Do demons exist?

The average Kenyan believes evangelical pastors and witchdoctors who claim to cast out demons are a fraud. But SOPHIA KHAKASA spoke to a woman who says she’s known demons for years.When the Son of Man cast demons into pigs thousands of years ago to free a man’s troubled spirit, the matter should have rested. But demons are back — with a vengeance, it seems. If reports can be believed, they have been let loose even in Nairobi and they are impregnating people’s spouses, deflowering virgins, indulging in sodomy and breaking up families. And predictably, neither the latest DNA tests nor the smartest of doctors can prove a thing.It’s not entirely a "new happening". Stories of demons or jinis as they are popularly known around the Coastal belt have always been treated with a pinch of salt by other contemptuous Kenyan communities.At the Coast, the demons are feared and revered at the same time. Many men allege to have witnessed demons molesting their wives. Although one cannot actually see the demonic spirit, they can see their wife’s clothes being ripped off and watch her sweating and screaming in pain, it is said. The most famous demons in Coast are said to be ‘Safia’ and ‘Halfa’.According to folklore, demons with a penchant for rape are heartbroken individuals whose love was scorned at a particular moment in time. So heartbroken were they that they committed suicide mostly by jumping into the lake or ocean. Their angry, jilted spirits normally show up even 20 years later to revenge on the victims or their spouses, the stories go.BewitchingIn his classic African novel, The Concubine, Elechi Amadi waxes lyrical about the bewitchingly charming and beautiful Ihuoma. Every man desires her, but none will own her because she is a spirit and the wife of a water spirit king.These tales about spirits and demons have always been that; tales. But no one is ridiculing Coastal people and their jinis anymore — not since demons started following victims to Kayole Estate in Nairobi and as far as South Nyanza.Doris Achieng’, 23, has, in her own words, been to hell and back for five straight years, courtesy of demonic attacks. "I was in Form Three when it all started. The year was 2002. I had come from school as usual, but I felt unusually tired. Immediately after my evening meal, I went straight to bed. "The next morning, just a few minutes to six o’clock as was the routine, my mother woke up to open the door and let the chicken loose. "Immediately the door flung open, I felt a strong wind blow into the house and suddenly felt heavy on the back as if someone was sitting on me. I tried to hit it with my right hand but the hand fell right into a hole like a mouth and stuck inside. I quickly turned my head only to see a naked woman staring back at me. "I had to do something drastic. Screaming was the first option but I feared the consequences. My second option was to cast it away. I invoked God’s name and it disappeared in thin air. I never spoke about it or told anyone thinking it was just a bad dream. "But the night that followed was scarier. This time the woman came with a companion and with their naked and cold bodies, they sandwiched me and blindfolded my eyes. They warned me against screaming or raising any alarms and threatened to kill me if I did. "I kept struggling and fighting to free myself with no success. When I could not take it anymore, I decide to scream. And immediately my mother responded to my distress call. She lit the lamp and prayed with me. That night I slept soundly till morning.Sleepless nights"However, the nights that followed were no different. I literally slept with those demons. They would order me to do their will and when I disobeyed, they would threaten me with death. They warned me against speaking out about what was happening."I only found peace by staying awake the whole night. That meant spending sleepless nights with my lantern on throughout the night because the demons would attack anytime I tried to doze off. This happened for three consecutive years. "This affected my class work to the extent that I had to drop out of school. Later I discovered I was pregnant and up to today, I cannot say who the father of my child is as I was still a virgin when all this happened. The child is now ten years old," says Doris.Her story is one that resonates with Athman Ahmed, 36, of Majengo, Mombasa. "We were in bed with my wife when the ‘visitors’ came. When they tried to molest her, I resisted but one slapped me so hard that I fell on the floor, paralysed. I could not move for 24 hours," says Athman.Own worldDoris, on the other hand, says on some nights, she would feel someone strangling her and she would escape into her own world where strange and immoral things happened. Here, everyone was dressed in black and the land was all covered with blood, she says."But my family and church pastors kept praying for me. "One night, when I had taken my normal trip to that dark world, I kept walking on and walked past the place I now refer to as hell. I could see some bright light past hell and kept walking towards it. "Towards the light, I noticed someone clad in a white robe and gold and shiny ornaments. He was stretching his hand towards me and the more I stretched out to reach him, the more difficult it got. I was not to give up because deep inside my heart I knew getting into contact with this man would save me from further demonic attacks."Immediately my hands got contact with his, I breathed heavily and woke up. I found my family and friends mourning that I was dead. I came to learn later that I had been unconscious for nearly six hours. That was the last day I experienced demonic attacks," narrates Doris. You might be surprised to learn that demons and exorcism — the driving out of Satan and evil spirits from a possessed person, place or thing — thrive not just in Africa, but in the so-called civilised world as well. According to the website, skepdic.com/exorcism, the Catholic Church, for instance, still maintains a 27-page ritual to drive out evil spirits. The ritual involves the use of holy water, incantations, various prayers, incense, relics and Christian symbols such as the cross.ExorcismThe website describes the 1973 death of German exorcism victim Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old who had her first psychiatric episode at the age of 16. She apparently suffered from depression, epileptic seizures, and various hallucinations. "But her zealous Catholic family believed she was possessed by Satan and recruited two priests who performed the exorcism ritual 67 times on the mentally ill woman. At the time of her death Anneliese weighed about 31kg. The priests and her parents received suspended jail sentences, but the Church began requiring priests to obtain permits to perform exorcisms. Not so in Kenya where nearly all witch doctors and pastors profess to be expert excorcists.But Johnston Ndegwa, a primary school teacher in Nyeri, dismisses talk of demons as hot air."What you cannot see with your naked eyes cannot exist. These people (excorcists) are just crooks who make money from people with problems," he says. Basil Tulesi, a counselling psychologist based in Mombasa, suggests the people who experience demonic attacks could be suffering from mental illness and exhibiting distortions of perceptions or hallucinations."They are probably experiencing delusions that are contrary to reality. It is not far-fetched for them to imagine rapes," he adds.

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