Wednesday, October 6, 2021

The Tokolosh

In Zulu and Xhosa mythology, there is an evil, dwarf-like water sprite called a tokolosh. Did I say mythology? I knew one person who described to me how she fought off a tokolosh with a broom. With my Western skepticism, I asked her whether she was quite sure that this had happened. She described it to me in more detail, with emotion, and showed me the door where she had expelled the tokolosh. OBSERVATION: It was a person I felt I had no reason to disbelieve. In Western culture, tokoloshes are fictions. In African culture, they really exist. Which then is it?

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