Sascha Wil­son

Nor­mal­ly a tran­quil fish­ing vil­lage, Moru­ga bursts in­to an ex­plo­sion of ac­tiv­i­ty with its an­nu­al Christo­pher Colum­bus re­dis­cov­ery en­act­ment and East­er Sun­day and Mon­day cel­e­bra­tions. De­spite its rich his­tor­i­cal back­ground in­ter­twined with a mix­ture of cul­tures, eth­nic­i­ty and re­li­gions, how­ev­er, Moru­ga con­tin­ues to be haunt­ed by a dark past in­volv­ing obeah and witch­craft. The late Pa­pa Nez­er and Moth­er Corn Husk–the mere men­tion of these two names still strikes fear in­to the hearts of many. Dubbed the King and Queen of Obeah dur­ing their reign and sev­er­al years af­ter their death, Moru­ga was then, and to an ex­tent still is, con­sid­ered the cap­i­tal of obeah. Chill­ing mem­o­ries sur­faced re­cent­ly with re­ports of de­mon-pos­sessed stu­dents at Moru­ga Sec­ondary School. Eye­brows were again raised with talk about Moru­ga be­ing steeped in obeah. Res­i­dents ve­he­ment­ly de­nied this dur­ing a vis­it to the sleepy com­mu­ni­ty last Fri­day. In fact, they in­sist­ed the vil­lage was re­li­gious-ori­ent­ed, hav­ing some 20 church­es of var­i­ous de­nom­i­na­tions.

"That was in the past. They die out now," res­i­dents echoed, when asked about the prac­tice of obeah in Moru­ga. For­mer school prin­ci­pal, Pe­ter Gloudon, said most of the el­der heads, who were la­belled obeah­man/obeah­woman, had died and their lega­cy along with them. "The younger ones nev­er pick it up," he said. De­fend­ing the vil­lage rep­u­ta­tion. He be­lieved that Pa­pa Nez­er and Moth­er Corn Husk were mis­un­der­stood. De­scrib­ing them as bush doc­tors or herbal­ists rather than obeah peo­ple, he said they used herbs to cure peo­ple when con­ven­tion­al med­i­cines failed. Say­ing they al­so pos­sessed the abil­i­ty to help peo­ple spir­i­tu­al­ly, he added: "They were sci­en­tif­ic in the sense that they knew things that oth­er peo­ple did not know." Gloudon, whose first wife was re­lat­ed to Or­isha King Pa­pa Nez­er, said Pa­pa Nez­er and Moth­er Corn Husk used to host a big feast where they did cer­tain rit­u­als. But, he said: "I do not think that is an evil thing be­cause they used to help peo­ple."

He re­called that oth­er vil­lagers of the Or­isha faith, a man named Pal­limoo and John­ny Mitchell, al­so held rit­u­al feasts and of­fered sac­ri­fices but they, too, died. As far as he knew that was no longer a way of life in Moru­ga, he said. Pa­pa Nez­er's grand­daugh­ter Leo­nis Roberts al­so in­sist­ed that her grand­fa­ther, whose re­al name was Ebenez­er El­liot, was a herbal­ist, but he was stig­ma­tised be­cause peo­ple could not com­pre­hend what he did. Spar­row even sang about him be­ing an obeah man. "Any­one could be a bush doc­tor, you just need to know about the herbs," Roberts said. De­fend­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of his vil­lage, Gloudon said Moru­ga was re­li­gious-based with count­less church­es–in St Mary's alone there are about sev­en church­es. He said it was not an evil place as per­ceived by some. An­oth­er res­i­dent, Far­ri­er Malchan, 70, said obeah ex­ist­ed all over the coun­try, not on­ly in Moru­ga. "Don't let any­body fool you, these things ex­ist," he said, re­call­ing in­stances where he wit­nessed ex­or­cisms. "When it hard­ly had elec­tric­i­ty up here peo­ple use to read bad books and it had La Di­a­b­lesse and thing." In Moru­ga, he said, peo­ple sel­dom car­ried young chil­dren to fu­ner­als be­cause spir­its fol­low them.

'Deal­ing with evil spir­its dan­ger­ous'

Gloudon said he did not know what to make of the "de­mon pos­ses­sion" in the school. Ru­mours, he said, had been cir­cu­lat­ing that an Or­isha woman had an al­ter­ca­tion with a teacher threat­en­ing re­venge and that the school was built on a ceme­tery and re­li­gious rit­u­al.

Preach­er Moses Abra­ham, of Streams of Pow­er Full Gospel Move­ment at La Rufine, how­ev­er, said the pos­ses­sions had been hap­pen­ing at the school since three weeks ago and es­ca­lat­ed last week. He said de­mon pos­ses­sion took place when peo­ple dab­bled with evil spir­its. He ex­plained: "You see, for de­mon pos­ses­sion to take place peo­ple have to deal with evil spir­its which will pos­sess the body of the hu­man and they re­act in dif­fer­ent ways. It is very, very dan­ger­ous."

Fish­ing, a way of life

Moru­ga has moved away from be­ing agri­cul­tur­al-based to be­ing a fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty, said Gloudon, who added that their fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty was one of the largest with over 160 fish­ing ves­sels.

Fish­er­man Al­bert Tay­lor, how­ev­er, lament­ed that the au­thor­i­ties were not plac­ing enough em­pha­sis on the fish­ing in­dus­try. He said they were yet to get prop­er fa­cil­i­ties. In­stead of re­lo­cat­ing the fish­ing de­pot, he sug­gest­ed that they ren­o­vate the ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ty. He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to put mea­sures in place to con­trol the in­dis­crim­i­nate fish­ing. He said trans­par­ent nets that scraped the sea bot­tom were de­plet­ing the fish­ing sup­ply.

"There was a time fish­er­men worked Mon­day to Fri­day, now have to work every day...day and night." Gloudon said they had moved away from be­ing an im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ty, adding that Cepep and URP were two con­tribut­ing fac­tors. "We have a lot of peo­ple gain­ing em­ploy­ment for this." Al­though the state of the road has im­proved, cer­tain ar­eas re­main de­plorable. Gloudon, pres­i­dent of the Moru­ga 500 Com­mit­tee, said the ma­jor ac­tiv­i­ty in Moru­ga was Colum­bus' re-en­act­ment, which has be­come a three­fold cel­e­bra­tion in­cor­po­rat­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and St Pe­ter's Day. In ad­di­tion, he said, East­er Sun­day and Mon­day were al­so grand events.

Moru­ga's His­to­ry

Giv­ing a brief in­sight in­to the his­tor­i­cal back­ground of Moru­ga, Gloudon said Colum­bus' ar­rival was fol­lowed by peo­ple of Span­ish de­scent who plant­ed co­coa and cof­fee. Then came the French, he said. Hence the French names of places in Moru­ga such as Grand Chemin, Bois Jean Jean, La Re­traite and La Lune.

In that era, he said, Ro­man Catholic was the dom­i­nant re­li­gion. When Trinidad be­came a British colony in 1797, he said Amer­i­can slaves who had sup­port­ed the British dur­ing the war were giv­en parcels of land which they named Third Com­pa­ny, Fifth Com­pa­ny and Sixth Com­pa­ny. He said they were re­spon­si­ble for in­tro­duc­ing the Bap­tist faith.