Family Secret: Discovery Of Witches Coven

Growing up in the small farming village was difficult and lonely for me. People said all kinds of mean things about my Grandma, and many girls my age refused to play with me. Those who wanted to play and be friends were almost always stopped in their tracks by their parents.

About five years ago, I got into a fight with one girl, I was on vacation from the University walking through the village square to buy something, when I met a group of girls on my way. Due to the way I was treated in my childhood, I have no friends and especially as an adult, I make no effort to be friendly to any of my age mates. So as I passed by this group, the gang leader called out, “There goes a member of the witches coven.” The other girls laughed nervously.

I talked back, and called them half educated village champions. An argument ensued and it got physical. I beat that girl black and blue, and when she realized she’d lost the fight, she bit me. The bite was so hard, she left my shoulder bleeding, with teeth marks. I went home to get first aid from my mother.

Instead of cleaning my wound, she called my grandmother. I remember it like yesterday, my grandmother upon hearing what had happened sprinkled ash on a purple piece of clothe and instructed me to sit on it. I obeyed. Then she took a red piece of cloth from a gourd and asked that I spit on it. I obeyed.

Whoever said witches only fly at night clearly is a novice.

She used the red cloth to clean my wound. With each swipe she took, she called the girl’s name. She took seven swipes, counted to seven, called the girl’s name seven times. And then she told me, “Lets see if she will bite you again. Give her seven days.”

In a week’s time, my father called me and said, “I hear you got into a fight with Adwubi, is it true?”

I responded in the affirmative. Then he asked that I follow him somewhere. He took me to Adwubi’s house. She was laying on a mat, moaning, clearly in pain. I couldn’t see her face, her mouth had swollen so much that her face was almost entirely covered. I couldn’t deny the connection between her state and my Grandma’s antics. Then it dawned on me, all the things I’d heard people say, could it be true?

Adwubi’s mom told me to tell my grandmother her daughter would die over her dead body. On our way home, my father said, “Don’t join your mother and grandmother, there is nothing to be gained from witchcraft.”

After he made the statement he said no more. I asked him loads of questions but he refused to answer. When I went home, I asked my mother and grandmother loads of questions too, but none would give me answers. So eventually I stopped probing. But I really didn’t need to be told, I had made the discovery of a witches coven in my own backyard. It was not a rumor anymore, I now knew.

Adwubi’s mother did follow through her threat, she brought a man clothed in red robes to heal her daughter. I remember hearing him chant loudly throughout the village, burn incense and sprinkle water on trees and shrubbery all through the village.

That day my mother went round buying all the salt she could find in the village. She made a salt solution in a big barrel and kept bathing my Grandma with it. She would pour cupfuls on her, and when Grandma began to get dry, she would pour more cupfuls, this went on all day long, until the man in red robes left. Grandma was sick for days and days, and Adwubi got better.

I put two and two together, it wasn’t hatred, or jealousy or just vile rumor, these women were witches. For real. That was when I made my decision to remove myself from this witches coven after I graduated University. It’s been three years since I left home and only recently returned because my school sweetheart and I are planning to get married.

When I was leaving, my Grandma gave me a bottle of ‘dawadawa’ with the instruction that I should make sure I use it to make my husband-to-be’s favorite soup for him. I threw the bottle away before I boarded a car out of the village. When I called them after I arrived at my home, my Grandma told me, “I went to collect the bottle from where you threw it at, come back for it. If you don’t tame that man, I won’t allow the marriage.”

My mother also said, “You cannot run away from your birthright.”

I sat dumfounded on the phone for several minutes before I got the courage to tell them, I’d rather die a single than make my man a zombie. I do not want to make my man into something like my father; quiet with no say, almost as if he had been castrated.

So here I am, torn between a man I love and family I fear. How does one marry without involving her mother? Can I persuade he to leave her witchcraft behind before coming to my wedding?

In my little unassuming family, there is an open secret I have made the discovery of a witches coven and apparently I am a member of the coven in waiting.