The Evergreen State College radio station, KAOS, hosts a Sunday morning show called Wheel of Wonder. While I am not a regular listener of this program, when I do play it, I am not disappointed. Often the programming contains gems of thought and reminds me of the importance of shedding light upon subjects that are important, however, not necessarily mainstream news.
This morning I heard the host read from an essay on the topic of modern witch hunts. I am not talking about the generalized application of that term. I am referring to the actual attack (and often murder) of women and children believed to be magical beings and the destruction of cultures that embrace learning and healing from natural sources.
I tutor two Catholic nuns from Tanzania. One readily shares stories of how Christian missionaries and the existing Catholic churches, do not allow them to use natural healing methods learned in their villages. These nuns maintain an orphanage and school. When the children become ill from malaria, dissentary, are stricken with headaches or parasites, the nuns must only treat them with Western medicine. Often these supplies are hours and days away. They and the children suffer needlessly. The nuns who remember their ancestors wisdom, put their lives at risk by going into the jungle to retrieve the roots and leaves hundreds of years prove will alleviate and cure the condition. She herself, is the daughter of a village king, her grandmother a gifter seer and healer. I pray that the Universe protects her memories, her spirit and her life.
The other, slightly younger, nun will not even speak about the medicine people of her village. She blesses herself at my inquiry. I do know her hand was saved by a Tanzanian medicine woman. When she was young, she was falsly accused of eating the bananas her aunt was saving for dinner. Her aunt held her hand in the dinner fire then kicked her out of the home into the jungle. Exposed to the heat of the jungle and its insects, the third and fourth degree burns became severly infected. It took her a week to walk to her brothers home. He immediately brought her to a small hut at the edge of the village. She doesn't remember exactly what was given to her to drink, or what the old woman helping her soaked pieces of fabric in before washing and wrapping her injured hand. She only remembers the pain stopping and the blisters disappearing. Some scarring remains today and she has reduced feeling in the fingertips of that hand, but she has full use of it. When she entered the convent, the Mother Superior heard her story and performed a blessing to rid her body of the evil that enetered it due to "the witch's work". Thus began her enculturalization to believe that such things are the work of evil spirits. My heart cries when I see the fear in her eyes.
The following is an excerpt from the essay,
The Timeless Allure of Witch Hunting, by Johann Hari.
"Across Africa, I have witnessed witch hunts. I have stood in a hut deep in the Tanzanian bush where the blood of and 80 year old woman was still wet on the walls, after her "evil" had been hacked out of her with a machete. I have been lectured in the Central African Republic by men who explain the collapse of their country is die to "there wicked women." I have played with rejected child witches livingon the streets in Congo and been told by anxious locals that I would soon die from their curses."
I wrote this entry, not to shock, appaul or bring the reader down. I wrote it to shed light on a dark piece of our common, human family, condition. We are all connected. Let us each shed healing light on these autrocities and thus heal a part of ourselves.
So mote it be.
