[note]Mar.23.2009

Islam and Christianity are the two major religions that are practiced in Tanzania. Although proportions of Muslims and Christians vary greatly from one region of the country to another, (more than 90% of population in Zanzibar is Muslim) wherever you go people would identify themselves with one of the two religious groups.
Regardless of the religion of their choice though, for the past several weeks at my school, I’ve been realizing a very significant role, in their daily lives, of traditional healers or witch doctors and the belief centered around spirits called “Shatani”.
My first direct encounter with this Shatanism was about two weeks ago. I was sitting in the staff room, preparing my lesson plan and chatting with other teachers. Suddenly we hear a loud scream outside. What I saw then was a female student violently shaking her body and screaming for several minutes and collapsing down on the ground. Although the situation wasn’t usual for me at all, the other teachers were surprisingly calm, just watching over the student as if something like this happens regularly. Then I heard one teacher nonchalantly say “oh, it’s Shatani again.”
I didn’t know what Shatani was but since then I started to realize that something like what I’d witnessed had been happening around me with some frequency but I hadn’t bothered to pay attention to it. The other day during my lesson, a teacher abruptly came into my classroom to check up on a student who apparently had been unconsciously lying down on the ground since the start of my lesson, after erupting out cries and violently shaking her body. With 40 some students packed into one classroom and without any one of them telling me what was going on, I failed to notice anything different.

So I became really curious to know what this phenomenon was all about. After talking to one of my colleagues, he gave me the following information on the Shatani.

1. Shatani is the name of a group of good and evil wandering spirits. (he then added that they are mentioned both in Quran and the Bible and that people believe in their presence regardless of one’s religious orientation.)
2. Evil shatanis can get into your head and possess you. The possession causes the screaming and violent shaking of your body as I’ve witnessed before.
3. “Possession by Shatani” proceeds something like as follows; it enters a victim’s head/mind, takes control over his/her body to give suffering (this is when the violent shaking and screaming take place) and after several minutes, the body comes to collapse on the ground and the victim unconsciously lies flat for a while. I haven’t yet seen how the victim recovers from that point.
4. The best way to get shatani out of your head is to visit one of the traditional healers who are believed to have the ability to talk to shatanis and find out what the shatani wants.
5. Once you provide the healer with the particular item the shatani wants, it will leave your head. (In some parts of the country and neighboring regions, this aspect of the Shatanism and traditional healing is causing human rights violation and controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/world/africa/08albino.html)
6. These healers can also direct shatanis to possess and suffer a particular individual hence some people visit the healers to ask for the “shatani attack” on someone they despise.
7. Women, especially young girls seem to be particularly vulnerable to the attack.

Well, although I cannot think of any legitimate explanations for what I’ve witnessed so far, I am not convinced of the presence of such spirits, of course. But the point is that a belief like this one is deeply rooted in the society.
What is the science behind all this? Are there any medical explanations? Or are they just faking the attack? If so, why?
Many questions still need to be answered.
Whether the shatanis exist or not, I really hope that the violent eruption of cries and body shaking will not ever happen during my lessons.