THE OBEAH MAN WHO WASN'T:

THE TRUE STORY OF PAPA NEZER

By Kathleen Maharaj

Express

March 21, 2000

Pages 6 & 7

Papa Nezer was not an obeah man, but he knew his way around it. "He could undo the work of obeah. If somebody did a spell to do something to an individual, he could undo that but he never cast it himself," says anthropologist Prof. Frances Henry.

Henry, who has both American and Canadian citizenship and is married to a Trinidadian, lived in Samuel Ebenezer Elliott's house for three months in 1956.

She had come to Trinidad to study the Shango religion and everywhere she went she was told, "Ask Pa Nezer, he knows everything."

So she did, but he played hard to get at first. She persisted and stroked his ego, telling him that she could tell just by looking at his face that he knew everything there was to know about Shango.

The first thing he told her was that it wasn't called Shango.

"It's the African work, the Orisa work," Papa Nezer told her.

He then invited her to live for a while in his Moruga Road house.

Henry isn't sure why Papa Nezer opened himself to her.

She wrote in a book launched last Thursday night, titled Beliefs, Doctrines and Practices of the Orisha Religion in Trinidad, 1958-1999, "Perhaps he knew that I would one day write about him and his work and try to share my knowledge with people who know him only by myth."

Her book was launched at the Heritage Library, Knox Street, Port of Spain.

Pa Nezer was immortalized by Sparrow in his calypso "Obeah Wedding," about a woman named Melda who was working obeah to tie him into marrying her.

He sang: "Melda, Melda, you don't seem to understand/ Obeah can't upset my plan because Papa Nezer is my grandfather."

Henry said, "For years and years and years people were afraid of him and they called him an obeah man. I mean nothing could be further from the truth."

In her book, a collection of articles, she described him as "a tall, heavy set, paunchy man who walked with a slow, shuffling step, shoulders stooped, head bent forward, and he gave every impression of being ill."

He suffered with rheumatism.

She also wrote: "The myths about Pa Nezer in Trinidad were legion. People believed that he had a vestigial tail and that he was the son of the Devil. Some thought he had a jack spaniard nest in his beard - in fact, he was clean-shaven! Above all he was believed to be an obeah man…As far as I know Nezer never practised obeah - it would have been a total anathema to his deep Christian faith."

Henry said obeah had no significance in Orisa.

The Orisa (sometimes written Orisha as it is pronounced) faith is the traditional belief system of the Yoruba people of West Africa.

"I think what happened early in the 20^th century is that because there is a belief in this region about obeah, about black magic, about witchcraft, that that belief existed side by side with the Orisa religion and, in the minds of people who knew very little about how black magic operated and even less about the Orisa religion, they brought the two together because they're both supposedly African."

Orisa is the fastest growing religion in the United States, according to Henry, who attributed this growth to the presence of large numbers of Cubans and Haitians who had brought with them Santeria and Voodun - their equivalent of Orisa.

Henry spoke of the debate within the local Orisa community about whether or not to discard the Christian aspect of the faith. It is the wish of younger members to remove the Catholic-inspired Christian elements from Orisa.

But Babalorisa, Sam Phills, chairman of the Council of Orisa Elders, told the audience at the book launch that Catholicism "was a bedrock to us" and led the gathering in a litany of the dead in memory of the late Archbishop Anthony Pantin.

Henry said she had no answer to either side.

"I am an observer, not a devotee," she said, but added that people must be able to worship in the way to which they were accustomed.

Papa Nezer was accustomed to Christianity, as he was raised as a Baptist in Fifth Company Village, and Orisa, as his grandmother was a renowned Orisa priestess.

Papa Nezer, born in 1901, was sent to live with his grandmother who passed on knowledge not only about Orisa but also about bush medicine.

It was his knowledge of healing that made him legendary, Henry said. Every Saturday morning there would be a queue of people awaiting his attention.

Henry wrote: "He sat on the verandah, his Bible next to him, and in his hand he rolled the obi seeds, which he used for divination. He would look at a patient, listen to his/her complaints and make a physical diagnosis such as 'hot blood' or 'wind in the stomach'. But then he usually added an explanation of the cause f the problem - 'not live right'; 'you don't live like a Christian'; 'you're envious of your neighbour'; and so on.

"On one occasion I heard him tell a young man that his physical complaint was caused by his worry over a minor robbery he had committed. The man was astounded, blurting out, "How you know that?" Elliott smiled and said, 'The Power never lie", and told him to keep on the Christian path of righteousness and his body would mend."

Papa Nezer dispensed herbal medications of his own making but always told people to pray.

Sometimes, he told his patients to read the Bible or to say 50 Hail Marys every day.

Henry said a man was brought in to Papa Nezer one day who seemed to be paralysed but who left the house walking on his own and smiling broadly. She was later told that the man's neighbour had put some obeah on him because he wanted the man's wife.

Papa Nezer never asked for payment, Henry said, but patients usually left "a little something", including gifts of vegetables and ground provisions.

Indians and members of the middle and upper classes also visited Papa Nezer, she said, but these people usually came under cover of night.

There were times when Papa Nezer told patients he couldn't help them. Henry said two such cases were a man with a broken arm who he gave the $2 taxi fare needed to go to the San Fernando General Hospital, and a woman who he said had cancer.

Henry herself used one of his remedies for sand fly fever. It consisted of spreading calamine lotion (mixed with herbs and a scorpion tail) on her legs to take the sting out of the sand fly bites, and drinking a brew made from the bark of a tree to get rid of the fever.

"By evening my symptoms had eased and the next morning I was hale and hearty again," she wrote.

She used to see Papa Nezer reading from a large and very heavy book and one day got a look at the title: The Home Physician's Guide, published in Great Britain.

Henry said Papa Nezer took up bush-doctoring in his mid-30s after several dreams and visions in which he was told by Orisa deities that he had remarkable healing powers and that he should use them.

Papa Nezer was at his most imposing though when he became "possessed."

Henry said her appearance with Papa Nezer at Orisa feasts raised some eyebrows, not only because she was a white woman, but because Orisa was practised underground during those days and strangers were not exactly welcome.

Henry said his possession by Ajaja-Jonah could be terrifying. As Ajaja he appeared seven-feet-tall (he was actually about five-feet, ten-inches) and he stomped around barefoot, shouting orders and chastising people for bad behaviour. One night he noticed a few people asleep in hammocks during his heated sermon and overturned all the hammocks, dumping the occupants on the floor, berating them for not listening.

"In possession, his rheumatism and slow shuffling gait entirely disappeared as his movements became awesome and assertive. When the Power left him, his body appeared to shrink, his gait became shuffling again and the middle-aged man with rheumatism reappeared," Henry wrote.

Another terrifying moment was when he became possessed by Aba Lofa or "God the Father".

The night in question he sat on the porch for several hours in silence and was completely still. Then his eyes closed and his head shook faster and faster until it looked like it might roll off his neck, and his body quivered. He then walked to his bedroom, wit his eyes closed, where his wife handed him a pair of white trousers, shirt and headband. He put them on and pulled on a white cloak.

He went into the 'chapelle' and then appeared with a freshly killed cattle head on his head, the blood dripping down his face and throat and splattering his white garments. Papa Nezer then did a vigorous African dance.

Henry returned to her home in Canada at the end of her three-month stay with Papa Nezer but visited him again two years later in 1958. That was the last time she saw him. He died in 1968 of diabetic complications (one leg had been amputated) and was buried in a double coffin, the inner one made of lead, because of fears that his skull might be stolen and used for evil purposes, she wrote.

Henry said people were always asking her about her time with Papa Nezer and wanted to know whether she ever caught Power, or "fell to the drums" or was initiated.

Her answer is no.

Henry said she had enormous respect for the elders and devotees of Orisa who, at great cost and pain to themselves, kept the religion alive. She added that the presence of President Arthur NR Robinson and Prime Minister Basdeo Panday at Orisa events helped give legitimacy to a religion whose followers were once oppressed and, in the case of Papa Nezer, feared.

Henry ended her article on Papa Nezer by saying: "In these years I've travelled extensively and have met and associated with some of the major intellectual and political figures of our day. No one has ever made as deep an impression on me as that supposedly simple old Shango bush doctor from Southern Trinidad."

Papa Nezer was married and had four children.

On Sunday, the Orisa community held a family day at their ancestral lands in Lopinot and Henry again spoke about Papa Nezer.

This time she called for a monument to be erected in his memory and for schoolchildren to be taught about the life and work of this man who, she said, contributed to the building of society.

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