THE US REPORT

In the Kenyan village of Kegogi near the town of Kisii, 15 people, mostly elderly women, were murdered in late May because villagers in the rural area believed the women were witches.  CNN says this may be “difficult for modern-day Western cultures to fathom.” That’s a bit silly, considering our own American history’s Salem Witch Trials. As I grew up, my grandmothers told us tales about witches. And in the early 1980s, I did a story for SC Wildlife magazine about a woman named Aunt Ellen whose healing powers in the South Carolina Lowcountry were well-known; some called her a witch.

I walked the Lowcountry woods with Aunt Ellen one spring afternoon. She knew what every single flower, shrub and tree in those woods was good for. She knew their names and how to make a tea or poultice. She had delivered babies for scores of years and was much loved as a midwife. She was one of the most amazing women I’ve ever interviewed. But Aunt Ellen wasn't my only experience with a "witch."

My grandmother who lived in the Piedmont area in South Carolina often told us about a witch who put a spell on her brother. Our grandmother told us one day when her brother Clarence was little, he’d gone with their father to the cotton gin to sell some of their crop. On the way home they stopped at his sister Leah’s house. People believed Leah’s neighbor could put spells on people. Leah and the neighbor woman had previously had a “falling out” about something. 

As my grandfather visited with Leah, the neighbor woman came over to the wagon where Clarence waited. The neighbor woman mumbled something and then she walked away. Suddenly Clarence couldn’t walk, talk or function. My grandfather went home, got his pistol, returned to his sister’s house with Clarence and threatened the neighbor woman. The alleged witch accommodated him by removing the spell—she motioned with her hands and mumbled something. And Clarence was fine.

When I grew up there was an African-American woman in town (she’d have a fit if she heard me call her that; she would tell you she was “colored”) and even though Civil Rights legislation hadn’t been passed, not a person in that town would’ve messed with her. You gave her plenty of room if she approached you on the street. Her name was Miss Carrie. My grandmother told me, “She can put the eye on you.” Miss Carrie was tall and regal, with caramel-colored skin. She always wore a turban. I remember sort of admiring her because she was a woman who could scare men, something very unusual at that time in those parts.

The point in my Southern tales is that in fairly recent times, rural people in the US believed in witches, probably stemming from long-held fears inspired by the emerging church which was of course a patriarchy. Some cultures in the US still believe certain people have supernatural powers. So while the Kenyan deaths of women believed to be witches may horrify us, we are, if we look at history as a long timeline, not very far removed from similar fears ourselves.

[Text and photo by Kay B. Day]