CULTURE-TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO: Keeping Jumbies Out of School

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Wesley Gibbings

PORT OF SPAIN, Jan 22 1998 (IPS) - It is not a widely talked about subject here, but there might well be more believers than sceptics when it comes to centuries old tales of evil roaming the earth seeking vulnerable human bodies to possess and control.

In Guyana, where obeah and pocomania thrive, spiritists keep out “duppies.” Here, they drive out “jumbies.”

Last Tuesday, priests, pundits, imams and spiritualists went into action at an East Trinidad primary school as students there claimed they were being affected by “evil spirits”.

The island’s North Eastern office of the Ministry of Education fell short of endorsing the action taken, but did not object when parents refused to send their children to school and called in the exorcists.

Ministry officials would not comment on the bizarre case, but everyone from the principal to the janitor of the Guaico Government Primary School welcomed the smoking chalices, rosaries and “holy water” as religious leaders worked at keeping “jumbies” out of the school.

This rural, agricultural area is well-known for encounters with the spirit world. Hunters talk of blood-sucking creatures preying on hapless victims as they sleep at night and many swear they had seen the bright, burning tails of others make their way across the night sky.

This time around, exorcists were called into the school for the second time in three months to deal with the “strange” behaviour of some students. Some, reports say, appeared to have gone into a trance and, while performing an Indian dance, collapsed to the floor and had to be taken to hospital.

Doctors could find no medical reason for the strange occurrence and did not hospitalise the students. After the first incident last November, which caused 175 children to be treated at hospital, there was speculation that the children were affected by insecticide used to keep dengue-spreading mosquitoes away.

This time around, the sceptics are finding it hard to locate a logical explanation. Rakib Buckridan, a clinical psychologist who writes a regular newspaper column on the metaphysical, believes the issue needs exploring but that the last possibility to be considered is the question of “evil spirits.”

He told IPS it would be necessary to first examine whether there had been further fumigating of the school since the insecticide used could have an impact on the “inhibiting centres of the brain.”

He referred to studies on the subject which proved that in “few cases” could there have been a reasonable suspicion that something out of the ordinary was involved.

He said in the case of the Guaico students, there might have also been a “contagion effect” in which children observing the strange behaviour of their colleagues might have mimicked their actions.

But a number of parents of children who attend the school are asserting that the phenomenon has to do with the claim that the school was built on the burial ground of Spiritual Baptists in the area. One other theory rooted in such beliefs is that some people in the community have been invoking “evil spirits” to get back at a member of staff.

During this recent episode, a female student who was taken to the school’s sick-room after complaining of feeling unwell, emerged from the room with arms upraised and dancing through the small school building.

This set off a string of reactions from other female students and, soon, more than a dozen of them were swaying and dancing through the school eventually collapsing and having what appeared to be seizures on the floor.

Frightened children went into a panic and the principal was forced to close the school for the rest of the day. The girls were taken to the hospital where the staff could not find anything medically wrong with them.

Buckridan believes many people here too easily attribute such occurrences to spiritual phenomena.

He pointed to the work of one Catholic priest, who having seen scores of reportedly “demon possessed” people, suggested that “there might be something there” but in less than one percent of such cases.

For the moment, students and teachers of the Guaico Government Primary School are breathing a sigh of relief that, perhaps, the incantations of the exorcists will keep them safe for now.

It also means that the old folkloric tales of spirits walking with men will be with the people of that district for a long time to come.