Taking Away the Stigma of Witchcraft

By Florence Gbolu and Gabby Kalaw

For nine years, Azara Azindow has seen herself as a witch. She once ran a stall, selling food in Diari in the Northern Region. She was the youngest wife of her polygamous husband and lived in her own house with her children. Life was working well for her until the day one of the boys in her neighborhood became seriously ill.“The boy kept repeating my name as the cause of his sickness until he died,” Azindow said. “I only knew the boy in the neighborhood as a customer and also as someone who used the road where I sell and travel to town.” She had previously been on good terms with everyone in her area, but when the boy died she realized her life was in danger. The town blamed her for the boy’s death. Marked as a witch, Azindow had to run away. With the help of her brothers, Azindow ran and walked for several days through forests and quiet streets. She made her way to Gambaga, where she found refuge in the town’s witch camp. She now lives alone in a small, dark, mud hut; part of a compound with six other women who are now her surrogate family.Three and a half hours Northeast of Tamale, Gambaga provides a refuge for those accused of witchcraft. For several generations ‘witches’ cast-out from all over the North of Ghana, and even as far as Burkina Faso, seeking the protection of Gambaga’s chief, the Gambarana. Tradition holds that the Gambarana has the approval of the gods, and thus has the ability to prevent witches from using their powers. “Whoever brings a suspected witch here, I know the god that I will mention and it will neutralize the woman, the witch, and she will never to perform anything here until she leaves here,” explains the Gambarana. “They will say that they are a witch and I will ask, are you really a witch?’”“I can’t deny the fact that I am a witch,” Azindow said about her witchcraft abilities. “I was accused when the boy was sick and after, he died.” According to Lariba Muhama, of the Presbyterian Church’s re-integration project, accepting blame is common among the women in Gambaga. Sometimes the women are just afraid to deny it. The chief only accepts actual “witches,” so non-witches may be asked to leave Gambaga. Azara Azindow believes that she may be a witch because the evidence pointed to her, even if she never intentionally hurt anyone. Likely, she had nothing to do with it: A meningitis outbreak took place in the area in the 90’s, and the young boy suffered severe pains in the backbone, along with other symptoms consistent with Cerebral Spinal Meningitis. “These women are asked if really they are witches and they admit it, but cannot tell what they do and how they perform witchcraft,” Muhama said. “They are almost forced to accept something that they are not.” She said these women are maltreated back in their villages; “Some [villages] even torture them up to the point that they even kill them. They used to kill them. Some they used to even tie the women down and they struggle [under the sun] until they die.” Over 150 women in the Gambaga camp have stories similar to Azindow’s. All admit to being witches, but are more like village outcasts. The are often widows without any male support, making them easy defenceless targets in their villages. “A woman will travel to different villages to go and marry into a different community where she is alone. She has no relatives there, so the natives [of the town] can accuse her of witchcraft,” Muhama pointed out. There are sometimes also wizards, but they do not live in the camp, they come to the camp and go. Men are much more accepted back into their communities, because they are raised there, unlike the women.“These men come and perform the necessary purification after which they go they can go back to their homes, because they are natives.” In Gambaga, The Gambarana has taken responsibility for housing and feeding the women, and explained that it can be a pleasant place to live. “When they come,” the chief said, “I organize boys to build a hut for them.”The women work for the chief during the sowing and harvest seasons. “I feed them with the food from my farm. I also use the money I get from [the reintegration program] and from selling my harvest, to build and roof their huts, and give them some money to buy what they need.” These women can stay with the Gambarana for as long as they need to, or until their children or family come to take them home. “When their relatives come for them, we try to advise them on the way to live with them and they also thank me with some gift which is meant to thank me for caring for their relations all this while. I don’t charge any fee,” the Gambarana spoke of the efforts. With the help of the Presbyterian Church’s reintegration project, the Gambaga camp is the most organized camp in the area. The project strives to improve living conditions in the camp, and tries to reintegrate the women into their communities.The group works with the chief to set up the conditions for the women’s return to their communities.The major concern for Muhama and the reintegration project is the way they women live and are treated. The project has organized the camp into tribe-based compounds for comfort, and has helped educate the locals of Gambaga to accept the outcast women.The project trying to put a stop to this kind of behaviour by educating the people in the villages around the north. “Before a woman goes back, we make sure that the village understands that what they do to the women is not right.” “We have to ensure that the people are living happy and peacefully after they return,” added Simon Ngota, the project supervisor. “Because it can be that you send the women back, and the community people can rise up against them again.”Some women have been in the camp as long as 20 years. Previously, one woman had been there for 30 years, but thanks to the Church’s project, she was able to return to her family. “We have workshops for the chiefs and the opinion leaders of the villages where they come from,” explained Muhama. The project educates village leaders about the cause of sicknesses and about how to deal appropriately with a suspected witch. Some of the educated chiefs already try to teach their people about the nature of witchcraft and how their people should not maltreat them, but as Muhama put it, “Sometimes maybe the chief is not around, and before the chief realizes it, they will kill the woman.”The Gambaga camp is the only one with a permanent staff providing assistance. According to Ngota, “The other places, they do not have established projects with the staff like we are here, with people working to improve the camps.”In addition Muhama said the project tries to give these women loans and skills to start businesses, and also bring them closer to God. People from the town buy and sell to the women despite the witch stigma. Muhama noted, “Formerly these women were discriminated in the Gambaga but because of the integration going on we have been able to educate the people…from the chiefs down to the youth you now accept them as a community and a family as well.” Some of the accused witches in Gambaga even have children or grandchildren staying with them. For them, “we have established a school and we now have about 15 children enrolled,” said Muhama.Meanwhile, Azara Azindow has not seen her own children and grandchildren much. She said she is happy at the camp, but still wishes the day would come when her sons come to the Gambarana and ask for his permission to take her back home.“I want to see all my children, but they have hidden themselves and their children from me.”