Voodoo Thoughts

Many Volunteers in Ghana are faced with challenges understanding and dealing with traditional beliefs.  Theses are some thoughts on the subject from one anonymous volunteer.

It seemed so ridiculous the first time that I heard it suggested…a voodoo curse on my PCV Supervisor!

And indeed, based on what I heard, I laughed.

What I first heard was that a few years ago , my Supervisor had been ‘running’ a commercial establishment for an American NGO in a rural Volta Region community and that therefore ’working’ for the yevu, the white man, he had to be making lots of money. Of course, he wasn’t, but that was ignored.

Ghanaian rural communities, if you haven’t figured it out yet, are riddled with jealousies…between families, among families, insiders versus outsiders.

And so there were those who resented my friend’s good fortune in working for the man and plotted to get him fired  from his post and claim the rumored rewards all  for themselves. And so they went to the local voodoo man and paid him to put a curse on my friend. 

I don’t know enough to be able to figure out whether that curse worked but my friend eventually left the community and the operation went belly up and the American NGO’s support was terminated.

My friend moved to another community in the same region but quite distant and the NGO started another operation, bigger than and better funded than the previous.

And the operation has been highly successful, hopefully aided by the assigned PCV (me) for eighteen months.

But according to what I’ve been recently been told, the original voodoo casters eventually found out about this new operation…much bigger than before...and repeated their original voodoo curse...perhaps joined by local people in our  community. 

And that is when I became aware of all of this. 

My friend, my supervisor, with whom I was pretty much in daily contact, got ‘sick’.

Malaria?  Nope!

It took a while and I seemed to run into quite a few brick walls before I got any understanding.

My friend looked awful and clearly felt awful….a mere shadow of himself.

Please, M, tell me what is wrong..it’s probably my fault.  Is it malaria/ Is it a stomach problem?

Reluctantly, eventually..he whispered..it’s spiritual.

Emmmm…what does that mean? He’s lost his faith? 

So he told me….he feels balls of fire inside..in his arms, in his stomach, in his legs. Like hot coals in his body and he feels fevered.

He went to the hospital in a nearby town and they kept him for few days but could find no cause, He looked terrible…weak, frightened really and he told me that his family were very scared too.

He told me about the original curse and how the people from the first place had found out where he was and that this time the yevu NGO had built a bigger and more expensive XXXXX and that therefore there was more yevu  money at stake...and indeed they may have joined forces with people in his new community to reinforce the curse.

‘M…this is crazy…surely you don’t believe this nonsense.’

But he did and he does.

He would seek cleansing with his minister…and with a vial of mysterious liquid, to drink? to rub on?

It goes in and out…some days he’s good and some days he looks like death warmed up.

I talked with some local friends, including one who has been educated and taught in the US college system.

‘Do you believe in voodoo and that someone could put a curse on M?’

“Well, No, but…’

‘But what?’

It doesn’t matter what I think it is what M thinks that is important.’

‘…and if M believes that there is a curse on him...........’

‘A curse can only operate if the person who is cursed believes it,’ my elder friend told me.

‘I’ve learned not to believe in them but I would never question anyone else’s belief in them,’ he said.

I asked him whether there was a voodoo man here in our area.  ‘No…maybe, don’t ask..’ 

And that’s what is scary…my supervisor/friend is not dumb, he is educated and a head teacher at a local school but he believes in this curse and so do his family and he is very frightened.

How little we know...how different our cultures.

I can still laugh and say impossible, absolute nonsense, but if he believes it then it is possible and not nonsense! And so I must worry for my friend’s mental and physical health.