‘Juju cures malaria’: A Realistic Amenity

Is it a boy or girl? What is the most important part of the human body from your perspective? Please don’t tell me it’s the heart or eyes o. Is that where midwives or parents look at when they want to know if the child born is a boy or a girl? Abeg, if you don’t know where they look at, just assume it is the nose and you won’t even be wrong but you would have misled yourself.

I just remembered that story about a naked beautiful woman who entered a banking hall and robbed the bank in the full glare of all male customers. As we speak, no man has been able to identify the woman. They were fully concentrating on watching, not the escapade o, but wanted to determine her gender! Only God knows what they were looking at! Men o men! It’s little wonder the HIV rate in Ghana is becoming so scary.

Almost 20,000 HIV infections in 2017 alone in Ghana should scare me but am I? Hmmm. The most worrying part is the fact that a chunk of this number is made up of young people 24 years of age or younger! Some have attributed it to the unavailability or rather unaffordability of condoms but I beg to differ. This is bcos some of us are just reckless and can have the condoms in our pockets and still go ‘raw’! It’s sheer recklessness and the fact that some people think they are super human and can never get infected. Really? Ayoo! Raw sex fascinates and assassinates o, yoo!

I thank God I have deleted some phone numbers I took just last weekend at the birthday bash I organized for that 22 year old eyi who I have been attending PTA meetings for as a representative of the who I don’t even know. Just when we thought you the younger ones are a safe largely ‘untapped’ area for us to enjoy, now see! Me? Never again o, hahahahahaaa!

‘Juju can only cure malaria` that is according to Shattah Waley. Apart from that any other thing is a waste of time. True? Shattah was so real and admitted he had consulted juju plenteyyyyyy times and it did not help him until he turned to Mawu Sogbolisa Jehovah God Katakiti. How many of us can be that blunt on radio as huge as Joy FM? Some people secretly consult juju when they realise that the one they want to get killed by God is not dying early enough and believe juju can do that faster.

Some people cannot wait for God’s time to do the needful and then resort to juju with the thinking that juju is a catalyst that can fast-track the process of killing their detractors or people they simply envy and some others for success. Some of these people have some of the neatest church stickers on their car windscreens at the same time with the inscription: ‘In God I Trust’ yet…hmmmm! Lord God have mercy on us! Shattah said it all. Herh, the way Ghana would be sweet if we learn to tell ourselves the truth er, I suwear!

The closest juju fiasco I witnessed was that experience at Korle Bu some years ago. Descending from the last floor of this tall building, we all entered the elevator. On board the elevator, we noticed the presence of a corpse being commuted from the ward to apparently the morgue. Then suddenly there was power outage and we got stuck. Inside the elevator was dark and the corpse was also in there.Kai! That is when you would hear everybody screaming ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! including a jujuman who was also in the lift. I waited impatiently till we were rescued when power was restored. The sigh of relief from this rescue was sweeter than fresh sea breeze in the hot afternoon at Kokrobite! With sarcasm in mind, I walked straight to this jujuman who was screaming ‘Jesus Jesus’ and queried him as to why he did not scream ‘voju voju’ but rather ‘Jesus Jesus’. Guess his answer: ‘My brother, the thing wey happen no be ‘voju’ matter o, I suwear’! Sosket! Etsor naga vawoe!

Praiiiiiisse the Lorrrrrrrd! Praiiise the Living God! Halleluya! I used to sing well till I developed a pot belly and start panting. Not the one for well-to-do people oo. I think mine is a sickness. What do I eat to have a pot belly if it is not a sickness? When my friends tell me I am living good bcos of my stomach size, I know they want me to die early so they can be free! How can you praise me for a visible sickness that can kill me suddenly?

Anyway, I think the solution is only one – I have to exercise and stop eating unnecessary things like…banku in the night. Exercising too requires a lot of discipline oo. There is this guy who comes to wake me up at 4.30am on Saturdays and he is beginning to annoy me. He works at Burma Camp. This dude can do 200 press-ups in 5 minutes. As for me, as soon as I do four, I remain down there on the ground. Getting up becomes a problem. The last time I challenged him. Oh to the glory of God I was able to do 300 in 2 minutes. Clap for me er. Each push-up was counted 50 and I did 6. Multiply that by 50. Is it not 300? If you don’t use your head, your body will suffer, though in this case I only succeeded in deceiving myself. Me? Do 300 poripori press-ups? I dey ‘craze’? Haaaa!

When I was converted from jujuman to born-again-man, I was so obsessed with dawn broadcasting and my San 7 evangelist friend encouraged me. There was this one that we organized in front of the house of a fetish priest at Chantan, Lapaz at 4am. The weather was quiet and sweet for sleeping while crickets sang lullabies to put both adults and children to sleep. Unfortunately that was the ideal time for dawn broadcasting too. If you don’t fear anything at all, you don’t attempt kissing a tiger oo, yoo! The least you can do is to bite a scorpion!

I was to first sing a song into the battery-powered megaphone. Though feeling sleepy, I managed to sing with my raucous voice which annoyed some people sleeping the more, I am sure. The song went like: ‘Only Jesus can save, I tell you…only Jesus can save…Halleluya. Akakpovi cannot save you…only Jesus can save…Halleluyah’. This was enough to make the anti-Christ attack us but no fears; after all we were doing God’s work. I was going to be the interpreter of whatever the senior San 7 evangelist was going to preach. Buoy, I did quite well until….hmmmm. ‘Devi meduna avula o; ava dehey’(to wit ‘a child must not eat dog meat; he would throw up’).

The theme that dawn was ‘jujutory (or ‘Idolatry’) not ‘Adultery’ oo. The evangelist would say: ‘God is a jealous God’ and I translated into Ayigbe. Our target was obviously the fetish priest who doesn’t wear any shirt. ‘There is no power in juju’. This one too I translated. ‘God is mightier than all’…I did the needful. ‘If you think you are powerful, come out whoever you may be’…at this point, I didn’t know whether to translate correctly or otherwise but I managed to say something in Ayigbe that ‘God loves you, Papa’. The evangelist knew I didn’t say the right thing and that I misrepresented him. He repeated it ‘‘If you think you are powerful, come out whoever you may be’.

I pretended I didn’t hear him. At this point I heard the backing of some malnourished dog coming from the fetish priest’s verandah and the trap door opening. I asked the evangelist to say what he said in English and do the translation into Ewe himself. He refused and told me ‘Fire burn you’! Me? Translate this life-threatening message into Ayigbe in the forecourt of a jujuman’s house? God forbid!

At this point I told myself doing God’s work will be difficult oo. Indeed it is! The fetish man came out from his room with a calabash containing something that looked like smoke! At this point, instead of saying ‘Jesus’, my evangelist and I said something else I can’t remember. We were dazed and confused and didn’t know what the man did to us. I started stammering. The megaphone went on low battery immediately.

It was then I realized I went on this preaching exercise with a very malnourished faith. I believe the fetish priest could have been floored if my faith was bigger. Up till now, we can’t find our megaphones oo. hmmm. As for my Evangelist, the least said about him, the better. He had some hangover from the previous night’s brandy hence he was both physically and spiritually weak before he led me into ‘temptation’.

Master, powers dey oo. Just respect other people’s powers and be true to your God and you will be fine. Me? Preach in the face of a fetish priest again? That one will be a 4G mistake.

Start scratching your chin er. Traditionally it is believed that when someone is telling you something that is a lie, your chin or beard will start to itch you. If by now, you are not itching there, then you have a problem la.

Happy new month but remember, AIDS is real and for the sake of your family, wear a condom or double it sef! If you can’t afford a condom, use polythene bag, the plain one for purposes of probity and accountability as juju can cure malaria but not HIV o, yoo!

Columnist: Mawuli Zogbenu