Spirit Lions...

Today the local media reported that a man in Ghana’s Volta Region had been attacked by a lion. Please understand that the Volta Region is quite a ways from Accra and although culturally similar in many ways, it is also very different geographically. There are no lions in Accra. I read the article this morning and it said that a local chief was attacked and the encounter lasted 45 minutes. In that time the man shot the lion in the head but the lion continued to come The whole ordeal ended when the man chided the lion for attacking an “old man” and slapped the lion across the face. The man did have to go to the hospital to be treated for injuries to his arm and thigh but it is reported that he will make a full and speedy recovery. Being as we do not have wild lions in the US, I found this article to be fascinating. When I went to class this morning I brought it up to the students because I thought they would find it interesting; they found it to be pretty funny. After I told them about it they proceeded to tell me that the lion was most likely a “spirit lion”. I have read about spirit lions before and the students here reiterated, and greatly elaborated on, what I had only read about. Spirit lions are initially other animals on which a fetish priest places black magic or juju and turns the animal into a lion. The lion then becomes the servant of the priest. It is said that if the fetish priest is upset with you that he can send a spirit lion after you. However, it does not always work that easily. Sometimes a spirit lion will attack the wrong person, get a taste for violence and become a rogue spirit lion, or, it is possible in the worst case scenario, that the fetish priest will pass away before he can remove the spell and the lion will continue to go on reeking havoc.

I remember talking with my geography class last year about this same subject. Here, in Ghana, I half expected the students to tell me that those are just traditional beliefs and people don’t really subscribe to those ideas and practices anymore, especially in Accra. However, that is not what they said. Instead, they told me that most of them believe that this was, in most likelihood, a spirit lion. They continued and went into why a fetish priest would send a spirit lion and even how to best defend oneself against such a beast. Some of the students simply believe that the animal was hungry and that is why it attacked, but the majority of the students (I talked to about 200 students on this topic today) believed, with all sincerity, that this was a spirit lion. We had a great discussion about it in all of my classes today, but I think that I learned more today than most of the students.