In Which Zoë May Be A Witch
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 01/Nov/2010 06:01, 34 days ago
Culture is a funny word. Just say it over and over: culture, culture, culture.Let’s talk about the culture of Sierra Leone. Not the art and literature and music kind as I’ve yet to see much evidence of those. They’re largely hidden away and not for visitors. Incidentally, 30% of Sierra Leoneans, and almost all the residents of Kenema, are Mende. Their cultural secrets arepassed down through secret societies for men (called Poro) and women (called Sande) , and the latter are headed up by theSowiewhich makes me wonder why so many people round here have trouble with my name.But no, not that culture. I’m talking way of life. There are behaviours here that, if they were to occur in the UK, would mark someone out as being in receipt of (or need of) psychiatric care, or on the autism spectrum at the very least. Here, though, I suspect that my reluctance to engage in such behaviours equally signifies something not quite right, and at the very least suggests I am deaf. Why is it totally accepted / expected to go up to strangers in one place and ask their name, or ask every single person who passes you how they are, even if you’ve never seen them before, but totally unaccepted in another?Then there’s the actual cultural beliefs of a people. Witchcraft, especially in relation to health, is big here, so in honour of Halloween (and to pad out a blog entry which otherwise would read: got up, lay in sun, ate lunch, lay in sun again), a few snippets on the topic. Apologies in advance for the quality of the journalism here. I know I talk about missing newspapers and magazines, but when I see stuff like this I reconsider and think I can probably subsist on a literary diet of American fiction. Though to be honest, the Lauren Weisberger I’m reading isn’t much better than what follows... Anyway, I digress.From the Concord TimesA True Tale of Witchcraft...'i Made My Husband Impotent'- Wife ConfessesFreetown— One Kadiatu Sillah - a resident of Lungi but currently staying at Hill Station in western Freetown - has confessed to one Pa Musa Koroma, chairman of Guinean herbalists in Sierra Leone and also a member of the Traditional Healers Association, that she is a witch who is responsible for her husband's deteriorating condition.Confessing before the witch doctor, Kadiatu alleged that she was introduced into the underworld by her grandmother when she was a young girl. "My mother handed me over to my grandmother immediately she stopped breastfeeding me. I grew up with my grandmother who initiated me into the underworld," she confessed.Kadiatu, who is probably just above 18 years, said she was responsible for her husband's misfortune and that she was also the cause for his impotency. But she said she was not happy with her husband's condition as she only did that under the influence of her initiator. "I am not happy over all those evil acts that I inflicted on my husband, but I did it under the strict command of my grandmother. I had no alternative because if I had failed to do it, I would have been severely disciplined," she revealed.The lady, however, promised to relieve her husband from all the evil manipulations she had inflicted on him.Husband, Mohamed Lamin Kargbo, said he and Kadiatu have been together for the past two years and that since their union, things began to go bad for him. "I was not surprised by her confession because I started encountering all sorts of difficulties since we came together," he said.According to Kargbo, he was engaged in a very lucrative sea business, dealing in what he referred to as "changie" before wedding Kadiatu. "But everything went extremely bad when we came together," he said. "I was doing business at sea, buying and exchanging goods of different categories. My boat sank at sea on August 4, 2009, that is just weeks when she came to stay with me. All my money and consignments perished at sea with nothing left of me. Since then, things are no longer right with me."He further stated that his wife had never called him while at sea and that the day he received a call from her was the very day his boat sankGolly. Who needs science when you have such strong evidence as this?One writer explains that“Witchcraft ... takes hold in people’s lives when people are less than fully open-hearted. All wickedness is ultimately because people hate each other or are jealous or suspicious or afraid. These emotions and motivations cause people to act antisocially".By this definition, I am probably a witch for the antisocial way I act as I walk down the street, but I am not alone. Vasile moved into the house today and is my new best friend, not least for the expert way in which she dodged potholes and blatantly ignored the heckling of our neighbours on our walk back from Capitol in the dark (yep, I got me that pizza). Yay!