Superstitions!

I was super-excited when the conversation turned to superstitions, although considering I was the one who brought up the topic, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I remembered that I’d once wondered if Fulas had an unlucky number, and I realized I still wondered this, so I tried to ask my question by explaining the American dislike of 13—the absent hotel floors, the missing airplane rows, the dread of the thirteenth day of a month.

Ousman said he’d heard of this. There was a footballer from Germany whose number used to be 13 but when he went to England the team started to lose so they made him change his number. That is why Ousman likes 13 and whenever they are choosing shirts he will choose 13 even though no one else wants it.

This fascinating bit of football trivia didn’t answer my question, however, so I pressed on. I said in China they dislike 4 because it sounds like their word for “death.” He said in Mandinka it is the same: “four” and “lose” are the same word. He did not, however, say that as a result of the words being the same, Mandinkas avoid the number four. Maybe not every culture has an unlucky number. Or maybe the Gambian unlucky number is too unlucky to even talk about.

However, there are plenty of non number-related superstitions that he then explained for me. I’d heard most of them before, but until now had never been given any reasons.

• A pregnant woman should not eat eggs because it will give the unborn child a skin infection. 
• You should not call a person’s name loudly at night because evil things will hear it and repeat it and you will answer. Then I forget what happens but I guess the evil spirits will know where you are and do whatever evil spirits do. 
• You shouldn't whistle at night because it’s bad luck. 
• You shouldn’t buy soap or needles at night, or rather, the shopkeeper shouldn’t sell them to you because it will be bad for his business. 
• If you hold your hand beneath your chin, both your mother and father will die. 

Ousman said he doesn’t believe the superstitions and he told his mother so. He said it just doesn’t make sense. For example, why shouldn’t a pregnant woman eat eggs? There are many good things about eggs.


But: there was a compound with a cow and this old man came and looked at the cow. And this old man was very good at seeing things and he said they should sell the cow or somebody will die. But they kept the cow until a close relative passed away, and then they sold the cow. There are people like this, who can look at an animal in a compound and know. I wanted to know, since the family had been instructed to sell the cow: who would buy a bad-luck cow? But Ousman didn’t know either, I guess, because when I asked that question he just repeated the bit about some people knowing when an animal should be sold.

How do you recognize a bad-luck cow?
Don't ask me.