Monday, October 20, 2014

allAfrica.com: Ghana: Govt Struggles to Reintegrate 'Witches'

Wumbie is one of five women held captive there. She was accused of having caused the death of a woman who was giving birth.

People had called her to assist the woman, 70-year-old Wumbie recounted, sitting in her room, cracking groundnuts with her bare hands. "When I got there, she was struggling ... so I assisted her until the baby came out dead," she told DW's Maxwell Suuk. Everybody had seen it, she said. "So I went home, and they called me later and told me that the woman wasn't feeling well," Wumbie continued. "When they were taking her to hospital, she died."

Wumbie was accused of having had a hand in the woman's death - an accusation she completely denied. Still, she was eventually banished.

She had been a traditional birth attendant in her community and had successfully delivered babies for the past 20 years, she told DW.

She said she had previously helped the woman who passed away deliver six children consecutively without any complications. She cannot understand what made people think she would want to kill anyone.

Back in Yong, Wumbie's village, which is located in the vicinity of Tamale, Wumbie's children have been calling for their mother to be brought home. Azara Sulemana, one of her seven children, is worried. "There's no one preparing her food," she says. "How to even wash her clothes is a problem, because she is too old."

Whenever Azara came home from visiting her mother at the camp, she was so troubled that she would have difficulty sleeping. She thinks their community is not being fair to her mother.

"They threatened to stone her if she comes back," Azara told DW.

allAfrica.com: Ghana: Govt Struggles to Reintegrate 'Witches'

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