Hi Sue and Sukie --

Though I might be wrong, I don't think the "witchcraft" thing will
spill over onto me. Kaleu doesn't want me to talk to anyone about the
situation -- this is typical Ethiopian behavior -- they try to isolate
you after they give you a problem. It's a traditional approach, and
I've had people try to do it to me before. I never comply.

Kaleu seemed alarmed that I wanted to take the business to the head
church authority and he was definitely alarmed that I wanted to have
a second church person come to the meeting. He said he didn't want
anyone to know about what was going on. Given all that, perhaps this
particular mess will just die down.

If you read about Haile Selassie's court, it is pretty much based on
intrigue, and HS's tactics included isolating people from each other
-- so they wouldn't group up against him. In the end when he got old,
he lost the ability to do it, but he succeeded for almost 60 years.

At any rate, since Kaleu wants to keep things ultra-secret, maybe
noone in the town will know and rumors etc wouldn't develop. Even
if they did, I doubt they'd associate them with me, being such an
outsider. Not that I want to stick around and find out!

Ethiopia isn't typical Africa, and this area is more Arabic than
African. Sometimes people say of someone who's gone, say, to Kenya,
that they went to Africa! Think also of Egypt -- it's in Africa, but
you wouldn't really call the populace African.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that the things one might be able
to generalize about "Africa" don't apply to Ethiopia (nor do the
Arabic ones). E.g., the curses and charms aren't voodoo here, though
they're yucky.

[Posted in FML 7885]