From: joachim omolo ouko
News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2014

Maurice from Kisumu County would like to know my opinion on Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga’s remarks that even witch doctors could help them resolve their disputes without taking each other to the overburdened courts.

My opinion Maurice is that Mutunga did not mean what he said. He was just trying expressing the fact that some cases can be resolved from outside and need not to be taken to court. He said people should stop saying “I’ll see you in court”, and entering a long and costly process, when they could first seek help from churches, mosques, elders or neighbours.

He was just trying to send a message across when he said that even in Kutui, where he comes from, he has told people they can go to the witch doctors to solve issues. The reaction of some people to my opinion is in contemporary world people view witchcraft as something evil and potentially harmful to people.

It is, therefore, no surprise that such a word came from a recognized and respected personality like Dr Willy Mutunga. This is particularly given that most witches are done at night making use of ordinary animals like hyenas, big dogs, mongooses, owls, snakes or lightning birds. They have the skill to tame these animals and hide them at the back of their huts.

This type of witches is common in Kitui where Mutunga comes from, which is why to my opinion he was prompted to use this example. Those days many people believed and in fact their problems were solved.

Those were days that witches were active and their practices included sending snakes to bite their victims or lightning to strike them down. They could also collect the victim’s hair, nail clippings or any article of clothing worn by the victim to cast a spell on it that will harm or kill their victims.

The idea of life-force goes hand in hand with that of limited cosmic good. For example, when people are not prosperous or when their goods are limited, they will argue that someone has taken their life-force.

People would also go to witchdoctors for consultation and to protect themselves against witchcraft. The main aim of the witchdoctor is more to protect than to attack. The diviners use a set of stones, shells and engraved stones which they carry in a small skin bag.

These they throw on the ground, and the pattern in which they fall reveals the answer of their ancestors to their client’s enquiries. Enquiries may relate to the nature and causes of sickness, the reason for a death, the whereabouts of missing stock or any baffling situation or a desire to know something about the future.

In Uganda for example, some women are reported to have been directed by witch doctors to collect body fluids like urine and menstrual blood among others to keep their errant husbands on check.

Under the guise of needing an urgent solution to a cheating husband, women from Katwe, Makindye and Wakaliga where women go to the shrines to seek advice from traditional medicine women.

After consultation women believe if their husbands tried to sleep with another woman, he would smell like faeces, which would turn that woman off. This they believe is a cheaper way of avoiding going to court to seek a divorce case.

That visit cost them sh25,000, cheaper than court case. After preparing food and you are ready to serve him, the woman goes outside and squat to urinate. The directive by the witch is that you make sure you get the first drop of your urine and put it in a cup or tin.

The directive is that when the woman is serving the husband she is to pour it in his soup and juice. As she is doing that she says: “the way this urine has pained me, is the same way you should feel pain when you intend to cheat on me.’ When you do that, you will come back and tell me”.

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Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com

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