“My grandson got sick at night and in the morning he died. He was a year old and a few months old he was able to walk,” said Amena Djaha.
Sitting under a mango tree in Kpo-Kahankro, a village in central Ivory Coast, the grandmother is still shocked to see her young life scythed down so quickly.
Dorothee Kouame Ahou, a grandmother at the age of 46, tearfully recounts how she lost her three-year-old granddaughter – “my daughter” – to a mysterious illness.
His grandson is among 21 people in the village who have died in the past two months – an episode in which ancient beliefs in witchcraft have collided with western understandings of law and medicine.
The nightmare began on December 2, when six children suddenly started vomiting, convulsed and died a few hours later.
In late January, another 12 children and three parents died in similar circumstances, according to villagers, and dozens were taken to hospital in the town of Bouake.
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In the village, there is a belief that powerful magic is at work – “something mystical”, said Nanan local chief Patrice Koffi.
As panic spread, people fled the villages, schools were closed and the government sent senior politicians to the area to try to calm them down.
-Fetish-
The finger of blame eventually pointed to a prominent village figure, François Kouame Kouadio.
He was accused of placing a talisman, a magical object also called a talisman, which caused misery in the village.
In early February, objects consisting of animal and vegetable skins were found buried in the ground with, above the ground, a flask containing an unknown liquid. Talismans have been installed to protect the land.
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The authorities, who have officially recorded 18 deaths, found traces of the common but deadly bacteria, clostridium, in the liquid from the flasks and the bodies they tested.
Found in the soil and intestinal tract of animals, including humans, the microbes can cause botulism – a disease that causes vomiting and muscle paralysis – and other illnesses.
The discovery sparked a quick trial last Thursday in which Kouadio and a self-described practitioner of witchcraft were accused of charlatanism and disturbing public order, and each sentenced to five years in prison.
– Denial and doubt in Ivory Coast –
Jerome Yao Kouakou, 40, who supplied the amulet, denied that it harmed the baby.
“Talismans can’t hurt a two-year-old,” he said.
Djaha also doubts that microbes are to blame.
“My grandson has never been in contact with that object (talisman). He can barely walk and never leaves the yard,” he said. His house is located a few hundred meters (meters) from where the talisman is.
But investigators have ritually touched the contaminated liquid in the gourd – and through contact with other people, the germs may have spread.
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“All it takes is for a child to come into contact with bacteria and put their hand in their mouth to make them sick.
“They can damage toys, objects and other children,” said Joseph Benie Bi Vroh, director of the Ivory Coast’s National Public Hygiene Institute, which carried out the tests.
The fatality has stopped but the fear is still there.
“Of course, we are scared,” said Paul Kouassi, who heads a local youth group, noting that there was a gap of a month between the two fatal episodes.
“I pray that they will not come back,” said village chief Koffi. “Our children have not been buried.”