Ghosts and ghouls and strange happenings abound all over the world. Every country has it's own weird tales to tell - all are reported to be true, told by people not given to wild flights of fancy... What do you think?
Africa
Death Duty
In Madagascar, the Malagasy people have bizarre beliefs about death. They spend more money on family tombs than they do their houses. Some clans even decorate the tombs on the inside. One ceremony in Madagascar is the turning of the bones, when relatives remove a special family member from the family tomb, between 4 and 7 years after their death, to tell them all the latest family gossip.
Other clans have different ideas. Noblemen from the Sakalava tribe are placed on a wooden bench in the hot sun after they die and relatives wait until the body decomposes so they can drink the bodily fluids of the dead, in the hope that they will be imbued with the deceased best qualities!
Sorcerers aren't buried, instead they are dumped to the west of their villages, their necks twisted to face south, and sprinkled with soil so that dogs can eat them!
Can You Stomach It?
King Radama I, who was a harsh ruler in the 1800s, had a revolting method of testing whether an accused criminal was guilty or not. It was called the Ordeal of Tangena. Tangena is a highly poisonous shrub, and the King would extract the poison and mix it into a meal of three pieces of chicken skin and rice. The suspect had the meal forced down his throat and had to wait until they vomited. If the person was innocent, all three pieces of chicken skin came up again, if they hadn't already died because of the poison, they were freed. If, however, the skins settled in the suspect's stomach, they were considered to be guilty and allowed to die a very unpleasant death!
Ship Graveyard
The Skeleton Coast is Namibia got it's name from the skeletons along it's treacherous coastline and the desert beyond. It has for centuries been one vast graveyard for unlucky or unwary ships and their crews. Shipwrecked sailors, lucky to make it alive to the shore, had very little chance of surviving the baking desert walk to civilisation.
The Dunedin Star, which sank there in 1942, with 21 passengers and 85 crew on board, was one of the worst shipwrecks reported so far. Conditions were so bad that even the rescue boat ran aground into the rocks and a rescue plane nose-dived into the sea. A rusty fuel tank from the ship's cargo has joined the pieces of other wrecks on the coastline, as a grim memorial to the lives lost.
Hill Spirits
The spirits in the Tsodilo Hills in the Kalahari Desert are still very much alive. Bushmen carved thousands of animal paintings on the rocks centuries ago and ever since myths, legends and spirits have surrounded them. Laurens Van der Post, a famous explorer, was filming at the site when some strange things began happening around him.
Every morning, huge hordes of angry bees swarmed and attacked him, and whenever he attempted to film, the cameras jammed. Van der Post's assistant who was a native of the area, told him the spirits of the hills were probably punishing him for not respecting their ancient resting place. He then wrote a formal letter of apology, asking for forgiveness, addressed it to the 'Spirits of the Hills' and placed it in a bottle next to a rock painting. The next morning he visited the area with his cameras, and the bees did not return, and the equipment worked perfectly!
Strange Creature
In 1997, villages in the Eastern Cape were buzzing with some horrifying news that a creature, half fish and half horse, had eaten seven locals. The attack happened in the Umzimhalva River. Government officials reported that the villagers descriptions came close to a beast from tribal mythology, which lives in rivers and provides great wealth if caught, called a mamlambo. It came as no surprise that a government official ordered workers into the area to track down the river beast and capture it! Unfortunately for him, the odd-looking creature was not sighted again.
The Dogon People
The Dogon people probably first lived in North Africa, on the borders of Egypt, but between 1300 and 1600, they moved and settled in West Africa. They made their home in the 145 kilometre long Bandiagara Cliff, which is in present day Mali. Around two million descendents still live there.
They built multi-storey houses with flat mud roofs, and granaries with pointed straw roofs, in villages arranged in the shape of a human body, on the steep cliffside. The men's meeting house is in the head, the family houses are the veins and arteries that carry blood around the body. Each of the mud and straw houses represent a body - the kitchen is the head and the bedrooms are the arms.
Gods and ancestors are carved on their doors to protect the buildings and their contents. They have a complex religion which involves a variety of spectacular rituals and dances. They are animalists, who believe that spirits live in all the objects around them, including animals, birds and trees. They believe they were created by a god called Amma, who made just four men and four women, who are their ancestors. The first male ancestor is the most important, as he turned into a snake when he died. Their history is explained in the Sigi ceremony, which takes place every 60 years. The Dogon carve a snake mask which they call the 'iminana', and use it in a variety of dances to tell their history.
They are also expert astronomers. The Dogon claim that their knowledge of the heavens was taught to them long ago by creatures from outer space who lived both on land and in water. Other rituals commemorate the arrival of aliens from outer space, who supposedly visited the Dogon thousands of years ago. They say that the aliens originated from Sirius and landed in Mali. The aliens were amphibious and called themselves the Nommo. The Nommo told the Dogon that Sirius was orbited by two smaller stars. In 1920, astronomers discovered that Sirius did have one star, but as yet a second still has to be discovered. Two French experts who studied the Dogons between 1930 and 1940 believed their story of space visitors. Other investigators suggested that the Dogon learnt of Sirius from French missionaries or the ancient Egyptians, or could be based on the fish-god legends of the ancient Babylonians.
Tales of the Sahara
The Sahara in North Africa is the largest desert in the world, formed from f\great expanses of sand and rock and stretches for more than 5,000km across 13 countries, from Mauritania to Egypt. It is also the hottest place on Earth with the highest record temperature of 58 degrees centigrade taken in Libya in 1922. There is obviously very little water and few plants grow except in oases. Experts believe that at the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 years ago, rain began to fall in North Africa. As a result, lakes formed and grass grew until it covered most of the desert as we know it.
Around 5,000 years ago, the rivers dried up, forcing the people and animals which inhabited the area to leave. All sorts of animals are known to have lived there from ostriches to hippos which were hunted by the local people. Now only the art of those ancient people remains.
French soldiers in Algeria made a series of amazing finds, in 1847, starting with some rock paintings. Thousands of sketches have been made and pictures taken of these painting over the years. Together they cover 1500 square metres, of varying scenes from the animals which roamed the area to the development of the tribes which also lived there.
The scenes show hunters equipped with bow and arrows hunting elephants and a species of buffalo, now extinct, through to people herding giraffes and cattle and on to horses pulling chariots and men riding on them, and finally to camels. The pictures have been dated and range from between 10,000 years ago to the latest at 2,000 years old. The last paintings show the desert was forming and fewer animals as the heat was increasing.
Lion Kill
The Gilbert family had spent thousands on the best guide, food and equipment for their dream holiday on safari in South Africa. On their first day, they spotted rhinos, giraffes, hippos and zebras, and Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert marvelled at the beauty of them all. But all their young son, George could do was moan and whine. He wanted to see a lion and thought everything else was dull and boring. The guide told him he would see a lion when he least expected it and when he did, he would never forget it.
For a whole week, George moaned and whinged, saying he preferred to play on his GameBoy in the camp, then to travel around the countryside, looking at the same animals every day. Eventually, his parents gave in in despair, so they agreed to let him stay at the camp while they went out on safari, and could enjoy the trip in peace. For once, George was happy, as he sat in his tent, playing a game on the GameBoy. 'They'll never see a lion,' he thought, 'I'm much better off here than going out to be bored and disappointed again.'
He'd hardly finished the level on the game, before he heard the roar of a lion - outside his tent! He turned around just in time to see a lioness pounce on him. She grabbed hold of George by the ankle and dragged him through miles of undergrowth to finally drop him on the ground in front of her pack of five hungry cubs, waiting for a meal.
Luckily for George, his parents had already spotted the hungry cub pack and were waiting for the mother to arrive with food, so they had driven up closer for a better look. Their excitement turned to horror when they realised their son was going to be the meal. Thankfully, the guide had his tranquilliser dart already loaded as usual in case of emergency, and shot the lioness.
George managed to scramble up and stagger to the safety of the jeep before the lioness woke. George spent the last week of the holiday in hospital, recovering from his ordeal. One of his Get Well cards came from the safari guide, who had written, 'I told you that you'd see a lion when you least expected it, and that you would never forget it!'
That's all for this issue, see you next time when we visit another country with strange customs and happenings.
