Volcanic eruption adds new twist to Comoros legend
IDGIKOUNDZI, Comoros, April 25 (Reuters) - Nobody has ever seen him
and lived. Quite how the ancestors ever verified the existence of "Red
Headband" - the Indian Ocean's answer to Big Foot, the Yeti and the Loch
Ness monster - is thus a mystery.
What is clear is that when a volcano erupted on the largest island in
the Comoros archipelago on April 17, an old story gained a new twist.
Comoran elders are seen in front of the mosque in Idgikoundzi
village near the 2,361 m (7,746 ft) Mount Karthala volcano in
Comoros April 18, 2005. People in the area say since time began an
evil spirit which appears like a giant human wearing his eponymous
red headband has stalked the crater at the summit of Mount
Khartala, sometimes appearing as tall as a house, or even,
deceptively, like a dwarf. “When people leave the village and they
don’t come back, we suspect they have seen Red Headband”, said
Ibrahim Ali, a farmer from the mountain village of Idgikoundzi.
Photograph taken April 18, 2005. REUTERS |
Since time began, an evil spirit which appears as a giant human
wearing his eponymous red headband has stalked the crater at the summit
of Mount Karthala, sometimes appearing as tall as a house, or even,
deceptively, as a dwarf.
That's only when he's viewed from very far away.
"When people leave the village and they don't come back, we suspect
they have seen Red Headband," said Ibrahim Ali, 60, a farmer from the
mountain village of Idgikoundzi, where night fell early and rain turned
black during the eruption.
"Some people say they have seen him, and he looks like a giant," he
said, sitting with other elders in the cotton robes common in the
Comoros, introduced to Islam by Arab traders seeking ylang ylang and
vanilla in centuries past.
Few in the village of corrugated iron huts, bleating goats and
pecking chickens - including those telling the story - give much
credence to the legend nowadays, but they do remember the tale of the
spirit's most famous victims.
"A very long time ago, seven hunters went looking for deer near the
summit," said Ali. "Only their skeletons were found. Local people
covered them over with rocks."
Comorans wait at dusk on the shore for fishermen to return to
Iconi village near the capital of Moroni in Comoros islands, one
of the world’s poorest countries. REUTERS |
Poison gas seeping from the bowels of Karthala killed 17 people a
century ago, and many fear a repeat performance today by a volcano that
dominates the Grande Comore island off east Africa and has erupted
periodically in past decades.
The ancestors, however, would not accept such a pedestrian
explanation for the deaths of their brothers on a summit that
overshadows the capital Moroni and whose ash nourishes the tropical
spices flowering on its flanks.
"If they died up in that place, they must have been killed by Red
Headband," said Ali, perched on a ledge of rock with a view up to the
cloud-ringed summit, and over crusted rivers of ancient lava tumbling
into the sea below.
Such lore is as common as the volcanoes spat out in the geological
convulsions that tore the north-south crack in Africa known as the Great
Rift Valley more than 30 million years ago, but perhaps only Comoros can
boast of adding a footnote to its story that is still in living memory.
While every eruption takes just a nanosecond in geological time, the
slow-motion groans and shivers of tectonic plates rarely give humans a
chance to embellish tribal culture that takes generations to refine.
Elders in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo blamed an eruption in
January 2002 that razed much of the city of Goma with lava on malignant
ancestral spirits living in the Nyiragongo volcano, saying they
sometimes floated over the peak in the form of white figures.
That explanation was just a rehash of old fireside tales and
traditional African ancestor worship, even if they attributed the latest
bout of ghostly wrath to years of civil war then raging in the former
Zaire.
The red-cloaked Masai of Kenya and Tanzania, who tend cattle
wandering between volcanoes steaming on the Rift Valley floor, also have
little new to add to their myths.
Masai legend has it that the Ngong hills outside the capital Nairobi
were created when a giant wandering across the plains tripped, gouging
the knuckle-shaped range out of the ground with his fist as he broke his
fall. That was many generations ago indeed, and the mountains are
unchanged.
The still active Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano in the north of
neighbouring Tanzania is venerated by Masai as the home of God, and
always has been. There's nothing new there.
Unlike other countries with geographies shaped by the white hot crush
of rock and magma, Comoros has been granted the rare chance for a
volcano myth update.
The graves of the seven hunters may be no more.
Karthala's first eruption for a decade not only forced 10,000 people
to flee, but may also have destroyed the warriors' resting place as
chunks of the crater walls collapsed into a cauldron of lava, providing
a cataclysmic epilogue for their deaths so many centuries ago.
"We're wondering whether they may have been entombed by the last
eruption," Ali said. Unsmiling, the other elders just nodded. |