I recently had a lengthy discussion with a friend who resides in the UK. We talked about different things, ranging from what is happening in each other’s lives to general issues facing the country like insecurity, fuel subsidy crisis, etc. We continued until we touched on some of our beliefs in Nigeria which today I find ludicrous or plain stupid. We talked about the ease with which people blame their woes on witches, most times their jealous relatives in the village. We talked about beliefs in the supernatural, the occult, influence of the spirit world on the physical plane and she found that my thoughts were corroborated by one of her childhood experiences which she then shared with me.
When my friend was a kid, her mum used to give her a glass of milk every evening, before bedtime – na ajebo o. As a child, she was always sick and was always taken from one hospital to the other, without any being able to propose any treatment that could give her some respite. Believing it was something spiritual, she was finally taken to the village in the south. Some things were done which she can’t remember completely. However, she remembers that food was cooked and offered to a group of kids that were about her age. They ate the food with their bare hands and were asked to wipe their hands on her body after eating. She was not allowed to eat with them.
Apparently, this was part of some sacrifice, amongst other things , aimed at setting her free from the children of the spirit realm that were trying to get her back to their world. She returned to Lagos after the experience but continued to be sick. Some months or so later, her family relocated to the UK. Not long after, she was taken to the hospital as she continued to be sick. She was diagnosed to be lactose intolerant, milk drinks were stopped and she became well. It was that simple!
As kids growing up in Nigeria, we were told stories and read books about children that came from the spirit realm just to torture their parents for some crime the parents or ancestors committed. They were usually very beautiful/handsome, very delicate, and lovable, yet, always very sick. So sick, that their parents spent all their resources trying to cater for their medical needs. They still ended up dying, only to come back again and continue the torture. Part of the solution we learnt was that, sometimes, the bodies of the dead kids are marked/ mutilated badly to prevent their return or to provide a means of identification when/if they return.
Different cultures in Nigeria have names for them like Abiku, Ogbanje etc. In my mind, I just see a description of children with sickle cell. If a man and woman whose genotypes fall into the AS category have kids, there is a 25% chance of having a child with sickle cell. I remember that in junior secondary school, it was presented as if out of every four kids, one will have an SS genotype and it is usually presented pictorially as the fourth. In reality, it can be the first, second and can even be all four.
Now, there used to be a man in my Grandma’s village who really loved me. I only have pleasant memories of him from our meetings as a kid as he always gave me goodies. However, I remember that there was this year we went home for Christmas and I went to visit my old friend and he gave me sugarcane. I did not eat it until I got to a few steps from the house, then I bit into it with the aim of peeling the hard bamboo-like skin. The next thing was “gboa” on my head as Grandma’s slap made contact and the thunder-like clap reverberated in my ear drum. “Have I not warned you never to take or eat what strangers give to you without my permission?” she screamed. She seized the sugarcane and hid it away. We both forgot about it until about a week later. She asked me to go fetch her something from her store; there I found the sugarcane – rotten!
Years later in the city, we heard that my old friend had passed on. Strange was the fact that news came that before died, he was getting rotten in the leg and this was seen as a sign that he was evil. He killed people with juju, wizardry and all. One can argue that he may have been truly evil and could have initiated or harmed me with the sugarcane if I had eaten it. However, I see parallels between his getting rotten in the leg and a diabetic with a sore and no medical attention.
Also, I remember an old woman we knew as kids, from our Christmas visits to the village, who was said to have been pregnant forever, without delivering the baby. She was quite old and had a big stomach. It was said that she was under some curse or spell by witches. Is it possible that she was suffering from fibroid?
Finally, less than a year ago, the nation was gripped with fear of the Ebola virus which had come into the country through the recklessness and irresponsibility of Patrick Sawyer. A lot of preventive measures were proposed by the health authorities amongst which were regular hand washing, avoiding contact with the infected and avoiding bush meat.
Again, with our gullibility put to the test, we heard about salt baths/drinks, eating of large quantities of bitter kola and other ludicrous tips. The fact that people believed, tried and propagated the broadcast of such spurious cures/preventive measures suggest that even with the level of education of the average Nigerian today and the preponderance of information on the net and otherwise, our society is still steeped in superstition, which can be as a result of intellectual laziness. People will prefer to believe any story that has a touch of mystery or the supernatural to explain problems, irrespective of how illogical it is.
During this period of Ebola crises, I imagined what would have happened if this had started in a remote village or if it had struck in the 1800s. The villagers would have died in their numbers and believing it was a curse from angry gods, would have consulted the oracle or witch doctor. The high priest who usually claims descent from ancient apothecaries or to have been chosen by the gods, if already not consumed by the disease, would have claimed some abomination had been committed and would have used a series of tools of divination to find out the abomination and how to cleanse the land – possibly human sacrifice.
If it is in modern times, people will now run from the cities to get there folks out of the villages and that would have increased contact ratio and caused the disease to spread like wild fire across many cities at the same time. The story wouldn’t have been different from that of the great plague or great influenza in history. In reality, it was easily nipped in the bud because it entered through Lagos and through a standard Hospital with an excellent doctor in the person of late Dr. Stella Adadevoh who raised a red flag immediately Sawyer was suspected to have the virus. Unfortunately, she lost her life in her fight to keep us safe from Ebola. God bless her soul!
As a country, we were able to beat Ebola because fear forced us as a people to learn about how to protect ourselves. There was abundance of information everywhere and people devoured it with insatiable appetite, not just because Ebola was a killer, but because it killed very swiftly and there is no known cure.
The questions then are, must we wait as a people until we are faced with a disease as ruthless as Ebola before we wake up, be informed about everyday matters? How can we still have supposedly educated women who do not understand something as simple as how to count a menstrual cycle in this age? How can we still have guys who believe that by practicing coitus interruptus, there is no chance that a woman can get pregnant? Knowledge, they say is power and our success over Ebola, gives an indication of what we can achieve individually and as a people if we get a bit more aggressive with our quest for knowledge, or, we will continue to die in accordance with the bible verse in Hosea 4:6.
September 11, 2015.
