The guy is still at the neighbor’s house sawing up the teak trees. He has been hard at work all day. I don’t know how he is not deaf from listening to that chainsaw all day long! He is not even wearing hearing protection. I wonder if his parents warned him that he is going to be deaf like our parents all warned us that we were going to be deaf from listening to all that loud music! Ha!
Donkey took today off so that he could attend the second Damba festival. He said that most of the time those attending the festival are dancing. Donkey said that dancing is exhausting work because of the clothes that they are wearing. Donkey said that he wears 2 of the huge hand woven smocks but some people will wear 3 or 4; he said that the more smocks you wear the “bigger” you look. Each smock has yards and yards of fabric that make up a full circular skirt around the smock. Much of the dancing involves twirling; when the men twirl their smocks make a big circle. Some of the women dance but they do not wear the big smocks.
I think that we told you a couple months ago the Ghana government made a law against calling anyone a “witch”. Well recently they have amended the ruling. It is still against the law to call someone a “witch” unless they are a self proclaimed witch. In that case you can call them a witch because you are just identifying a witch not really hunting for a witch. They made the ruling because almost everyone in Ghana believes there are witches and there is a whole society of soothsayer / juju / witchdoctors that make their living by identifying and treating witches. You might wonder why anyone would say that they were a witch in the first place considering the very least you will be run out of the community. Well, the belief is that you can be a witch and not know you are a witch; you can go to the astral world, sacrifice and eat another person and not be aware that you are doing it. If soothsayers / witchdoctors repeatedly consult the ancestors and the spirits and always come to the conclusion that you are a witch you must be a witch. You cannot begin the treatment to stop being a witch until you have admitted that you are a witch. The whole thing is very sad. It is hard to believe that so many people are so gullible! Most of the people in government positions believe so it is not because of lack of education. One of the church leaders at Jakpumba who had been a Christian for many years got sick and his family consulted the Juju to see what could be done for him; they said that if he did not become a soothsayer he would either die, become crippled or blind. He was so afraid and believed that he gave over to the pressure and became a soothsayer and left the church.
Thank you for listening to me ramble on! Have a great day!
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
