Popobawa

Popo Bawa, also "popobawa", which means "bat wing" in Swahili is a monster purported to live on the spice islands of Zanzibar. Its existence has not been documented. Variously described as either a ghost or ogre with a gigantic penis and bat wings. He is sometimes thought to be a shapeshifter who looks like an ordinary human during the day. His presence is usually announced by the sound of scraping claws on their roof and a sharp, pungent smell. Different from other incubus legends, Popo Bawa primarily attacks men and only in their own beds, resulting in many men sleeping outside in streets or on porches after recent reported attacks. He attacks men as they sleep, overpowering them, holding their face to the floor and sodomizing them for up to an hour. People who claim to be victims of Popo Bawa are mostly poorer residents on the island of Pemba, though other reports have also come from other islands and coastal Tanzania. The victims are threatened with repeated, and longer, sodomizations if they do not let their friends and neighbors know of their experience. It is thought that Popo Bawa reports are the result of episodes of sleep paralysis.

Origin and history As legendary creatures go, Popo Bawa is of fairly recent origin. A popular origin story of Popo Bawa proposes that in the 1970s an angry shiek released a djinni to take vengeance on his neighbors. The shiek lost control of the djinni, who took to demonic ways. It is said because of Zanzibar's past as an Arab-run slave market, the story of Popo Bawa is an articulated memory of the horrors of slavery. Many of the legends on Zanzibar came from the colonizers and traders of the past, including Arabs, Portuguese, Hindus, Chinese, Britons, Persians and Africans. Reports of Popo Bawa attacks rise and fall with the election cycle in Zanzibar, although victims argue Popo Bawa is apolitical. Popo Bawa reports rose dramatically relatively recently, in 1995. Villagers maintain that Popo Bawa becomes enraged if his existence is denied. It is said Popo Bawa spoke to the villagers in 1971 through a girl possessed by the monster. The girl, called Fatuma, spoke in a man's deep voice and then villagers say they heard the sound of a car revving and rustling on a nearby roof. Many of those on the islands believe in exorcisms, and place charms at the base of fig trees or sacrifice goats.