Genies "MAJINI" made in Tanga

By Erick Kabendera

On a roadside cafe, in downtown Ngamiani, sits a group of men, they sip bitter coffee from tiny tin cups and nibble on kashatas, enjoying the salty taste of the peanuts stuck in burnt sugar as it mixes with the scalding hot liquid in the mouth. The talk is mostly on politics. Then Faki Haji Faki passes and a sudden hush falls over the group.

“Do you know where he stays?” an elderly man in a white kanzu, whom they call Sheikh, asks the rest as they watch Faki disappear into the early gloom of the evening.

No one responds. No one knows where Faki Haji Faki lives these days…not since he started writing about genies and went to learn about them from the late Said Hassan. Since then he has become a mystery that no one wants to solve.

Soon the creepy silence that fell over the group begins to dissipate and tongues begin to wiggle once again. “I heard he once fought a genie,” someone contributes.

“Yes, the genie attacked his cousin,” Sheikh nods in agreement, “That was in Micheweni.” He tries to remember the exact date, fails and just adds vaguely, “That was some time ago.”

More stories about Faki’s exploits flow each one more incredible than the other. Generally everybody agrees that Faki has helped a lot of people with his genies. Then the stories extend beyond Faki and become about the supernatural in general, for which Tanga, a coastal city, is well known

There are the Pangani and Chumbageni coconut shells with their amazing vocal abilities and which can curse you if you ever step on them or kick them. Then there is the story of the man, Soud, who meets a genie one night as he walks home after watching a film at the Majestic Cinema Hall.

“He is walking along Mkwakwani Road,” narrates the old man, Sheikh, as the others listen attentively although they may have heard the story a hundred times already. “It is night and no one else is outside…”

It is deathly quiet and there is no one else with him that night. Then a woman suddenly appears in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere. He wants to greet her but his words turn into a terrified scream when he looks down and sees…hooves where her feet should have been. He runs away.

The hellish night does not end there for Soud. Fleeing from the apparition he miraculously runs into his sister, wearing a long white gown, in the middle of yet another dark and deserted street. In his state of panic he never wonders how she came to be there but instead words tumble out of his mouth as he conveys to her what he saw. As he gets to the hooves part his sister lifts up her gown and reveals her own hideous pair of hooves, “you mean hooves like these?” she asks him with a smile. That is too much for Soud, who falls down and dies…

Sheikh finishes his narration.

It is 10 pm now and a chilly wind is blowing raising bits of trash and dust on the road. The stories about genies are beginning to make some of the people outside the café nervous. Shifty gazes sweep this way and that perhaps looking out for strange women wearing long flowing gowns. But the old man Sheikh is not done. He quickly embarks on yet another story that involves his cousin Mohamed in the late 90s.

“I guess most of you know my Cousin Abeid,” he begins. Some heads nod in agreement, some don’t. “Eh eh! You people, you are letting me down. Don’t you know Abeid who got married to Mzee Haruna’s daughter of Pangani?” Everyone nods now and Sheikh continues telling them about a fateful night at Darajani area as the ill fated Abeid is riding home on his… er… bicycle

He is pedaling along the empty street at night when suddenly a creature crosses the road in front of him. It appears to be a man in a kanzu but he is the tallest man that Abeid has ever seen. The man’s torso seems to be going up endlessly and Abeid can only get the sensation that somewhere high above him there is a head looking down. The shock is tremendous and he loses consciousness and tumbles off his bicycle. People find him the next morning wondering around babbling incoherently…

It is now midnight and the group begins to disperse. Huddling close together the men leave in twos and threes with hurried steps wishing to reach the safety of their houses fast.
.
The next morning I try to find Faki Haji Faki. It turns out he is still in touch with current technology despite spending most of his time cooped up inside his house with ghoulish creatures from another world. I give his cell a ring. As I wait I wonder briefly if maybe a genie can answer the call. Then a cheerful voice, that sounds perfectly human responds on the other end and says it belongs to Faki Haji Faki. He is happy to hear from me and agrees to meet me the next morning.

Faki is as slender as he appeared to me the other night. Hygiene, though, does not appear to rank very high in his priority list. His kanzu is old and tattered, tainted although at certain spots it still maintains its former white. Cleanliness aside, Faki comes across as a goodhearted person.
He agrees that he keeps genies at his house. “I first learnt about the skills in 1980 when I was writing a book called Jini Mwanaharamu.” The book he hasn’t been able to publish to date because of lack of funds. “I knew there was no way I could write about genies while I knew nothing about them. My intention was to write a book with fictitious characters but with reality in it,” says Faki.

As it turned out things became too real for Faki as he was drawn deeper and deeper into a strange world of alien creatures and bizarre rituals. To learn about his other worldly subjects Faki had to seek the help of one Said Hassan, now deceased, who kept genies at his house and knew the secret rituals.

“It took six months to convince him to teach me his skills,” says Faki. Later the old man agreed and Faki moved into the house where about 20 genies were kept. “The old man used to lock himself in a separate room that nobody was allowed to enter, except his oldest son.” Faki says. “During all that time I was yet to be shown anything.” The training lasted a year. Faki remembers the night he saw his first genie…

…It is an exceptionally dark night with hardly a star in sight. Faki goes out to relieve himself after yet another fruitless day with the old man Hassan. The toilet is located about three meters from the house. As he walks he sees something that forces him to freeze in his tracks.

“It was really dark yet I could clearly see it,” recalls Faki

It is a man, but a very old one, with a stooped back and long strands of white hair that obscure the face and fall all the way to the waist. His ancient nails are long and curved at the end. The skin is abnormally white and seems to be defying the inky blackness of the night.

“I could clearly see him,” repeats Faki, “he was so pale.”

Faki does not relieve himself that night and instead runs back to the house, horrified.

The next day passes without any more ghouls making appearances but at night Faki is invited to the ‘room’, the one where only the oldest son is allowed to enter.

With his heart drumming Faki closes his sweaty palm on the doorknob and slowly pushes the door open. The creaks from the rusty hinges only serve to heighten his anxiety. Inside it is dark, Hassan is sitting on a mat with some people Faki describes as ‘strange’.

He recognizes one of them; it is the ancient genie from the previous night with the pale skin and the long hair. It speaks and its voice has an eerie hollow quality to it. The genie tells Faki that it is in fact German and aged 250 years. It lives on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. “It told me that it takes it about four seconds to fly from the mountain to Tanga,” says Faki.

More genies warm up to the new comer and begin to present themselves. One says it is 190 years old and that it is Nyamwezi by tribe. Then they begin to eat. The food consists of raw nuts and roast chicken and rice mixed with milk. After the meal a bizarre ritual follows where the spectral diners and their human host clean their hands by wiping them on the floor then digging a hole on the ground and pouring water into it before drinking.

Said Hassan is now dead and his oldest son has taken over from him the task of keeping the genies. Faki says he has learnt a lot from the old man but not enough to keep ‘genuine’ genies. “I keep manufactured genies,” he says and confesses his fear of the type he calls genuine which cannot be destroyed by humans and therefore extremely dangerous.

There is thriving business in genies going on mostly in Tanga and Pemba where a single manufactured ghoul fetches around sh25,000. “It is people from Tanga who buy the genies from Pemba,” says Faki. He himself keeps several manufactured genies but insists that they are for helping others only. The genuine ones are the most expensive and can go for as high as sh100,000.

“The genies which are made are called SIHR,” says Faki. Genies can live up to five generations and within that time may produce more than six children. Six spectral fledglings and their parents can be quite a handful.

“To keep genies you have to abide by their rules. For instance, you have to dig a big deep well where they can swim at night,” says Faki. Another condition is to allocate a separate, and very dark room, for them to live in and where no one is allowed to enter except the keeper. “you must also slaughter a he-goat for them every year and prepare a special meal for them called ‘chano’,” adds Faki. Failure to adhere to the conditions can lead to fatal consequences for the owners of the genies and their entire families

Faki suddenly interrupts his flow and stands up to stare at the setting sun through the window of his house. He suddenly looks weary as if the weight of the of the entire world rests on his shoulders, “they don’t want me to interact with people,” he says referring to the genies, “that has affected me a lot. I sometimes I feel like my heart is no longer human.” He says.

But suddenly his mood changes as melancholy gives way to a bright playfulness in his eyes. “let make you one genie, just to prove what I have been telling you,’ he says with a smile then takes a white A4 paper places it inside his trouser pocket before taking it out again and placing it on top of the table between us

The white piece of paper rests on the table and I stare at it dreading the horrors that can leap out of its white depth at any moment. No growling creature suddenly emerges from the paper instead Faki asks me to rub my hand on the floor and then stamp it on the paper. I put my hand on the dirty floor and then place it on top of the blank piece of paper just like he said.


I gasp with shock when I see what my hand has left on the paper. Instead of the outline of my palm there is a caricature image of what may have been a human being but with huge round eyes and jutting spikes for hair. The figure is bulging out of the paper too as if straining to free itself from whatever sphere of existence it inhabits. I find this out as I trace the outline of the drawing.

“it is alright, don’t worry,” Faki says reassuringly when he sees fear spreads itself across my face. He reaches for a plastic bag and from it picks out a black bottle. “if I put this paper in this bottle,” he dangles the bottle, “then you will be able to fully see the genie.” He looks at me questioningly.

I am not sure that I want to see it. Right now it looks contained within the paper and unable to do anything beyond staring out into our world. Transferring it into the bottle, I feel, will be similar to freeing it somehow from its paper prison. I don’t want that responsibility knowing that it did come from my palm. I don’t want to dig wells and have separate dark rooms and he-goats to slaughter each year. I shake my head, no.

Faki smiles, “young man you should get used to such things. I thought you wanted to see?”

No thanks, I mouth. He cancels the exercise.

No thanks…