“Finally brothers, pray for us that the Lord’s message may run swiftly and be honored…and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not all have faith.”
Claiming to be Wise, They Became FoolsIn a small village north of Impfondo, three children went missing. They disappeared into the jungle without a trace.
A few days later in the same village, three elderly people were murdered.
———
Earlier this week, two men came to town and paid us a visit. We will call them “the uncles” because although they are not actually related to us, they call that tiny village their home town, which means they consider themselves Orcxance’s relatives, since his mother was born there.
The uncles live in a village a few hours outside of Oyo, and they came to town in hopes of figuring out the mystery of the missing children. Here they had better chances of making phone calls, getting the police involved, talking to the right people and communicating with their home village.
The uncles arrived unexpectedly. When we got home from work at night, they were waiting for us outside our house. From the first few minutes in our home, the uncles were agitated and talked nervously in loud voices. I sensed an unpleasant chill settling in our home, and I could tell the uncles were captive to fear. You could see it in their eyes, and hear it as they talked of the deaths the witchdoctors had caused, and the disappearance of the children. They were angry too. Their loud voices and their talk of getting revenge on the witchdoctors showed it.
We scraped together a meal for them and pulled out an extra mattress, collected a few buckets of water and helped them settle in for the night.
Then we sat and listened to them recount what had happened.
———
The three old people, two men and a woman, had been witchdoctors for a very long time. They had spent their careers in serving evil spirits, keeping people harnessed by fear, and living in darkness.
Everyone in the village lived in fear of the witchdoctors and what they could do. If someone got sick or something went wrong, they went to the witchdoctors for a remedy. The old folks often had a cure, but it always required money, and often that someone would have to die. The evil spirits seek to destroy human life and they make no exceptions for anyone.
People from the village often died mysteriously of unknown causes. Some disappeared without a trace. Others who became sick with simple diseases and mild infections would quickly die for no apparent reason.
One child was brought to the hospital in Impfondo, but even at the hands of the Western doctors with excellent care, a simple problem progressed rapidly to a serious one. The child clung to life while within the hospital compound, but as soon as he was taken out of the hospital gates, he died.
People believed the witchdoctors had caused a man to completely disappear while on the river, but that they kept his spirit locked up in their house - and that it is still there to this day. The villagers are bound by superstition and fear. And their fears are not unfounded. Where there is darkness and an absence of love, fear runs rampant.
The witchdoctors gave up most of their children to the evil spirits as well, killing all but a few.
The only relatives that survived were those who left the village. Orcxance’s mother was one of the few. His father paid the bride price for her, enough money to satisfy the greedy relatives, and took her far away from there. “She wasn’t even their daughter, but she wouldn’t have survived if she hadn’t left,” Orcxance told me. Instead she found freedom, safety and a new life and family of her own.
The most recent event of the disappearance of the children had the whole village in an uproar. The villagers searched everywhere. They tried everything; they paid the witchdoctors to tell them where they were, they threatened them, but nothing happened. No one seemed to know what to do - and everyone was angry.
———
When the uncles tired of talking, we went to bed. That night I slept poorly, and had several nightmares. The next day, in the late morning, they left. It was a difficult day for me, and there seemed to be unexplained tension. When we had a quiet moment, Orcxance and I prayed for our house, rededicating it to the Lord. We prayed for each other and the uncles, and by evening peace had returned to our home.
We went back to our normal lives, hundreds of miles away with only the occasional phone call of some relative wanting to update us on the latest news.
Meanwhile, amidst the fear, frustration and anger, the villagers rose up and attacked the witchdoctors, beating them to death. They had lived a long time, keeping others captive to fear, themselves enslaved to darkness. And in the end they received no reward for their service, instead they paid with their own lives.
Here in Congo, everyone who is able will travel for a family funeral, but not this time. Nobody mourned the deaths, and nobody wanted to go to the funeral.
As happened often before, one person’s death brings healing or life to another. Even those lost in the fear of the spirit world understand this, and the witchdoctors made their living this way. “Your son will get well….but…so and so will die.”
And so it was with them. The three witchdoctors died, and a week later, the three children were found - over 30 kilometers from where they first went missing. No one had seen them the entire week, but they were alive and unharmed. How they survived without food or water, no one knows.
———
“For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals and reptiles… they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.”
