Kenya is a little less stable than normal these days. After a recent presidential election in which Mwai Kibaki won, riots broke out over claims of voting fraud. Americans tend to forget that we're lucky that a disputed election leads to court battles and not gun battles. We're actually in the minority on that. Actually, Kenya is lucky that they're one of the more stable countries in Africa so their problems were protests turning violent and not the case of competing presidential hopefuls bringing their personal militias into the streets.
Of course during these riots, Kenya having a high rate of poverty, many people saw it as a good time to remodel the house or start up a business and looted stores in the area during the chaos.
They're now returning what they stole on their own accord. Why would they do this? Because they can't poop. They supposedly can't pee either, and it's commonly believed in Kenya to be caused by a curse by property owners who were unhappy with the ineffectiveness with local police at finding their stolen goods.
You know what, if I were going to curse someone, that's probably the curse I'd go with, especially when I knew the wrong I was attempting to redress wasn't done out of malice but a needy person spying an opportunity. It's not lethal, unless the victim is too pig headed to bring the stuff back before getting a ruptured bladder, kidney failure, or blood poisoning, but it is quite painful and pain is always an effective training tool.
Too bad I don't believe in curses. Or maybe it's good for many of my students that I don't believe in curses. Some of them would be getting monkey pox or something.
2 comments:
Good headline. I think one of Christianity's shortcomings is a steadfast refusal to resort to curses, aside from the occasional utterance of "God damn it." A well executed, malicious curse really seems to get results. In my experience, the effectiveness of prayer has been about 50/50. But a good constipation curse? That gets 'em every time.
Mickey, if it's curse you want, you should read up on your Old Testament. Isn't there a story of Elijah calling down a bear from the mountains to eat children who make fun of him for being bald? I'm pretty sure there is. That's really fucked up.
Interesting post, Jacob. I suppose it never occurred to the people that they can't poop because their diet is so terrible (or nonexistent at times).
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