| THE HISTORIAN can write about European witchcraft crazes with a degree of detachment the anthropologist, participating observantly in a sorcery scare, cannot emulate. The former, can, no doubt, eloquently express his indignation at the clerical obscurantism which, in collusion with popular incredulity, sent thousands of innocent old women to a fiery end. But he will be raking over coals long spent in his own culture. The latter, the anthropologist, can even have his own fingers burnt when the smouldering fires of suspicion flare up into accusations of witchcraft among the people whose social drama he is sharing. At the very least, he can no more remain indifferent to the inhibiting effects of his people's idioms and images than he can fail to be moved by the economic and political injustices done to them by individuals and their own or alien institutions. This is above all true of the anthropologist who also happens to be an apostle. The apostolic anthropologist's position is a delicate one. While his fellow missionaries will mistake him for an anthropologist, his anthropologist colleagues will take him for an apostle. He himself would like to think the latter are not wrong. For the accusation most likely to enrage him is that he is using his apostolic activities merely as a front to accumulate field material for academic purposes. I would like this article to be read as an illustration of how apostolic and anthropological aims can converge into a harmonious and helpful pastoral strategy. Nowadays the colonial administrator is accused of having applied anthropology so as to alienate the people from their best and long term interests. There are those who fear that the foreign missionary abuses the people by using anthropology to subjugate them to a particular Church. May this article also illustrate that pastoral anthropology aims rather at enabling people to make their own that measure of Christian freedom of which they are capable. I The Wakonongo, a branch of the Wanyamwezi, in West Central Tanzania, to whom I ministered for three years, were bedevilled by majini spirits. As a Catholic priest amongst an almost totally Catholic population, I could not simply be content to analyse spirit possession from the socio-economic and historico-cultural angles. The parishioners would not have understood, even less appreciated, my standing aloof from a matter so affecting the community's life. This is not the place to discuss the sociological setting of the phenomenon women's liberation a la Kokonongo nor to detail the cultural context: the superimposition of an Islamic idiom on a traditional spirit cult. I would prefer to outline here how, after a prudent and protracted investigation of the phenomenon, I came to involve the spirits themselves in the psychotherapy of their victims. The most convenient and convincing way to do this is by presenting a case study. In the summer of 1972, N, the granddaughter of the old man with whom I was staying, turned up unexpectedly in our village from her father's place some two hundred miles away. She was a pleasant, smiling extrovert, friendly and uninhibited. A full frame belied her early teens, betrayed, at times, by a certain giddiness and coquetry. Her industriousness and readiness to help, won her elders approval. Her gaiety and good humour endeared her to her companions. I, for one, assumed her to be in the best of spirits. All was not well however. It soon transpired she had fallen out with her father. He had matched her with a cattle-rich neighbour and the marriage beer was already brewed before she plucked up courage and refused to marry her intended husband. Understandably, neither he nor her father was particularly pleased. But she held out against their exasperated entreaties and declared her intention of going to visit her grandfather to seek some respite. At first, she seemed to have put behind her the worst of this distressing experience. During the day she worked wholeheartedly with us in the fields and in the evenings joined lightheartedly in the conversations around her female relatives' fires. She appeared to be in the best of spirits. But her resilience did not last. A couple of days after her arrival, while bathing alone in the dark, prior to retiring, she was heard sobbing and groaning. Worried, the womenfolk went to investigate and found her lying in a coma-like trance, quite incapable of coherent speech. Her condition left no one in doubt as to what had happened: she showed all the symptoms of having been possessed of a spirit. Wrapped in a blanket and still heaving heavily, she was ferried on the back of a bicycle to W's, the woman exorcist and leader of the majini spirit cult. By chance, I happened to be there, having spent the evening in W's compound, assisting at the expulsion of a spirit and recording majini songs. The "operation" was over and we were about to disperse when N was brought to us. She was made to sit on a special stool, still obviously lost to the world, neither recognising me nor replying to my greetings. Preparations went ahead for the new patient with the same no-nonsense matter-of-factness which characterizes a casualty ward. A pot of herbal medicine was boiled to steaming point and placed between her feet. The blanket was pulled over her head and down to the ground. She rocked to and fro, moaning the while, inhaling the fumes and puffing occasionally on a hemp-stuffed pipe. Two young men began to shake rattles rhythmically, close to her ears, while the dozen or so women present took up the repetitive majini songs, calling on the spirits to be appeased and put in an appearance. W, who had been busy selling paraffin to a late night customer in her husband's shop, came forth, put out her cigarette, seated herself on a stool facing N, and summoned the spirits to declare themselves and their intentions. After some minutes, it being apparent that the spirits were about to speak, the singing was stopped. In her ordinary voice, at first, the exorcist enquired after the spirits' names, provenance and purpose. They replied in hysterically high pitched voices that they were numerous; that they had been sent by N's father and financee because she had infuriated the one and slighted the other; and that they would make her pay for her misbehaviour. This seemed to be too much for W's own spirit. He took possession of the exorcist and scathingly apostrophied N's spirits: "You are not genuine spirits! Why do you torment this poor creature? She has done nothing deserving of capital punishment! How long are you going to stay? What can we do for you?" Cowed by this imperious onslaught, N's spirits, one by one, acknowledged the points their superior was making and agreed to reconsider their mission. They declared they would merely trouble her for a while but, as she was obviously not entirely to blame, would stop short of finishing her off. They would eventually return from whence they had come but meanwhile would like deferential and preferential treatment in the form of certain kinds of food and ceremonial observances. They then respectfully took their leave for that evening, and N came to her senses and was restored to her relatives, subdued but not shattered. She walked quietly home and slept soundly till the following morning. II
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