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CONVERTING THE SPIRIT SPOUSE: PIONEERING WOMEN AND THE EMBODIMENT OF SPIRITUAL WARFARE IN MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
At a service of the Brazilian Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God that I attended in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, I received the following invitation on a small piece of paper:
Attention!!!
Women
This Saturday at 17 hours, come to participate in the
BIG WAR AGAINST MALEDICTIONS
Such as: Sterility, destroyed marriage,
not succeeding marrying, and visited by the husband of the
night, abortion, impotent husband, cooling off
in conjugal life, beating husband, childless,
Husband cheats on you, every man that turns up
leaves you, your husband views you as his sister [1]
Transborder marriages and long-distance dowries in process of negotiation
Luanda, 1 May, 2007. Sitting under the only available tree of the court yard, together with the male members of the family, I watch the women preparing the meals for the 'pedido' (bride price or dowry ceremony), which will take place that day. The engaged couple is not here. They live in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.
Staging the Mystery of Spirit Possession. Bahian Candomblé and the Production of the Really Real
During one of the first spirit possession ceremonies that I witnessed in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, I was taken over by the fear that I might become possessed. That fear was kind of odd, given the fact that I do not “believe” in spirits who take possession of people. Yet it was scary nonetheless (whatever this “it” may have been).
