The Strange Gods We Believed In

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you knew the world had its own set of rules. Some were written in stone—“don’t be late for supper,” “never cross Mum when she’s holding a slipper.” But others were whispered, passed along like contraband—rules that lived in smoky kitchens, chang’aa dens, and the hushed voices of older cousins who swore they had seen it all with their own eyes. These weren’t rules at all. They were spells disguised as advice. Superstitions. The strange gods we believed in.

We believed if a black cat crossed the road, you were doomed. The bravest boys in the estate would spit three times on the ground and whisper a counter-curse before crossing. We believed if you whistled at night, snakes would come, slithering under the door, tongues flickering, angry at your mockery of the spirits. And so nights in the 80s were quiet, eerie, broken only by the transistor radio’s static as it coughed out Franco’s guitar or Whitney Houston’s impossible voice.

Football carried its own gospel of superstitions. In the village, men swore AFC Leopards lost whenever a certain drunk in a green coat showed up to the stadium. Gor Mahia fans tied lesos on their wrists, convinced the gods would honour their team if only they tied tight enough. The Harambee Stars, poor things, never had enough luck no matter how many goats were sacrificed or how many pastors were called in to pray before tournaments. Yet, we kept the faith. You’d hear someone say, “leo lazima tu win, nimetoa mbuzi jana usiku,” and you wanted to believe him because, what else did we have except belief?

Musicians too carried the weight of omens. Rumours spread like wildfire that if you played Prince’s Purple Rain backwards, you’d hear a satanic message. Michael Jackson’s glove was more than fashion; it was charm, talisman, juju. Closer home, the village elders whispered that certain benga musicians had to pour libations on stage before performing or risk their voices breaking mid-chorus. And when Daudi Kabaka sang Harambee Harambee, men with cracked heels stood straighter, believing even development had its superstitions.

The 80s and 90s were decades of contradictions: cassette tapes tangled like cursed spaghetti, yet we carefully wound them back with a Bic pen like surgeons fixing broken bones. Radios that needed a slap on the side before the sound cleared, as if technology too respected ritual. Mothers warned us never to eat food at funerals or we’d carry the dead’s spirit home. And we obeyed, stomachs growling, because nobody wanted ghosts as roommates.

But the strangest thing is how these superstitions stitched themselves into the fabric of our joy. They gave football its mystery, music its aura, childhood its peculiar magic. Looking back now, you realize they were less about curses and more about hope. Hope that if we just knocked three times, tied that cloth, avoided that path, then maybe—just maybe—life would tilt in our favour.

We laugh now. We call them myths, old wives’ tales, village nonsense. Yet even today, when your team is down 2-0 in the 80th minute, don’t you find yourself shifting on the couch, muttering, changing seats like a desperate priest negotiating with unseen gods? Don’t you find yourself holding your breath in traffic when a black cat strolls across your way, wondering if the rules still apply?

The 80s and 90s left us with cassette tapes, ugly sofas, one public TV per estate, and a collection of wild beliefs that we never truly outgrew. Maybe that’s what superstition really is: the poetry of survival, the strange gods we carried in our pockets, the quiet ways we tried to bend the world in our favour.

 

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