Note : Between 2009 and 2011, I used to travel to
Ghana very frequently on business. This story is not my own in totality; it was
inspired by a talk on the BBC radio service I listened to regularly while in
that country. This is real – a primeval practice common among the tribes of
Northern Ghana and surrounding regions.
****
The phone rang as Sarah was going through her mail in
the morning. It was the Pastor from the village she had visited last week. His
voice was very quiet. “It’s over. The child is dead,” was all he said and hung
up. Sarah stared at the phone in stunned silence. A lump in her throat almost
choked her.
In all her years as an aid worker out in the
scrublands of West Africa, where the sparse
vegetation struggles for life against the mighty Sahara, she had seen, heard
and lived with human misery in all its myriad forms; it was her life’s mission
to help the unfortunate people living there - but this was one bit of news she
had thought she would be able to prevent happening…. the murder of a three year
old boy by the “concoction man”, aided and supported by the child’s parents.
Her breakfast lay untouched on the table as she rushed
out the door. She gathered a couple of her African colleagues, called her
driver and asked him to take her to that village.
A dusty three hours later they were there. She rushed
to the hut where the child lived. His parents were quietly preparing for his
burial. A small crowd had gathered; no one was crying – there was silence in
the air – a silence that was loud and pregnant with untold thoughts. There he
lay quietly, as if asleep – and Sarah knew the little boy would never open his
eyes again. She had known him for barely two weeks.
His problem ? He was born with “hydrocephalus” – commonly known as “water in the
brain”, giving him an unusually large head. By the time Sarah and her team had
reached his village and got to know him, the child was three years old. His
parents had cared for him all these years, fervently hoping that his condition
would go away, but it did not. He could barely walk, and his mental faculties
were impaired.
The village doctor had been consulted – all the old
men gathered for a meeting with the parents and they all had decided that this
was a “spirit child”- one that should not be allowed to live, because if he
did, he would grow up to kill his parents. His young mother did try to put up
some semblance of resistance though, but was easily overpowered by the force of
argument of the village elders, her husband, and the fear of the unknown. They
had ignored their village Pastor completely during this meeting.
Sarah had come on the scene after this decision had
been made. She wanted to take the child away to a hospital for proper treatment
– that would mean two days by jeep to the nearest helipad and a one – hour
flight before he could get proper medical care. The Pastor had been her
staunchest supporter in this.
After two days of protracted negotiations, coupled
with the gentle persuasion from the Pastor, the village elders had relented,
but not the village doctor – also known as the “concoction man”. Oddly enough,
the child’s parents had sided with him. They told the Pastor to ask her
to come back next week for the child.
And then, this.
Sarah slowly walked around the village, accompanied by
the Pastor, asking people, young and old, if this was right. They all said yes.
The concoction man proudly said that the evil spirit inside the child was so
strong that he had to administer three doses of poison before he could put him
to eternal sleep. “But don’t you think this was murder?” asked Sarah. “No”,
said the man, “murder applies to human beings, this child was not human. I have
saved his parents from danger.”
Sarah went back to the hut. She looked into his
mother’s eyes. They were blank. And there were no tears.
This may be a devoutly Christian country, but ancient
tribal traditions ran deep. So did the fear of the unknown and the para-normal.
And they created a schism that Sarah knew she and the Pastor would find very
difficult to bridge. But they only served to make her resolve harder – to try
and save such children if she could. She witnessed the burial.
****
Back in her office the next day, she pulled out her
worksheet and put a small cross against the child’s name. That was the
thirty-seventh cross in a list of forty such names.
*****
