Dem Jamaicans (part one)

Safira Mono is a Jamaican dancehall artist (which is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s) .....

Safira Mono Snake Head Charm

In 2020 she claimed that a rival artist had put her under a spell or obeah curse.

She had been ill, suffering weight loss, dizziness and fever, and that doctors had been unable to cure her, but that she had overcome it by wearing the head of a snake around her neck for spiritual protection. She told reporters from the Jamaica star who reported the story in the local patois, which I have copied below.

"Yow! Is a artiste weh mi look up to, enuh, but after the after the female come near mi, mi just raise big suh, and is like mi go inna one different space." [Translation: 'She was an artiste I looked up to, but my head became swollen and I felt like I went in to another realm'].

"Mi go on to the stage, and mi couldn't sing. It was like mi tongue get heavy. Mi body feel hot, like it deh pon fire and mi dizzy like crazy. Fat, fat me get down mawga mawga." [Translation: 'I went on to the stage, and I couldn't sing. It was like my tongue got heavy. My body felt hot like it was on fire and I was very dizzy. I went from fat to thin'].

"Mi faint and wake up inna hospital, and at a point in time dem a wonder if a lupus mi have, but the blood work never show that" [Translation: 'I fainted and I  woke up in hospital, and they thought I might have developed Lupus, but the blood tests showed that I didn't have that condition'].

But when all looked lost for her, she had a vision from the ancestors in which they told her to drink snake venom ..."Mi grow up in church and around positive, so mi never believe in certain things, but my ancestors in a dream, had to grab me up and teach me some things and let mi know seh mi have to go find a rattlesnake to protect me." [Translation: 'I grew up with a church upbringing with positive people around me, so I never believed in non Church things, but my ancestors came to me to show me how to protect myself with a rattlesnake'].

She then said that she went in to the California desert and hunted out a rattlesnake. To prove the veracity of her story, she then showed the journalists her bare arms to reveal a mark and swelling that she said were from a rattlesnake bite .... (apparently, although not advisable, a rattlesnake bite is rarely fatal).

She continued "Anyone who follows me knows that I am always focused on wildlife because I am a Maroon, which means that I am very strong on my African heritage. I had to go on a spiritual journey before I went in the desert. The [snakes] head that I have round mi neck belongs to the 13th one that I catch. I had to drink its venom inna mi juice with rum in order to save my like because the doctors couldn't cure me because they didn't know what was wrong with me."  

Health fully restored, she returned to the recording studio, and with her new found interest in non church beliefs, she recorded a single on the subject of witchcraft, 'Tun Back Blow'  ..... An interesting tale of alternative belief systems and told in an interesting manner. I hadn't realised that Jamaican newspapers actually wrote in dialect, rather than common English.

By the way, rattlesnakes are not considered an endangered species in California and so are not protected.