Wall Geckos!!! Ugh I naturally find them disgusting. I hear a lot about them but I don't know if these are true.
For example when I was a little girl, it was said that if you kill one, you would pee a lot while sleeping.
Just yesterday, I saw one in my friends room, tried to kill it but she stopped me saying killing wall geckos bring about Badluck.
Are these myths true or just false beliefs about Wall geckos?

Growing up, I heard that they tend to cause one to be stiff or static if they are above ones head while lying in bed.

Well like u said I guess its all myth. No truth in it.

one of my least favorite things about Nigeria... the lizards

**From the Raampa script used in the senegambia**


Interpretations frequently presuppose require cultural understandings

The pictograph representing a gecko is (062sf.jpg). But simply knowing it represents a gecko will not help interpret a raampa message. The cultural belief about geckos is that they are a sign of bad luck. We were told, “The gecko is the worst evildoer that God created. If it cries at night it predicts good rains but if it lays eggs continuously it predicts poor rains. It is a sign of bad luck; it is taboo to kill one.” Therefore if the pictograph of a gecko is used in a message, the context will indicate if it stands for a prediction of a poor or a good rainy season, or impending bad luck, etc.


Does anyone in Senegal understand these marks?

Our fieldwork revealed that the same tradition or system of pictographic writing and communicating reached across six language groups. Time and resources did not allow us to contact other groups, but all the groups we included in our fieldwork did indeed use the same system. We even found that a message written by a man from one language group could be read accurately by a man from a completely different language group. The language groups we found that used the raampa pictographs were:
1.Saafi-Saafi (srr *) – Senegal, Niger-Congo language family, Atlantic branch
2.Serer-Sine (srr) – Senegal, Niger-Congo language family, Atlantic branch
3.Pular (fuf) – (Fula) Senegal and Guinea, Niger-Congo language family, Atlantic branch
4.Hassaniyya (mey)—Mauritania, Afro-Asiatic language family
5.Mandinka (mnk) (Mandingue) – Senegal and Guinea, Niger-Congo language family, Mande branch
6.Pulaar (fuc) (Toucouleur/Tukulor) – Senegal and Mauritania, Niger-Congo language family, Atlantic branch



Read more: The discovery of the raampa pictographic writing in the Senegambia, West Africa http://phoenicia.org/Discovery_Raampa_Pictography_Senegambia.html


Observation:
The more African history and anthropology I read along with interactions from people still on the continent; the more I see that at some point in the past the different ethnic groups start to converge. Seemingly being only a couple of ethnic groups ...or different groups under one bigger ethnic umbrella. If I had to quess I'd say 1.the drying of the sahara 2.fights with muslims 3.each fall of west African empires(ghana,mali,songhai) dispersed alot of related(culturaly) people.

Odd part is I never here people of a particular ethnic group discuse what ethnic group the founder of their ethnic group came from ...but when you look in the literature the big piture starts to open up. If for no other reason then people in north west Africa tend to mention when groups to the south appeared or you can match up the founding of an ethnic group in south/west Africa with a big event in the north/west Africa.

My sister says that if you kill a wall ghecko, the spoons in your house will vamoose
I have a very strong phobia for it, I hate the way it wriggles the tail. Ewwwwwh!

hottiechoco: My sister says that[b] if you kill a wall ghecko, the spoons in your house will vamoose[/b]
I have a very strong phobia for it, I hate the way it wriggles the tail. Ewwwwwh!

and you never tested it out?

pleep: and you never tested it out?

I can't hurt a fly
I remember my brother killed one sometime ago,we ran short of spoons throughout that week.
Its not true, maybe cos we saw all our spoons in hidden places

I think it might the myth(?) might also serve a practical purpose. GEckos keep all the insects under control. so when you kill them, your house will swarm with all sorts of unwanted creatures.

PAGAN 9JA:
I think it might the myth(?) might also serve a practical purpose. GEckos keep all the insects under control. so when you kill them, your house will swarm with all sorts of unwanted creatures.

Which is worse?

pleep:

Which is worse?

well lizards definitely look better than cokroaches, flies ,etc., and atleast they have a face unlike those faceless insects that cant be trusted. + insects carry disease and dirt.

PAGAN 9JA:


well lizards definitely look better than cokroaches, flies ,etc., and atleast they have a face unlike those faceless insects that cant be trusted. + insects carry disease and dirt.

True to some extents.
How about the geckos waste material which is same as germs?

candygosh:

True to some extents.
How about the geckos waste material which is same as germs?

come to think of it, Ive never really seen a geckos waste material. it must be so tiny amounts . lol and who knows in what corner hole it does it.

Anyways, we can be assured that these microscopic wastes cant fly around or sit on your body or enter your ear or land on your food. so yeahh, geckos are a safer option. .

PAGAN 9JA:


come to think of it, Ive never really seen a geckos waste material. it must be so tiny amounts . lol and who knows in what corner hole it does it.

Anyways, we can be assured that these microscopic wastes cant fly around or sit on your body or enter your ear or land on your food. so yeahh, geckos are a safer option. .

Then u haven't found out much about these things.
They give of smelly wastes. Maybe whitish liquid or solid dark waste.
And this rily calls for concern as to why geckos shouldn't be in the house.

Came across more mentions of lizards(this time chameleon instead of gecko) while looking at bantu mythology


The High God

---

The High God, when thought of as having a definite dwelling-place at all-for usually they are rather vague about him-is supposed to live above the sky, which, of course, is believed to be a solid roof, meeting the earth at the point which no one can travel far enough to reach. People have got into this country by climbing trees, or, in some unexplained way, by a rope thrown up or let down; and, like Jack after climbing the beanstalk, find a country not so very different from the one they have left. In a Yao tale a poor woman, who had been tricked into drowning her

[1. The Swahili are a Bantu-speaking people, descended partly from Arab traders and colonists, and partly from the different African tribes with whom these Arabs intermarried. Their home is the strip of coast from Warsheikh to Cape Delgado, but they have travelled far and wide as traders, carriers, and Europeans' servants, and spread their language over a great part of the continent. The root -zimu, with different prefixes, is found in many Bantu languages, and sometimes means a mere ghost. sometimes a kind of monster or cannibal ogre.]

baby, climbed a tree into the Heaven country and appealed to Mulungu,[1] who gave her child back to her.

The High God is not always-perhaps not often-connected with creation. The earth is usually taken for granted, as having existed before all things. Human beings and animals are sometimes spoken of as made by him, but elsewhere as if they had originated quite independently. The Yaos say, " In the beginning man was not, only Mulungu and the beasts." But they do not say that God made the beasts, though they speak of them as " his people." The curious thing is that they think Mulungu in the beginning lived on earth, but went up into the sky because men[2] had taken to setting the bush on fire and killing "his people." The same or a similar idea (that God ceased to dwell on earth because of men's misconduct) is found to be held by other Bantu-speaking tribes, and also by the Ashanti people in West Africa and the 'Hamitic' Masai in the east. It may be connected with the older and cruder notion (still to be traced here and there) that the sky and the earth, which between them produced all living things, were once in contact, and only became separated later.

Whatever may once have been the case, prayers and sacrifices are addressed to the ancestral spirits far more frequently than to Mulungu or Leza. The High God is not, as a rule, thought of as interfering directly with the course of this world; but this must not be taken too absolutely. Mr C. W. Hobley, among the Akamba, and the Rev. D. R. Mackenzie, among the people of North Nyasaland,





[1. This word, which in some languages means 'the sky,' is used for 'God' by the Yaos, the Anyanja, the Swahili (who shorten it into Muungu), the Giryama, and some others. Other names are Chiuta, Leza, Kalunga (in Angola), Nzambe (on the Congo; American Negroes have made this into jumbi, mostly used in the plural, meaning ghosts or bogies of some sort), Katonda (in Uganda), and Unkulunku (among the Zulus). This last (which-is not, as some have thought, the same word as Mulungu) has sometimes been taken to mean the High God, sometimes the first ancestor of the tribe, who lived so long ago that no one can trace his descent from him.]

[2 For whom Mulungu was in no way responsible. ***The first human pair were found by the chameleon (a prominent character in African mythology) in his fish-trap!*** See Duff Macdonald, Africana, Vol i, p. 295.]

have recorded instances of direct prayer to the High God in times of distress or difficulty.

CHAPTER II: WHERE MAN CAME FROM, AND HOW DEATH CAME

---

The Chameleon

Most) if not all, of the Bantu have the legend of the chameleon-everywhere much the same, though differing in some not unimportant details-explaining how death came into the world, or, rather, how it was not prevented from coming. I will give it first as it was told to Dr Callaway by Fulatela Sitole, and afterwards mention some of the variations.

It is said he (Unkulunkulu) sent a chameleon; he said to it, "Go, chameleon (lunwaba), go and say, 'Let not men die!'" The chameleon set out; it went slowly, it loitered in the way; and as it went it ate of the fruit of a bush which is called

[1. The Baronga are a branch of the great Thonga nation (Amatonga). Father Bryant says that "the relationship between the Nguni (Zulu-Xosa), Sutu (Basuto), and Thonga Bantu families may be likened to that existing in Europe between the English, Germans, and Scandinavians of the Nordic race."]

Ubukwebezane. At length Uhkulunkulu sent a lizard [intulo, the blue-headed gecko] after the chameleon, when it had already set out for some time. The lizard went; it ran and made great haste, for Unkulunkulu had said, ****"Lizard, when you have arrived say, 'Let men die!'"**** So the lizard went, and said, "I tell you, it is said, 'Let men die!'" The lizard came back again to Unkulunkulu before the chameleon had reached his destination, the chameleon, which was sent first-which was sent and told to go and say, "Let not men die!" At length it arrived and shouted, saying, "It is said, 'Let not men die!'" But men answered, "Oh, we have accepted the word of the lizard; it has told us the word, 'It is said "Let men die!'" We cannot hear your word. Through the word of the lizard men will die." [1]

Here no reason is given for Unkulunkulu's sending the second messenger. I do not think any genuine native version suggests that he changed his mind on account of men's wickedness. Where this is said one suspects it to be a moralizing afterthought, due perhaps to European influence.

I hated wall geckos with a passion until I discovered their usefulness in keeping insects down in the house. I'm still petrified whenever I see them, to an extent. In case you wish to keep their numbers down in the house, just eliminate the insects in the house and they will disappear naturally.

frodow:
I have them alots in my house, pls what can i use to eliminate them completely in the house

Mothballs, onion, pepper can help in reducing their appearance. Trust me they will all take to their heels. Their secret hiding places are dark places, warm places, etc. Don't forget to keep your house, dishes, clothes clean always

I hate geckos,am so scared of killing it

Wenebadu:
I hate geckos,am so scared of killing it

Same here! I managed to kill one last month, they always hide behind potrait that is on the wall

pleep:


Which is worse?

and u just have to do this? i'm trying to use d garlic method though, by morning, i'll buy eggs. I just hate them

I just killed a wall gecko and now I cannot sleep cause everyone keeps telling me that a gecko will eat my hair this night.. �