“When will you file your story?” Cephus asks.
“Soon, it will happen soon.”
“It is about witches, right?”
“Yes, witches and wizards.”
“Where did you see wizards?”
“In Yendi.”

Cephus is the managing editor of The Mail, the newspaper I work for and he is calling me about the witch article, which has yet to be started.   Not only have I yet to start it, but none of the notes have been transcribed.  They are all scribbled in my tattered yellow notebook, which sits in the rucksack below my bed.  The only thing I have looked at so far are the pictures.

It has been two weeks since I left Gambaga and I have spent most of the time on my balcony.  It’s a private balcony,  attached to my massive ocean-side room, all of which costs me about six dollars a night.  My guesthouse is managed by a woman named Perpetual, but she is currently on vacation, so most of my interaction is with her sister Sawah.

Today Sawah is doing my laundry and I am watching intently from my balcony.  The pools of flesh around her elbow flap as she scrubs my jeans.  She wrings the soap from my underwear with the force of her palms.   She hangs my light-blue dress shirts from the line with care and they bounce, ever so gently, as the wind whips past the beach, the palm trees and the stone gazebo in the yard.

Today, Sawah does my laundry.  But most days, she spends her time sitting with a look of abject hopelessness on the stairs.  The stairs face a wall.  She could easily face the ocean, which bursts in torrents of white against the huge black rocks on the beach, but instead she faces the wall.

I try to write in the late afternoon, as the sun hemorrhages over the water in hues of purple and orange, but I can’t produce a word.  I want to get a drink with Sawah and stare at the wall, but Sawah never drinks in public–she stumbles and slurs in public, but she only imbibes alone–so I go to the bar by myself, and then walk along the beach through the piles of litter that dot the sand.  My thoughts begin to blur and pool.  They run in jagged, uneven lines, like a glass of spilt water on a dirt floor.  Mostly, I am awash in images– Polaroid pictures flipping through my brain.

I see Simon at dinner, eating voraciously, confiding his “secret” belief in the specious nature of the supernatural, licking the frothy head of a Guinness; the Gambaranna, cloaked in his flowing white tunic, staring ahead with his soft brown eyes, as I slip money under his rug; the Juju man, stonewalling me with his obstinate guru bullshit, mocking my questions in his tiny shack full of antiquated weaponry and voodoo charms; the guys at the bar laughing at the idea that witches may not exist; the youthful organizer, Ernest Cudjoe, telling me in his perfectly polished English, “It’s not up to me to decide who is a witch or not;” Magaji –the guilty witch–confessing spiritual murder listlessly with her dead gray eyes.

I see a copy of The Crucible in my hand in high school, a fantastical play about something that happened in America four hundred years ago and something that is happening in Africa right now. “Did you hear about the witch that flew into Nungua the other day on a broomstick without clothes on?” I recall a friend asking me.  ”RITUAL MURDER TAKES ANOTHER VICTIM,” a newspaper headline proclaims. “BOYS TURNED INTO SNAKES FOR BLOOD MONEY,” another shouts.  I fixate on the dent in the forehead of the wizard in Yendi; the nail hole looms large in mind.

I want to write an op-ed, like I do in America whenever something offends me.  In America, I can call people out, I can  castigate them if I think they’re false or hypocritical, but in Africa my voice is so small.  I want to say that Northern Ghana is in the Stone Age and that these beliefs retard development, democracy and human rights, but my pulpit is so flimsy here. And who would ever feel sympathy for a witch?  And even those who might–like Simon–still don’t believe that maybe these men and women aren’t witches at all.

A deluge of pity hits me, followed by a breathless moment in which all I can hear is the mortar-like pounding of the waves.  Pop, pop, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! The rocks take their beating peacefully.  The tide crests, the sun fades, and a violent bout of loneliness descends upon me in its wake.   It hurts more than usual this time.

Visit the Gambaga archive for all the posts in this series or check out the photo gallery for more images from the witch camps of North Ghana.

Magajia Dahamat Seidu

Magajia Dahamat Seidu is an admitted killer.  She murdered a child in her village of Zeongu almost twenty years ago.  She cursed it and  it died mysteriously.  She doesn’t know why she did it.  She just did.

At least that’s what an article from last year’s Daily Graphic tells me.  Simon shows me the article in his office when I ask if there are any witches who have confessed to witchcraft.  He saves all newspaper clippings that mention the camp.  I ask him if I can talk to Seidu.  A half-hour later, I’m sitting on a tiny footstool, chewing nuts and staring into her tiny wrinkled face and pooling brown eyes.

Seidu tells me, in short measured sentences, that, yes, she is a witch, and, yes, she did curse a child to death, and, no, she doesn’t know why.  “I just opened my mouth, and it spoke,” she says. The woman is not stable. She is unable to answer many of my questions, and it becomes apparent that Simon is filling in the gaps during translation.  I am a bit wary of her eyes–they are uncomfortably vacuous and constantly staring through me. I decide to cut it short after ten minutes.

“Done,” Simon says, surprised.

That night I have Simon and his wife, Evelyn, over for dinner.  I find a woman who will make me pasta and I order a six-pack of Guinness.  Simon shows up five minutes early in his best shirt, a faded Chelsea soccer jersey.  He drinks the beer with a disquieting fervor, not even waiting for the foam to recede.  Evelyn tells me that she has “small malaria” and asks if she can have some of my medication (I keep a prescription of malarone in my bag when I leave Accra).

I don’t eat any of my chicken, it tastes horrible, so they inhale it together, including the bones.  Suddenly I realize that I have spent the last three days looking for the answers to my questions about the Gambaga witch camp, when the best source was always sitting in front of me.  “You know, you must have one of the strangest job titles in the world,” I joke with Simon. “How did you ever become the manager of a witch camp? ”

Simon and Evelyn Ngote

Simon’s English is very good, although he has no formal education, and he unwinds a long, tightly constricted narrative about his past. He is from a small village, close to Gambaga, and has lived in the region most of his life.  He became involved in social work in the eighties, primarily assisting victims of river blindness, an insect-borne malady that affects the aged in rural areas.  One job led to another, and most were affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.  In 1994, he was offered his current position in Gambaga.

Simon cares more about the witches of Gambaga than anyone else I have met.  “I want them to live a decent life,” he tells me.  “I don’t think of them as witches but social outcasts.”

“But, do you believe that they are truly witches?” I ask.

“My wife thinks I’m crazy,” he whispers, smiling at Evelyn, whose English is very poor, “but I don’t think all of the allegations are true.”   He delivers the line as if he’s confessing an infidelity, a state-secret or a radical conspiracy theory.  The shocking thing is that in northern Ghana Simon’s belief–that witchcraft may not exist–is borderline sacrilege.  In fact, Simon tells me that if he attempted to debunk witchcraft in rural villages his efforts would not only be fruitless, but could damage him professionally.  “I would lose my credibility, people would think I was a crazy man,” he says.

Visit the Gambaga archive for the first three posts in this series or check out the photo gallery for more images from the witch camps of North Ghana.

The Gambaranna

The going rate to interview a witch is 1 Cedi (approximately $.67), so I make sure to fill my pockets with small bills before approaching the camp.  When I enter, I kneel and clap twice to pay tribute to the Gambarrana.  He is a Muslim and dressed in a long white flowing robe with blue trim.  He inquires of my purpose, and Simon translates to him that I am an American journalist working in Ghana and interested in writing about the witch camps.  Simon has told me the Gambarrana is skittish about providing access to journalists, as previously reporters have been critical of the conditions of the camp.  I assure him that I have heard many good things about his efforts and then supplement the statement by slipping 5 Cedi’s under his rug–as Simon had suggested.  He nods and we stroll inside.

The compound is made  of a number of small, circular-shaped huts that face each other in groups of five or six.  They have dirt floors and no water or electricity.  When I arrive, the women have just returned from the field and are scattered about, mostly sitting on the ground or tiny footstools.  In the middle is a large pile of peanuts that they sift through, occasionally taking a handful to munch on.

An accused witch in Gambaga arranges nuts (photo by Brian McAndrew)

The women’s faces are weathered, their shoulders slumped, and they appear torn between two  forces: the survival impulse that drives them to push on and the anguish of their plight, which has caused them to be banished–under the threat of violence and even death–from their friends, families and homes.

The first interview I conduct is with Kondug Dute.  Approximately sixty years old, she arrived in Gambaga from her village ten years prior, after being accused of bewitching a child who had died.  Inexplicable deaths–especially among the young–are one of the most frequent motivators for allegations of witchcraft, and Dute was accused by the  son of a rival.  She was chased from the village amidst threats of violence and now lives in Gambaga selling firewood.  “I have been disgraced and separated from my family, yet I have done nothing,” Dute tells me.  Like most of the women I interview, Dute says that she is innocent of all allegations of witchcraft.  However, Dute and others do not deny that witchcraft exists.  When I ask one woman if she believes that her peers might be witches, she tells me flatly:  “There’s no way I can know that; it’s between them and God.”

My first interview in Gambaga (Photo by Brian McAndrew)

I interview four women that evening and all of their stories are similar.  Most have been accused after a death in the village, others simply because a rival said they were “haunting them” in their dreams.

It is rare that there is any fact-finding effort in regard to the allegations facing an accused witch. The only possible vindication occurs during a trial by ordeal that is sometimes held at the witch camp.  In these cases, a woman slaughters a fowl in the presence of the Gambarrana and other spiritual leaders.  If the fowl dies with its wings facing upward, the woman is exonerated.  According to Simon, this happens on average 20% of the time, but even if a woman is found not guilty she will still often stay at Gambaga.  One woman, who had won her trial, tells me that the stigma associated with witchcraft is so great that she was unable to return to her home regardless of her “acquittal.”

The women tell me that their biggest problems are a lack of food and basic healthcare.  They look emaciated and the few children milling about appear even worse.  One lays motionless on the ground the entire time I am conducting interviews.  It is naked and a horde of flies congregate around its buttocks.  For the initial twenty minutes, no one attends to it, despite the fact that it moans on and off.  I grow more and more disturbed by its presence and finally one of the women notices my discomfort and carries it to another part of the compound.  “It has a sickness in the rectum,” Simon says.

I pay the women and they thank me and insist that I take handfuls of peanuts.  It is just a bit after seven when I leave the compound, but there isn’t a single restaurant open anywhere.  I buy two packages of biscuits and head back to Martha’s. There I take a shower, pouring three buckets of cold water over my head.  I go out to look for a beer and find one and a few drinking partners as well.  I want to know if they believe that the women of Gambaga are actually witches, so after a drink I summon the nerve to ask them.

“Of course,” they say.  “Why else would they be here?”

Read the first post in this series or check out pictures of Gambaga in the photo  gallery.