Chilling Accounts
There is a multi-storied residential building in Nairobi's Eastleigh estate that always has vacant rooms. And it is not for lack of tenants. But those who enter the building never stay very long.
There is also a building in Huruma with a room that is always vacant. Several tenants are said to have died in that room, so nobody rents it any more. The building is widely rumoured to be inhabited by jinn.
Yet another building in Mathare North has a high turnover of tenants.
"Only a few people stay here for more than two years despite the reasonable rent," says a tenant who is planning to move out at the end of the month.
Francis Musyoka explains why. "I had surveyed the rooms. They are very spacious and I was planning to move in when I heard there were jinn in the building."
Asked for a logical explanation for these seemingly superstitious phenomena, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Mr Francis Owakah, retorts. "You sound sceptical; don't you believe that jinn exist?"
Jinn (the plural of jinni) are spiritual forms mainly associated with Muslim mythology who can assume human or animal form and influence man by supernatural powers.
Owakah wonders how one can possibly disregard the existence of spirits and their interaction with living people.
"How do you explain a dead person refusing to be transported to his rural home due to the presence there of somebody whom the deceased had disagreed with when he was alive," he asks.
"I have even heard of houses in Karen and Buruburu being abandoned due to jinn," he adds.
Nevertheless, the philosophy lecturer, who specialises in logic and African philosophy, hastens to add that so long as science has not discovered the laws governing phenomena such as spirits, their existence will always remain a matter of personal experience.
"Science operates within two laws. The first holds that the laws governing phenomena be discoverable. The second law states that such laws be interpreted. But what if science has not discovered the laws in the first place?" he poses.
So where does one draw the line between truth and fantasy? What are jinn in the first place and how do they resemble other spirits or differ from them?
The Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend says of jinn: "In Arabic tradition, a devil or demon with great miraculous power. There are five kinds of jinn: jann, jinn, shaitan, ifrit and marid, but these are seldom distinguished in translation."
The dictionary goes on to trace the dual nature of jinn: "In the earliest concept, the jinn were probably malicious demons, living in deserted or impure places, often in animal shape. Islam adopted these spirits, admitting a possible dualism in the jinn, some good, and some evil. They still retain an animal characteristic, whether paw, or hoof or tail."
Many of those who have encountered these spirits testify that jinn can either be benevolent or malevolent, depending on how they are treated by their human clients, although their malignant nature is more conspicuous.
The benevolent jinn are largely believed to protect their human clients against witchcraft, while others bring material prosperity. This, by and large, is the conception of jinn popular with Islam, which views them as God-fearing spirits just a little lower in rank than the angels.
Mohammed Abdullah, the Imam of Jamia Mosque in Eastleigh, Nairobi, explains that while angels are made of light, Muslims believe that jinn are made of fire. But he goes on to add that although jinn are "believers in God, they are made from the same material as shetani (devils), who only differs from them in that he doesn't believe in God. "
Jinn, according to Imam Abdullah, can disguise themselves in many forms and shapes such as animals and human beings. And like human beings, jinn also eat, but they eat bones of either animals or humans, rather than flesh. In this way, too, they differ from angels, who do not eat.
The evil jinn, on the other hand, are believed to engage in all sorts of malicious activities, including turning against their clients and killing them, haunting whole families out of their homes and having sex with women even in the presence of their husbands. Perhaps because of this malignant nature, none of those who keep jinn are willing to admit to it.
Nevertheless, tales abound of how jinn have made life miserable for some people while creating riches for others. Generally it is believed that the jinn behave themselves until their retainer breaches their terms of contract. One such term of contract is that their retainer must feed them well. Another is that he must ensure that some of them are sent "home" when they become too many, since jinn procreate like humans. If they are too many, they become a bother, often given to wandering and harassing innocent neighbours. Sending jinn away entails driving them to the nearest flowing river, which will take them all the way to the sea, their original and natural home.
Feeding jinn depends on what purposes they are retained for. According to Maluki Mwoki, who was once employed to look after jinn, those who are supposed to bring prosperity and protect it require a cow to be slaughtered for them at least once a year in addition to their normal food, such as rice. In addition, they might demand a human sacrifice, which might be the favourite child of the host. The host does not have to do the killing himself, but is required to point out the child, and the jinn do the rest, making it look like a natural death.
The other category of jinn, says Mwoki, are those that protect their owners against sorcery and other evil spirits, and these require normal food, and maybe a chicken or goat once in a while.
Dennis Wafula narrates how, for close to a year, he was haunted by jinn while living in Nairobi. The middle-aged man recalls how on several occasions he would leave his house in Dandora and go to the shop with a Sh100 note in his pocket, only for it to have turned into Sh50 when he took it out to pay for his purchases. And that was not all.
Several times he and his wife left the house in the morning to go to work, and on returning in the evening, would be told by the househelp about how they had both come back during the day for lunch or 10 O'clock tea.
When this happened several times, Dennis decided to investigate. He realised that some jinn had been impersonating him and his wife and coming back to the house when they were away. There have many cases reported of jinn haunting school children. Just two years ago, a primary school in Kitui town was reported to have been invaded by spirits, causing pupils to be possessed and to speak in strange tongues. Some of them spoke in fluent Kiswahili although many did not use the language in their normal lives.
A woman suspected to have brought the jinn to the locality from the coast was almost lynched by angry parents. Since time immemorial, spirits are believed to have physical love affairs with women of flesh and blood. The Bible reports in Genesis how the "sons of God' started having sex with human beings and in the process begetting giants".
In his book, The Story of the Devil, published in 1931, Arturo Graf narrates how Saints and Fathers of the church collected evidence of intimate communion between spirits and humans. Citing one such authority, Arturo writes: "And in the life of Saint Bernard is related the scandalous story of how a brazen devil who, for years in succession, lay daily with a certain woman without the slightest check or restraint, so that he would even thrust himself into the bed where the poor husband also was sleeping."
Arturo goes on to tell how some women came to like their clandestine connubial affairs with the spirits and concludes the passage with a shocking revelation: Alvaro Pelagio, bishop of Silva, who about the year 1332 composed in Latin a book entitled The Lament of the Church, says that he knew many nuns who voluntarily offered themselves to the fiend.
Despite their dark side, jinn are in high demand ("so and so has gone to the coast to buy jinn," it is often whispered) due to the belief that they protect one's wealth in addition to bringing prosperity. Indeed, so widespread is the the connection between jinn and wealth that anyone who becomes wealthy overnight is rumoured to possess them even when the poor fellow has no idea what the spirits are all about. On the flipside, the hand of jinn is often seen in tragedies. Commuter accidents, for instance, are often blamed on the owners of the vehicles or boats, who are accused of sacrificing innocent people to appease their jinn.
Spirits: Facts or fantasy?
Despite countless testimonies by different people about their encounters with spirits, there is still a lot of skepticism as to whether spirits really exist.
The major problem is that such experiences are not subject to scientific or even empirical verification, explains Mr Francis Owakah, a lecturer in the department of philosophy at the University of Nairobi.
Claims of encounters with ghosts, some people's ability to commune with the spirits of the dead, palm-reading and future telling have been attributed to religious beliefs by skeptics. The universal belief in life after death is seen as the utmost influence of those who claim such experiences. Scientists also attribute the phenomenon to mental dysfunctions and hallucination.
But since the 19th century, social scientists have been studying the phenomenon of spirits with more seriousness than before. Their findings, backed by empirical evidence, overwhelmingly lend credence to the existence of spirits. These studies show that what we call the soul or the spirit within us, can conceivably move out of the physical body and assume a different, more subtle body, thus overcoming the limitations of the grosser body we are made of, and the limitations of the senses which restrict the perception of human beings.
So far, these findings are the closest to a scientific admission that the soul survives death and thus corroborates the religious belief of life after death. The most persuasive phenomenon verified by social scientists across the world which gives evidence to the existence of spirits are the so-called Out of Body Experiences (OBEs). Jouni Smed defines OBEs as those curious and usually brief experiences in which a person's consciousness seems to depart from his or her body, enabling observation of the world from a point of view other than that of the physical body and by means other than those of the physical senses.
A number of OBEs, according to findings by social science researchers, have claimed to have left their physical bodies and gone wandering in various places. O
An example of a vivid OBE, which was subject to empirical verification, is cited in a book, Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience authored by K. Ring and published in 1980: A very near-sighted woman was lying on an operating table with the anesthesia medicine behind her head. When she experienced the OBE, she felt detached from her body and could read the equipment identification numbers which were out of her vision. She then floated up to the top of the room and noted that the top of the light fixtures were dirty. After she recovered from her illness, she returned to the hospital and ascertained that the numbers she had seen were correct and that the light fixtures were actually dirty.
Near Death Experiences are a phenomenon similar to OBEs, with many people who have been certified as clinically dead but somehow survived telling how they escaped the body and travelled in another subtler body. A 1991 poll, estimates that 13 million Americans (five per cent of the population) have reported having had near-death-experiences. Similar experiences have been recorded in other parts of the world and across all cultures. The surprising thing is that despite the dissimilarities of religions, all NDEs have common traits. NDErs talk about travelling in a bright tunnel, meeting the spirits of their dead relatives and a "Being of light". They report having seeing a river, which they their dead relatves urged them not to cross, and instead turn back because their time had not come.
These findings have strengthened the argument of those who believe in the existence spirits, and especially in life after death. To many people, the belief in spirits, is the clearest demonstration that there is life after physical death, and that human destiny is controlled by higher spiritual powers.
The Funk & Wagnall dictionary says that jinn "are usually invisible, but can appear in any shape, human or animal". This explains the different shapes and forms of jinn reported by those who claim to have seen them. Some have said they are miniature humans with oriental skin colour while others report seeing humans with hooves like those of a donkey. Still others associate jinn with cats. For the most time however jinn remain invisible even as they continue wrecking havoc in the lives of many people of flesh and blood.
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