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Witches and family revolutions
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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
Merari Alomele’s
THE typical itinerant salesman in Sikaman is a herbalist. He is normally a slim macho with the capacity to perambulate the expanse of area covering the triangle of Accra-Tema-Ashiaman. In short, he can walk a total of 60 miles a day, marketing a product that cures every disease, including poverty.
The door-to-door herbal pharmacist advertises his product by word of mouth. He has nothing to do with the Food and Drugs Board (FDB). After all, his concoctions do not feature on FM stations.
Those herbalists who cannot walk to propagate the herbal gospel, liaise with drivers of mass transportation and their mates. They are, therefore, given the chance to sell their products on Benz buses that ply the routes.
Normally, the herbalist starts his sales message with a prayer and Bible study. He asks the passengers to bow down their heads in supplication to God the father, the son, the Holy Spirit.
When a herbalist asks the passengers to close their eyes and bow their heads, Moslems on board naturally feel offended. They feel that the herbalist has no right to assume that every passenger is a Christian. They think such an assumption is an affront to Islam.
So a Moslem on board will raise the hand for a point of order. He’ll remind the herbalist that it would be in his own interest to mind his language.
“Be careful the way you address people in a public place. Not every person here is a Christian,” he’d state assertively.
Of course, the herbalist will promptly ignore him, but would all the same “watch” his tongue. Who knows whether or not the Moslem brother is inspired by Quoranic zeal to defend the tenets of Islam to the hilt?
When he starts saying, “Wallahi!” and “Inshallah!” it could be the beginning of proclaiming Islam as supreme, a point which must be driven home with talibanic precision.
So the herbalist must tread carefully lest he steps on fire.
The herbalist could even add a measure of mirth to it all, by announcing that Christians on board today have very interesting company on the journey, but that should not detract from the business of the day.
The Moslem brother will weigh the words carefully and offer a wry smile.
He must be careful the occasion does not degenerate into the use of semantics and proverbial oration to deride his conviction that public utterances must be mindful of religious sensibilities. He has made his point very clear and expects that it is taken in good faith in the interest of a peaceful journey.
The herbalist will now open the New Testament and preach salvation, stating clearly that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ and NOBODY else.
The Moslem brother will now start twitching his moustache. The visible and almost revolutionary reflexes of his upper lip can be an indication that sentiments have begun superseding reason, and the outcome could well be tragic now shift uneasily in his seat.
The time has come for him to also express his right to the religion of his fore-bears. He’ll put his hand into his pocket and rise to his feet. The time has indeed come!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 9, 2006
When the cause of a particular problem like sickness, disease, sudden illness, a social issue etc. are not known, it stands to reason that resolving it becomes a huge challenge.
Citizens would understand the government when public announcements are made to the effect that government is trying to find a solution to the issue, even though it is taking a while for it to be resolved because citizens are rational beings.
On the other hand, if the solution to a particular issue is known to everybody but the government for whatever reason, is dragging its feet in resolving it, citizens become frustrated and begin to lose trust in their leaders.
One such issue is the heavy traffic along a section of the Kasoa – Odokor road. A short stretch of bad road between the traffic light at the Weija Government Hospital and the entrance to the entrance of the overhead that leads to the N1, is the cause of the problem but nothing is being done about it, day after day, week after week, month after month. Thus is clearly unacceptable.
Another issue that requires urgent attention is the lack of pavements along a lot of streets in parts of the various Municipal Assemblies. Exercise is a prerequisite for long life and healthy living and for those of us who it has become a way of life, this issue of people putting up structures right to the edge of the drains beside the roads, are making life difficult for us.
We are compelled to walk along the roads, putting our lives at serious risk. Pedestrians should never be compelled to compete with vehicles on our streets and roads. Roads and streets are made for vehicles and pavements are made for pedestrians. That is the norm. Any attempt to normalise a situation where pedestrians are mingling with vehicles is insanity.
It is the road regulations that makes it so and therefore district or municipal assemblies are to take responsibility and ensure that spaces for pavements are not encroached upon. Citizens have rights that must be protected by their leaders and making pavements available to pedestrians, is one of them.
When we hear of teachers having sex with students, it appears it is something recent. It is not a new phenomenon. It has been there since Adam. Perhaps this issue is getting much attention due to the proliferation of social media. It was an open secret in times past when Teachers were in relationships with female students and some married them immediately after completion of school.
Some teachers were also known to be having unholy interactions with female pupils but due to the times that these acts occurred, human rights issues and the awareness around it, allowed such unscrupulous teachers to get away with their crimes.
Now we are in a different era and so a Headmaster is now in hot waters. He is alleged to have raped about 19 female students and as usual, some officials tried to cover it up and are also in hot waters and their actions or inactions in the matter are under investigation.
Why the man has been allowed to roam freely without being arrested is simply mind boggling. It appears that the law applies differently, depending on who you are. This issue came to public attention sometime in August this year, yet the police had not arrested or invited this man for question regarding the rape allegation.
It has come out that he is a Constituency Secretary of the ruling party and the question in the public domain is that, is it because he is a political figure that is why he is still walking around without questioning? I believe in the rule of law so let us hold our breadth and let the proper thing be done.
The police must however be seen to be active in this matter. God bless.
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