What do witches eat

All right. Bakesuka says she knows nothing, but we were one another's witnesses and we know beiween us that she is a liar and cannot be excused from this. Again I say, pay close attention to what happened, how we went to Boma as it were in the spirit bonso ku nsi a mpila mayembo , and how the matter ended.

When Mr. Madiama asked to marry our daughter we were not very happy about it because he lived far away in Boma. We wanted her to marry nearby to be able to help us. But our daughter did not want to, so we allowed them to marry. And now I say to you parents, if love erupts, don't try to stop it; let it boil over and spill on the floor, like a little stream that finds its own way. When we had agreed with my clan and my wife's clan that they should marry, we asked for what we wanted and we received palmwine, marriage money, and the rest.

But just imagine! You know what it's like when something that was yours is taken away, how deprived you feel. When we began to feel that our loss was more than we could stand, we cast about for a way to overcome it.

After the wedding we sent Miankodila off to Boma with her husband, and misery descended on us, because we loved her very much and she was so useful in the house. In our depression we decided to go to Boma to kill our child. When we had agreed on this we left home, the four of us: myself, Bakesuka my wife, our son Mahungu, and Kuzimbuku.

We went to Boma in the guise of owls, with witch lights, resting on the way at Kingila village over by Mbanza Mona; we asked permission from the local witch to rest ourselves in the village and he said we could. The request was made so that other witches would not be surprised at our arrival and there would be no trouble between us; and after all, it is the custom of the BaKongo if they want to spend the night in a strange village to ask permission first from the elders.

After staying at Kingila we set off again, resting once more at the Kinkenge mission, in the silk-cotton tree there. After Kinkenge, Tshela, then over the Mayombe forests all the way to Boma, but in Boma we couldn't at first find the house of a child of ours of the clan, or "witchcraft" apprentice there, a witch who was to show us our son-in-law's house where our daughter lived. After resting a little, and getting ready to see whether the house was protected by any sort of charm, we sent our son Mahungu ahead to find out whether Miankodila was at home.

He reported that she was. Immediately Bakesuka and I went into the house, while the other two stayed outside to watch for anyone who might come to defend her. I did not want to stay outside to guard the house, because there is a rule that unless the father makes the decision [ nzengolo , which could also mean cut] the child will not die, because be is under father's protection ku nsi a lupangu lwa se.

When it was time to remove the soul my wife signalled outside and I immediately seized her throat bula kingoodingoodi and strangled her in a witchcraft fury, [ toma fieta squeeze, strangle mu mfumfu gluttonous eagerness ya kindoki ] so that she died. Then there were just the two of us. We went outside and told our assistants that she was dead. Lutete: I have come to accuse Hanna, not idly, but because she is a witch.

Elder sister Mayi fell ill, and Hanna agreed that she had caused her harm on account of a quarrel in the fields. When she blessed her she got better. Hanna: The person who taught me was Mary Ntongo, but she only gave me a recipe that caused diarrhea. A: A witch. I was angry with my husband and killed him because he threw me out of the house, that's why I did it, and someone had my peanuts eaten up by sheep.

From the official transcript of a case heard in the local court, Mbanza Manteke, , with additional material from the clerk's manuscript notes.

Pagan Federation North West. Robsphotography's Photos. The Holly Grove Coven. Witchcraft - UK Parliament. Kathy Rowan-Drewitt concealed her fascination with witchcraft. Witch school. Published 18 August Published 23 April Published 16 March Published 28 July Published 31 October Published 30 October Published 17 August Five portions of fruit and vegetables each day can help the growth of healthy skin. Black, greasy, thin, hair: This may be a sign of deficiencies in vitamins and minerals such as vitamin B complex, copper, and zinc.

Vitamin B complex is essential for the growth of healthy hair and is found in wholegrain cereals, dark green vegetables, legumes, lean meat, and eggs, Copper is needed for hair colour and is found in green leafy vegetables, nuts, offal, and wholegrain breads and cereals. Zinc, also needed for hair growth, and can be found in fresh fruit, potatoes, egg yolks, Brazil nuts, and dried fruit.

Long, brittle, nails: This could also be a sign of a calcium deficiency, which can be caused by a lack of dairy products. Having three portions of dairy a day can help give you the calcium you need for healthy nails, as well as healthy teeth and bones. Eventually, the increasingly ravenous spirit will require the blood of his own progeny, thereby obliterating the very future he was trying to secure through his search for financial security. In some rare instances, the maye witch himself becomes the ultimate victim of the Doguwa.

They only turn malevolent at the prompting of individuals who use them to serve their own selfish ends. Spirits, people say, are like children; like them, they will do what they are asked to do. Like children who are taught wrongly, Doguwa spirits learn from their unscrupulous masters how to perform immoral tasks. In short, they are the unwitting instruments of human selfishness. If he is mean, she becomes mean. Nor can they return to the wild.

After she has undressed completely, the accused is given swamp water to drink and asked to vomit it. By vomiting the water, she establishes her innocence. If, on the other hand, she cannot spit the water out, she must be a witch. The water test is considered an infallible means of identifying witches Ordinary water does little good to assuage their thirst for greed is like a fire that burns in their insides, quickly exhausting any moisture their bodies might absorb.

Because of its special properties, the water of Gumbin Kano not only establishes the guilt of the accused but also divests him of the Doguwa and tansforms him, thereafter repressing his urge to profit from others. He cannot […] harm anything that contains blood. Thereafter, and in the presence of the entire community, she must jump three times over the motionless body of her victim in a procedure known as ketare jumping When successful, the procedure frees the victim from her spiritual attacker.

Known generically as Doguwa, these spirits played a central role in the survival of local communities in pre-colonial times, protecting the inhabitants from enemy attacks, droughts, and epidemics. Eventually, many of them evolved into more personal protectors. As noted already, Islam has gained ground over spirit worship on the visible terrain of religious practices and the overwhelming majority of residents in Dogondoutchi and the surrounding villages are now Muslim. As I noted at the outset, it is this lack of commitment that has supposedly unleashed the wrath of the spirits.

As non-human and mostly non-Muslim, spirits are the ultimate other, the expression of a wild, yet powerful alterity that can seldom be contained within the ordered parameters of social life. It is to secure their protection as much as to placate them that bori devotees communicate with spirits.

Muslims, on the other hand, abstain from any contact with aljannu spirits. Ignored or altogether forgotten, spirits now haunt the very places they once called home— this is, at least, what some residents claim when pressed to explain the incidence of spirit attacks Masquelier , In the late s, Arewa was reputed to harbor a considerable number of evil spirits.

Civil servants originating from other regions who were assigned to Dogondoutchi reportedly took up their posts with great reluctance; they had heard what happened to those who crossed the path of an evil Doguwa. While they allegedly continue to insure the prosperity of the household, this prosperity comes at a cost—the cost of human lives that must be sacrificed to keep the spirit satiated. Many such spirits are said to reside in Muslim households. As Kasuwa, a bori devotee, explained:.

Everybody prays and becomes a malam [Muslim cleric]. The malams avoid the Doguwa. Even if it was their fathers who brought them in the house, they avoid them. They do not like Doguwa [spirits]. She will ask the mai gida [head of the household] to give her one of his daughters. And the Doguwa will kill the child.

If the malam refuses, she will kill him. It is the Doguwa spirits who kill all these people in town since they have been abandoned because of prayer. Now they take their revenge. When they are given a child, they will suck his blood. When there is no more blood, he will die. Because Muslims categorically deny that the blood shed during babban salla or other Muslim celebrations is for the spirits, they are suspected not only of sacrificing to the spirits to secure arziki wealth, good-fortune, and well-being but also of sacrificing to a Doguwa who, hidden away in a back chamber of the family compound, assiduously converts the blood of her victims into wealth In the eyes of many residents, the glaring good fortune of these individuals, which exacerbates the failure of their less fortunate neighbours, can only have originated in a corrupt deal with a Doguwa.

In , I was told that Niamey residents financiers and politicians, mostly now hire the services of Doguwa masters from Arewa to embezzle public funds. The laws that govern the process of wealth production are as inscrutable as they are corrupt which is why a positive outcome can only be secured by accessing the equally mysterious and perverted powers of a blood-sucking Doguwa.

Membership in the umma Muslim community has opened doors for those who—not having the French-based education required to enter the civil service—must engage in trade to supplement the income they derive from farming, but it is not in itself a guarantee of success.

Whether or not these individuals publicly recognize the power of Doguwa spirits, the outcome is the same: people around them fall suddenly sick and often die while they, on the other hand, allegedly get plumper and more prosperous This was noticed by some residents who, after he was taken to Gumbin Kano, pointed it out to me as a blatant example of Muslim hypocrisy. In their eyes, rather than ruling out illicit processes of wealth production, Muslim piety had become a front for such activities.

Aside from helping make sense of the hidden logic of wealth production, the rhetoric of witchcraft also sheds lights on what Muslims supposedly hide behind their monotheism. In contrast to educated elites who see bori possession performances as an expression of the local folklore and a part of their cultural heritage, gado , the majority of Muslims, all recent converts, associate bori values with transgression, immorality, and backwardness.

Yet despite their best efforts, the practice of sacrificing yanka to the spirits is not easily disentangled from local models of wealth production; on the contrary, it provides ever more relevant images for dealing with the ambiguous and often contradictory workings of power, with reports of false representation and hidden accumulation.

Witchcraft discourse adjusts circuitously to the changing cultural landscape: even when it generates diametrically opposed explanations of social realities, it remains seemingly consistent. In Arewa, emerging Muslim values as well as the models of personhood, the modes of sociality, and the practices of consumption they are predicated on have not stamped out the discourse on maita.

Mayu, on the other hand, allegedly accomplish the trip in the company of their bloodthirsty Doguwa: they have grown so dependent on the fearful creatures as to need their constant protection against the threat of being trampled to death by crowds of faithful, for instance—a distinct possibility in Mecca when pilgrims converge en masse to the same spot. Even Muslims who have no direct dealings with bori are known to secure spiritual protection before leaving for the pilgrimage.

In , a woman I knew asked a bori practitioner to guarantee her safe return before leaving for Mecca. She promised to bring a goat if the spirit of the bori medium protected her during the pilgrimage. They are trampled by a crowd or bewitched. She had returned from the Hijaz safe and sound, and was making good on her promise to reward the spirit.

Tani or Hajiya, as everyone called her , showed little trust in Muslims, however. Nor did she value the social recognition that came with the title of Hajiya pilgrim she had earned upon her return from the Hijaz. As she explained:. He let me attend possession ceremonies.

But since he went to Mecca, he does not let me. If I leave for a possession ceremony, he beats me […]. He went to Mecca, this is why he does not like bori anymore […]. There are plenty of Muslims who keep their spirits. And if you had told me this before, I would not have gone to Mecca. Stated otherwise, Muslims allegedly rely on spirit for protection and to guarantee the income needed to afford the hajj but they do so secretly: admitting that they worship spirits which Islam condemns as shirk, associating a lesser being with God would sully the reputation they have earned as alhazai pilgrims.

It is precisely because Muslim practices seem opaque to those who are in no position to know better that they invite speculation about what really goes on. By resolutely rejecting the title of Hajiya and loudly claiming to be a bori practitioner, she avoided any suspicion that, like other less scrupulous pilgrims including her husband , she had gone to Mecca under false pretence.

In other words, by openly acknowledging her own dealings with spirits in the context of her engagement with bori practices, she could claim the high moral ground whereas alhazai pilgrims who, by virtue of their commitment to Islam, denied altogether having any relations to the spirits, paradoxically raised suspicions about some potentially secret—and therefore, necessarily pervert—dealings with spirits.

For financially burdensome practices like the hajj to be sustained at a time when households throughout Niger are feeling the impact of an economic crisis that shows no signs of resolution, Muslims must rely heavily on the very body of traditions they are supposedly combating.

Of course, not all Muslims are thought to keep a Doguwa spirit to finance their pious endeavours. Nor are suspicions of Doguwa-produced wealth directed solely at Muslims. Nonetheless, and despite the scorn which Muslims pour on bori practitioners and the combative stance they take towards indigenous religion, in Dogondoutchi, the aetiology of witchcraft has been strengthened, indeed reaffirmed, by the rise of a commercial Muslim elite.

Instead of being confined to irrelevance by an emerging Muslim order of values, witchcraft provides a convenient, malleable rhetoric through which the problems associated with this order might be addressed. If Doguwa-centred practices are shrouded in secrecy, that secrecy must paradoxically be unveiled for the reality of witchcraft to be demonstrated at all. Consider the following case.

In , Usuman, a wealthy Muslim living in the village of Balgo now part of the commune of Dogondoutchi , was accused of being a witch by a bori devotee in the throes of possession.