INSIGHTS ON LIFE

The Koro-Syndrome

My mother returned home one day looking tired and very concerned. She called out me and my little brother and asked us to pull our pants down. She wanted to be sure that strangers at not come to steal our ‘penises’ away. Seeing that we still had our stuff, she calmed and set about making us dinner after informing us that evil men and women are prowling the streets, using magical means to steal the ‘penises’ of men and the breasts of women to use for rituals.

This was in the late 80s/early 90s, I believe. The story was that it took just a slight nudge on your shoulder or the side of your body for your precious center to be gone. I heard stories of people almost setting men ablaze for this "crime". I don't know of any man who looked into his pants and saw his penis vanished, but there were cries on the streets and reports in the papers about this. A massive wave of fear swept through the land. This taboo became a cultural belief and today people still believe it happens.

It was years later that I came to know and understand what this thing really is and you can go on google to do your own findings. It is called Koro-Syndrome. According to an article on Wikipedia (you'd find similar information on other sites), Koro is a culture-bound syndrome, a delusional disorder in which an individual has an overpowering belief that one's sex organs are retracting and will disappear (or has disappeared), despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genital. Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and it is listed as one of the mental disorders.

The syndrome, which is commonly known as genital retraction syndrome, does not affect males alone. Among females, the cardinal symptom is nipple retraction in the breast, generally into the breast as a whole. They have their causes in the mind of the sufferers (psychological causes), and therapy and life of frequent sexual activity has been offered as treatment modes.

What I want you to get in this is the world of belief that Africans have constructed around a psychological condition. It is one of the conditions that give people the label of suffering from a mental disorder. To believe that someone 'spiritually' stole your genital or leveled your breasts to nothing is a truly sorry and painful state of mind.

Koro Syndrome is one of the many regressing beliefs we have as people. Though people in other parts of the world have report Koro to medical authorities, the gravity with which we hold ours is such an injury to the mind. If you dispassionately open the book of beliefs and superstitions of Africans, it will surprise you the weird forms that we call beliefs which imprison the mind of the people and limit their creative expression.

We have to question so many of the things we believe and destroy a lot of them if we have to move forward. We have to free our minds from the shackles of dark thought-forms. Sadly, if the mind of the majority of the people is dark, the land can see no light.

Victor Negro is based in Lagos. He writes on matters of life and existence as he thinks, preferring a better understanding of common questions.