Witch Symptoms?
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 27/Jan/2011 07:48, 34 days ago
“Attia is sick. We are on our way to the hospital to see him. Will you come?”Attia is the Afrikids teacher helping TangaCulture with the street children project. He is a close friend of Donatus and Kwesi, both of whom were crammed on a motorbike eager to get going. I jumped on my own motorbike and followed them up to the hospital. Attia has high blood pressure, they told me, and had been rushed to the hospital that evening but, looking at him lying in the hospital bed, I knew there was something else.Visiting people in hospital is an obligation. No one will leave a sick friend in peace or politely leave the family to be by the bedside. Attia is a vivacious, bubbly and popular man in Bolga so the ward was crowded with well-wishers. Eight beds were laid out, each one containing a worrying looking patient but Attia seemed the most serious. He appeared delirious. Shaking and out of control. His eyes lolled around, trying to focus on the sober faces looking down on him. A nurse frantically mopped his brow and checked his drip, all the time reassuring him and trying to get him to relax.That was on Tuesday. Today is Thursday and Attia is dead. He was, I guess, in his mid-thirties.I heard the news whilst sitting with Kwesi and Culture. They were shocked, especially Kwesi who was a close friend of Attia. The news also hit Culture hard because Culture is also sick at the moment. He is tired, aching and passing blood in his faeces. His fingertips and lips are de-colouring.“Someone has wronged him,” Culture ranted. “Someone wants Attia dead and so has made this thing happen to him.”Culture went to the clinic several weeks ago and was told he has chronic bilharzia. He was given some drugs that haven’t worked. He then went to ‘Unique Naturalist Care’ clinic – a place that advertises constantly on the radio. This sells up-market traditional medicine. They charged Culture 150GHc to tell him he has chronic gonorrhoea and syphilis. They wanted to charge him more money for treatment but Culture couldn’t afford it. He therefore went to the “powerful shrine” at Tengzug and paid several fowls to be given a lump of mud. Wrapped carefully in a black polythene bag, the small spherical lump of dirt must be stirred into water and then drunk. Unsurprisingly, Culture is confused as to whatis wrong. Kwesi and I are encouraging Culture to go back to the central hospital but Culture believes the problem to be caused by other means:“Someone has cursed me with this sickness,” Culture continued. “I know that some witch has given me this condition. Tonight I must go to the festival of the witches so I can appeal to the ghost and cure me of this sickness.”What?!I offered to take Culture to this festival, curious as to what it might involve. Sat on the back of the motorbike, he directed me down a narrow track away from town. Eventually, after fifteen minutes of weaving through the night, lit by the twinkle of a million stars, the glow of a huge fire appeared in the distance. Hundreds of people surrounded the fire and we joined the queue to file into the house. The large area was crowded. Someone was playing a drum. Several people were selling millet porridge and stew. People staggered around clutching calabashes of pito. Culture kneeled in front of a phallic shaped shrine and placed some money on the ground. He took me back outside to the fire to explain. A child used a long stick to pull a roasted dog out of the fire, its charred paws clearly visible in the flickering light, its lips curled up in a posthumous snarl.“This is a festival. It will go on three days – morning, afternoon, evening and all night. People who are sick will come. They will offer sacrifice – maybe money or a dog or a goat or a fowl. They will call on the ghost to free them of the illness. The ghost is called Tigarey. The ghost will find the witch who did this bad thing and call her to come. You will see it – witches will come running to this place. They will come and dance in the fire. You have never seen such a dance. They will dance like they are mad. They will remove their clothes. Can you see the clothes hanging on that tree? Those are the clothes that used to be on the witches. They will dance wildly, throwing their hands, head and legs this way and that. They will shit and then eat their shit. If you give them food they will throw the food on their heads. If you give them water they will throw the water away. Theywill only drink their own urine. After some hours dancing like this, sometimes days, they will confess to being a witch. When they confess like this, the priests will give a medicine to rub in the eyes. When they give this medicine, the witch will wake up and will be able to see the people around –she couldn’t see them before. She will be cured of being a witch and the person who was also wronged, he will be cured of the sickness she gave. The witches will now be human beings – they can sit and eat with normal people. They will no longer be a witch and the community will accept her back.Anthony, you don’t believe but it is true. You will see. The witches are around. The ghost, Tigarey, will find them and call them here. They have festivals like this in Kumasi, Accra, Bongo, Upper West, Holland, all over.”I left Culture at the festival and made my own way back into town. Without a good quality health care system, it is not surprising that people look for alternative explanations to early deaths. Attia, after all, did not die of hypertension, whatever the hospital says.