>>>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/15/serbian_witchdoctor/>>>
>>>I guess that would cure anyone of the affliction (a-friction?)! :-)
>>
>>The Register, eh?
>
>Yes. What about it? It just happened to be first in a long list of citations on this subject.
Checked with my diaspora mailing list, and got one response so far - yep, it's been in the newspapers. Not that those can be trusted. I'd imagine it'd be a nice filler story that nobody would bother to check.
>What's a witch doctor soing in a Xian/muslim country anyway? - it's not as if there's a load of ex-colonial Africans or Polynesian residents/citizens.
That's a remnant of Sloba's times. One of the features of his system was the destruction of institutions. The parliament was turned into a circus, for one. Among other dented institutions, the science and general enlightment were pushed aside, and we had a flood of psychics, seers, herbal healers and whatnots, even on state TV. The folks, specially in central Serbia, have been known to stick to centuries old superstitions, and were a particularly good market for con artists of that kind. Some of the popular healers were actually good - there was a case of the actress Kitty Swan (sp?) who got severely burned, and the herbal healer Jovo Šaljić restored her skin. There was a sun lotion later based on his herbs - tried it, and it does work. But for one good, there's a thousand fakes.
>>The point here is that "screw a hedgehog" is a well known Serbian (and generally ex-Yu) saying, meaning one's in for a particularly hard ride. As in "you'll have screwed a hedghehog when the boss returns".
>
>So really the WD was saying "Nothing we can do about your getting off before the station; you're screwed" and the guy took him literally? :-)
I don't really see how would that be feasible language-wise, it's always spoken in modal perfect tense (which is why I translated it with "you'll have screwed"), which can't possibly be misunderstood as an imperative. But then I wouldn't put it past the imagination of the writer to conjure such a scenario, or the witch doc to assume that the proverb came from the actual act :). Or, worse, the witch doc may have said it as a joke, and the guy took him literally.
