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Witches and family revolutions

Sikaman Palava LOGO

It is now quite fashionable to col­lapse your own business and blame witches. You only have to sharpen a cutlass and chase your grandmother out of the house and everyone blames her for the financial virus that has infected you.

It is not quite certain, however, whether Satan should be held re­sponsible for every misdeed of man. A pastor rapes an eight-year old girl and quickly blames Satan to save his neck, knowing that Mr Lucifer would not be around to defend himself.

A man deliberately takes four pow­erful quarters of local gin and goes directly to his mother-in-law to slap her on the eye. At the Sanhedrin, he blames Satan. “The devil made me do it, he’d grin like an idiot.

I think one of these days, Satan would have to appear on the scene in person with a horrifying face and declare: “As for this one, I don’t know anything about it. I am tired of being blamed for every bad thing. Henceforth, I’ll appear to defend myself. If possible I’ll bring along a demon who has a Master’s degree in Law, to act as my de­fence lawyer.”

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We all know that the devil is not a straight-forward individual. At best he is as crooked as a snake suffering from diarrhoea. According to the Bible he was someone of noble birth until he misinterpret­ed, misquoted and misrepresented the heavenly motto “ORDER IS THE FIRST LAW IN HEAVEN”.

The devil in fact changed it to mean “CONFUSION IS THE FIRST LAW IN HEAVEN”. This was tanta­mount to staging a coup d’etat.

Although the devil pleaded not guilty, the trial was swift. There was no ‘I put it to you’ business, and a ready conviction saw the de­scent of the evil one from heaven to earth. Since then, he was sup­posed to be the cause of every bad thing on earth.

If there is a lorry accident as a result of wrongful overtaking, he is blamed for it. When a man is jilted by his girlfriend, the devil made her do it.

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A man suffers from constipation and the devil is surely responsible for it. The devil must have put a “road block” in his rectum and cemented it.

I guess the day Jimmy Satan would be brought physically to a court or tribunal, the charges against him will be uncountable.

He knows it, so he won’t dare ap­pear in the dock to listen to constipa­tion charges. Even if he’d enjoy free legal aid, he won’t.

But let’s come down to this dev­il-blaming matter. Satan is surely destructive and red-eyed demons can cause havoc of unimaginable propor­tions.

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However, is it reasonable for a man to blame the devil for his own carelessness or senselessness as in the case of a reckless driver getting maimed in an accident?

The reason why most people do not progress in life is that they are quick to blame their failures on others. A man who mismanages his business and the enterprise collapses on his head has no justification going to blame his grandmother for it. Not when he spent half the capital on women, and the profits on booze and takeaways.

As it were, some of our beliefs and superstitions are not helping us. When a typical Caucasian’s business is collapsing, he takes pen and paper and honestly lists the possible causes of his failing endeavours. If he can’t do it himself, he hires the services of a consultant. The business is, therefore, examined in all its forms through crevice, from all facets an angles.

It has nothing to do with witches flying at night, and at the end of it, the business rises up again. This is because the businessman has done some introspection and has got to know that he may have been misap­plying his capital on a lousy woman. So he’s got to choose between saving his business or keeping the woman. The choice is entirely his and his grandmother has nothing to do with it.

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A superstitious African would look at it differently. First, he doesn’t want to blame himself for his failings. Second, he has been indoctrinated to Revolutions doctrinated to believe that witches and demons can make and unmake.

Third, that old relatives are friend­ly in person but dangerous in spirit especially at night. And four, that there is a common witch behind the fall of every business, behind every incidence of poverty and behind ev­ery daily constipation.

So when he is not managing his business properly and is losing money, he begins imagining things. Instead of sitting down and calculating how much he has been milked by the waist-swinging lady in his extra-mari­tal life, he’d start frowning at the old lady at home.

When she greets him, he’d growl, “Leave me alone, you witch! At night you won’t sleep. You’ll be flying from North to South. You’ll see!”

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This is a prelude to the sharpening of cutlasses to launch a family revo­lution.

The papers report it every day. Young men are butchering their moth­ers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law for their poverty, their illnesses, whatever.

Witches can cause some of these things, but it would be fallacious to assume that they are responsible for all our woes when in eight out of 10 cases we should be blaming our­selves.

In any case, if you believe a witch is making you poor, why not go to Jesus instead of butchering your old lady? The battle against the devil is not a physical one.

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It is not a heavyweight contest or a kenkey-weight brawl. Neither is it a cutlass palaver. It has to do with prayer and nothing else. So go to Jesus The Christ.

If you are a Muslim go to Allah. And surely go to Budha if you are a Bud­dhist. Whatever it is, stop butchering the old ladies!

This article was published

on Saturday, October 19, 1996

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Merari Alomele’s

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Attempts to kill natural therapy?

Sikaman Palava

Anyone who has the devil’s bene­diction of getting sick of diabetes and jaundice at the same time would surely blame an experienced witch for his or her palaver. Fact is, the combination is a dreaded one with the form and visage of an obituary.

The bio-chemical analysis of the unholy combination is, however, within arm’s reach. Diabetes doesn’t tolerate sugar and jaundice can’t get cured with­out glucose (sugar). The two diseases are therefore irreconcilable under any medical condition. They are just not of the same womb!

So the terrified patient has to choose between two styles of dying: either curing the diabetes or dying of jaundice or curing the jaundice and falling into a diabetic coma en route to a cold room transit. The next available plane is destined for the cemetery, meaning the world no longer has any business to do with you.

Now, forgetting about pathological combinations and narrowing the focus on diabetes, one can still crumble in fear. The reason is that diabetes as a disease is not a benevolent ailment. We can understand this because it has nev­er been philanthropic in any sense of the word. It demands its pound of flesh, and that is often worth a human life.

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglyce­mia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

TREACHERY

I am writing this piece because of the sundry sinister attempts of treach­ery, overt and covert, being subtly perpetrated to kill Natural Therapy which claims a cure for diabetes. The claim is completely at variance with the assertion of orthodox practitioners who believe that diabetes can only be man­aged, but can never be cured.

Basically, diabetes occurs when the pancreas is not producing enough insulin to cope with blood sugar, or is not producing insulin at all. The result is a debilitating disease with several compli­cations that can lead to death.

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To combat the disease, one has to be put on diaonil or daily insulin injections supposedly to manage the disease, not to cure it because according to medical gurus, it cannot be cured.

Natural therapists have a different and more progresso-radical view. They say diabetes can be cured and they are proving it every day of the week. Happi­ly, medical doctors who develop diabe­tes are now coming for natural therapy, albeit under the cover of darkness. Today, there are many living testimonies of a natural therapy cure for the deadly ailment.

I was really sad about a silly attempt to frustrate the efforts of a well-known Texas-trained naturopathic physician who has toned down the orthodox medi­cal chorus that diabetes is not cur-able. Many of his patients who had been on insulin for years before seeing him are off it.

The medical crusade is a veritable one, and the good news is being propa­gated by those who have seen the light. Dr Kwesi Ofei-Agyemang’s success story is one that needs to be told from the roof-tops. But ask me, how is he being frustrated?

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On October 28, 1996, a diabetic patient of Dr Ofei-Agyemang had her sugar level checked. It was 6.1 mmo1/1. After treatment using naturopathic methods, she became well and was asked to check her sugar level again at a laboratory (name withheld) on 6-11- 96. Surprisingly, the lab recorded 13.3 mmol/l; meaning that her situation had worsened by far.

When she brought the report, Dr Ofei-Agyemang was sceptical about it. The patient was supposed to have recovered, or at least was recovering. The level could, therefore, not be 13.3. He rushed to the laboratory to demand an explanation.

When Dr Ofei-Agymang queried the report, the technician said he was sorry and added that he’d investigate the error.

Meanwhile at another laboratory where he sent the patient for another test to cross-check the earlier result, the patient’s sugar level recorded a low 2.9 mmo1/1, a correct reflection of her improved state of health.

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The doctor was furious for a very good reason. If he had taken the earlier lab report seriously and continued treat­ment to further reduce the patient’s sugar level, the patient would have sunk into coma and possibly died.

“This is not the first time this is happening,” Dr Ofei-Agyemang told me in an interview last week Friday. When I send my patients for tests, some lab technicians deliberately don’t return the correct results just because they know the patient is attending a natural therapy clinic.

“I see it as a subtle attempt to kill naturopathy in this country aside other hidden strategies that are being adopted to sabotage it. They are all out to create a wrong impression in the minds of pa­tients that they are going to the wrong place for treatment when in fact they are at the right place.”

Other attempts include doctors warning their patients never to submit themselves to natural therapy whenever the patients suggest they want to try it, knowing well that orthodox medicine isn’t helping them.

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Look at something else like this one. After Dr Ofei-Agyemang had cured one patient of a disease and placed him on a diet of fruits and vegetables, the patient’s brother (a doctor) advised him to quit the natural diet regimen and to eat plenty of meat and all that has to do with balanced diet.

So the patient quit the natural diet and ate meat to his fill. Before long boils broke out all over his body. Apparently, the body was rejecting the unnatural diet which had become toxic to the body following the spell of natural dieting.

FAILURE

I have been thinking about this diabetic cure controversy for some time now. I was compelled to ask the natural therapist to explain how naturopathy could possibly tread where orthodox medicine has woefully failed as far as a cure to diabetes was concerned.

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He explained that a defective pan­creas only needs to be revived through selective manipulation, diet and urine therapy to make it function again. If de­fects in other organs of the body can be corrected, there should be no medical reason why the pancreas should be an exception, he said.

“What other doctors must know is that once our methods are different, our results will naturally be different,” he said. “What they are supposed to be saying in fact is that ‘according to orthodox medicine, there is no cure for diabetes.’ They should stop saying there is no cure for diabetes because we are curing it. If they doubt it they should come here and see things for them­selves.

“Our methods are natural and include colon irrigation, deep tissue massage which is more effective than physiotherapy, diet, some fast and manipulation, and urine therapy. There is no way any disease can survive a combination of these methods.

Cancerous sores and all kinds of chronic ailments have been cured, dia­betes inclusive.

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“We just rejuvenate the dormant pancreas and it starts producing insulin. Unless the pancreas is cut out through surgery as a result of cancer, we have ways of making it work.”

I spoke to one of his patients, Jamison Ocansey. He was sick of diabe­tes and has been on herbs of all kinds, insulin and dioanil for more than a year. His sugar level fluctuated between 9 to 17 mmo1/c. After treatment, his sugar level is between 5.0 and 5.9 mmol/c.

“People don’t like this method because of the urine that is included in the method of cure,” he said.”I used to feel the same way but as I’m now cured, I’ve an entirely different opinion. Let me also thank your paper Weekly Spectator. It was an article in it that made me come here, so keep spreading the message.

“I used to be very weak and couldn’t walk. Look, now I am as strong as a bull. I eat well and I’m happy.”

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The doctor has cured various types of diseases at his clinic which is 100 metres north of Holy Gardens or Lido, Circle, Accra. What I believe would help us all is that the medical authorities should investigate these cures and come out openly to claim or disclaim them.

Those who are off insulin would also give testimony. That way, natural therapy can become more acceptable and there would be no point in anybody trying to frustrate efforts at entrench­ing it as the better substitute that has no side effects. It should in fact be the ideal complement to orthodox medicine and not an adversary as people want to portray it.

This article was first publish on Satur­day, November 16, 1996

Merari Alomele’s

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

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 It is great to be young

 If I had the power, I believe I may be tempted to remain a child forever. We used to hear statements it is great to be young when growing up.

I did not really comprehend one anybody would wish to be like me, a small boy and not wish to be an adult like my Dad. Those were the days that the family did not sit around a dining table and your Dad’s meal was set up on a small table at a particular spot in the hall.

When I observed the amount of meat that were given to my Dad and what was given to me, l definitely wanted to grow up quickly to also become an adult. Therefore to hear some adults occasionally declare that it is great to be young, was some­thing I could not understand.

My reasoning was that, adults were enjoying a lot of benefits and so for any adult to even consider the possi­bility

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When I grew up however, I have come to appreciate that saying that indeed, it is great to be young. Growing up as a child, all l looked up to was the next day to come as I go to bed. When I woke up, l had no worries about what I would eat before going to school.

Where the next meal was going to come from was not my concern. All l had to do was to make sure that I go to school, study hard and pass my ex­ams and ensure that I am within the first three, in my class. There was no worrying about school fees, chang­ing of school uniforms or clothes in general, something I cannot run from now as an adult.

I now have to provide for some people now and I can now fully un­derstand my Dad’s comment that it is great to be young.

Christmas time was a very inter­esting and exciting time as a child because new clothes were provided for me and my siblings. I recall one Christmas period when I was provid­ed with a suit. It was a memorable occasion in my life as it was the first time I wore a suit.

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I felt very proud wearing the suit and with my new shoes to match, I felt great walking with my friends as we moved from place to place. When a new academic term begins I always looked forward to having a new school uniform. How much it was going to cost or how it was going to be provided was not my concern at all. It was taken for granted that I will get a new uniform at all cost.

I always had a good night’s sleep with the exception of those days that I was suffering from malaria and I had quite a number of such malaria attacks.

Recently my last born jokingly said “Daddy, do not think that I am not going to take money from you when I grow up oh. Even when I get mar­ried and have children, do not think you will be free. I will still collect money from you because you are my father”.

I burst into laughter and said “It is great to be young”. At the moment, her needs are provided by me and until she completes school and starts working, I will continue to provide for her needs. There have been mo­ments that I wish I were a child once again.

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I recall an incident involving my little girlie as I affectionately call my last born, when she pushed a piece of chalk into her nostril and we had to take her to the hospital, and wondering how it was going to come out. While her mother and I were worried at the hospital, she did not seem bothered and in that moment I wished I was a child. When the nurses finally got it out, I was so relieved and she was just smiling, obviously not worried as I was. Indeed, it is great to be young.

NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNA­TIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’

By Laud Kissi-Mensah

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