Chameleons and cultural folklore

I decided to post about this because I had the opportunity of witnessing some cultural perceptions of chameleons first hand while I was studying abroad in Kenya and Tanzania. During part of my stay in East Africa I lived in a Maasai village. It was pretty traditional in that family compounds were set up with mud huts as the houses encircling a herd of cattle contained by transplanted acacia trees, and then the entire compound was contained the same way. One morning while taking a leak some distance from my host family's compound I saw a flap-necked chameleon climbing a tree next to me. I thought it would be cool to show my host family so I brought it back. To my surprise, as soon as I brought it into my mom's hut and showed her and the kids, everyone pretty much freaked out. Children either hid behind their mom or quickly scrambled to the most protective areas of the hut, carefully keeping an eye on what was slowly crawling all over me. However, after I showed them that it was harmless, everyone was soon laughing at its goofy walk and eyes and wanting to pet it, so I did my best to explain in my broken Swahili and Maa that they eat insects and are good to have around. I don't know if it changed anyone's mind about them but nobody died and the little flap-necked went back to its tree afterwards. My one buddy Tobico, who helped me talk to my host family about them, the guy pictured above, and one of the few people in the whole village that spoke any english, later explained to me that in Maasai folklore, chameleons represent a bad omen, witchcraft, evil spirits, and that they are said to possess great magical and mystical qualities, as well as a deadly bite. Normally, when a Maasai would come across a chameleon, they'd whack it to death with the longest stick they could find because they are so feared. During other parts of my study abroad trip my group stayed in some big cities and sometimes in the markets you could find either dead and dried ones used for meat, folk medicine, or spells, and other times, depending on the cultural viewpoint taken, kids would collect several of them and keep them on a stick so tourists can take a picture and pay them, all the while the chameleons are wildly pissed off at each other and fighting, if they're fresh catches. In some cultures in other parts of the world they are used by wives to keep husbands faithful by hiding some of their meat in the husband's meal. They have also been traditionally used to ward off the "evil eye" in places like Tunisia by being killed and buried in a building's foundation. Obviously this is a bit of a problem for chameleons, and with their novel appearance and strange behaviors, it may continue to be a problem for their conservation for a long time.