As I might or might not have mentioned before, growing up
as a kid I was more afraid of Nigerian movies or Nollywood movies as they are
now called than I was of your typical Hollywood horror flick. I was more afraid
of the witches, wizards, evil spirits, demons and witchdoctors (aka babalawo
aka dibia) that were common in that period of nollywood history than I was of
Freddy Kruger, Jason, Candyman or Chuckie (ok maybe Chuckie freaked young me a
little bit). Why is this you ask? To my younger mind the threat of witchcraft,
someone using native medicine to make you go mad, kidnapping you and using your
body parts for rituals was realer (more real?) than Freddy Kruger who I knew
was not real and seemed to only attack oyibo children (oyibo translates as
white but refers to ‘western’ people). I was safe in Nigeria from Freddy Kruger
I thought but was not safe from the Nigerian occult. Why did I think that?
Growing up and this is still true today, the Nigerian society has stories of
occult happenings floating around, stories perpetuated by people that never
witnessed the original event or the real reason behind the event.
I remember stories about children who collected sweets
from their nursery school teacher and the sweets turned into human fingers. How
did they know this? Well apparently one of the kids did not consume his sweets
when he was given and left it in his pocket. When his mother took his trousers
to go wash them she felt something in his pocket and lo and behold it was a
human finger.
