18. Experiences in Jamaica and Barbados
Jamaica
The first of my two visits to Jamaica in 1964 proved the more profitable. What I saw was not as exciting as in Trinidad or Brazil, but it was interesting and informative. Jamaica has its own peculiar mixture of African and Christian religious practices, called Pocomania. Intensive drumming is not used, though a large drum is sometimes employed to mark the beat for singing. The service consists almost entirely of the repeated singing of hymns of a Moody and Sankey type, interspersed with short periods of preaching, prayers and readings from the gospels. There is also a great deal of ‘tramping’, which means rhythmic over-breathing and the making of peculiar breathing sounds for the purpose of ‘bringing down the Holy Ghost’, which also makes the worshippers highly suggestible to what is told them by the preacher.
The slums of Kingston, Jamaica, where these services are held, are as bad as any I have seen anywhere, and can be dangerous, especially after dark. The service we attended was run by a black preacher named Karpo. He is also a talented painter and I believe that since our visit his fame as a painter has outstripped his celebrity as a Pocomania ‘shepherd’ or leader. He told me that he himself had been converted at the age of fifteen; he was now in his thirties. He had been preaching and healing people ever since he was sixteen. During the service he went round laying his hands on those who needed help. He said that he was able to help the mentally ill and to treat some organic diseases as well and he believed that this was due to the faith created by his preaching and by the services. His congregation looked upon him as the instrument of God, who healed the sick through him.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that among these poverty-stricken people religious services of this sort are of real help, in giving them a sense of dignity and faith in living, despite the appalling circumstances of their lives. We saw the same effects in Africa, where the same techniques are used to smoothe away resentments and tensions. I am sure that as the Black Power movement becomes stronger, this type of service will be bitterly attacked, so great is its power to keep people contented with their lot when they possess little or nothing: and indeed they cheerfully praise God for what little they have.
As usual in such services, the preacher dominated the scene. Half-way through he stopped, took us behind the scenes to his room and had a long talk with us, paying little attention to the congregation, which waited patiently for him to resume the service. When he did continue, I was able to sound-record the ‘tromping’. It was very similar to what we had heard among the nomadic Sainburu tribe in Kenya, who used this same method of inducing trance before battle. The tromping went on practically the whole time that the preacher was talking; this would have the effect of producing a state of greatly increased suggestibility and readiness to accept what he said. There was also rhythmic hand-clapping to the beat of the big drum, while they were singing.
We arranged for a second visit in the same week, to film part of the service, but when we arrived we found the BBC and Alan Whicker there too, for the same purpose. He seemed rather bewildered at what was going on around him at this service. The BBC camera team became very angry with us because, they said, our efforts would impede their own. We tried our best to explain to them that we had arranged to film there before they came along, and that they had been told to come in on the same night to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. However, their lighting was very useful to us. This was before Alan Whicker left the BBC for ITV and later, at home, we saw an interesting BBC television programme on Pocomania, which contained some of the information I had been able to give him.
When the hymns were being sung, because so many of the congregation were illiterate, the preacher had to give the next line of the hymn as the previous line was being sung. This gave a peculiar chanting effect, with the congregation repeating everything the parson said. Some shouted ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen’ after every sentence uttered by the parson in his sermon; there is an agreed body of opinion and no intellectual opposition to any point of view expressed by the preacher. In group worship of this sort, anyone who disagrees with the preacher must leave the church and start his own services elsewhere, or attend some other chapel. There is no room for critical religious discussion or expression of doubt, which would spoil the powerful atmosphere of uncritical faith and mar the happiness and peace of mind of the other worshippers.
At this service there was a notable absence of younger people. While men and women were going into trance and being possessed by the Holy Ghost, the preacher himself started to go into trance, to a lesser extent, no doubt brought on by the repetitive singing and preaching. He identified himself with the congregation in trance and possession, which indicated his personal contact with God. The Holy Ghost would then descend on preacher and congregation alike. At the end of the service, because we had been attacked in the same district earlier in the day, as will be described later, he sent us home in his car as the safest way of getting out of the very tough slum district at night.
There is Indian influence in Pocomania, as well as African, and deities of both continents are mixed up with Christian saints. There is an ‘Indian’ spirit, another called ‘Queen Dove’, another ‘Bell-Ringer’ spirit, and there is the ‘River Maid’. According to the spirit present, so the form of ‘tromping’ changes. A certain East Indian spirit came into Pocomania around 1840, and when one has been possessed by this spirit one grows long hair. In Pocomania they also talk about ‘labouring and travelling through the spirit world’.
Sometimes one person in the congregation is delegated to talk with possessing spirits or the Holy Ghost, and then tell the rest of the congregation the content of the conversation. The pastor is known as the Shepherd and the female flock are called ‘sisters’ or ‘mothers’. There is much less identification with African gods, but Indian spirits are identified with Christian saints and the Holy Ghost. Fasting is also frequently used to make people more sensitive to the messages given them by the spirits and the preacher. The fasting usually lasts for about three days, and services go on continually during that time.
On the day of our first visit to a Pocomania service in 1964, we had seen another religious procession going down the street near by, earlier in the day. Foolishly, and it was the only time I did this, I started to film the procession without getting formal permission from the leader. It turned out that they had been out all night, fasting and praying in the country, and were now coming back to their small chapel to complete the service. Some were already entranced, and most of them were in an hysterical and highly excitable condition. Suddenly we were attacked; attempts were made to snatch my camera, and my wife was hit and spat upon. They deeply resented, quite rightly perhaps, that I was endeavouring to film them without their permission. We were rescued by one of the faithful who turned out to be a policeman. He told the rest of the group to leave us alone and that we had as much right to be there as they had. We then asked if we could come to the church with them, and again the policeman suggested to the others that we be allowed to do so since there was ‘freedom of worship’. We went along with them, but the atmosphere was still very tense and difficult. When we were in the church, I got up and made a speech explaining that I was a doctor interested in these services, and felt that perhaps they had more to teach us than we had to teach them. I also explained that I had a brother who was a Bishop of the Church of South India. This pacified them as part of the congregation were of Indian origin. Because of the degree of suggestibility and excitement present, quite an ordinary speech on my part was able to switch them completely round to full cooperation, and we were given permission to film and photograph as much as we liked.
Later in the service the policeman gave his own testimony of how he himself once came in to a service, in an official capacity, but suddenly felt the hand of God upon him and from then on had become a believer and a worshipper with them. The preacher and the congregation were all wearing Indian-style clothing, with turbans on their heads. After a while the preacher went off into complete trance and possession; his body was shaking so much and his head moving so quickly that his turban unwound itself and finally fell off. As he went into possession, numerous members of the congregation went in with him and we saw extreme examples of possession-states of the same type as described elsewhere. This was no doubt aided by the long fasting beforehand. Before the end of the service a marriage took place between two of the worshippers, and individual testimonies of conversion were given by several people. Certainly in this service the Indian influence was most marked and there seemed to be little of the African influence which was so prominent in the Trinidad ceremonies we saw.
While in Jamaica we also attended a less excited service at which there were many young people. Two children aged about ten or twelve went into trance, and I saw this again in Nigeria among a Christian sect called the ‘Cherubim and Seraphim’ (Chapter 15). There was the usual singing and hand-clapping in this service and an intense personal commitment of the congregation, as one by one they rose and gave testimony of their conversion and what it meant to them in their subsequent religious lives. I remarked again how much more religion meant to these people, both personally and emotionally, than it does to most Christians elsewhere.
Barbados
In 1967, following a second hurried visit to Jamaica, we spent a week at Barbados attending a Caribbean Psychiatric Congress. I was assured there would be nothing of special interest to me there in the way of the subject I was most interested in. But my informant proved far from right.
Going through the graveyard of one of the older churches I found a funeral procession just starting. A Spiritual-Baptist preacher was burying his mother. It was a sight to be seen. The ‘mourners’ were dancing and jumping with joy around the grave as the coffin was lowered into it, because they were all so certain that the deceased was now very happy in Heaven. Such absolute faith and joy in the face of death was a revelation to me and contrasted severely with the sombre attitudes of most Christians at a funeral service.
I established contact with the preacher concerned at his church the following Sunday. It turned out that he had been trained in the Belmont region of Trinidad and knew Leader John and his group. This church also practised ‘mourning’ and ‘travelling’, as Leader John’s group did. Of all our experiences in the West Indies, this was one of the most instructive and impressive. There was no drumming, but the loud ringing of a bell ‘brought down’ the Holy Ghost into the hearts and bodies of the people. The preacher and most of the congregation were in trance, the preacher dancing with individual members of the congregation. Then a succession of people gave evidence of what a change had been wrought in their lives since being saved, after the Holy Ghost had possessed them.
A man with a symbolic sword stood in the doorway, possibly as a defence against the entry of Elegba, the troublesome spirit, and many of the other rituals here showed that the service had partly African origins.
After I had spent some time filming and taking photographs, I joined in the service, as a mark of respect to those present. And here I was nearly ‘caught’ myself by the surrounding atmosphere. I was struck by their deep fervour and certitude of a heaven hereafter which would free them from their poverty, their tiny slum houses and hovels, their lack of the material blessings enjoyed by their white brothers. Nevertheless, they were beautifully turned out and spotlessly clean, dignified, kindly and humble people, who deserved to enter the Kingdom of Heaven if anybody did. Their religion taught them to help each other and to get rid of all unkindness in their personal relations. This to me was a true religion. The strength of their faith was so obvious that I felt that had they been told to go into the arena and be eaten by lions, they would have done so, trusting in God’s help as the Christians did of old.
I soon realized that I was ‘co-operating’ in the service too much! I had not come to be saved, but to examine the techniques of possession and the creation of faith. So when I returned to a second service I carefully stuck to my camera and recording apparatus, for if you actively take part in, and lend yourself to, these faith-creating techniques, you can easily be influenced and you may come to believe with a firm faith in what may be great truths or utter falsehood.