Witch Doctors and Lemurs

The first time I left the country was to visit Kenya when I was 19. A friend from Sri Lanka invited me and another friend to visit his father, a man who lived in Kenya doing tea trade. The friend who invited us lost his passport in a mosh pit after we bought our tickets, so we went and winged it for three weeks without him - only seeing his dad briefly for lunch one afternoon. I have many thoughts about this trip, but what’s on my mind today is related to an experience walking home one night - two Americans and a native that volunteered to show us around for the time we spent near Mombasa.

We generally made it back to the place we were staying before dark, but one particular night we didn’t. We were being escorted home by the friend we made when a small lemur with big eyes leapt from the brush onto the road in front of us. I recognized it immediately to be a bush baby – reminding me of the movie Madagascar.

I took two steps after it before our Kenyan friend grabbed my arm and yelled, “no!” I tried to pull away and he tightened his grip. “No! No bush baby!” The lemur then took two more big leaps into the dark and vanished. I was irritated until it was explained to me that bush babies are “the devil”, witch doctors that lure people into bushes to kill them. He fully believed what he was saying.

Later that night I tried imagining the scenario from his perspective, and I really couldn't. It was hard to relate to, but I didn't dismiss him. His experiences led him to that belief. I extrapolated and decided that if I could be okay with his belief, I could be understanding of how all other perspectives lead people to conclusions that I couldn’t ever understand (not that this excuses mal intent). Plato is accredited with saying something like, “nobody is wrong on purpose”. I do believe everyone is making decisions with data they deem best at the time, based on experiences that are infinitely different than my own.