June 2007 Meeting Report By Dan Creffield
Juliet Coombe kicked off her very entertaining talk: Black magic: Be a Devil about her travels from South America to South East Asia in search of magic and mystery by pointing out how many supposedly ‘black magic’ customs and superstitions are often no more than practical remedies and traditions passed down from generation to generation.
Why do people traditionally use garlic, she asked (other than in cooking). To keep vampires away! was the response. But more well-informed members also knew that garlic can have antibiotic properties. It also smells pleasant and has a calming effect, she explained.
The same is true of salt – often thrown over the shoulder for good luck – which has a similar antiseptic effect. Voodoo dolls have a reputation for being used as a curse, but in fact their use simply echoes the practice of acupuncture, prevalent in countries such as Haiti.
However, she did find herself mixed up in devil dancing, exorcisms and yes – some black magic. Much of it, though, could be explained away as harmless rituals. Firewalking, which Juliet said she witnessed, often represents purification.
These kinds of rituals served to ease the pain of many communities following the Tsunami disaster which hit many countries in south-east Asia. The ‘devil dancers’ common in Sri Lanka were actually desgned to scare demons away.
She also acknowledged that while much of the ‘magic’ was clearly just wild talk and nonsense, some of the things she witnessed were impossible to explain, and she became more convinced they were genuine the longer she observed some of the rituals.
For example, she said she had seen people walking through fire, placing their hands in boiling water and sticking skers through their skin without actually seeming to do themselves any physical harm or even apparently feeling pain. Ultimately, she concluded, there ARE things which we simply cannot understand.
Our next speaker, James Brabazon, showed us his Sony award-winning film Liberia – Journey without Maps. James spent many months travelling around the lawless state of Liberia with Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), a rebel force formed in 1999 by Liberian refugees in West Africa who opposed the government army led by the country’s former president Charles Taylor.
The conflict threatened the stability of neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone. James frequently feared for his life and witnessed murder and horrific violence on a regular basis. Some of the footage showed soldiers – some only barely into thei teens – eating a dead enemy’s heart (not too graphically though, thankfully!). Taylor has since been sanctioned by the United Nations for war crimes, and is currently on trial.
James explained that he originally went to Liberia for three weeks but quickly realised this relatively short amount of time would not adequately capture the scale of human suffering taking place in the war-torn country.
He was constantly astonished by the lifestyle of people in the country. Time was never fixed, he explained, with the term “soon” meaning anything from tomorrow to in a month.
The soldiers clearly lacked much in way of military training, often mixing grenades with fuses of different lengths. Once a grenade went off in a car, killing one man and injuring another badly. James said it was sheer luck that he decided not to ride in the car on that day.
However, he was also impressed by the indomitable spirit of the people, and their willingness to fight on even when the cause seemed hopeless.
By Dan Creffield
London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back in September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotters Info line on (+44) 020 8674 6229, or visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk