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642 O Obeah toBago Obeah is the term that Africans of Tobago employ to identify the power that some individuals are alleged to have over the natural laws. This power is used to command, through the means of certain formulas, such desired effects as the healing of diseases or the bringing of luck and good fortune to those who hold the power or to the persons who appeal to them. Some are clients with social and personal problems ranging from serious court cases to marriages on the brink of breakup to business failure. In the case of serious disease , so long as repeated visits to the official medical practitioner have failed to bring satisfactory results, Tobagonians conclude that the disease is not “good disease” (natural) and therefore requires the “black doctor” or “Obeah-man,” as practitioners are termed. (See also Tobago—Bush Bath; Obeah—Obeah and Myalism in Jamaica; Gumbay; Kromanti Dance.) The Tobagonian defines Obeah as “science,” “lash,” “center whop,” “tie,” “wash hand,” or “range.” All these terms have their unique applications semantically, in the complex use system in which Obeah finds its social functionality. To further examine the terms used in connection with Obeah in Tobago, it should be explained that “to work Obeah” applies not only to the professional Obeah-man but also to the client who, like the Obeah-man, is viewed with suspicion by some members of the community. In official discourse in Tobago, the term Obeah is often used to refer to malevolent practices. Few admit to practicing it. Those elders of the Spiritual Baptist Faith who have the gift of doing spiritual work would never identify themselves as Obeah-men or Obeah-women, but many outsiders— mostly members of Western-originated churches (see Christianity )—call them so. Many observers fail to recognize any distinction between Obeah as benevolent spiritual work— healing, blessing, help in court cases or difficult situations at the workplace—and Obeah as malevolent practice, where someone sends a spirit ( jumbie) on someone else, or tries to harm his or her business or “tie” an unwilling man or woman into matrimony. Thosewho practice Obeah go undera numberof names including “lookman,” “scienceman,” Obeah-man, and Obeahwoman , but what is interesting about them is that they are called “doctors” and they are all multifunctional. There are no specialists as such. Each of them will divine, exorcize the Evil One, remove a curse placed upon a patient, and “loose” a “tie” that has been hindering the progress of a business man or woman. In Tobago, an Obeah-man is an herbalist, a magician, and a diviner, all in one. In the 1950s in Lowlands, Tobago, a famous and gifted woman called “the Damsel” was very popular because of her work with barren females and impotent men. Her work was especially to undo the work of those Obeah-men who were practicing “revenge magic” and causing harm. Despite the various West African linguistic origins of the word Obeah (Allsopp 1996), in Trinidad and Tobago it was the Kongo (Congo) nation (see Kumina; Palo Monte; Comfa) that was regarded as having the great sciencemen, the notorious Obeah-men who traditionally had the power to levitate and transform themselves into werewolves and other fierce animals . In South Trinidad they made claim to extraordinary powers, which the Yorubas (see Orisha Tradition) and the Igbos did not aspire to. In Tobago, there were several Congo Hills, settlements containing closed enclaves of “Congomen” who would join the other Africans only when their special aid was needed in times of serious disaster, like the epidemics that struck Tobago in the 1850s and when cholera and typhoid swept the little island in 1920. The Kongos with their special skills came down from their settlements at Pigeon Hill, Charlotteville, and joining with other Kongos from Low Side, played their music and performed their “science” and healed many a patient. These exceptional Africans have died out, and manyof their skills have been lost.They never taught it to the other nations around them. In 1951 the University of theWest Indies Extra-Mural Team of researchers who were in contact with the Caratal/Mayo Congos came away with just a smattering of Kongo culture and a few songs. In Tobago at Pembroke, a small group of Africans led by two Kongo drummers annually hold a saraka (ancestral feast) (see Rada— Saraka Ceremony), but they work no Obeah, never having learned it from the elders. Obeah-men perform a variety of social functions in the Tobago...
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