Walazo: The Dadas

Walazo is an old people’s home (kwa watu wasiojiweza) located about twenty minutes inland from Stonetown, Zanzibar.  It’s perched on the top of a high hill; from the dala-dala stop on the main road, it takes fifteen minutes to climb up to the gate.  From inside Walazo’s compound, you can see all of Stonetown sprawling out yellowy-grey and mysterious and tightly-packed until it hits the sea, and the coastline all spiked with dhows and ropes, and the huge, silent cargo ships wallowing just off the coast.  You see the quaint roofs and minarets of Stonetown shift abruptly to the geometric Soviet-era-like housing blocks that rim the city, and then the gradual spreading-out of buildings – more greenery, interrupted by corrugated tin – as the land gets nearer.  And then a huge green mosque just below, one of its two giant speakers aimed toward us, and the other toward the sea.

Walazo is run by three Catholic nuns, who I grew already terribly attached to.  At lunch on the afternoon I arrived, they were pouring each other tall glasses of sour milk – thick, clotted, off-white. 

“Take some, it’s so good,” said Sister Rita.  I declined as politely as I could, and she shrugged and drank her own milk with gusto.  The sour-milk smell clung to their clothes for the rest of the day and made me feel slightly nauseous.  By the time I left two weeks later, I was fond of the smell -- or at least I didn't mind it, the way you don't mind hugging the guy you love after he's played a game of soccer and is drenched in sweat.

The American elections happened a week after I arrived, early Wednesday morning.  Sister Gemma (the leader of the Sisters: stout and regal) had questioned me extensively about the US election process.  The Sisters were all emotionally invested in the outcome, and during their prayer-time on Tuesday, they asked God to choose the best leader for our “great nation.”  I woke up early the next morning (midnight in the States) to watch Tanzanian coverage of the results on the Sisters’ TV.  Everyone else woke up with me, and cheered when letters at the bottom of the screen read: “Obama Victorious.”  The channel kept showing the percentages of the popular vote that each candidate received: 48% to 49.5%, numbers like that.

“Yaani, Kenya needs to learn from America!” said Sister Rita, a Kenyan.  “Your voters are almost half-half, yet you can elect a president without violence!”  I don’t know if the caricatured bipolar system we have is the greatest democratic model, but I do feel privileged to come from a country where democracy “works” (though I just read an article about a bunch of states petitioning to secede after Obama’s reelection... haha).

Sister Gemma went into town for groceries that morning and came back with a tub of blueberry ice cream to celebrate; she called it “the Obama Party.” The blue ice cream was probably not political on purpose, but I was silently amused.

The Sisters prayed twice a day in their prayer chapel on the bottom floor of their house.  It was dark and cool and I loved sitting in the back while they sing canticles out of a prayer-book. Sister Gemma changed the words when she read prayers aloud: where it said “our brothers” in the book, she read “our brothers… and sisters.”  Loved that little feminist streak.  There was a red light in the front of the chapel, set inside a little enclave, that "housed the Holy Spirit."  Whenever we entered the chapel, the Sisters dipped their fingers in an iron receptacle near the door that contained Holy Water and dabbed it on their foreheads.  When they prayed, they lit candles in front of two large plastic figurines of Mary and Joseph.

One thing that kept amazing me was how superstitious the Sisters were.  Some folks think religion in general is superstition, that belief in God is equivalent to belief in fairies and gnomes.  I'm not one of those people; I believe in God.  But the Sisters were always talking with utter gravity about the wild and freaky elements of the Supernatural!  Once, they told me about the decennial unveiling of St. Francis Xavier's body and how it doesn’t decompose and still flows with blood.  They said that at the last unveiling, one devout Catholic cut off Francis' toe as as souvenir, and the blood that came gushing out was as bright and red as a teenager's.

They talked about the mermaids off the coast of Mombasa who come out when the sunlight is at its brightest, surfacing like a flash in a pan, and then diving back underwater when a cloud covers the sun.  They're visible, far offshore, with hair as long and dark and flowing as the sea. 

They told me about one old man in their home who used to practice Black Magic on his porch, and how the school-kids near Walazo would come to him after school; they wanted him to predict their futures and cast spells over their exam results.  One afternoon, the Sisters discovered his porch littered with sticks and seeds and leaves and dust in dark vortexed patterns.  After that, they moved him to a room directly opposite their house, so they could "keep on eye on him."

Sister Njeri told me about her bus-ride back from the Uluguru Mountains last week.  She had boarded the bus with a fellow nun, and this man suddenly sprang from his seat and started screaming, “The angels have arrived!  I can’t do it any more!  Our plans are ruined!  There will be no blood today!  I’m sorry Asha!  Oh the cross, the cross, put it away!”  He was shielding his eyes with one hand and pointing to the rosaries around their necks with the other. The Sisters informed me that Asha is the demon that inhabits the man – a demon who lives off of fresh human blood.  For the rest of the bus-ride, the man kept crying and apologizing to Asha, and listing off his recent victims: “I left Fatuma in Dar es Salaam!  I ate Anna in Moshi!”

The man was riding the bus in order to cause an accident (with casualties) so that he could feed his hungry demon.  The sisters told me with utter seriousness that vampire-demons are the reason for most of the bus wrecks in Tanzania: “That is why you see no blood on the road, even when many passengers die.”  The demon-man was scaring so many passengers that Sister Njeri doused the guy with the last centimeter of Holy Water in her plastic water bottle, and he grew quiet for the rest of the ride.