Mixed messages

“In those days, if you used to come to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this sassywood was hot water, needle, put it on the fire, put it on your foot. It would be very, very hot and they would put it there.”

“Way back there were some people here that used to investigate witchcraft,” said Mr Walker, referring to the ministry itself. “We used our traditional method.

Mr Walker is responsible for putting an end to all manner of what he terms “negative cultural practices”. The sign went on to list some of these: child labour, beating your wife, trial by ordeal - and sassywood.

A narrow two-storey building in central Monrovia makes up the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the car park, a hawker stood beneath a parasol, selling mobile phone vouchers. Inside, Ishmael Walker, liaison for culture and custom, sat behind a desk beside a typewriter and a large map of Liberia. He pointed towards a sign on his office wall: STOP STOP STOP, it began.

About once a week, someone still comes to the ministry hoping to accuse a suspect, says Liberia's liaison for culture and custom

Now, he said, “we don’t do it anymore – the section that was here for that has been closed. These are traditional practices that are harmful and we are trying to call it out.”

Even so, he admitted, “we hear plenty of it”. About once a week, he said, someone still comes to the ministry hoping to accuse a suspect. “We give them government information that we don’t investigate witchcraft and you don’t accuse anyone of being a witch."

To illustrate his point, he explained that his ministry keeps a register of more than 100 traditional doctors or “herbalists”. They are not allowed to deal in deliverance or eliciting confessions, but they can still use herbal remedies to treat various non-spiritual ailments, such as back pain or malaria.

If any of these doctors were found to be investigating witchcraft, he said, they would be struck off. “Maybe we confiscate your licence, tell you not to practise for one or two years. Depending on the gravity, we tell you ‘don’t practise anymore’.”

He was asked how many licences had been confiscated. “So many licences. So many licences we have taken from people.”

Yet, sitting beside him, David Free, a senior cultural inspector here for 18 years, did not seem so sure. Asked how many licences he has confiscated, he said he had never “had any case like that”.

Not one in 18 years? “Not yet.”

To lesser or greater extents, the government itself, the United Nations and charities are working to prevent children being accused, and to help those who have been. After Save The Children heard about Tamba’s circumstances, they stepped in: he now lives with his aunt, has been given psychological and medical support and should return to school this year.

Yet, according to Lovely Sie, the Save the Children worker, “a lot of people are not even aware of the laws”. “You can have all the laws but if people do not change their perceptions and their attitudes, the laws are not going to make any difference.”

For now, the stigma endures. Mrs Bondo’s baby recovered and a year has now passed since Confidence was “healed” by a traditional doctor in a ceremony that cost Mrs Bondo two weeks’ wages, yet the family’s reputation remains tarnished.

“It causes a lot of confusion and hatred among families,” she said. “People look at me as being associated with children who are witches.” She explained that her business had suffered as customers feared being linked to her family; Confidence and her nephew, who was also accused, were still not allowed into their friends’ houses. “Other children refer to them as witches, laugh at them and make fun of them.”

As her cousin spoke, Confidence kept her head down. She looked at the floor or at a chair, anywhere but at another pair of inquiring eyes. When it was her turn to talk, she first whispered her answers to an interpreter, then dried up entirely. Shame still gripped her, its power greater than any curse.

Names of children and their relatives have been changed

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