Somebody's civilization in decline.

[grinninfoole]

MALAWI

Move on to extinguish vampire attack rumors

BLANTYRE - A radio journalist was arrested for interviewing a man who claimed he was attacked by vampires, under a Malawi government campaign to quash vampire rumors. Maganizo Mazeze, who works for a community radio station in Blantyre, was charged with broadcasting false news that could lead to public unrest. President Bakili Muluzi has ordered the arrest of anyone seen to be spreading accounts of vampires attacking villagers at night, which started circulating in this tiny east African nation in October. Since the rumors started, frightened villagers have beaten to death two men suspected of being vampires, attacked a ruling party official suspected of harboring vampires, attacked three visiting priests, and destroyed an aid group's encampment they feared was a vampire headquarters. (AP)

Comments

[-solstyce-.livejournal.com]

all right, so they found our encampment. we may have to have a garage sale to make enough for a downpayment on a new place, but that's doubtful considering that all my faberge eggs are gone from the LAST six garage sales. and they *wonder* why we attack them at night! assholes.

[fuschia.livejournal.com]

I love reports like these...but, then again, Fortean Times is one of my main guilty pleasures.

I am sorry we weren't able to see the movies yesterday, and I'm hoping (though not certain) that J. called. As sometimes happens in the aftermath of bad anxiety attacks, I crashed down for a "quick nap" at 3 PM and woke up at around noon today. I'm sorry to have missed the movies and the company.

Yours,

Shan

Re:

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

J indeed did call. I'm sorry to hear that you had an anxiety attack. I hope things are better for now.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Malawi is an interesting place..they are recovering from a nasty dictatorship and have a shaky democracy. (To get an idea of what that dictatorship was like, check out a book called The Quest For African Dinosaurs (author's name forgotten by me), which had to go through a censorship process by the old government. About a chapter and half was written in praise of the government (always a danger sign), including how it was so wise to ban Jehovah's Witnesses.

Scares like this were not uncommon in early Industrial Europe: considering that a good chunk of Malawi is still primitive and rural, that's a good baseline for comparison.

Of course, scares like these happen in many places. We in the States had a vastly overblown pedophilia scare in the '80s, and the UK had riots not too long back where a pediatrician's office was burnt to the ground by an angry anti-pedophile mob. Pedophiles actually exist, of course, but mass hysteria is hardly confined to Malawi.

Re:

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Well, my title for the post was rather flip, so the truth is I know very little about Malawi and I don't really know what they mean by whatever term has been translated as 'vampire' by the AP. I do know that bloodsucking undead monsters don't exist, so I am a little contemptuous on that score, but I don't know what stories they tell about vampires in Malawi or how they use them in their lives. I posted the piece because it was interesting, really, however one feels about Malawi, vampirism, and mass hysteria. Mass hysteria may yet break in the USA over war with Iraq.

What does primitive mean, in this context? What difference does it make that Malawi's population is rural?

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

By primitive..think post-Neolithic, with very modern technology making it into the countryside en masse within the last fifteen years or so. Most of Malawi's population was living in those conditions until fairly recently (within the last generation), when the standard migration into the cities began.

They mean vampire in the standard Western movie sense...Malawi (like most places in the world) has native legends about vampire like creatures, but the popular conception of vampires is straight out of late-late show type movies. (It's too bad they didn't get Hong Kong films, or we might have riots against the plague of hopping vampires.)

I doubt we'll have mass hysteria about war against Iraq, unless you're counting the people who think it will lead to some kind of American imperium. ;) But we've had plenty of hysteria in the last few years...rememebr "the Summer of the Shark?"