage, the healer announced in the prayer that he would be slaying witches. The prayer was said in the version below.

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Oh God, we pray to you, this is the session where we shall hang (kill or slay) the witches, God bless us all. Bring to us all the wrongdoers immediately. Bring to us all those who have done well to us. God bless us, Amen.

After the prayers, the healer always walked out of the X-ray room as casually as he entered and the secretary took over the proceedings. The secretary, who is at this time sitting near the bible, starts a chorus and the congregation joined in. It is what I could call the ‘ritual chorus’ as it is sung in all sessions, including the church service session. The chorus is a common one sung by a majority of church denominations. Its tone is repetitive and uncomplicated, even clients who have never heard of it can easily learn and sing along as the secretary leads. The secretary does not follow any text or any order but partly memorized and partly invented the different lines as the congregation sang along. I reproduce some of the transliterated lines used by the secretary in the song below.

The Divination chorus:

Sec: Blood of Jesus,

Congregation: (Blood of Jesus) x 2, Washes us clean Sec: Jesus is the way of life

Congregation: (Jesus is the way of life) x 2, Praise be to the saviour.

Sec: Forever we shall sing Hallelujah

Congregation: (Forever we shall sing Hallelujah) x 2, Praise be to the saviour.

Sec: Diseases of the devil have been defeated by Jesus

Congregation: (Diseases of the devil have been defeated by Jesus) x 2 Praise be to the saviour.

Sec: And Jesus is the way to salvation.

Congregation: (And Jesus is the way to salvation) x 2 Praise be to the saviour Sec: The angels of God come down to pray,

Congregation: (The angels of God come down to pray) x 2. Praise be to the saviour.

Sec: Witchcraft from the devil has been defeated by Jesus,

Congregation: (Witchcraft from the devil has been defeated by Jesus) x 2, Praise be to the saviour.

Sec: Illnesses will be cured by Faith,

Congregation: (Illnesses will be cured by Faith) x 2. Praise be to the saviour.

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This chorus continued up to the point where voices of people confessing their evil deeds emit from the bible or the area on the floor near the bible. The voices emanating from the bible followed the same pattern. The secretary listened keenly to the bible and as soon as the first voice was heard from the bible, she would motion the congregation to be silent by lifting up her hand. The process was always the same. A voice emanated from the bible and stated its name. The secretary took note of the name of the person and responded by informing the voice that she/he was accused. For example,

Voice: My name is X

Secretary: Mr. X, you are accused. Tell us what you have done.

The voice proceeded to narrate what it had done to one of the clients who would be seated in the congregation at this time. Any time a voice identified a member of the congregation, the secretary asked the ‘afflicted’ member to move and sit next to the bible so that they could listen and respond. For example, a voice emerges and says, 'My name is Mr. X and I am the one who has bewitched client Y'. Usually Y would be asked to move near to the bible so that s/he could hear the voices clearly. In most cases, more than one voice emerged to explain their deeds. In such cases, all the voices of people afflicting one client will come in quick succession before those involving another client come. Let us say for example, a client X has come to the healer and is sitting in the divination room. Client X has a problem with his neighbour Y who has gone to witch Z to procure witchcraft. But in doing this, he has worked together with his wife, brother and mother in law. Usually the first voice would be that of the principal afflicter, the person with whom there is a direct conflict. And so the first voice would be that of Y who confesses to afflicting man X stating the reasons for his actions, followed by the witch and the rest of the accomplices. All the voices always tried to justify their actions.

After every confession, the voices emerging from the bible asked the congregation what they wanted from them, and the congregation responded by saying, ‘We want you to howl!’

The voice would then howl while the congregation, goaded and guided by the secretary uttered a befitting rejoinder. Voices howled from the bible several times and the congregation responded to each howl by shouting a rejoinder. In the course of my fieldwork, I realized that there was no standard number of howls expected from every voice.

Generally, the voices howled for between four and eleven times. The highest number of

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howls I encountered in the course of my fieldwork was forty (40). There was also no preset form of rejoinder from the congregation. It all depended on the type of offence committed by the confessing voice. There appeared however to be standard guidelines that were modified by the secretary and the congregation for each type of confession/confessor. I identified the following set of guidelines for the different confessions:

a) All voices that confessed to be witches and murderers were asked to remain in the bible to wait for ritual burning. Every time they howled, the congregation shouted back; Baki hapo!! (‘Remain there)!’

b) All people who had contracted the witches, especially if they did not actively participate in the preparation and acquisition of the witchcraft would be asked to take back their evil deeds. The congregation shouted: ‘Ikurudie!’ (May your evil deeds come back to you)

c) Debtors were always ordered to pay back the debts. The congregation shouted back, Lipa deni!’ (Pay back your debts)

d) Run away spouses and children were asked to go back to their homes. The congregation shouted, ‘Rudi nyumbani!’ (Go back to your home)

The sessions had differing conclusions depending on the stage of the case. The burning of the bible for instance was only done at the ‘judgement’ stage of the process. Although there appears to be an informal set of rules that guided the type of punishment to be meted out to the offenders, the secretary at times consulted with the client(s) before pronouncing certain punishments. The secretary would ask the client, ‘What do you want us to do with this one?’

In such cases the clients were empowered to decide on the destiny of those deemed to have afflicted them. The importance of such empowerment of the client in the healing process is analysed later.

Apart from leading in the songs the secretary performed a couple of other important tasks during the courtroom proceedings:

a) In the performance, she directed what was to be done and said in the session.

b) She took notes of the proceedings, which she passed on to the healer. The healer was always absent throughout the sessions except in a few sessions where he participated in the courtroom session. In the course of my fieldwork I observed him only twice attending these sessions. He would later explain to me that he only

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attended sessions where powerful witches had refused to submit to the burning ordeal.

c) She assumed the role of a judge or overseer between the clients and the emanating voices. In some cases some of the voices questioned her presence in the proceedings and she responded by saying, ‘I am the judge’ (Cf pages 194 in the case of Jael Okoti)

d) She decided, in consultations with the clients, the type of punishment to be meted out to the offenders.

c) She lit the fire that burned the witches during the judgement stage of the X-ray.

In the following pages, I outline the four different stages of the X-ray process, namely the Mention, Hearing, Judgement and Outcome. Initially I explain what happens in these sessions and then later illustrate them with actual cases of clients.