Witches amongst us muggles?

A curious paranoia has gripped the residents of Freetown over the past couple of weeks; that we are being controlled by dark and evil forces. Now, this post is not inspired by the fact that I’ve just finished watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince; the obsession with witchcraft in Sierra Leone has intrigued me ever since I first got here.

Let me recount the latest events. About two weeks ago, the city’s main water supply was choked off by a severed pipe which took that long to fix. The government released a statement saying that that damage was too severe and they were doing all they could to plug the problem. A different group of commentators however forwarded a more sinister conspiracy theory: that there were witches and wizards in the president’s closest circle. It was apparently these ill meaning sorcerers that had a spell over our water supply in an effort to embarrass the ruling party.

The more recent incident involves the performance of a cleaning ritual at the president’s official residence, the State House. A local paper reported that the head of security at the State House had been passing around a hat to collect money to hire an ‘ariogbo’ (witch doctor), to come and rid the premises of bad karma.

This seems to have unleashed widespread pandemonium with everyone speculating that the president, Ernest Bai Koroma was indeed possessed. Joe Minah, a local journalist who investigated the story assured me that he had seen the exorcism pyre with his own eyes an vouched for some of the president’s aides being wicked.

I must pause here to mention that I’m not one to ridicule traditional beliefs. I’m merely a rational person trying to understand things on the periphery of our consciousness. I have had conversations with a number of people about witchcraft in Sierra Leone. A young media researcher narrated a first person account to me. Her father was suspected to be under the influence of wizards so an ariogbo was called in to expunge the spirits from his body. This involves the smearing of an ash-like powder on the arm, following which the area is branded with a hot iron. I’m told if the person is clean he or she will escape unscarred.

To me as an outsider who admittedly doesn’t understand the local culture that well, witchcraft seems like a convenient scapegoat. It’s what causes mental illness, polio, typhoid and malaria. The cure is some variation of the above mentioned ceremony.

Another fear that grips locals is that of being shot by a witch gun. I have often wondered what this offending weapon actually looks like. Some tell me it’s invisible, others say it’s small enough to fit in your pocket. A third group say it’s the evil eye.

I wonder why I find witch craft so hard to digest even while I’m glued to the screen waiting for Voldermort to make an appearance. As a muggle who’s spent many fantasy trips wandering around the dark halls of Hogwarts, I of all people should be able to embrace this real life ‘Abacadabra’. Is fantasy easier to believe in than reality? For Sierra Leoneans, not seeing is believing; this is their Pottermania.