Where witch doctors learn their craft

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 10

Where witch doctors learn their craft

LARTEH (Ghana). In this remote village deep in the tropical rain forests stands the shrine of Akonnedi a holy place to both African fetish-worshippers and to hundreds of black Americans who have begun returning recently, to the religion of their forbears.

The shrine has many facets. It is a place for healing the sick and for summoning supernatural aid —to good or evil purpose. But it is also a school with a curriculum made up mostly of the ancient arts of herbology and with a “degree” that confers upon its graduates the right to practise as witch doctors. High priestess of the shrine is Nana Oparebea, a stately, imposing Ghanaian who first attained national prominence as the "Number One” mistress of former President Kwame Nkrumah. After his fall from power five years ago, she retired to her tribal homeland near Larteh, but not to oblivion. With her rare blend of cosmopolitanism (she has made several trips to the United States) and het supernatural powers (selfprofessed, yet enthusiastically attested to by her followers), Nana Oparebea soon became the single most influential figure in African fetishism.

Psychic exercise Fetishes, of course, are deceptively ordinary-looking objects—necklaces, amulets, perhaps only a length of knotted string attached to porcupine quills. They are not “holy” in themselves but merely the vessels in which “spirits” reside. It is the apparent ability to communicate with these spirits that sets witch doctors like Nana Oparebea apart. Yet there is more to the practice of fetishism. “The fetish does not cure with magic powers alone," warns Nana Oparebea. “The whole exercise is psychic.” It is also deeply satisfying, not only to untutored African villagers but to a growing number of educated young American blacks. In fact, last summer some 250 of them journeyed to Ghana and spent a month at the shrine of Akonnedi, studying under Nana Oparebea.

Normally, students undergo a three-year course in witch doctoring at the shrine. They live in celibacy and out of contact with their families. During the first year, they “bathe with medicine” which means they learn how to get in closer contact with spirits and how to avoid the taboos that might cause these spirits to fly away. v In the second year, the students are introduced, to the fetishes and taught their powers: how to cure disease or how to cause it; how to aggrandise sexual powers or how to bring on impotence to an enemy; how to assure success or disaster in battle.

The third and final year features the arts of watergazing and divining, of “hearing” the voices of the trees and streams and the “little people” of the rain forest. The secret chants

(Newsweek Feature Service)

are also learned and the recipes for the most powerful of the magic potions.

Healing the sick

The Akonnedi shrine is famous for the “good” it does. According to many Ghanaians, large numbers of sick people have been cured by pilgrimages there. Nana Oparebea says she has successfully treated insanity, barrenness and piles. She is sometimes able to remove bullets without surgery, providing the pilgrim was shot accidently.

She also has her own timehonoured method of treating fractures. She breaks the leg of a cock, then bandages it with herbs recommended by the proper fetish. When the cock’s leg has healed, the patient’s leg will also be healed.

Many African governments —Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania are among them have outlawed the fetishism practices at the shrine of Akonnedi and at similar, less famous shrines. Nigeria has a law that makes witch doctors subject to six-month gaol terms.

But all the governments in developing countries of Africa are painfully aware of the lack of proper medical care. And many educated individuals believe that, chants and “voices” aside, there may be more of the herb treatments of witch doctors and priestesses than modern science is willing to admit. They point to the new respect for acupuncture, a Chinese technique which until recently was disdained by Western science.

The interest of black Americans is, of course, something else again. Though very few have been attacted so far, there is a small movement going, mostly among

the educated young attempting to discover their lost tribal heritage. One of the leaders is Gus Dinizulu, a faculty members of Queens College in New York specialising in the study of African culture. It was Dinizulu who organised the 250 who visited the shrine last summer.

“Possession has been in by people for many hundreds of years,” he says. “Some black people still think we are savage and strange, but many are coming to accept us. They want to know more about where they came from and how their forbears lived. What we are really doing is just coming home.”

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