The Witch Doctor’s Cure
By Anila Angin | 6 February 2011
Belief, Death, Fables, Fear, Health and Healing, Short Stories
The police caught the most wanted man in their country – the ringleader of a drug cartel. Pleased with their booty, they paraded the man in front of their chief amidst many hoots of triumph.
The ringleader remained defiant and looked at the throng of cavorting policemen with a mixture of disdain and pity.
As he was being led away to his prison cell, he threw the police officers a warning: “All of you will suffer for this! You can try to put me in jail, but you will die! Your livers and spleens will shrivel and burn. You will throw up blood and bile. Your limbs will turn to stone. You will twist in agony on your death beds, and you will curse the day you were born! I have powers…” he ended mysteriously.
The policemen laughed, but their hearts were nervous.
That night, the police chief and his staff fell sick. They shivered, shook, mumbled wildly to themselves, gagged on rivers of vomit and thought they saw the ghosts of their ancestors lurking in the shadows.
They knew they were going to die.
Their wives rushed them to the hospital. The doctors shook their heads. The policemen’s eyes rolled like marbles in their sockets. They spewed blood and bile on the nurses unfortunate enough to be in attendance. The doctors read death in their pallor.
The police chief’s wife decided to visit a bomoh, or a witch doctor. The bomoh entered a trance and declared that the ringleader had placed a hex on her husband and the other police officers.
“Is there a solution?” asked the wife anxiously.
The bomoh thought a long while. Finally, he went to his cupboard and took out a flask. “Give a few drops of this liquid to each man. It is an elixir from the Tree of Life, which I spent many years travelling to find.”
The police chief’s wife was supremely grateful. She paid the bomoh, took the precious flask (swaddled in many layers of cloth for protection), and left for the hospital.
She informed her husband and the other policemen about the elixir she had received from the bomoh. Even through their fog of delirium, they understood her. Reverently, they received the drops on their tongue like a holy sacrament. It was bitter, but what was bitterness compared to the gift of life?
A few minutes later, the miracle happened.
The men stopped throwing up and their spasms ceased. Colour returned to their skeletal faces. They got up and began walking around the rooms. Some began jumping with joy. A few denied that they had been sick at all and everyone agreed that the ringleader wasn’t all that powerful.
The doctor who attended to them was astonished. That evening, after the last of the policemen had been discharged, he rushed to the bomoh’s house and flung himself at his feet to learn from this great guru what his medical science had not been able to teach him.
“So where exactly can I find this elixir of life?” he asked.
The bomoh smiled. “The elixir was from the common moringa tree. All I did was to juice its leaves.”
“Is that all?” asked the doctor, aghast. “Does it really cure all illnesses?”
The bomoh laughed. “Nooo, by itself, no.”
“So what cured the policemen?” pressed the doctor eagerly.
“What I gave the police chief’s wife was the gift of hope in a flask. She carried that hope with her to the hospital, and the men believed her. They had nothing else to believe in, so they believed that she held the cure in the flask.”
“So why did they get sick?” persisted the doctor. “Does a hex have the power to cause death and illness?”
The bomoh laughed again. “Nooo, by itself, no.”
“Then what made them ill?”
“Belief,” replied the bomoh calmly. “When the drug lord uttered his curse, he gave them the gift of believing that they would die. In believing, they created their own sickness.”
Earlier stories: The Girl, Her iPhone and Her Baby Brother | The Receptionist
Animations: Whose Dream Are You Living? | The Child and the Money-Obsessed Merchant
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