Witchdoctors too, collect seed money

BY TED MALANDA

KENYA: When you are a successful citizen, with a lovely wife with fertile eggs, smart children, money in the bank, a good car and you are in excellent health, you don’t visit pastors for miracles.

You go to tee off at the golf club, see a shrink when you sniff depression and unwind in the Bahamas, too. Come Sunday, you rouse up the happy family in their Sunday best and nip over to church to give thanks to the Lord.

When they pass the offertory basket around, you give handsomely because as you know, He rewards those who give mightily, even if the pastor spends the loot on a fleet of cars and shiny suits. It’s also some sort of insurance to ward off the devil, so that your good fortune is maintained.

But the devil works in mysterious ways, his wonders to horrify. One day, your boss discovers he hates your nose. You get fired, your mortgage and gold club payments fall into arrears. Your lovely wife gets a shenzi disease. Your eldest son starts stealing utensils to buy bang. Your mother-in-law starts mumbling that you are an idiot and your world falls apart.

At the end of your tether, you run to the pastor, this time not to give thanks but plant a seed, to seek a miracle. And a miracle you get — if you pay up.

Frenzy

Alternatively, you could walk into a witchdoctor’s hut. The modus operandi is the same — speaking in tongues, jumping up and down in frenzy, a fetish for colourful costumes. Like the good miracle, seed receiving pastor, the witchdoctor performs miracles, too.

There is absolutely nothing he can’t fix, from a boil in your nether regions, to a runway spouse to making your boss love your nose again.

Oh yes, the witchdoctor collects seed money, too. But whether he, like his comrade in arms the seedy pastor, delivers or swindles, only the gods and the CID know.