Dear diary
I said I was going to tell you about my encounter with the voodoo priest, so this is just going to be a side note and not my usual daily rant to you, as what I will be talking to you about happened over the course of a month, earlier than that maybe, but I am going to be talking about when I actually got into the picture.
I gotta tell you also that this encounter wasn’t about me alone but my family, actually my male siblings exclusively. Before I delve into it though, I have to give a little run down on how it all started and what actually led us to meet with a voodoo priest. This would give a lot of perspective and angle to the story. So, here we go...
Where I come from, working without eating bodes badly (this is somewhat a local adage), this, in essence, is what you could call a fool's errand. In other words, you are really working hard, but there are no results to complement your hard work and when it continues like that without an end in sight or a possible explanation to what is actually going on, then you gotta go look for answers.
A lot of freaky things have happened in my family, a lot of questions went unanswered. Like when my dad got sick, when he died and things that happened afterwards. I mean you could assume and speculate, being just human with a pretty limited grasp of the unseen.
Right before my dad died, when he was pretty sick and in and out of hospitals, a colony came and nested in our house. Nobody was stung or anything but they just nested there for some days, did their thing then left. This was considered an omen, a bad omen which indicates an impending death or sorrow.
A couple of weeks after the bee incident, my dad died and that even opened up more chain of events. When we sent word back home to his brothers about his death, one man on hearing the news was confused, he claimed he had seen my dad on the morning that we said he died but that my dad didn’t have much to say when they met; he just waved and walked past pretty fast.
Hmmm, from the day that he died up until the day he was buried and probably months after, there were different accounts of his citing and disturbances from him. He was a very gentle and peaceful man when he was alive, so these ghosts stories mean he was probably angry about something or with someone.
My mum would tell us how she continually feels his presence in the house, how she would hear someone cleaning the sole of their shoes right in front of our front door (like he usually does when he was alive), and then how she would hear the sound of drawers opening and closing, fridge opening and closing when everybody was supposedly asleep.
My eldest brother had his share of experiences with him too, but he didn’t harm anyone, he wouldn’t harm the family he had just left but he was sure as hell scaring the living daylight out of us. The weird things in the house stopped when my mum called out his name one early morning and gave him a stern warning that if he doesn’t stop, she was going to leave. Right after that, the disturbances stopped and we had some peace, at least my mum and older siblings, because I was just 8 when he died, I didn’t know much of what was going on. Although I saw a lot of tears to understand what grief meant.
The period of my father's death was one of the episodes of mystery in my family but it was just the start. At least that period was always the 101 whenever we reminisced on the freaky things going on.
Well, after his death life went on, we all grew up and became important members of society. We had two police officers (Dad was a cop too) one nurse, one lab scientist, a footballer and a political scientist. We were all doing okay, in comparison to the general standards and expectations of our environment. We weren’t living lavish, but we had means and we were living fine.
My eldest brother, when he thought it was time, at least when he had the resources remodelled and expanded the house my dad had built in the village. This is somewhat expected of him because, by all means, the house belongs to him and is an extension of my father, so the onus was on him not to leave it in ruins.
(As at the time I was writing this piece, I had gotten interrupted by a big spider, a beetle and a rat, all in the space of 1hr. A rat jumped right on me from the curtain, a beetle attacked me like a fighter jet. WTF?)
He remodelled the house in a way that signifies the presence of a new head of house. There was a big house warming party and I would say, this was one of the best periods of my entire life. There was a feeling of power and influence rising again from my family in the village, a feeling that used to be there, but died when my father died. It was apparent that my brother had re-enacted it, even when he consciously trying to.
Do you believe in dark magic? Voodoo? I believe the universe is full of mysteries and holds some revelations that we can’t possibly view and understand within our human consciousness.
The house warming party was lit, everybody from the village came, ate, drank and made merry. My brother gave out gifts and cash in loads, to old and young, men and women alike. It was a festival, it was big, it brought us smiles at the time, and everything was great...but not for long.
The house warming happened in December 2008, strategically planned to correspond with the Christmas season and the festivities and it proved to be the last family merriment we have had to date.
After the party and the Christmas celebrations, everybody went back to their different bases of operations, their different, normal lives, and then the problems started.
You know when you are having series of misfortunes, you wouldn't know where to place it or what exactly is happening until you ultimately hit rock bottom, and that is exactly how it happened at the dawn of the New Year. It all started from the eldest of us who had just done the house warming. His business took countless financial hits, everything seems to be happening to him at once, it was like a chain of bad luck. Kinda reminds me of one episode in Supernatural, when the Winchester boys had an episode of bad luck and every single thing would just work against them.
His business partners no longer wanted to do business with him for no reason at all, those he did business with started owing him money, the supermarket he had setup for his wife started winding down, business became bad all of a sudden, two of the three pieces of land he had bought over the years when things were well and good suddenly became the centre of dispute between two native communities where he had bought them. His life was being torn to shred right before his eyes, but the cumulative effect was to come years later.
At this point, his finances had almost dried up which had affected every aspect of his life. He could no longer pay rent for his house, he couldn’t renew the lease on his wife's supermarket and the lawyers were on his neck. Items in the supermarket were ultimately auctioned off and the supermarket closed down. The more these little blips happened, the harder he fought to turn things around, but the forces conspiring against him (us) were stronger.
Couple of months later, a very good friend of his who had borrowed him some money when he was trying to turn things around needed his money back, but he had no money to pay back, in fact, he no longer had any money. This friend wasn’t having any of the excuses and had to involve the law to get his money back. When it rains, it pours and it was certainly pouring problems for my brother.
Do you believe in dark magic? When things like this are happening, do you assume they are coincidental? What if they keep happening for up to 10 years or more? It would have crossed the threshold of coincidence, wouldn’t it? How do you explain these strange happenings? Can one person or a family of 5 hard working adults be that unfortunate?
Follow me as we go down this road, this is only the beginning; there is plenty to come...