From the archives - Fatim story part I

Originally written March 29, 2005
(before I knew about Blogger!)

Dear friends,

After 6 years in a country – especially one as small and homogenous as Guinea – one would expect to have seen it all. People talk regularly about people transforming themselves into animals, women in the village who “eat” babies in the night, love potion slipped into a man’s milk so that the he cannot conceive of an existence without the woman, body washes against evil spirits, cowry shells that tell one’s fortune, a man who urinated on the Koran and found himself with a 3- foot long member before bursting into flames, and devils that live in the rivers and the bush. However, nothing that I have seen compares to my experience of recent weeks. Anyone with a particular interest in superstition, black magic, or psychological troubles, I suggest that you read this. First, I need to give you a little background.

Many of you know that I have a “little sister” named Fatim. She is about 13 years old (date of birth unknown) and in the fourth grade. Fatim is a member of my Guinean family from my Peace Corps village. Fatim lost her father when she was very young and her mother’s location is still a bit of a mystery to me. Her grandmother often looks to me as her “replacement son” because of the support that I give to her and her granddaughter.

I have known Fatim for about half of her life now. I encouraged the family to enroll her into school and financed the materials she needed (it was about $2) in 1999. On her first day of school, she came to me and told me she was scared and wanted me to accompany her there. During the two years that I was in the village, she lived in the hut next to me and seemed to always leave an impression on visitors that I had. My mother continually asks about Fatim and is always sending her little gifts, which Fatim always appreciates.

When I moved to Conakry two years ago, Fatim was here living with her aunt. Now, my Guinean family is full of problems. The siblings (all older than me) fight. Most are uneducated and unemployed. Little support is given to the mother living in the village. The last trip that I made to the village for the Muslim holiday of the sheep, the family erupted into a huge fight. I found this quite embarrassing (Fatim admitted the same) that this should happen in front of my roommate who came with me to visit “my family.” After this fight, the mother wrote (technically, someone else wrote for her) to me to tell me that her children stole her clothes. This reminds me of when Fatim had all of her clothes stolen here in Conakry, including several items that my mother had sent. And this is the environment that Fatim has grown up in.

Today, Fatim is still living with her aunt and she attends a private school with financial support from me and my mother. Last summer, I bought her a plane ticket to go to Dakar. To explain the difference to an American about the difference between two African cities is very difficult, because for an American who has never been here – well, Africa is Africa. However, there is a huge difference between Dakar, Senegal and Conakry, Guinea. The difference shows itself particularly in my Senegalese family, where the entire family speaks French (and some English) and the girls are educated and employed. Fatim spent six weeks there with a friend of mine – a 30-year old single Senegalese woman who took Fatim under her wing during that time. Fatim also hit the height of puberty during her stay, and she is no longer the little girl that I met several years ago.

With the background finished now, let’s enter into the strange and bizarre world of Guinean superstition…

About 6 weeks ago, I got a phone call that Fatim had “fallen.” During a period of a few hours at school, she ripped up her uniform, bit her teacher, and was restrained by several people of which she remembers nothing. At the school, the teachers bought garlic, honey, and limes to drive away the devils that were responsible for this.

Since then, the number of these types of episodes has increased significantly. Fatim missed a week of school just before her exams. During exam week, she returned to school – but only for 3 days before the family kept her at home because she continues to “fall.” Just two days ago, she “fell” 3 times. She has now missed another 1-1/2 weeks of school since.

When this started, I took Fatim to a very good German doctor in town. The doctor recommended a battery of tests. I didn’t go beyond this initial visit until recently, thinking that it might be something that would go away, something related to growing up. Besides, to me Fatim was normal – I hadn’t yet seen one of her episodes.

Last weekend, I invited Fatim to my place thinking that maybe she would not “fall” in this environment. I was wrong. Just one hour after her arrival, I was organizing chairs on my balcony and Fatim was playing with the jump rope. And then “Boom.” I walk back into the living room, and there she is lying on the floor. “Fatim, wake up,” I say. Her friend Yeray standing nearby chuckles and says “She’s not sleeping.” Each time I touch Fatim, she lets out a muffled scream and her body contorts violently as if trying to escape something. Occasionally, she finds the energy to stand up and take a few steps toward the door before falling once again. A friend of mine places her hands just above Fatim and begins reciting verses of the Koran and once again, Fatim reacts, screaming and twisting. I take a seat near the large closed windows, ready to jump up should she approach them, not wanting to see my little sister fall to her death from 3 stories up. Sure enough, she gets up and tries to open the window, but by now, she has snapped out of it. I ask her later why she approached the window, and she has no recollection of it. She “fell” again the following morning, but not as animated or as long.

This all seems very bizarre to me and every Westerner that I have discussed this with, however to the Guinean, even those who are educated, this is perfectly normal. “It’s devils that do this,” they say. “You are wasting your money to take her to the doctor – that won’t help,” they say. I didn’t listen to them – I took her to the doctor. “You need to send her to the village and get her treatment from the medicine man,” they tell me. After the tests, the doctor looks at me blankly; perhaps she has schistosomiasis, but the results are not clear. “The devil is the same devil that used to follow her father,” Fatim’s aunt explains.

A week after Fatim has taken the medication that the doctor prescribed, I am at Fatim’s house visiting and once again, Fatim “falls.” “She fell three times yesterday,” explains her aunt as she grabs a switch, whipping it through the air around the room as she shouts out insults. Fatim lies on the ground crying out as the swishing sound penetrates the air. “Yesterday I hit the bastard,” she says, “Fatim told me that the devil told her that I hit him good!” She also burns some special incense to chase away the devil. “This is a bad devil,” she says. The aunt takes a handful of medication and splashes some in Fatim’s face as she cries out. “This medicine works the best – we got it here in Conakry. This one, we got from the village. This one, we got from another medicine man and Fatim took it and vomited. This one, we also got in Conakry, but it doesn’t work so well. We know someone who is going to Dakar, and we are going to give him money to seek a reliable remedy.”

After about 30 minutes, Fatim escapes letting out a more human cry with tears in her eyes. Once she recovers and the Fatim that I know returns, I pull her aside so that I can talk with her. I really miss her, because I am used to seeing her every day of the week.

Fatim and I sit alone in the bedroom shared by Fatim, her sister, her two aunts, her cousin, and her uncle’s wife’s sister. She tells me how this devil has been with her for a very long time – she knows him very well. The devil wants to marry her, doesn’t want children, and offered her a ring and a necklace, however she refused this. Sometimes, she likes to flirt with the boys, but the devil really gets angry when this happens and makes her “fall.” Also, touching her on the back of her neck can cause her to “fall.” The devil watches her, sometimes taking the form of a human being. She doesn’t want to fall, but she can’t do anything to control it.

Fatim’s case is not at all unique in this country. Everyone has a story of someone they know who has experienced this sort of “possession.” The good news is that it seems to be almost always curable. Someone should always remain with the person, as some people have been known to wander off into the bush and “wake up” lost. A friend of mine had problems for almost three years before it was cured by a village medicine man – she missed an entire year of school because of the illness. The illness also seems to appear in waves. Sometimes schools have several cases that arrive simultaneously, and this requires a medicine man and the sacrifice of several goats or sheep to drive away the demons. Fatim admitted knowing someone else who “fell” prior to the same symptoms befalling her.

For the past week, I have been baffled by what is at the root of this illness however, after my conversation yesterday with Fatim, it has become clearer. This illness appears to be mental and she is seeing things that are reinforced and supported in this culture. She is not doing this on purpose but unconsciously. Her devil is real and she is in a real fight with her devil. As I listened to her story, I gave her some advice that I hope will help her fight her devil. “Fatim,” I said, “Each time before you eat, before you sleep, when you wake up in the morning – I want you to tell yourself these things. Believe in God and believe that he has a good life for you. God does not want this devil to control your life – this devil is bad. You have a path to follow that you and God together can determine. This devil wants only to wreck your life. You and God together are stronger than this devil and the devil cannot win. You have your education, you have your trip to Senegal this summer, and you have me leaving in just a few months, so you need to cure this illness.”

As I left, I hoped that these words will be the most effective medication yet. This story shows that we as human beings have the ability to create our own reality. Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in devils or not, what is important is what you believe and that it will shape your life. We all have devils, I suppose, that we sometimes allow to dominate our lives. For the moment, Fatim believes in the devil that controls her. Until she can believe differently, she is going to remain bound and chained by this demon. The conclusion to this story remains to be seen…

Aaron

PS. I saw Fatim yesterday. For the 36 hours since our conversation, she has not “fallen”.