Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Animal sacrifices, what??

That's right. I got to go visit the fetish priest today (aka witch doctor). I saw an animal sacrifice (it was a chicken), but I wasn't allowed to take pictures. I did get a picture of the main priest though. He's very tall and has dreadlocks. Pretty cool guy.

Apparently, the chicken sacrifice was for this guy who wanted prosperity. SO, the priest was sitting there and slit the chicken's throat (I think, I was behind him so I didn't get a good look), and poured some blood on the ground and then smeared it on this little round thing and said some stuff and I don't really remember what else. I think he cut the head off too. Then someone else took the chicken away (it was wiggling pretty badly). I think they eat it. But first they had to bring some of the organs back out and put it on that little round thing for the gods, obviously (um, I kinda snuck a picture of the whole set up from far away, but don't tell, I don't want to die). Some guy was hitting a rock on a bigger rock the whole time. Oh, and later he came back and rang these bells for 5 minutes or so.

The main priest did some weird egg-throwing thing a couple times. At one point he was talking to me and someone handed him this egg and he just chucked it as hard as he could onto the ground as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He wore a couple different outfits and people came to consult with him. After he did some weird ritual thing involving egg-throwing, throwing some kind of dust around from a machete, and walking around the shrine with his helpers he went into this room and called people in one at a time.

Apparently, if you disobey the priest, he will kill you. And it sounds like sometimes you just kinda die. Last year, I was told, this priestess just died because she disobeyed one of them or something. And I was also told that this priest was so tall because he has the spirits with him now. AND if the spirits don't like a certain food he can't eat it again EVER. There's one priest that can't eat rice. This one has been seen eating fufu, so I guess the spirits are okay with that.

4 comments:

Jenna said...

What is fufu? Apparently I missed that post.

Brie said...

crazy!

Brooke said...

it's amazing how diferent other cultures cna be!!! I am glad they didn't kill you for taking a picture!

Kelli Nicole said...

Lol, correction. They don't know I took a picture. I sneaked it. From far away. When the priest was in a room consulting people. I will never tell them I took a picture, but you probably can't see anything very well anyway.