Tales of Black Magic from Africa

These days  my colleagues and me are kind of jobless in the department. This is the time for us to sit and chat. We try our best to kill time. Mostly we engage in conversations that are aimless and misguided.

A few days back I initiated a discussion about Black magic in this part of the world. Some of my colleagues have spent years in this land. So I was sure that they will have lots and lots of tales to tell. And they didn’t fail me. This blog is about the tales of Black magic that I heard from my colleagues.

Flying Old Lady:

This is about a family and the weird experience they had some years back. One night after dinner they were seated in the living room, watching a football match. They were engrossed in the match when they heard a loud crash. The TV screen went black. They could make out that the noise came from the roof. They decided to move upstairs and enter the roof through the bedroom window. The father and the two sons moved together. They had a torch in their hand. When they reached the roof they saw that their  TV dish antenna was twisted and in a mangled state. Lying next to the antenna was a dark figure.They approached the figure with careful steps. It was human and it was moving, groaning and whining pain. They focussed the beam of light on the human shape,so that they could see the face in the bright white light that fell from the torch. To their shock and disbelief they discovered the human figure to be the old lady who was their neighbour. They shook her and called her by the name. She responded in a feeble voice. They called her name, this time their voice didn’t hide the suppressed irritation. She looked at them, her eyes probed them from their wrinkled sockets. She spoke and what she said made them stare at her in disbelief. She told that she was flying in the air on a stick and she fell on the roof after hitting the dish antenna.

The Naked Roadies:

This happened a few months back in a mountainous area in this country. Two brothers were travelling in a Toyota pickup. They were returning home after completing some important work in the city. They were in a hurry to reach the comforts of their home. Moreover they were driving through the land where no human presence was there. All of a sudden one of them saw something whitish moving across the road. It was fast and he couldn’t make out what it was. The younger one who was driving the pickup was so shocked by what he saw, that he lost control of the vehicle. The pickup skidded to the right, and it crashed against the road barrier. Both of them were thoroughly shaken and they were  silent for some time. Then the elder one who was in the navigator seat asked ‘Did you see them?’. ‘Them?’, the other one asked,what do you mean by them? ‘I saw three men, naked, with long white hair crossing the road’. The other one just stared at the road, his eyes eagerly scanning the darkness. They tried starting the engine and realized that the tyres were struck in the dirt. They had a sigh of relief when they found that their mobile phones were in working condition. So they contacted the police and waited for them to arrive.

( The tale will continue from the POV of the Police Officer)

I was about to go home when the office phone rang. I attended the call and from the other side I heard one voice excitedly speaking in hurried breaths. It was another call reporting about passengers stranded in the desert. I didn’t want to take up the job, but my conscience asked me to make the trip before heading home. So I set off in my patrol vehicle. The traffic in the city was light and soon I found myself moving towards the highway which led to the mountainous landscape. From a distance I could see the pickup with its lights flashing  lying on the side of the road. I parked my patrol vehicle next to the pickup, got out and moved towards the two figures that were in the pickup. ‘What happened to the vehicle’ I asked them. They were silent for sometime and then one of them spoke ‘We saw something and we lost control of the vehicle’. ‘What did you see in this place?’ I asked ‘It seems to be bit strange that you saw something here’,I commented. ‘We saw naked men running across the road’, they replied in a quivering voice. I couldn’t believe what they just said. I was about to open my mouth to say something when I some cries and not far from where we stood I saw a group of naked men, with the long hairs almost touching the ground moving quick and fast across the road.

Black Magic is still practiced in this part of the world. The rich use it to make more money and the poor to harm the rich. Black men use it to woo the fair maidens and in some cases even to destroy whole tribes. It is a belief system surviving mainly because of the inherent fear factor that is present in the human heart.

The Constant Gardeners – Our Farmville Tale

 

As I have mentioned before in this space, games have played a major role shaping sensibilities. The games added more variety in my life or in our life to be precise. Living in a land where the scope of entertainment is limited and restricted games helped us to remain in touch with the imagination. It all started with computer games and slowly it progressed to Play Station Portable games. The discovery of the shop in  XXXX Mall with a wide range of PSP games made us explore the world of virtual games. Then Facebook happened and along with it happened Farmville. The game is  played by thousands of people all round the world. The game is kind of hot topic these days in the Internet.

 

This blog is about Farmville. It is divided into two parts. In the first part,  I will describe how we became ‘real’ farmers because of Farmville. The second part deals with the lessons that we can learn from Farmville.

Farmville made us think about the possibility of creating a farm in our flat. Some events  happened that actually made us swing into action. One Thursday we got some plants from the church (thanks to the lady) We got some pepper plants and other plants. It was like receiving a puppy or kitten, with great care and concern we brought them home. The next step was to find a place to plant them. Again it was a neighbourly turn from another lady who brought us empty yoghurt buckets.We also used modified plastic water cans to plant them. We felt immense joy and satisfaction once we completed the task of planting. I kind of added some more plants by bringing some from my college garden. A visit to the restaurant made us procure some money plant. We also learnt about a popular belief that money plant should be stolen not borrowed.  In the next step of expansion we were assisted by the kids in the neighbourhood who actively participated in the act of farming. This time we had the support of uncle neighbour who brought  bag of mud from his ceramic factory. Kids joined us in mixing ordinary soil and the mud. As of now we have 15 plants and we hope that the number will grow in the future. It also depends on how long we are planning to stay here.

Farmville is a lovely way to do some virtual planting. The game helps you in the following ways:

1. Not-so-bad-way to kill time.
2. Gives a Sense of Hope.
3. It helps us in creating a sense of time, valuable lessons in time management can be learned.
4. It creates a kind of eco sense. Planting trees will almost becomes a habit.
5. You will become a good Samaritan and you will start helping others in real life not just your Farmville neighbours.